Cristal - Novella Page 3

  He mumbled something that resembled “Good night,” kissed the top of her head, and returned to his notes. She straightened herself, turned, and walked out of the sitting room. Ever since the riot that devastated downtown Manila and the reports of hundreds of people who went missing a few weeks ago, her father had stayed past office hours at the consulate every night.

  Her thoughts raced as she walked down the long dark corridor. Due to the blackouts in the city, everyone had to conserve electricity by keeping the lights off as much as possible. The huge three-story house was intimidating in the daytime but even spookier at nighttime. Built in 1926, the maids said that the house was one of the oldest in Quezon City, which, according to legend, the ghosts of the Filipino prisoners who were tortured and killed in the rooms throughout the house during the Japanese occupation, still wandered the hallways.

  Suddenly, Serena felt a hand on her left shoulder. Parts of her wanted to start running, but instead, she froze in her tracks. The spicy scent of “Gucci pour Homme” cologne enveloped her nostrils. She must have sprayed that scent on thousands of male customers last summer at her part-time job during the “Shangri-la Plaza’s Back to School” promotion. Definitely, not a ghost.

  “Don’t be scared, Serena. We need to talk,” a deep, strong voice whispered in her ear.

  This clown was about to learn he was messing with the wrong girl. All she needed was an opening and her training would kick in. She continued walking down the hall. The stranger pressed his hand into the small of her back.

  She squinted to see her reflection in the twenty-foot mirror at the end of the hallway. Her short, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, revealed her pale white skin. Her pink cotton pajamas made her look like a bewildered child and not the confident twenty-two-year-old she was known to be among her circle of friends.

  As they walked closer towards the mirror, she could faintly see the outline of her captor; his hooded jacket hid his facial features. Possibly six feet tall, his frame overshadowed her mere five-foot-two inches of height. She made mental notes, so if he got away after she disabled him, she’d have all the details to give to the police.

  “Let’s go inside your room.”

  It was more of a request than a command.

  Why did he sound so familiar? Who was this person? She opened the door into the darkness of the room. Her hand reached out for the light switch, an automatic reaction. He grabbed her hand and held it tight.

  “Keep the lights down for now.”

  The streaks of pale moonlight streamed through the open window onto her bed.

  Serena tried to think. She could have easily caught her captor by surprise and kneed him in the groin or better yet, gouged his eyes out if she wanted to. Having taught self-defense classes at Global Nation for the past two years, she was not about to lose her advantage of her hidden talent until she ascertained what kind of weapon he carried.

  “Have a seat on the bed.”

  Unsure of what his intentions were and yet as equally curious, she sat down on the corner of her bed, obeying his request. Her gaze moved up his dark pants and up his jacket until it reached his face. He raised his arm. She held her breath anticipating a blow, but realized he was only removing his hoodie from his head.

  Before she could react, he sat down beside her and removed the backpack from his shoulder and lowered it onto the bed, keeping it close to him. He fumbled for a minute and brought out a square object. He placed it onto his lap and then opened it. The bright light from the laptop caught her by surprise and forced her to rule out robbery, rape, or kidnapping as a motive. He had to be the lamest intruder on the planet.

  Unable to contain herself, she jumped up and said in a loud voice, “What is this? Who the hell are you?”

  He turned to her, his blue eyes piercing into hers. His lips curled into a smile, like a child who had a secret to share.

  “Harry…Harry Doubt. Nice to finally meet you in person, Serena, or should I say, Lioness? I have a mission for you. Many Philippine citizens have ‘disappeared’ or have gone missing in the last year.”

  “Are you nuts?” Serena sputtered. “You don’t break into peoples’ houses and say, ‘Hi, I have a mission for you.’ I want you to leave.”

  Serena stood, pointing at the door.

  “Perhaps I went about this the wrong way,” Harry said with a sigh.

  “Ya’ think?”

  Harry reached out to shake her hand in an attempt to introduce himself. Serena grabbed it and made a swift classic “ippon seoinage” judo move, disabling Harry with a one-arm shoulder throw to the ground. She pinned her foot over his throat and twisted his arm. That teaches you a lesson.

  “So talk to me. What’s this about?” she asked.

  “Manila, Global Nation,” Harry managed to choke out. “Disappearances.”

  “So? Tell me something I don’t know. Global Nation has been offering help to the local police and army to investigate the disappearances.”

  She pushed her foot even more firmly on his throat.

  “In my front pocket of my shirt, there’s a flash card. Take it.”

  She reached for the flash card while keeping an eye on him.

  “We need you to find out what is on your father’s computer. We have information that GN is involved.”

  Chapter 5

  Cristal (alias Mist)

  Mist: Zero, are you there? Hello?

  Zero: Yes. We’re confirmed for video chat with Onyx at 1 pm. Do I need to remind you to be nice?

  Be nice? Cristal stared blankly at the screen.

  Mist: Of course I’ll be nice. Who do you think I am?

  Before she could respond further, he logged off. Argh!

  When Harry recruited Kerim Ilgaz without asking Cristal, she was “nice.” She had voiced her concerns about Kerim’s technical skills that were not up to par with the others on the Elite team.

