(STAR)
"MIKA!"
Walking upon hearing my name. I slowly open my eyes looking around with my blurry vision, which is slowly clearing out in my sight. Glancing right besides, Yuna's worried call and tone face me.
"Mika."
She calls with a sigh of relief as I glance up the ceiling patching my thoughts and counting what happened, I jolted up as his face register my mind realizing and recalling everything from that night.
"That guy?" I immediately ask with a rush and urgency of my voice, by which they three knew as they look at each other.
Gasping as silence and questionable silence places in the air, Yuna closes her eyes with her words.
"Thank God you're finally awake." Falling as she sat on a chair beside my bed, relief from the entire chase that just happened.
Leo walks beside me as he piles some pillows on my back asking me to meetly lean and sit on the bed which makes me wonder, with their eyes and stares that are knocking something consequential but they are having the doubts telling me.
Reading the atmosphere, I ask the question which they need to answer that will lead me to have what I want from the first one. "How long was I unconscious?"
Curious yet not, as I rather want to know what happened to him and how he is than my condition, the other two gasps taking their seats on the couch facing me. With their face of fatigue and burned-out minds, I can read that they are hiding something they are currently wondering to rely upon me.
Somewhat fed up, I took a deep breath asking, "Yuna." with a commanding voice, Yuna yields as she faces me with a mix of doubts, worry, and suspicion.
"You've been unconscious for three days." She starts, getting into the details. "After the last call and an hour, we arrive at the destined location finding out that you were not there we know something is wrong. So, we track your location using your phone's GPS in Vince's laptop, but we cannot locate you."
Realizing as I recall that in that time, my phone was cut with its power and was broken, I then nodded with the reason. "My phone was broken as I am running away escaping, and with its power run down, you cannot track me down nonetheless."
Yet, somehow it did not convince the three of them as Yuna sighs and Vince immediately showed me his laptop with a random glitch of coordinates but a tracking signal deliberately sends out to them, paving my location, 'our' location.
"If it is as easy as that we can rest assure that everything is still what it all is, but for some unknown reason," Yuna added, with all the suspicion as Vince points out the coordinates with the server address encrypted and enclose, but Vince manages to decode, giving my location with the unknown sender.
"At first, I thought that it was embedded with a virus as I took great precaution unlocking the code. But realizing how well created the message be, one thing came in our mind, it came from someone we did not know."
Giving his suspicion and deduction Vince's serious tone warns that someone might know the real me and the mask that I am wearing. With the possibility that it can be an enemy or an ally, we must be aware of it. Showing me the codes, he added, "It became like this." Pointing the codes in amidst his skill and intellect as a hacker himself. It traps and corners him without a way to escape from the keys that though he successfully decoded, still bears the mystery he finds challenging.
"Mysterious as it only delivers one message of your whereabouts, but it gives a virus code of unknown matrix symbol that can corrupt any system. I try tracking it down from where could it came from, but I always find myself in a dead-end."
Somehow irritated, Vince is taken deep within his interest as he wanted the challenge.
"What do you think happened?" I ask, alarmed by the possibility of an enemy we did not know.
"I still don't have a clue as I am still trying to decode this glitch or was this one in the first place. But one thing is sure this is not connected to any pattern that links to the president."
Taking about my father, Vince pulls his laptop away as he sits back on the couch, taking the challenge ahead. "For now, I can guarantee that this glitch, or whatever this is, is not here to harm us, but I'll keep trying to decode it, for good time's sake."
Dauntless, he lay properly leaning his back on the couch while Yuna looks puzzled and worried about something.
"Is there something wrong, Yuna?"
I ask, reading her worries by which she just shoves away shaking her head answering back. "Don't worry, there's none."
She immediately assures smiling halfway unconvincing as I wanted to plunder more, I remember him, which made me stops thinking about the other thing and ask once more, now with my firm want to know what happened to him.
"The person who is with me, where is he?"
Looking away as they three somehow could not look straight at me, Yuna hand a piece of paper.
"I doubt everything about this, but I think you should have this."
Receiving as it turns out to be a business card. I read the words and of the company that was written as Yuna explains everything.
