Children of the Uprising (26 page)

“They bled him over the water.”

“What does that mean?” Christopher asked.

“They hung his neck over the dock and slit his throat.” Reggie saw the disgusted look on Christopher's face. “It's what Jung-Su wanted. They asked him. He said he wanted his blood to feed the sea.”

“What's wrong with these people, Reggie?” Christopher finished his drink and held the glass out for Reggie to pour him another one.

“These are my people too,” Reggie told him. “Maybe that's what we need you for—to tell us what's wrong with us.” He forced a smile. “Let's try to get some sleep. The sun will be up in a couple hours and we're leaving here in the morning.”

“Is everyone leaving?”

“No,” Reggie said. “Just us. They'll need time to talk about us after we leave and to talk about whether or not they want in on the plan.”

“And if they don't?”

Reggie's eyes told Christopher everything he needed to know. “These people represent a third of the world, Christopher,” he said. “Let's try to get some sleep. We're leaving for Istanbul in five hours.”

When the liquor finally hit Christopher, it hit him hard. It knocked him out cold. Reggie wasn't so lucky. He stayed awake, worrying that someone else would betray them, worrying about what he was doing to Maria's son.

Reggie let Christopher sleep for as long as he could the next day. By the time he woke Christopher, he'd been sleeping for more than four hours. Their bags were already packed and loaded on the boat. Reggie had left out one outfit for Christopher to change into. When it was time to go, Reggie gently shook Christopher awake. “It's time, Christopher,” he said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. “We've got a long way to go.”

Christopher opened his eyes to the brightness of the morning. Everything around him glowed golden in the sunlight. Even Reggie was golden. “I fell asleep,” Christopher said to Reggie as he tried to shake off the sleep.

“Yeah,” Reggie said, “that was kind of the point. The boat's ready now. We have to go.”

Christopher sat up in bed and looked around. “It seems a shame to come this far and not see anything,” he mumbled, only half kidding.

“Well, you can always come back when this is all over,” Reggie said to him. “You've got clothes on the dresser. I need you outside in ten minutes.”

Christopher waited until Reggie had closed the door behind him before he climbed out of bed. He walked over to the window and looked outside. The water was a pristine blue. Slowly, he began pulling apart in his mind what had actually happened the previous night and what he had dreamt. But it was all real. The dream was the blank, empty space between the madness. He walked over to the dresser and found his clothes. He dressed slowly, still trying to make sense of everything he'd seen and everything he'd heard and everything he'd said and everything he'd done.

They were waiting for Christopher when he stepped outside into brightness that the view from his windows had only hinted at. The light came from all directions, sparkling off the water almost as brightly as it came down from the sky. They were lined up along the bamboo bridges leading from Christopher's hut to the dock where the boat was. All of them were there—all the survivors anyway. Christopher had to squint through the sun to see them all. He began to walk, passing a person every few steps. They said nothing to him as he walked past them. Instead, they simply placed their hands together in front of their chests and bowed as he passed. Christopher was unsure what it all meant. He was unsure if he should thank them or say good-bye to them. All he was sure of was that he shouldn't bow back.

All in all, Christopher passed twenty-two different people who bowed silently to him. The only ones that hadn't lined up were Reggie, Apsara, and the person that had been selected to replace Galang and drive them back. Christopher had walked slowly, trying to at least honor their bows by being present for them. Still, he was relieved when he finally saw the boat with Reggie already in it. Apsara was standing beside it. Bejo, the island's owner, sat behind the wheel of the boat and a pang of guilt ran through Christopher, remembering first Galang, and then Jin and then Max. Then he remembered Jung-Su and waited to feel guilty about that too, but the guilt never came.

Christopher walked up to Apsara and, to Christopher's relief, instead of bowing she reached out her hand for him to shake. “Good luck in Istanbul, Christopher,” she said.

“Thank you,” Christopher answered.

“We're counting on you to convince them to follow you, the way that you convinced us.”

Christopher stood there silently, feeling a pang of joy in his chest that he wasn't sure was warranted. He was worried that he'd heard her wrong. He hadn't. Apsara smiled and nodded. “They decided last night,” she said. “Subject to the rest of the world agreeing, we will fight.” Christopher looked over Apsara's head at Reggie. He didn't smile or even acknowledge that Christopher was looking at him, but Christopher could tell that Reggie had already heard the news. “Stay safe, Christopher,” Apsara said, sending him off.

