Read Crystal Horizon: A Short Prequel to Crystal Deception for Free Online

“What’s going on, Sid?”
    He stepped to her, caressed her cheeks, and kissed her,
holding it for a long moment. He squeezed her hands as he stepped back, and
then turned and walked ahead on the trail, his pace quickening with each step. He
nodded to Sophie and Alstine as he strode past them, and then the trail curved
into the forest.
    Following him with her eyes, she brought her fingers up and
traced her lips where he’d kissed her. She stood unmoving until he vanished
from sight. Her mind swirled in turmoil as she struggled to understand.
    When Cheryl got back to her cabin that night, dread filled
her heart. She looked for him in his bunk, and then checked his usual haunts. She
tried calling him, but her com told her there was no such person. She asked their
friends if they knew his whereabouts, and then she asked everyone she saw. She
didn’t sleep that night. She just stared into the darkness.
    The next morning, she asked to see Captain Dooley. Following
an aide into his office, she stood in front of his desk and, breaking protocol,
asked him what he knew.
    Looking at the work on his desk, Dooley compounded her
anguish with a cryptic remark. “We’ve spent eight months training you to keep
your eyes facing the future, Lieutenant. We don’t dwell on history here.” He lifted
his head and said gently, “Dismissed.”
    She nodded and made a hasty exit. Back at her bunk, she
spent the rest of the day working her com, trying to find out where he might be
or how she might contact him. In spite of her substantial technical talents, as
near as she could tell, Sid didn’t exist and never had.
    Confused and devastated, she curled up on her bunk and
cycled through feelings of grief, anger, denial, and betrayal. Staring into the
dark again that night, she started to cry. A few hours before dawn, completely
exhausted, sleep came to ease her pain.
    She attended the graduation ceremony that afternoon. Dressed
in formal whites, she assembled with the class. Cheers and friendly jeers rang
out when the winning hidden-treasure team revealed their loot. Cheryl didn’t
notice who had won or what the treasure was.
    As was tradition, the ceremony ended with a roll call of
next appointments for each of the graduates. Announced one by one, the class
clapped and hooted in support of their colleagues. It was a heady day for the
group.
    “Lieutenant Cheryl Wallace is now Commander Wallace,” announced
Dooley. “She’s the new first officer on Fleet ship Pinnacle . Congratulations,
Commander Wallace.”
    She walked to the front, saluted, shook the captain’s hand,
then faced the class and accepted their accolades. As she waved to the group,
she saw an empty chair where Sid should have been. It was a fitting metaphor
for the void in her heart.
    * * *
     “Ohh,” Sid moaned. He opened his eyes
and closed them immediately when a wash of pain radiated through his body. A
welt on the back of his head throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. He reached
back to explore the wound. Or tried too. His arms wouldn’t move.
    He opened his eyes for a second time and peered into darkness.
Wiggling both hands and probing with his fingers, he determined that his i wrists were bound to the armrests of a chair. Lifting
and twisting his feet, he confirmed that his ankles were fastened to its legs.
    As his eyes focused, he detected a faint slit of light a few
paces in front of him. That’s a door. The closeness of the ambient noise
in the space helped him complete the picture. I’m tied to a chair and I’m in
a closet.
    With these cues, memories flooded back. He was on a small
island in the Pacific Ocean—a rogue plot of land set closer to the Philippines
when traveling from Hawaii. The island had switched owners at least four times
in the past decade, and the different landlords all had two things in common: they
were controlled by criminal syndicates hostile to the Union of Nations, and they
used the prime location as a world-wide clearinghouse