  “There are other talents we need, not just programming or gaming ones,” he said.

  Harry didn’t share what those talents were, so she respectfully kept her mouth shut.

  And wasn’t she nice when Harry recruited Angelica? Again, despite her not even being in the top 500 of the Truth Seekers’ game, she agreed to train her.

  “She will be a significant asset for us when we need it,” he assured her.

  Serena, on the other hand, was really cool to work with. Stationed in the Philippines, which was twelve hours ahead of New York time, Serena often video chatted with her late at night or early in the morning, all without complaint. She took the missions seriously just as she did.

  But what was the big deal with Joanna? During the online game missions, Joanna always broke the rules. She once led the team into enemy territory with not enough weapons or ammunition despite Cristal’s warnings. They did succeed in destroying the enemy’s munitions building, but to the expense of losing three members of their team. Nothing Harry could say would convince her that Joanna was nothing more than a ladder-climbing fraud.

  She took a deep breath. Don’t worry, Mr. Doubt, I will deal with Joanna when the time comes.

  ***

  Ten years ago, Cristal Hernandez started playing the online game, Truth Seekers. In her real life outside the game, she didn’t fit in with anything or anybody. Classmates called her “the loner” or “weirdo,” taunting her in the playground because she was always nose deep in a book.

  She enjoyed losing herself in the fantasy world where the problems of her life didn’t matter. Since she was little, she was very aware of things that made her different from other children. Her father used to spend time with her, teaching her how to control her “abilities.” She was able to open a book and read it from beginning to end in half an hour. The words used to lift off the page and flood into her head in waves of sentences, phrases, and paragraphs. She used to tell her father that it felt as if she was consuming a book, not reading it.

  When she was in first grade, her father began molding her interest in computer p
rogramming. Instead of dolls or toys to play with, she received thick programming books to read. He told her that these skills would be very useful for her in the future. She enjoyed consuming the books and found the programming activities inside them creatively challenging. Soon, she was building online applications and web tools. The power of creating something out of physically nothing tantalized her curiosity.

  “Dad, I want to do more projects. What else can you teach me?” she begged him.

  “You were meant to do special things, Cristal,” he always told her.

  When she was with him, she felt she could accomplish anything she wanted. But one day, everything changed.

  On her tenth birthday, her father never made it home from work. He was reported officially missing after her mother placed a missing person report forty-eight hours later.

  “He can’t be gone, Mom! He just can’t!”

  She ran into her room and slammed the door. She remembered how at that same moment, her heart began racing, her lungs were expanding as if drawing in all the air around her, and the room slowly started spinning. The floor shifted beneath her feet and then the walls started to shake.

  “Cristal! Stop!”

  “Dad?”

  She whirled around. There was no one in the room but her. Her heart rate slowed; the room was no longer shaking. Her books were strewn on the floor, evidence that the event happened. Had her father not called out to her, who knows what damage she could have done?

  After that night, she was convinced that her father would return.

  When the police closed the missing person’s file a year later, her mother became ghost-like—floating around the house, wordless; an empty vessel.

  Cristal had no choice but to fend for both of them. She knew that’s what her father would have wanted. She made sure her mom made it to her psychiatric appointments and her Help Group at the local church. She learned how to buy the groceries and cook. All the while, she never gave up the hope of seeing her father again. Even if she had wanted to forget, her dreams wouldn’t let her.

  Her father is standing at a distance, surrounded by a light mist, waving and calling out her name. She runs towards him, screaming, “Dad, I’m coming to you!” but her voice has no sound. The faster she runs, the farther he seems to be. Still, she runs faster, harder. Clouds of white merciless mist block her from reaching him. “Dad, don’t go!” she cries out in her head. But now, his image is fading, melting into the blanket of whiteness and silence.

  Two years after her father’s disappearance, her mother started dating a dentist from her Help Group. Short, bald with a terrible case of bad breath, he was the complete opposite of her father. It wasn’t long before Dr. Halitosis married her mom and moved into their home.

  “Cristal, get off the computer. You have school tomorrow,” her mother called out from the living room.

  “Mom, fifteen more minutes!”

  Fifteen minutes usually meant an hour.

  “You know how your dad hates you playing those online games. He’s going to be home soon.”

  “He’s not my dad,” she grumbled under her breath. Why does Mom put up with that creep?

  Instead of hanging out at the malls like most thirteen-year-old girls, she spent her spare time battling against evil. It was about the time when she received a full scholarship to study at MIT, the summer before her fifteenth birthday, when she first met Harry.

  She had gained ten million points, the most any player had ever reached. Everyone was talking about it in the discussion forums. That same day, she received a private message, which invited her to join the Elite team. It was sent by Harry, or more accurately by his online alias Zero Doubt, creator of the Truth Seekers. All gamers knew that Zero only invited the best of the best.

  Zero: Inviting you to be a member of the Elite Team. You have twenty-four hours to accept the invitation.

  No one would even dream of receiving a private message from the infamous Zero Doubt. Other gamers could only hope of having Zero comment on their discussion posts. When Harry posted a message, gamers would rush to reply to his post in hopes that he would respond. What a bunch of losers. Who the heck was this Zero Doubt anyway?