“You too,” Christopher replied. “All of you.” Then he stepped into the boat and they pulled away from the dock and were off.

The plan in Paris was to collapse the Intelligence Center into the earth and then blow it to smithereens. The rebels had thought that the Intelligence Center was impenetrable, but then they realized that it was built over an old, forgotten section of the catacombs. Since they couldn't figure out how to get into the building, they had to figure out a way to bring the building down to them. It was a demolition job, strategically planting bombs in the various dark corners of the underground tunnels running beneath the city so that when the time came, the bombs would all go off and the Intelligence Center would come tumbling down. They would destroy the pillars holding up the Intelligence Center and it would collapse into the tunnels under its own weight. Then the second set of bombs would go off, ensuring that everything that fell into the earth was utterly destroyed. Only then would the rebels move in to clean up anything that was left.

“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” Anouk asked Xavier as he descended deeper into the darkness of the tunnel with fifty pounds of explosives strapped to his back. She shined the red light from her flashlight after him, hoping to keep him from tripping or bumping into something. Anouk was pretty sure that a collision involving the explosives wouldn't end well for either of them.

“You know they asked me to do this for a reason,” Xavier fired back at her. He walked in front of her, glowing red like a devil in the beam of her infrared flashlight.

“Yeah,” Anouk answered, “you and five other guys.”

Xavier stopped walking and looked back at Anouk. “Just pay attention and make sure nobody sneaks up on us and shoots me, okay?” he said, motioning toward Anouk's hand that wasn't holding the flashlight, the one that was holding the gun.

“Don't worry about that,” Anouk said. “You know they gave me this job for a reason, right?”

“I know,” Xavier said, suddenly not joking. He remembered how excited he'd been to have Anouk assigned as his guide through the tunnels. She was the best they had. He'd heard stories about her before he'd ever met her. She had brought more people into the Underground than anyone else in France. Not only that, but she often pulled them out when their situations appeared the most dire. She was the one who knew about the lost tunnels. She had hidden people in them before. The list of people who owed Anouk their lives was long. Xavier hoped not to join that list, but he knew there were plenty of worse lists to be on. Xavier was no slouch either—not when it came to blowing shit up, and that's what they were there to do.

Six pairs of them were roaming the darkness of the tunnels. Each pair was assigned a different section, each section lying directly below one of the Intelligence Center's key support points. Xavier had been one of the people consulted when the tunnels were divided into sections for the plan. It wasn't possible to pick the exact spot where to place the bombs from the maps of the tunnels that they had, though. The maps were too old to be trusted. The team had to be inside the tunnels for that. So that's what they were doing. Setting the bombs and then getting the hell out of there before the whole thing blew up. Everything was strictly timed. They had two hours.

“Do you think what we're doing is a bit extreme?” Anouk asked Xavier as she closed the distance between the two of them so that she could talk to him quietly enough to avoid an echo.

“What do you mean?” Xavier asked, his face now shining in her light.

“I mean, we're taking out a whole city block in a historic district of Paris to try to end a War that most people don't even know exists.”

Xavier shrugged. “Well, they'll know now, I suppose. Maybe it's long past the time when they should have known. It's too late for doubt now anyway. We all had our time for doubt and all it did was make us all look like fools.”

At that moment, they heard a noise coming from behind them in the tunnels. In one quick motion, Anouk pushed Xavier into a dark corner, flicked off the flashlight, and aimed her gun at the noise. The red light was meant to help their eyes adjust to the darkness faster, but no eyes could adjust where they were, in the middle of the complete absence of light. Neither Anouk nor Xavier moved a muscle. They froze and waited for another sound. Then they heard something again, not far from them, down one of the tunnels. Xavier didn't dare make a sound, but he wanted to whisper to Anouk that they were losing time and that they probably didn't want to be in the tunnels when the others started detonating their explosives.

