Children of the Uprising Read online

  Heng swam up next to Sun. “You are worried?” Heng asked Sun as they swam side by side.

  “We should have given ourselves more time,” Sun answered.

  “No matter how much time you give yourself, old friend,” Heng told him, “it’s not enough.” Heng and Sun had lived together in the monastery when they were boys. Heng had always been the wise one. Shortly after they turned eighteen, they found out that they were destined to be mortal enemies in a War that neither of them understood.

  Sun thought about his friend’s wisdom for a moment. “We should have given ourselves more time,” he repeated. Christopher’s plan required coordination. It needed the chain to be unbroken. When the water became deep enough again, everyone got back into the boat and Narith gunned the engine.

  After Sokhem was hit with a bullet, most of them jumped into the water with their guns. They swam toward the land, holding their guns over their heads to keep them from getting wet. Holding their guns above them made them even bigger targets. Heng was cut down in the water. They shot his body a second time as it floated there to make sure that he was dead. A few of the rebels stayed on the boat, knowing that they needed to get the boat, and its bombs, onto the land for the plan to have any chance of working. The problem was that access to the beach had been effectively cut off by the gunfire from the Intelligence Cell, and the men and women in the water were being picked off one by one. Luckily, as things were beginning to look their bleakest, the helicopter arrived. Sun had radioed for it only moments earlier, before he leapt into the water. When the helicopter came, it came with wind and fire. Its wind blew the leaves on the trees and created great ripples in the water on the lake. Then its fire: the helicopter’s first missile hit the Intelligence Center with a crack and then its machine guns flared, providing enough cover for Sun and the others to pull the boat onto the shore.

  They were already down eleven men by the time they got the explosives off the boat, but at least there was hope.

  Thirty-four

  Reggie looked over at Christopher and saw that he seemed to have finally fallen asleep. They had adjacent aisle seats on the plane. The flight from JFK to Frankfurt was about eight hours, and then they would have another twelve-hour flight from Frankfurt to Singapore. Reggie hadn’t known that Christopher had never been on a plane before. He did his best not to doubt his decision. He reminded himself that it had been Christopher’s decision to fight, that he had given the boy every chance to run. Since Christopher had already decided to fight, Reggie was simply helping him to make sure that his fight wouldn’t be wasted. That was what Reggie told himself anyway. He wasn’t sure that Maria would agree.

  “Why do you keep staring at me?” Christopher asked Reggie without opening his eyes.

  “I thought you were asleep,” Reggie answered.

  “I can barely sleep in a bed,” Christopher said. “How am I supposed to sleep in this chair?”

  Reggie laughed. “When you get tired enough and bored enough, you’ll sleep,” he told Christopher. “You should try anyway. You need the rest. We’re going to be busy when we get to Singapore and we have a few things to discuss during our layover.”

  “I was trying to sleep,” Christopher told Reggie, “but it’s hard with you staring at me.”

  “Point taken,” Reggie said and closed his own eyes.

  No matter how hard he tried, Christopher couldn’t manage to drift off to sleep. It wasn’t the chair that kept him awake. It was his inability to get his mind to settle in the present. His mind kept moving forward and backward in time, leaping over the present like a dancer leaping across a stage. He tried to imagine what it was going to be like when they landed in Singapore, but the images in his head were an abstract blur. Reggie had tried to explain everything to him, but eventually Christopher merely pretended to understand so that he wouldn’t look dumb. When his mind got too jumbled by the enigma that was his own future, it jumped back into the past. His eyes felt heavy and he thought about the conversation he and Reggie had had in the house on the Jersey Shore.

  “So I know why it is that you want me,” Christopher had told Reggie when he got to the beach house. “I know that you guys think I’m the only person that everyone will trust since I’m the only person in this War without a side. But what’s the plan? What chance do we really have of ending the War?”

  Reggie still hadn’t turned the lights on in the room. He and Christopher sat in the darkness. The boats still trolling the bay moved over the water like red and green fireflies. Reggie didn’t want to turn the lights on. He didn’t want to attract attention. He had thought that Christopher might ask him to turn the lights on, but Christopher never did. “There is a plan,” Reggie said to Christopher.

  “I hope so,” Christopher answered. “I’d hate to think I abandoned my only two friends for nothing.”

  Reggie paused. It would have been an easy opening to tell Christopher what had happened to Evan, but Reggie let it pass. “There’s a reason why we need somebody that everyone will trust, and it’s not because people from opposite sides of the War won’t fight together or run together or work together. I don’t know what Brian told you, but they will. Former rivals from the War have worked together in the Underground for generations. But no one has ever asked them to do what you’re going to ask them to do.”

  The darkness outside the window seemed to close in on them. Christopher could feel his heart beating in his chest. He wondered what request could be so horrible that it would strike fear in the hearts of paranoid killers. What could be worse than the violence he’d already seen? Christopher thought about letting it go for now, but he didn’t have the stamina for confusion. “What exactly am I going to ask them to do?”

  “What do you know about how the two sides of the War are structured?”