"On that night as we three continue to search for you while tracking down the possibilities of the President's henchmen that might still be around. At the same time that the encrypted code was sent a random caller called Leo. A female voice instructed us what to do, and realizing the connection, we hesitated at first. But our priority is to find you so we were left with no choice, and the rest is what we laid out earlier."
With the word 'she' and the fact, that's too vague to call a coincidence. Its connection is laid present to be a fact. But trying to know who, why and what as this is beyond what my father could do and too impossible to make that even Vince had the hard time decoding, it leaves us with the mystery of an unknown enemy.
"Did you say she?" wondering even more as the back of my mind is telling me that everything is not just a simple as it all is or a mere coincidence, with my heart that's telling me that he has something to do with it.
I ask once more, "Where is he?" in a vague tone and between the lines, they read what I wanted to know.
Nodding, Leo continues laying out the facts. "We did not meet the person who you say that's been with you that night we found you."
Now flooded with questions knowing that he's been with me tall that time and though I may be too weak and somehow disoriented to recall everything, one thing I am sure off. He is with me that night.
"How could that be?" I ask firmly, asserting that what they are saying is a lie. "He was just with me all along that night."
Looking at each other as they are finding the right words to explain the truth on their side, a thought hit me in between as I realize that if I connect the facts and the dots, he might be.
"Mika, look," Leo assures, snapping me out of thoughts as they read unto my eyes the written possibility that they three somehow is getting. "The person that you are talking about, we already look at his information as we become suspicious after receiving that business card." talking about the piece of paper Yuna handed to me, Leo elaborates. "Just to be safe, we took precautions, but we could not find anything nor confirm the fact that maybe his party contacted us as we could only find is this information." Handing a document that tells and is written about him, I cannot help but whisper the name.
"Rafael." Somehow ringing something I could not explain, the same longing and pain I felt with him that night hit me once more, but different as I read the name and the article that call's him with the name, 'Rafael.'
Sitting properly as Vince opens and types something on his laptop, he added some detail.
"Everything is possible, but we could not get any evidence that connects him to the person who contacted us that day. Worst and even suspicious, the one who sends us your coordinates with an encrypted code uses our secured email only the four of us shared and knew off." Vince added with a smirk loving the mystery and the enemy he could take on. "Hacker or not, this unknown person is someone whose genius mind is commendable. Enemy or not, we need to be cautious at all cost." With those warnings and red flags, it only took me deep in my thoughts as the possibility arises that maybe he did know me all along, that saving me in that time was just an act as he might be an enemy worse than my father could be.
"What's more, as we're digging something out, another pile of mystery hits us. Whoever that guy is, you should not trust him." Leo insisted on taking his conviction and warning he wanted me to take.
Sitting on the edge of my hospital bed as Leo tosses a piece of a clear clipboard catching it directly with my hand, I flip it over and read the name with the exact nameplate of my hospital room smirking.
"We do not know what they want as we are digging the fact of their plan, but the time we found you, emergency personnel was already there with you in that scene. We did not mind it at first, but those people knew where they should send you, and somehow the staff in here was already brief for before we could give any information about you for a medical record, everything was laid perfectly out."
Somewhat disappointed as they three somehow is taking it all in secret knowing that they could not make a scene as my identity might lead for my father to find m. Pieces are slowly coming into a hole as my suspicion only arises of taking him as my enemy.
"I wanted to call it worst, but how did they know?" As Yuna added pointing at my chart and the documents that contain my information, Vince manages to hack through.
"Your name, your age, your birthday, and the same name that they gave to the nurse's desk as your basic information is the same one, we four only knew from outside the Village." Leo reminded, that left the four of us in silence as I read the details and stops with the name.
"Miyu." Stun, I clutch my first firmly aside thinking for the worst. Yet as my mind is screaming the danger up ahead, my heart is protesting the opposite. "Altamira Enterprises." Reading the name of the company that was written on the calling card that 'she' gave. With its known name that rings as one of the tops in the business world. I then realize that everything might be a plan and set for me as a trap from the very beginning, but why?
Just then, I notice something odd with the card, scratching the white dried liquid on the back, and below the card, everything falls to the tract of the worst possible thing. As written in the tiniest way of a handwritten ink, the name, "Zero."