Anouk did what she could. She stepped away from Xavier so that if they saw her, they still wouldn't see him. She turned on her flashlight for a split second, then turned it off again. For that split second, the tunnel flared the eerie red color of the flashlight and the image of the tunnel during that tiny piece of a moment burned itself into Xavier's brain. The image was of an empty tunnel. Then the tunnel lit up again, still for only a fraction of a second, with Anouk farther away from Xavier now. Then there was blackness again. The noise grew louder. Then the light came a third time, beating back the darkness for a moment like a red flashbulb of a camera. Then a fourth time and a fifth, until it was like Xavier was watching Anouk in a flip-book coated in blood. The advantage that Anouk had created for herself over anyone that was following them was that only Anouk knew when she would turn the light on. But after the seventh time, she stopped. Then she made her way back to Xavier in the darkness.

“Only rats,” Anouk whispered to Xavier when she got close to him.

“Are you sure?” Xavier asked.

“Now's not the time for doubt,” Anouk said. Xavier began growing fond of Anouk's ability to throw a person's words back at him.

“Let's plant these bombs,” Xavier said, “and bury this War forever.”

So they made their way through the tunnels, feeling their way along the walls, using the light less frequently now even though they seemed to be being followed only by rodents. They turned the light on when Xavier thought he found a good place to plant a piece of the explosives. The trigger for each of the bombs was on a timer, all of them set to go off at exactly the same instant. They had talked about using a radio signal but worried that it wouldn't penetrate deep enough into the abandoned stone mines. So, with each planted bomb, their time to get out grew shorter, but they kept going, knowing that failure to topple the entire Intelligence Center would mean failure of the entire Uprising.

The tunnels were wet, cool, quiet, and dark. By the time Xavier had planted the last of his fifty pounds of explosive, he and Anouk had only fifteen minutes to find their way out of the catacombs. They'd come so far without the light, made so many turns based on feel and sound, that backtracking was difficult. Twice, it became evident to both of them that they had walked in a full circle, returning to where they'd started after wasting precious minutes. The red light was on now ceaselessly, the tunnels glowing like veins in a body. Lost, Xavier and Anouk tried not to panic as their chance of escape grew more and more remote.

They took one more turn, took one more chance moving down a tunnel that they only maybe recognized. Then, without speaking a word to each other, they started to run.

The bombs weren't perfectly coordinated. They were close but not exact. So Xavier and Anouk heard the echoes of the first bombs wailing their way through the tunnels before they saw the light and felt the walls around them shake. Whether it was because the timing of the bombs was close or because one explosion kept igniting the others, once the first bomb went off, the rest began to follow in a chain reaction. Even as they ran, Xavier listened to the sound of the explosions. Whether they were going to make it out of the tunnels or not, he wanted to know if it had worked. He wanted to know if the Intelligence Center was going to come crashing down like they planned. What he heard in between the sounds of the explosions was the creaking of stone sliding against stone and the cracking sound of crumbling rock. Those were the sounds that he wanted to hear. Those were the first sounds of the fall. Those were the sounds that meant that they'd done it.

Then the walls around them began to shake. Then the red light from Anouk's flashlight was eaten by the white light from nearby explosions. The destruction reached out toward Xavier and Anouk, but it didn't catch them yet, so they ran even faster.

Maria couldn't remember the last time she'd climbed into bed without locking all of her doors first. That night, she left the back door unlocked. She did everything else the same as she did on any other night. She got home from her work at the bar, not early but not late by bartending standards. She went into the kitchen, opened up a can of soup, and poured it into a pot on the stove. She turned the television on as she stirred her soup and then she sat down at the kitchen table and watched TV while she ate out of the pot. When she was done, she went up to her room and changed into a pair of dark gray sweatpants and a matching hooded sweatshirt. Then she went around the house, the same way she did every night, and checked every door and every window to make sure that they were all locked. Only this time, when she got to the back door, the one facing the woods, she only pretended to check. Instead, she flipped the lock so that the latch locking the door in place came free. Then she looked out the window into the dark woods, for only a second. She didn't see anything. She hoped that nobody had noticed.

When her routine was finished, Maria climbed the stairs leading to her bedroom, turning off the lights as she went. She got to her bedroom and pulled the covers off the bed. She consciously did every single thing that she'd done unconsciously for years, trying to make sure that nothing about her awareness leaked into her movements. The last light that she turned off was her bedroom light. Then she climbed into bed.