  Christopher shook his head. “I don’t understand your question.”

  “Your mother must have said something in her journals about how the two sides of the War are structured. She must have said something about what she learned before she broke in to the Intelligence Cell in New York to find out where you were. What they did, breaking in to an intelligence cell like that and stealing information—people don’t do that. She knew things. She must have written something about what she knew.”

  “I remember something. She had a conversation with that Dorothy woman. I don’t remember the details. All I remember is that they had to risk their lives to find a piece of paper with my address on it. None of the other details meant anything to me.”

  Reggie pushed on. He wanted Christopher to find the answers on his own. He knew how much more powerful Christopher would be that way and how much more convincing. They were going to have to sell it as Christopher’s plan anyway. That’s the only way it would work. “That’s not true, Christopher. Those details meant everything to you. You just didn’t realize it at the time.”

  “Why are you talking in riddles, Reggie? I didn’t leave my friends for fucking riddles. I came here because I thought you could give me answers.”

  “Do you remember in your mother’s journal when Dorothy told her about the Intelligence Cells like the one that she and Michael raided?”

  “Sure,” Christopher said. He looked up at Reggie. Reggie’s green eyes nearly glowed in the darkness.

  “Back then, each side had about fifteen Intelligence Cells. They have even more now because of what your mother and Michael did. They added redundancy. You guys took out one of the Intelligence Cells the other day. It’s not easy, but far from impossible. That’s where all the information is. That information is what tells each side who their friends are, who to kill, and who to hate.”

  “So you’re saying we did a good thing when we razed that building in the desert?”

  “No,” Reggie told him. “You didn’t do anything. All of the information in there is backed up in other Intelligence Cells. There’s triple, maybe quadruple redun
dancy. All you guys were, in the big picture, was a minor nuisance. You were a gnat buzzing in their ear. They’ll have that Intelligence Cell rebuilt somewhere else in a week. And there’s something like fifty of those all over the world.”

  “Okay,” Christopher said, confused as to where this was going. “So why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Because the key isn’t destroying the information.”

  Christopher shook his head. When he read his parents’ journals, he wasn’t trying to solve the puzzle about how to end the War. He was trying to figure out who he was and why he was so afraid. Then a small spark came alive in Christopher’s memory. “There were other buildings, right? There were these central hubs where everything was mapped and organized?”

  A smile crossed Reggie’s face. “Right,” Reggie said. “The information in the Intelligence Centers is the key to understanding how the information in the Intelligence Cells is organized. Without the information in the Intelligence Centers, the average person couldn’t go into an Intelligence Cell and tell the difference between the paperwork of a friend and that of an enemy. A few of the old Historians might be able to piece together tiny bits of the big picture, but we’re not too worried about them. The key isn’t destroying the information—it’s making sure that nobody can understand it. All this War is about is history. Take away the history, jumble it up into an incoherent mess, and nobody knows who to hate anymore.”

  “So all we have to do is destroy the Intelligence Centers and the War falls apart?”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “Didn’t Dorothy tell my mother that the Intelligence Centers were basically impenetrable?”

  “Yes.” Reggie nodded slowly.

  “How many of them are there?” Christopher asked.

  “Seven.”

  “And you need me to go talk to people because—?”

  “Because you’re proof that people can survive without their history, that they can make their own history, that they are more than cogs in one side of a War.”

  “I’m proof of all that?” Christopher asked.

  “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s proof enough for now.” Reggie left it at that, even though he knew that they would need more.

  The plane hit an air pocket and ripped Christopher back into the present, lurching downward for what felt to him like at least fifty feet. His eyes shot open and he felt his stomach leap up to the top of his chest. He reached out and clutched the armrests of his seat. He looked around. The lights on the plane were out and everyone had the shades on their windows drawn. Most of the other passengers didn’t budge, let alone wake up. Christopher tried to focus his mind on that moment. What the hell was he doing? This was silly. How were they supposed to end a War by destroying a bunch of pieces of paper?

  Thirty-five

  Evan waited until he was sure that Addy was asleep. He knew that he’d have to be really quiet because he knew how lightly she slept. The slightest sounds woke her up, and when Addy was awake she was wide awake. There was no transition out of sleep. Addy woke up ready to fight or ready to run, whichever option the moment called for. Ever since the second time that they made love, they’d slept close to each other, sometimes even touching. Even as he slipped away from her, Evan could feel her leg brushing against his. He moved his leg away from hers slowly, half convinced that the moment when their skin disconnected Addy would wake up. If she did, he would have to pretend to be merely tossing and turning in his sleep. As long as she didn’t notice that his eyes were open, she would have nothing to be suspicious of.

  Evan didn’t like sneaking around on Addy like this. He didn’t like planning his lies. He felt bad about what he was going to do, but he needed to do it. They’d been on the road for three days already. It had been three days since the compound in Los Angeles was raided, three days since they escaped, three days since Evan killed the policeman, and the only information he could get out of Addy was that his picture was out there and that they had to keep moving or somebody would find them. When he asked about Christopher, Addy refused to say anything. She told him that there were no lists of the dead and no lists of the captured. There were only numbers—twenty-eight dead, even more captured—and even those were incomplete. Evan knew why she was doing this. He knew that she was trying to protect him. It’s only that it’s hard to accept being protected when you have no idea what you’re being protected from. Evan needed to see what was on Addy’s phone.