  But the challenge to be in the top team was hard to resist. So she responded to his invitation.

  Mist: Mission accepted. Awaiting further instructions.

  After the first successful mission as an elite Truth Seeker, Harry began messaging her regularly. They started to spend hours online brainstorming strategic maneuvers to conquer other players in the game.

  Many times while video chatting with Harry, her stepfather would bang on her door yelling, “If you don’t stop playing on the computer, I’m going to shut off the Internet!”

  “Is everything okay?” Harry would ask her.

  “Yeah,” she answered, in a tone that was a bit sharper than she intended.

  She always pretended that things were fine. “Never show anyone your weaknesses,” her father always told her. “Especially your closest allies.”

  Chapter 6

  Joanna Chan (alias Onyx)

  “IS HE SERIOUS?” Joanna asked herself, running her hand through her long, straight, black hair. This was the fourth quality assurance project assigned to her. What an insult to her programming expertise. She wasn’t the top gamer in Truth Seekers for nothing.

  She drummed her peach-colored manicured nails on the armrest of her office chair.

  Instead of working, she was entertaining herself by playing the Truth Seekers’ alternate reality game. The fun part was doing it with no one noticing. It wasn’t hard to do, since she was the newest kid on the block. Her cubicle was the size of a postage stamp stuck way back in the dungeons of the office, far away into the corner next to the archive cabinets. The nearest cubicle to her was ten feet away, so she had all the privacy she needed to play her games. Out of all the games she played, Truth Seekers was the most breathless and demanding, just like the programmer genius who developed it. And like in any game, she wanted the top prize, so she had no doubt that Harry was hers to attain.

  The game’s private message box bounced in the corner of the monitor demanding her attention.

  Joanna’s eyes sparked with excitement.

  Zero: Onyx, let’s meet at the coffee shop across the street in ten minutes. Mist hacked into the database and found some information that might help both Graphix and you find out what happened in the disappearance of your family members. You can work to decode all the encrypted data. But we can talk more when we see each other.

  Without hesitation, Joanna logged out of her computer, grabbed her purse and ran out the back door. She ran across the street, the spiked heels of her black boots tapping the cement. She could see Harry sitting by the window table of the coffee shop. Finally, here was her chance to work alone with Harry on a real Truth Seekers’ mission.

  Harry Doubt, the icon of alternate reality game creators was a private guy. Gamers could only play by his personal invitation. Joanna, who had been playing obsessively on Truth Seekers every night, took the job at Global Nation at the GN University campus in New York City when Harry sent out the following message via the Truth Seekers’ private message system:

  “Looking for a real Truth Seekers’ mission? Only inviting 5 of the top gamers here. You’ll get to work closely with me on missions which are yet to be disclosed.”

  Joanna didn’t think twice. She was twenty-four years old and had just graduated from the Emery College’s Game Art and Design Program in San José, California. She was itching to do something fun. She bought a one-way ticket to New York City.

  Harry had made sure all the hiring paperwork was taken care of. He even found an apartment for her to live in and paid one year of the lease up front. She was so thrilled to be one of the few gamers to have the opportunity to meet the famous Harry Doubt that she had heard so much about in the discussion forums.

  His father, Aaron Doub, professor of theoretical physics at Global Nation University of New
York, was pretty famous too. He was intelligent and entertaining without even trying to be. People paid big dollars to watch him guest speak at conferences. He introduced himself as a “futurist” and a “mad scientist.” His quirky habits were his signature. He continually pushed his black, horn-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his beak-like nose, and waved his hands around excitedly, explaining a breakthrough in something unheard of, like worm holes. He wore a T-shirt that said, “I’m from 2025.” His presentations were captured on thousands of YouTube videos, which Truth Seekers shared on discussion forums. Too bad he died so suddenly. Harry must have been so devastated to lose such an ingenious father.

  After working for eight months at GN, Joanna barely saw the twenty-two-year-old genius. The only time Harry spoke to her directly was when he wanted to ask her something about a GN work-related matter. It was always Cristal who met with Harry to brainstorm ideas after work. Sometimes Gabriel, codename Graphix, Harry’s buddy and one of the top Truth Seekers, would be invited on those overnight mission-planning sessions. For some reason, Joanna was always kept out of the loop.

  Not this time. Harry personally invited her for this mission. And knowing that it could help solve the mystery around the disappearance of her father made it even more attractive.

  When she stepped into the shop, she did a quick sweep of the store. Like in the game, she always made a point to check her surroundings.

  There were two customers waiting in line at the counter. Joanna looked to the back. There was an old man sitting and reading the paper. There were two teen girls eating. She could see Harry sitting at a table, working on his laptop with his head leaning forward. He wore a brown sport jacket, white T-shirt, and jeans. Nothing seemed suspicious.

  Joanna straightened her skirt and walked up to Harry’s table.

  Be normal. He’s like any other guy. Just go up to him and say, “Harry, I won’t let you down on this mission.” She shook her head. No, that sounds dumb. Say, “It’s going to be fun to be doing a real mission with you, Harry.”