Claiming the CEO's name as everything turns into a light bulb switching a tone of a solved crime. I remember and got the final piece of the puzzle behind the mystery as he is the one you should never trust nor get yourself near as his world runs in the underground the likes of my father are dwelling within. Connecting the clear pieces, he is someone who is not just and might be connected to him, but someone who might be toying me with my father as his lackey as I am collateral, he thinks of as a toy.
"Mika."
Yuna calls out, but as I was left in a daze and hate from the bits of information that fit into a circle of a perfect 'foolishness', I crumple my fist hating everything. With my father adding the worst and hate that I have for him as he might, no, definitely is the one who sends me in this situation from the world he secretly dwells, and I am as the price collateral. I immediately pull my dextrose out and force myself to stand, and though the three of them restrain me down asking why? I instead commanding them to let me be.
Opening the door as I step foot outside, supporting my weight as I cram in the wall. Everything turns back, in my memory with his wounds, the danger that he's been through, the moment he held my hand into his tight embrace, the things that he's done, and the urge from his eyes to protect me were all in the middle of truth and lies. For he knew that I was there and knew very well of what to do. To the years that I was in another country and away from free but caged, he might stumble to the pit he should not in the first place. Knowing the illegal things his dwelling inside that world, he made me as his last resort, and now with his piling depth, he did not disclose I am the one suffering.
Thinking about him and the fact that he knew me is clear. The truth that he is connected to my father is inevitable. From the very beginning that was a lie down from his wounds, those scars, and everything from his bleeding flesh then, is all but an act to lure me in. Yet somehow my heart is protesting hard and nonstop. With my mind taking the conviction that he is nothing but a con artist and a liar, my heart beats otherwise.
"Fool, you're a fool, Mika." Scolding myself as his name and the company mark finally made the dangerous tone.
The years where I was in prison in a foreign land. The days where I did not waste just to sit back and wait but did my part in every way and corner that I can. The side tracks studies I mock my father at his back and upon the discovery of the dark corner that my family dwells into. The danger of my self-investigation paves me to know the things that he kept me in a blind. The powerful company in the world and everyone respected, the company and the owner known only by a mask of his initials of H.A. and the most powerful underground boss lurking in the shadows of his facade known only as Zero. The facade that he wears his hidden identity, skill, and careful craft to hide all this time in the dark is the biggest enemy I needed to face now.
"Hiro Altamira." As a slight fear creeps inside me with the thoughts that I might be in a cage right now under his grasp, knowing who I am, and with that, he can manipulate everything as I fear the most with him wanting the Village.
Stepping foot outside the hospital, hoping for the slightest chance and possibility that he might be near. The theory that formulated in my head just now, the chances that his mind works to be, and the reason for his actions will lead me to him. Taking the timing at hand, I fake a supposed accident as I took a risk standing in front of an ambulance. Screaming as some witnesses did so, I caught everyone's attention. As I close my eyes waiting for destiny to kick a proof to my hypothesis a hand grabs me in my arms and into my waist, pulling back into a tight embrace as a voice echoes in my ears.
"Already figured everything?"
With a mix of a cunning smile, but somewhat a playful genuine one, and a dangerously captivating face, it proved me right. To his ocean sapphire pair of eyes, silver hair, and perfect features, I'm caught. Lock in his arms as he slowly closes the gap between us, he whispers in a sweet and seductive voice the words,
'Is everything that you hope for turns into the same perfect one as you finally found him,'
"Hiro." Whispering as his smile turns into a precious one, he places his lips in my ear, making my heartbeat like a bullet train and stupidly fast, as he smirks, whispering,
'The one that I've been looking for, the one that I kept dreaming of, but I couldn't recognize if she's that same girl should I restrain myself again?'
"I caught you then again, Miss del Leonore, or would you prefer I call you by the name, Miyu."
Stupidly caught in the moment as his smile completely turns my entire world around. The firm truth that a while ago is kicking the agony of him being my enemy, turns into a worst of luck as my heart was struck, falling greater than his dangerous identity behind his façade. But with his smile that put me down on the ground.
'The thing that you've been looking for all these years is not in that place, but the one behind that place, if you really want to know everything, start with it, and maybe one of these days, you will eventually meet her,'
HIRO