Children of the Uprising (38 page)

A moment after Christopher was done Reggie stepped up next to him, identically outfitted. “Let's move,” Reggie said. The two of them headed for the stairs, ready for anything.

The service tunnel running between the buildings was dimly lit. Half the tunnel's lights seemed to be turned off, leaving the tunnel a pallid gray color. The floor was concrete and the walls and ceiling were a dusty white tile. As far as Reggie and Christopher could tell, the tunnel was empty. They couldn't see anything but footprints in the dust on the floor and torn pieces of paper littering the ground. They moved through the tunnel fast, knowing that there was no cover—no place to hide—until they made it to the other end. They could hear their own footsteps echoing through the tunnel as they went. It was impossible to walk lightly while carrying that much weight. Christopher's heart was thumping in pace with his footsteps. It didn't matter that they were in a tunnel underneath New York City; for a few seconds, those footsteps were the only sound in the world. They needed to get to the security control room beneath their target building. From there, they'd be able to trip an alarm requiring every floor of the building to evacuate. Then, while almost everyone else in the building was headed down the stairs, Reggie, Christopher, and the others would head up. The only other people left in the building were the psychopaths left to guard the Intelligence Center during the emergency.

At the end of the tunnel, Christopher and Reggie came to another door. Through that door was the building that housed the Intelligence Center. They would be there in moments, only thirty-seven floors below their target. They paused outside the other door again, not sure what they were going to face on the other side.

“We go through fast and quiet,” Reggie said to Christopher. Christopher could see the sweat glistening on Reggie's forehead. He had never seen Reggie sweat before. “I'll go first. If you don't hear anything, wait five seconds and then come after me. If you hear something”—Christopher knew that by
something
Reggie meant gunshots—“wait until I open the door and let you in.”

“And what if you don't open the door?” Christopher asked.

Reggie shrugged. “Then you're on your own. You'll have to find your own way in.” Reggie didn't wait for a follow-up question. He stepped toward the door, opened it, and without a sound slipped to the other side.

Christopher counted five seconds in his head like he was a kid playing hide-and-seek, all the while praying for silence. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand. Five one-thousand. He didn't hear anything, so he stepped toward the door and pushed it open.

Reggie was already on the other side of the room, his back pressed up against the wall. He had his rifle slung on its strap over his back and was holding his handgun. Past Reggie was another hallway. Reggie put his finger to his lips so Christopher knew to be quiet. Then he waved Christopher over to him. Christopher sped across the room, trying to move silently the way he'd seen Addy and Max move. Seconds later, he was standing next to Reggie. Each step brought them closer to the security control room.

“I saw someone moving down there,” Reggie whispered to Christopher. “We can't afford to fire any shots unless we have to. Surprise is our best weapon. We don't want to lose that.” Christopher nodded. “We'll go together, move down opposite sides of the hallway. If you have to attack, try to use your hands first and gun only as a last resort.” Christopher nodded again. It was all he could think to do. Then they started moving.

As they started down the hallway, Christopher saw what Reggie had seen. It wasn't a person, only moving shadows. They were about two-thirds of the way down the hall when the shadows suddenly got larger and two armed men turned into the hallway. Christopher lifted his gun, knowing full well what it would mean to shoot but being ready to shoot anyway, but also ready to charge like a bull toward a fluttering cape. Reggie moved quickly forward, toward the two men. Christopher followed him—step after step after step—both of them with their guns raised. The men at the other end of the hall saw them coming and raised their guns too. Everybody aimed, but no one seemed to want to fire. Then everybody stopped.

“Reggie,” one of the other men called out in a loud whisper.

“Hector,” Reggie answered with relief. It was Hector and Dave, two more of the six rebels assigned to climb up the building. Now the four of them were together. “You guys seen the others?” Two more and the team would be assembled.

Hector nodded silently and pointed around the corner in the direction of the security control room was. Reggie looked at his watch. They still had fifteen minutes until the explosions started in New York and everywhere else. Everything was right on schedule.

The four men and one woman cleared a path for Reggie so that he could make his way to the door of the security control room. He walked up to the door and put his ear to it to see if he could hear anything going on inside. He couldn't hear a thing. The door was thick and virtually soundproof. They would have heard gunfire inside but not much else. Reggie turned back to his team. “You all know the drill,” he said. “There's five of them inside. There's six of us. They have guns. We have bigger guns. One of them is part of the War, but there's no way for us to know which one. The others are innocents. If one of them tries to be a hero, we all agree on the assumptions we need to make, right?” Everyone nodded, even Christopher. “Otherwise, we should be able to do this without too much bloodshed.”

“Fast and ready,” Hector said to the group. Everyone nodded again. They lifted their weapons in unison. Then Reggie went for the door.

Only two of them could fit through the door at a time. Once Reggie pulled open the door, Dave and Hector would go in first. They'd fire shots, aimed away from the people and away from all of the security equipment. The last thing they needed was to accidentally break the alarm trigger. The shots were only meant as a distraction, meant to make the five security guards inside flinch long enough for the others to get through the door. Linda and Mike went in second. Reggie and Christopher would go in last. The earlier you went, the more dangerous it was, but nobody argued about the order.