Addy and Evan waited outside in the woods. They'd parked the car a few miles away as instructed and had made their way through the woods on foot. Addy was certain they hadn't been followed. She knew what it felt like to be followed. She knew what it took not to be followed. When they'd left the bar that afternoon, they had driven clear out of town. Evan drove north for over an hour while Addy studied the map, divining a way back that took them across back roads and over old bridges. The hour-and-a-half drive north took them three hours on the way back. The whole time, Addy watched the road behind them, waiting to see any evidence that someone was following them. No one was behind them. If anyone was going to get to them, it wouldn't be because someone was following them. It would be because someone was waiting for them.

Maria's lights were still on when Addy and Evan made it far enough through the woods to see Maria's house. They knew their instructions.
Wait until the lights are off.
So they hunkered down in the woods, making sure that they couldn't be seen. Then they waited. They were close enough that they could barely make out movement inside the house. They watched as, one by one, the lights in the house began to go out. First it was downstairs, one light after another going black. Then the single light upstairs went out and the entire house was dark. Even then, Addy and Evan didn't move. They waited, thinking that now that the lights were out, something would finally happen. Nothing did. Everything was quiet.

“Should we go?” Evan whispered over the pulsating rhythm of the forest around them.

“Not yet,” Addy replied, remembering the look on Maria's face from earlier that day. “I think we should wait a little longer.” She wanted to believe that there was more to Maria than rank paranoia. So they waited another thirty minutes. They still didn't see or hear anything suspicious.

“Let's go,” Evan said after it was clear to him that nothing was being accomplished by their waiting.

“Okay,” Addy conceded, growing worried now that maybe everything that had happened to Maria had broken her. The two of them got to their feet and walked toward Maria's house. They were still careful. They were still afraid. Maybe they weren't afraid of someone being out there anymore, but they were still afraid of Maria, of what she might think or what she might do. They moved in silence. The house in front of them was completely still. The woods nearly butted up against the back of the house. They saw the door—the one that Maria had promised them would be unlocked. It was all about trust now. They could see the door to the basement through the window of the back door. It hung open, only slightly.

“I'll go first,” Evan told Addy. Then he stepped out of the cover of the forest and took the two steps toward the back door. It swung open, as promised, with only the slightest squeak. Evan stepped inside. Before going through the door to the basement, he looked back at Addy and waved her forward. When she started coming toward him, he slipped through the basement door and began to descend the dark steps.

The basement was even darker than the woods. It had no windows to draw in even a single sliver of moonlight. Only the open door at the top of the stairwell gave off any light, and that light got swallowed by the darkness after only a few feet from the top step. It was dark enough that when Evan made it to the bottom of the stairs he froze, unsure of what to do. Then Addy came through the door at the top of the steps and closed it behind her and the blackness was complete. Addy made her way down the stairs by holding on to the handrail. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt Evan's hand reach out to her. She knew by touch that it was Evan's hand, but that gave her only the slightest bit of comfort.

“Evan?” Addy said out loud, wanting to be further comforted by the sound of his voice.

But another voice answered Addy before Evan could. “You're sure you weren't followed?” A woman's voice came from the darkness. It was only a few feet from them.

“Yes,” Addy answered, “we're sure.” Addy heard a clicking sound and then a light flared on.

It took a few minutes for Addy's and Evan's eyes to adjust to the light. They'd been in the darkness for that long. When they could finally see, they saw Maria sitting alone at a plain wooden table, a bare lightbulb hanging above her head.

The light in the room was now stark, bright and clear. Evan got a good look at Maria for the first time. To him, the resemblance was undeniable. “You're Christopher's mother,” he half mumbled through the shock of seeing so much of his best friend in this middle-aged woman in front of him.

Maria looked Evan up and down. He was no more than a boy. “Let's assume that's true,” Maria said, not giving anything away. “What's it to the two of you?”

“Reggie sent us here to get you,” Addy repeated the words that she had said to Maria that afternoon. Maria shot Addy a look in response, a look that could have turned water to poison. Addy didn't know what the look meant, but it froze her throat. She began trying to think of what else she could say.

