Doubt (13 page)

The dawn has come
And the morning sun’s rays
Streak the painted sky, warm crimson shades of orchard rose
While the ocean tide caresses the damp dark beach
And a silent tear slides down her cheek.

AR Vasquez

“SAEED, I’M TELLING YOU
,
it worked! I’m living proof.”

Harry watched
in shock as Aaron Doub danced around in a circle, shaking his arms like a mad man.

This man is not my father. My father is dead. This stranger has my father
’s voice, his face, and even his ridiculous comb-over that hides his bald spot.
Aaron Doub looked exactly the same way he did the last time Harry saw him alive.

Dr. Saeed
said in a soft voice, “But you were declared dead at the hospital.”

The hair on Harry
’s arms stood on end. What is going on here?

“
Don’t say that word! You know I don’t like that word.”

That was the kind of eccentric
talk Harry knew and grew up with—the paranoid scientist.
My father is alive.
Somehow the shock didn’t register, as it should have. Aaron’s presence made a strange kind of sense in Harry’s mind.

“
Sorry, Aaron. I forgot,” Dr. Saeed said quietly. “My only guess is that something must have happened at the hospital. If someone took you from the hospital and then cremated another body, then that could explain how we were made to believe that you died.”

“
Saeed! Didn’t I tell you NOT to use that word?”

He jumped up and down
like an infuriated gorilla.

“
Would you like me to give you a sedative? It looks like the trip has made you quite anxious,” Dr. Saeed said, crossing his arms.

“
No! No sedative,” Aaron said, his anger suddenly dissipating. He slumped down on the examination bed, and whispered, in a breathy tone, “I don’t feel well.”

“
You’ve just travelled through time at superluminal speeds. The human body travelling at warp drive, theoretically speaking, could affect the atomic molecular structure of the person, agitating the body at a cellular level. You need to hydrate and rest. When you are rested, I will do some testing.”

Dr. Saeed helped Aaron
step down off the examination table and got him safely situated on a nearby bed. He reached for a folded sheet and covered Aaron’s body.

“
Here, drink this,” Dr. Saeed said, as he handed Aaron a plastic cup filled with water.

“
Straw, please?” Aaron asked, his eyes looking up at Dr. Saeed.

He grasped the sheet
, pulled it up to his neck, and waited while Dr. Saeed put a straw into the cup.

“
Thank you, Saeed. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said, grinning sheepishly.

“
Now, now, Aaron. Just relax. I need you to tell me everything you can remember before you arrived here,” Dr. Saeed said in a soothing tone.

Harry
could barely contain his desire to burst into the room and demand answers from Dr. Saeed and his father. Fortunately, the Truth Seeker in him knew enough to stay still. He had to watch and listen.

W
hat other information has Dr. Saeed withheld from me?

Tasting the same bitter
betrayal Cristal must have felt towards him, he knew this was karma—
what goes around does come around
.

Dr. Saeed turned away for a moment, his back to Harry.
When he turned around, he was holding a needle syringe. He gently pulled up Aaron’s sleeve, wiped his arm with a cotton swab, and injected what Harry assumed was a mild sedative.

A
aron smiled as his body relaxed.

“
Ah, you always knew how to make me feel better, Saeed.”

Dr.
Saeed pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down.

“
Okay, are you ready to tell me everything?”

Aaron closed his eyes
in affirmation. Harry was baffled. He never remembered seeing his dad like this before—vulnerable and almost childlike.

Harry looked at his watch.
Time was ticking by. If he didn’t leave soon, Cristal would reach the black hole, and—the thought of what could happen made his gut wrench. Torn and emotionally sucker-punched, Harry was reluctant to leave. The truth he sought might have been a complete lie. Dr. Saeed and Aaron were both in on something, and now, Harry’s world was turned completely upside down. He knew that whatever secrets those two shared would definitely affect every Truth Seeker, not just himself.

“
Do you remember the dinner party at your house?” Dr. Saeed asked in a monotone voice, hypnotically soothing.

Aaron
mumbled to himself, his eyes still closed.

“
Ah, yes. I was telling everyone about our latest findings. About time travel.”

He chuckled quietly
, grasping the top of the sheet tightly.

“
Go on…” Dr. Saeed prompted him.

“
I don’t remember the rest of the dinner. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up and found myself in a lab, just like this. Yes, yes…I remember now. There were people around me wearing hospital masks. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t.”

“
Do you remember what they were saying?” Dr. Saeed asked.

“
Nothing. No one was talking. I thought that was strange. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move a muscle. Then they all left the room, leaving me alone on the gurney. That’s when I felt the room shaking. My body started convulsing violently. I felt the air being squeezed from my lungs. I wasn’t scared though,” he said, half whispering.

“
Why weren’t you scared?”

“
It almost felt like the first time when we almost succeeded. I felt myself slipping out of reality. The atoms in my body were pulling apart; the room was spinning around me. And then there was a flash of white light. Then blackness, like I was falling into a deep endless pit.”

Dr. Saeed frowned
, nodding his head as if he was picturing what Aaron was saying in his mind.

“
It seemed like I would fall forever, horrified and worried that it would never stop. After what seemed an eternity, I felt all my atoms rush together like a magnetic wave pulling all my cells towards the core of my body.”