  Three days, and Evan didn’t even know where they were. He knew where they were going. He knew that Addy was trying to get him to Florida to meet up with someone named Reggie that Addy used to work with. She said he was one of the leaders in this thing called the Underground. There’s a lot of space between Los Angeles and Florida, and hitchhiking wasn’t the most direct way to travel. Evan tried to follow the road signs, but it wasn’t easy when they jumped from one car to the next the way they had, barely caring what direction each car was taking them. Addy’s theory was that as long as they weren’t going backward, it was always better to be moving than standing still. Evan was pretty sure they were in Louisiana. It wasn’t that Addy wasn’t talking at all. She had told Evan so much in three days about her past, about the War and its history, and about what Christopher meant to the whole thing. Now, if she would just tell him what the fuck was going on today.

  It was so dark. They were sleeping in an abandoned barn. That’s where they lived now, in places that had been discarded by others. It was quiet outside. The only sound Evan could hear was the rhythm of the cicadas and crickets and frogs, keeping tempo like a mysterious heartbeat. He recognized the sound from his nights in Maine, but it was different here, thicker and slower. Evan slid his body away from Addy’s. He felt the moment when the skin of his leg separated from the skin of hers. He felt the lack of warmth. He felt the air rush between them. Addy felt it too. Her body moved unconsciously back toward him. Evan quietly slipped farther away from her, trying to make sure their bodies stayed apart for the moment. Addy turned away from him in her sleep and then her body was still again.

  Evan slid past Addy without standing up and reached for her phone. It was lying next to her head—close to her in case she needed to grab it and run. Evan had already learned that much from her. Be ready to run. Always be ready to run. Evan lifted up her phone and turned it on. It produced an eerie blue glow. That tiny bit of blue light lit up the entire barn. Everything around Evan filled with ghostly light and shadows. Evan took a deep breath, hoping that the light was weak enough that it wouldn’t attract any attention from outside. Addy was adamant about the lack of light at night. She’d told him that she’d made that mistake in the past, but she wouldn’t tell him the details. And Evan didn’t ask for them. Some things you don’t ask.

  Addy’s phone was password protected, but Evan had been watching her each time she checked it, which happened frequently. Most of the time she checked it when she didn’t think Evan was watching, but Evan was always watching. He watched to see if he could read the password over her shoulder. He watched her fingers. Despite its total lack of meaning to him, he was fairly sure that he’d figured out her password. He typed what he believed to be the password into the phone: canossa. He hit Return. It was like he’d found the secret key. Evan now had access to everything.

  Though he was tempted, he didn’t open any of Addy’s e-mails. He didn’t check her personal files. He tried to leave her some semblance of privacy. All he wanted was access to the Internet. All he wanted was to know what everyone else in the world already knew.

  He found his own picture in a matter of seconds. It was the picture from his driver’s license—the one in the wallet that he’d left in the compound when he and Addy ran. The picture was everywhere. He didn’t think he had time to read the articles. He could only scan them for words and ideas. Killer. Dangerous. Terrorist. At first it was disorienting, seeing pictures of himself everywhere, seeing his
name in print, labeled as some sort of monster when all he’d done was save a girl. One article would have worried him. Ten would have scared him senseless. But thousands—seeing his picture and his name in thousands of articles was so absurd that he found it almost funny. He kept digging, his own situation becoming more ludicrous by the moment. He wondered what all the kids back in his hometown in Maine must be thinking about him. He wondered how many stories he’d seen in the news during the course of his life that were this tenuously tied to the truth. He now had to doubt everything. None of the Web sites he looked at contained any of the details that he was really searching for. He found an original article from the day after the raid on the compound. Addy had told him the truth. No names were released except for his and the name of the cop that he’d killed. Evan didn’t read the cop’s name. He didn’t want to know it. Other than that, everything was written in numbers—this many dead, this many captured—almost like a code.

  Evan kept searching. He wanted to find something—anything—about Christopher, but there was nothing to find. Nothing existed that mentioned Christopher by name. Evan wondered if it was possible that Christopher had been reduced to a number. After all the time that he and Christopher spent training while growing up and after all the adoration, bordering on worship, that Christopher had been showered with over the last few days, was it even possible that he’d been reduced to a number? And, if he was a number, was he one of the captured or one of the killed? Evan looked over at Addy. He watched her for a second to make sure she was still sleeping soundly. She lay there, dimly lit by the blue light from her phone. Her breathing was steady. Her face held the stern expression it always did when she slept. Her body didn’t move. Evan listened to the night. He found the dissonance between his own surroundings and what he saw on Addy’s phone to be the most disturbing thing of all. He knew that if he kept searching, Addy would eventually wake up and catch him, so he gave himself five more minutes.