The Viral Chase

Chapter 35: After Effects

Chapter 35

After Effects.

"Ignore him, Al." Jack pulls me towards the old desk in another corner of the small lab, ignoring Daniel. "So much for showing concern." Daniel says with an expression of fake hurt, shaking his head. "Yeah, you and your fake hurt face." I yell back at him, unable to resist the urge to get him back for his mockery. "I said ignore him, Alina. He is probably trying to get you on your nerves." Jack tries to calm me down but I feel a different level of hate towards Daniel. "If only I could punch him to get the real pain on his face." I mumble to myself, glaring at him as he struts down the hallway. Jack gives a hearty laugh at my words and I smile sheepishly when he says, "Still the same. The same old angry adorable Alina."

"So what do we do now?" I ask Jack, clueless about the whole situation. Professor being the mind behind this criminal activity has come to me like a shock and no doubt, Daniel had to be the one to join hands with him. I wonder what is Professor offering him to lure him in this whole plan. And after knowing all this, one thing is clear, he doesn't need any insider to give him the details of the company, he owns that whole useless firm.

"Do you have any copy of that virus?" Jack questions me and I nod in agreement, remembering the small navy blue pendrive, the tiny thing that started it all. "Great! Do you have it now?" "No, sorry." I reply with a hint of fake sorrow in my voice. I can't trust anyone now, not after all I have been through. The known and the unknown are both the same, trusting anyone will be risky. So instead, I lie very convincingly to Jack about the pendrive not being with me.

Harry's backpack had it all when we robbed the agency and the moment after I cleaned his wound from the bullet, I found the pendrive lying on the floor of the car beside my left foot. It was only sensible for me to keep it safe and now I have it tucked inside the hidden pocket in my combat boots. I am not letting anyone know about it, at least not unless professor is caught.

"So then you just act like your making one and I will go get that one. We can show him the original and exchange it before escaping." Jack thinks of it on the spot. I can't believe it that he is an officer after making such a useless plan. "How can you think of something like that! He is our computer and network security teacher. He can easily differentiate one virus from another and he is much more dangerous than all the people I have been held captive by, until now." Jack widens his eyes at my last words. "How many have held-" "We can count them later, now think of something senseful."

So we rack our brains for any possible solution to our problem but not a single one comes our minds. "Why haven't Harry and Kevin found us yet?" I ask Jack, unable to keep quiet about this. "Because I didn't tell them where I was taking you. I had to act as professor instructed me, it was your life on stake." His fearful eyes told me what he said was true.

I sat behind the desk and switched on the computer, for the sake of pretending at least, typing few lines of code. He was by my side, trying to think of a solution but I couldn't concentrate. I felt guilty for lying to him about the pendrive while he was doing everything in his hands to save me.

I am on the edge being unable to trust anyone with turn of these sudden events. I can't stop wondering how it all started on the night when Harry landed up in my house and then everything wrong just seemed to follow us around. Its true I have been trusting everyone blindly since the chaos in my life but I won't anymore. There is no need to feel guilty, I convince my heart. If these can play with me for my own safety, I can play for myself too.

I can barely breathe in this cellar with no one around, Jack is being kept away from me and it may not seem like it but this place is filled with people. I was shocked when Jack took me to the upper levels of this place and gosh! If someone could have seen that place; wouldn't have believed his own eyes. Its a large factory up there manufacturing some type of medicines. And there are guards moving around the place, at every corner, at every turn and every door. They were looking at us like we are some kind of prisoners on an escape mission, well we are prisoners here but not on the run yet.