Duo's Revenge

Chapter 3: Gone

12:35 am.

I sighed. I went to bed over 3 hours ago, yet I could not get a wink of sleep. How was I to sleep when my sister's fate was uncertain? All I could do was lay there, unmoving, staring at the ceiling and thinking of her. I had told my mother that I believed she was alive, and I truly did, but I was still worried. What if she had died? What if someone had murdered her?
No, I told myself. She has not been murdered. She is alive, waiting for us to find her and bring her home safely, back to the people who loved her and to the strawberry pancakes and the grouchy cat and away from her kidnapper.

And who, exactly, was her kidnapper? How had he been able to hack into Duolingo's servers? That required intelligence and skill, neither of which I had where hacking was concerned. What was with Duolingo, anyway? That application certainly had something to do with the kidnapping, something major. It appeared as though something had happened to the man my father had been speaking to when he called Duolingo Customer Service. Had the man known something? Did the kidnapper want him to stay silent? It was rather odd, what the Customer Service man had been talking about. The demons of Hell? Begging for mercy? Repenting? Maybe he had been speaking of the kidnapper. And if he was as terrible as he sounded, it was very likely that he had already murdered my sister.

At that moment, it all finally sank in. My sister was really gone. This was no joke or no prank. Nobody had even the slightest clue of her whereabouts. She could be alive in some suburban house twenty minutes away from our home, or dead in a tiny shack in Timbuktu. We may be able to find her. We may never see her again. Or we may see her deceased body. I turned over so I was laying on my stomach, and began to cry into my pillow. If anyone deserved something like this–and no one really did–it was certainly not her. She was one of the kindest, funniest people I knew. Of course, we had our silly little sibling squabbles, but they ended quickly. We couldn't stay mad at each other for long. It's quite difficult to when you live under the same roof (and you're fighting over petty, insignificant matters such as who really owns the light blue tank top), anyway.

As the tears continued to slip down my cheeks, I turned over again and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling. Finally, after about 5 minutes, I sat upright, then stood up and walked out of my room. Every time my feet hit the floor, I paused, listening to the sounds of the night–cars driving by outside, the soft drizzling of rain–to see if I would hear my parents' bed creak. But alas, I did not. I reassured myself that my walking was not causing nearly as much noise as I thought it was, and continued down the hallway. The walk down my hallway was usually a short one, but tonight, it seemed to take eternity. I was hyperaware, hearing every single little creak I made as I stepped forward and every breath I took. I could hear my heart pounding. Calm down, I thought to myself. Everything sounds loud when you're trying not to make any noise. I repeated this in my mind over and over again until, at last, I made it to the end of the hallway.

Her bedroom was at the very end of the hallway, the final door on the right. There was a magenta 'L' in the center on the door, with a 'NO TRESPASSING' sign directly below it. Magenta was her absolute favorite color, which was quite apparent to anyone who entered her room–her walls were painted magenta as well, and she had an assortment of magenta-colored clothing in her walk-in closet. Her nails were almost always painted magenta, and if they were not, they were painted a similar shade of purple. That was just one of her many quirks–something that made her...her. Besides her obsession with magenta, she also loved to play her Queen II vinyl. She had a few other Queen records, but that one must have been her favorite. Almost every day, I heard Brian May playing the guitar on Procession, signifying that she was listening to the album for the umpteenth time. It was a wonder the record had not yet worn out.

She had a number of other quirks as well, but it would take ages to list them. I felt a lump in my throat as I walked into her room, seeing her magenta walls that looked much darker than they were in the darkness of the night, and her record player, with Queen II on it, being shon on by the moonlight. I thought of all the memories that had taken place in this room. Nothing major, but still important to me nevertheless. I thought of when I was 7 and she was 5, and we would play with our dolls. Between us, we had a large collection that would make any collector jealous. She had owned a 3-story townhouse that had been where the record player was–we had sold it a few years during a yard sale. Our dolls, of course, were best friends. We would make them perform rather mundane tasks together, such as doing chores or cooking. Sometimes, we would make one of our dolls get...intimate with a male doll, and giggle like mad. We would spend hours upon hours playing, usually until my mother announced that lunch was ready, when we would drop our dolls and race to the kitchen.

I then thought of Halloween 2012, when I was 10 and she was 8. It was about 11:45 at night. We had already finished going trick-or-treating with our respective friend groups, and had had more than our fair share of sugar-laden candies. We were both sitting sitting cross-legged on the round, pink rug in front of her bed. The lights were off, and I held a flashlight pointed up so that it illuminated my face. I was telling her a scary story, a silly, ridiculous one that I had made up on the spot about a monster that ate children–only 8-year-olds, though. (How convenient!)

"Are you scared?" I asked her.
"Scared?" She guffawed. "Of course I'm not scared. If anything, he should be scared of me!"
"Oh, really?" I asked her, raising an eyebrow. "I think you're a fool, not fearing him. You say that now, but if you saw him, you'd scream for your life. In fact, I encountered him when I was your age."
"Really?" she asked, trying to remain calm, even though her mask was beginning to slip as her eyes widened ever so slightly.
"Mhm," I said, nodding. "I didn't tell you then because I didn't want to scare you. But you're 8 years old now, so you have to be prepared, since he'll be after you now. It was actually on Halloween when he came after me. I was going to bed when I heard a noise in my closet. I crept over to my closet door...and there he was! He growled and hissed and did everything that scary monsters do, and I was paralyzed! Then, I picked up my shoes, and whacked him right upside the head! He flashed his sharp teeth at me, and I ran out of my room, into mom and dad's room. They scolded him, and he ran away! I've heard that parents don't scare him anymore, though, so he's harder to defeat..."

I paused.
"What?" Lola asked me.
I didn't say anything.
"Daphneeee!" she whined. "What is it?"
"I think I heard something," I whispered to her. "Oh no. Don't move and maybe he won't see you."
"Who?!" she whisper-yelled. She wasn't even trying to hide her fear anymore. Her eyes were saucers, and she was shaking, her lips quivering.
I rolled my eyes. "What do you think?!" I said. "Oh, wait, you're only 8 years old. I forgot, children your age lack intelligence." (Says the 10 year old.)
We sat there silently, her clinging my arm and holding on to me tightly, about to cry. I pretended to be concerned, listening for more noises.
Suddenly, her closet door burst open, and the 'monster'–my friend, who I had sneaked back into my house after tricking-or-treating-wearing a mask–growled as my sister screeched. After that, my friend and I got a stern talking to, and my sister slept in my parents' room for a month.

At that point, I was fighting back tears, and decided to return to my room. The walk back took just as long as when I walked to my sister's room.
When I arrived in my room, I knew that I was not going to fall asleep, so I picked up my phone from my nightstand. Filled with a mix of sadness and anger, I went on Safari and typed in 'Duolingo.' Maybe there would be an article about how Duolingo's servers had been hacked. Or just an article about anything concerning Duolingo. I knew that app had an enormous role in my sister's disappearance, and maybe I could find something out by learning about it.
I pressed the search button, and the blue bar slowly went across the screen. Our WiFi could be infuriatingly slow at times. Finally, after a minute, the search results were displayed. I was surprised to see that there were many new articles about Duolingo. They were very recent, in fact. And all under the 'Breaking News' category. My eyes moved across the screen, reading the title of the first article.

My stomach dropped.

Massacre at Duolingo Headquarters.