“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.
The 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.
He 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? Something inside him made him pause and reach for his phone. When he swiped the screen to unlock his phone, he saw that he had a text message waiting for him.