Before Addy could think of anything, Evan spoke. “He's my best friend,” Evan told Maria. “He's been my best friend since we were little kids. I see him in you.” Evan paused, trying to compose himself. “I just want him to be safe,” he finished.

Maria stared at Evan, but not with the same icy stare that she'd given Addy. Maria's look for Evan was deeper and gentler. “How long have you known my son?” she asked Evan, vulnerability slipping into her voice for the first time.

Evan shrugged. “As long as I can remember.”

“What's he like?” Maria asked. Even if Addy couldn't have understood the words that Maria spoke, Maria's tone alone would have made her want to cry.

Evan didn't know what to say. Christopher was the most complicated person that Evan had ever met. He didn't think that they had time for him to give Maria the answer that Christopher deserved. He settled on a single word to describe Christopher. He muttered, “Different” barely above his breath. Maria didn't say anything in response. She simply kept on staring at Evan. “Different than everybody else,” Evan clarified under the weight of Maria's stare.

Maria seemed to accept this. “Is he happy?” she asked Evan.

Evan thought hard before answering Maria's question this time. He tried to think of a way to qualify or soften his answer. The similarities between them made Evan feel almost as protective of Maria as he felt of Christopher. He couldn't lie to her either, though. “No,” Evan answered. “I wouldn't call him happy.”

Maria's eyes began to shine in the light. “And you—” Maria turned back toward the fiery redhead. She could see that the color was fake and remembered a time when she had disguised herself too. “How do you know my son?”

Addy felt her throat constrict again, but she fought it. “I tried to help him run away from the War after
they
found him,” she said, “but running didn't work.”

Maria stood up now. She began to pace, still keeping the table between her and Evan and Addy. “When did they find him?” she asked the two of them.

“They went after him the day he turned eighteen,” Addy told Maria.

“But he felt them following him long before that, for as long as I can remember,” Evan finished on Addy's behalf.

Maria paced faster now. Evan almost thought that she was going to break into a run. “All of this for nothing,” Maria whispered to herself. Then she stopped pacing and looked at them again. “Where is he now?” she asked. “Where is my son now?”

“He's with Reggie,” Addy answered. “That's why Reggie sent us to get you.”

“With Reggie?” Maria repeated, as if she didn't believe it. “What is he doing with Reggie?”

“They're going to start an uprising,” Addy said. “They're trying to end the War.”

With that, Maria fell back into her chair. Her eyes transformed from merely shining to becoming the source of matching rivers of tears. She looked like all the strength had been sucked out of her. “Where are you supposed to take me?” she asked.

“Back to New York,” Addy told her. “Will you come with us?”

“I want to,” Maria said. “You have no idea how badly I want to. But I can't.”

“Why not?” Evan asked. He wanted to do this for Christopher. “You have to do this. Christopher needs you.”

Evan could see that the words stung Maria, maybe even more than he wanted them to, but they definitely hit their mark. “I can't because I'm being watched,” Maria told them. “I've been being watched almost every day since I was let out of jail five years ago. They started following me the day I left prison. That's why I never went back to get Christopher. I thought that they were watching, hoping that they could use me to find him, that I would lead them to him.” Maria shook her head. “But you're telling me that they knew where he was the whole time?” Evan nodded. “So why were they following me?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Addy chose to answer it anyway. “Because they were afraid of you,” Addy said. “They were afraid of what you could teach him.” The silence after Addy spoke went on for several minutes, until Addy finally broke it. “You can still teach him, you know?”

Maria shook her head. “They'll follow me. I would lead them right to him. It's true now, even if it wasn't before. The day that Christopher turned eighteen, I didn't see anyone following me, but they were back again the very next day.”

“We can take care of them,” Evan promised out of the blue. “We can take care of them, and Addy can make sure that no one else follows us.”

“Can you do that?” Maria asked Addy.

Addy nodded. “I can.”

“How do you know?” Maria asked.

“Because Reggie taught me how to run, and he learned from the best.”

“So where are these people that are following you now?” Evan asked, eager to move forward and see his friend again.

“Right now,” Maria answered him, “they're outside, watching the house.”