Harry was puzzled by Aaron
’s words.
What was he talking about?

“
And then I felt as if a bus had hit me. I thought I was going to die. Then I was stumbling in here,” Aaron said, his eyes opening.

He looked around.

“
Looks like you have upgraded a lot of things, since I’ve been here.”

He
’s been here before? What the --?

“
Like I said, it has been five years. Harry and I were trying to continue the work that you started. But this lab, I’ve kept secret. I don’t want GN sticking their noses into our work. I also wanted to protect Harry.”

“
Ahhh, Harry. How is my boy?” Aaron asked, smiling.

“
He’s not a boy, anymore. He’s a man now with a doctorate. A true genius. Just like you said he’d be,” Dr. Saeed replied.

“Yes, we succeeded in proving my theory. Inducing the chemical changes in the cells of a genius—one whose soul is pure of mortal sin. That was the secret to it all.”

I can
’t believe you both used me.

Dr. Saeed stood up and leaned over the bed.

“
But that doesn’t explain how you time travelled here.”

Aaron’
s voice melted into a nostalgic lilt.

“
You’re right. We did try altering the general chemical composition of my nucleic acids. Nothing seemed to come of it, except for my sudden hair loss.”

Dr. Saeed chuckled.

“That wasn’t sudden, Aaron. It’s just that you hadn’t seen the top of your head in a really long time.”

Aaron scowled and turned away.

Dr. Saeed seemed to ignore him.

“
In order to time travel, you had to be near the vicinity of a black hole, and there had to be enough power or energy to enable you to transport to here—the future.”

Aaron rolled his eyes, saying,
“I told you, the energy was coming from inside that room. It seemed that those masked persons turned on the energy when they left the room.”

“
Similar to an X-ray technician going into a booth before powering up the machine on a patient,” Dr. Saeed said.

Despite marveling
at the idea that such a machine capable of time travel existed, Harry was seething with anger. He and his mother had trusted Dr. Saeed. But he was just using them both like lab rats. Suddenly, he could hear Cristal’s voice in his head saying those same words to him not too long ago.

His mother
’s journal had mentioned how much she trusted Dr. Saeed, because he had helped prescribe the medication she needed to cope with the loss of her husband. He had driven her to the GN psychiatric visits. But now, Harry doubted Dr. Saeed’s intentions. Harry didn’t know what his mother, Bina, had said to her psychiatrist, but he was certain that she never told anyone about her secret journal.

“
And Bina? Is she safe? Did you manage to test our theory on her?”

“Bina is fine. She finally got over your death,” he started to say, but he paused and corrected himself. “She finally got over her loss of you. The tests I conducted on her were a success, just as we had hoped for.”

Tests?
On my mother? Did he kidnap her?

The phone in his pocket began
vibrating, followed by the text notification alert.
Crap.
He fumbled to turn it off.

He glanced up to see Dr. Saeed
frown and tilt his head. He stood up and started walking towards the closet. His face had a deathly calm expression, as if he was about to capture his prey.

I
’ve never seen him look like this before.

What was
more odd was the fact that his eyes seemed to be glowing a fluorescent shade of yellow. Harry wasn’t sure if the shadows in the closet were playing tricks with his mind, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out.

“
Harry? Is that you?”

Harry shook his head
in confusion. He acknowledged in his brain that it was the voice of Dr. Saeed, and yet it wasn’t. The tone was much deeper with a reverberation that sounded like nails scratching across a blackboard.

Now, I know I
’m not imagining things.

He
stumbled backwards, bumping into the boxes of supplies behind him. Quickly regaining his balance, he turned and ran out of the closet and back into the lab. He had to get the hell out of there.

He ran to the doors
, flinging them open. Behind him, he swore he could hear a weird “wooshing” sound.

Holy crap.
Don’t look back.

He sprinted down the hallway, rushing past the security guards
. They both called out for him to stop.
No f’ing way!

He
made it into the stairwell, picking up the pace as he sped like a bullet down two flights of stairs to the bottom floor where he reached the emergency exit doors. Power reading a sign written in Hebrew that was pasted on one door, “Alarmed. In case of fire, push to open,” he slammed his body against the handles, shoving the doors open.

T
he clanging of the alarms rang into the air.

He
bolted towards the parking lot.
What the hell am I running from?

The rational
side of his brain told him he was being paranoid. But his natural instincts told him to run even faster.

H
e reached the parking lot and saw that his car was one of only three left in the lot. He ran towards it, ripped open the driver-side door, and jumped in, slamming the door behind him. He jabbed the button to lock the doors while he shoved his foot on the brakes and pushed the button to start the engine.

Why I am so frigging terrified? It
’s just Dr. Saeed, for crying out loud
.

Out of desperation he called out,
“Mom, if you can hear me, please help.”

He couldn’t believe that he would resort to calling out for his missing mother. He must be losing it.

Check your phone.
The answer is there.

“
Mom?”

He whipped his head around
. He was certain that the sound of her voice was coming from the back seat of the car. But his anticipation was replaced with a sad disappointment. No one was there.

“
Freak, I must be hallucinating.”

Hurry, Harry, there isn
’t much time.

He
spun around again. No one else was in the car.
I must be going nuts.
Why is my mind playing tricks on me?