Reggie opened the door and Dave and Hector ran through it. Christopher heard the shots fired—three in rapid succession and then two others, spaced out more deliberately. Linda and Mike ran through next. Christopher didn't hear any more gunfire but he could hear shouting. First a voice he didn't recognize saying words he couldn't understand, and then Dave shouting, “
EVERYBODY ON YOUR FEET, HANDS IN THE AIR
.”

Then it was Reggie and Christopher's turn. They went in shoulder to shoulder, guns aimed in front of them. By the time they were through the door, everything seemed to be under control. Christopher saw the five security guards first. They were already lined up against one wall with their backs to the room and their hands above their heads. Their hands were pressing up against the wall. Christopher couldn't see their faces. Then he looked at their equipment. The wall in front of him was lined with television sets showing color pictures of dozens of entranceways and stairwells. Below that was a table full of buttons and levers. Christopher looked at the televisions. All of the stairwells were empty. The screens showing the various entranceways were mostly motionless, only a random person walking across one of the screens every few minutes. It was almost midnight. The images on the screens were serene, like abstract art about the tedium of normal life.

“Okay, where are the buttons?” Reggie said, stepping toward the control panel. Linda went with him. She'd been assigned to study the plans that Jared had stolen for them, the plans that told them what buttons they needed to press.

“Over here,” Linda said, motioning to the right side of the control panel. “Each one of these red buttons triggers the alarm for one of the floors.”

“And if we want the alarm to go off on all of them at once?” Reggie asked.

“You flip that switch there,” Linda pointed, “and then you hit the top button.”

Reggie looked at his watch again. They still had eight minutes. “Okay, and where is the evacuation announcement button?”

“Over by the microphone,” Linda said, pointing to another part of the desk. “You don't have to say anything. You just hit that top yellow button on the right.”

“And then the people leave?”

“And then they leave,” Linda confirmed. Seven minutes.

Christopher was still standing in the back of the room. Hector, Dave, and Mike remained standing with their rifles pointed at the security guards. “Get the restraints,” Hector said to Christopher. Christopher walked behind Hector and unzipped his backpack. Christopher saw Hector's gas canister but he looked past it, to the bottom of the backpack. Christopher reached inside and moved Hector's gas mask out of the way. Beneath the gas mask were a few dozen plastic wrist ties. Beneath those were three rolls of duct tape. Christopher took the wrist ties and the duct tape out of the bag. He left the gas mask and the canister inside. “Give me those,” Hector said, taking everything from Christopher. This was as planned. Christopher wasn't supposed to get too close to the security guards. “Take my place,” Hector said to Christopher before stepping toward the first man with his hands splayed against the wall. Christopher moved to the spot where Hector had been standing, next to Dave and Mike, and aimed his gun at the backs of the security guards.

“We don't have all day, Hector,” Reggie called out, glancing down at his watch again. Reggie had stationed himself near the alarm switch while Linda stood near the button that would play the full evacuation message.

Hector walked up to the first of the guards. “Give me your hands,” he ordered him. The guard took his hands off the wall and moved them behind his back. Hector grabbed them quickly and cinched them together with one of the plastic rings. “Now turn around and sit on the floor,” Hector ordered. The man did as he was told. Hector helped him get down on the floor. Then Hector cinched his ankles together. Finally, Hector took the duct tape and wrapped it over the guard's mouth.

“What are you going to do to us?” the third security guard in line asked nervously as he watched Hector wrap the tape around his colleague's mouth.

“Nothing,” Hector answered. Then he moved to the second guard and started the procedure over again.

“What do you mean,
nothing
?” the third guard asked as Hector cinched the second guard's feet together, the panic in his voice escalating.

“I mean nothing if you shut up,” Hector said. “Our business is upstairs. We're simply going to empty the building and leave you guys here so that someone can find you tomorrow.” Hector finished wrapping the tape around the second guard's head.

“Tomorrow?” the third guard asked as Hector approached him with the plastic handcuffs in his hand.

What happened next happened so fast that Christopher didn't even see what was going on until it was over. He saw the flash and then he heard the bang and saw the blood splattered against the wall, but none of it registered for a few seconds. The fourth guard slumped to the floor, blood seeping down the front of his face, a hole where his forehead used to be. Dave's gun was still smoking. The fourth guard had a gun in his hand. He'd turned all the way around and was facing us by time Dave shot him. God knows what he thought he was going to accomplish. At best, he would have taken one of the rebels out before they stopped him. Maybe he thought that would have been enough for him to be able to go out proud. Instead, he was dead and hadn't accomplished anything. “There's the inside man,” Dave said quietly, staring at the man's body over his smoking gun. Everyone agreed because that's what they'd all promised themselves they'd believe. Whether it was true or not didn't matter. Hector moved quickly now to restrain the third guard. The guard began screaming. Not words, merely sounds. The sounds stopped only when Hector got the tape wrapped around the guard's head. They had only two minutes left when Hector finished with the fifth guard. They left the four of them, bound and gagged and sitting against the wall beside their dead colleague. They would move the four of them out into the hall when they were done to make sure that none of them could get to the control board. “Let's go,” Hector said when he finished tying up the guards. “Hit the alarm.”

“Not yet,” Christopher said, looking at Reggie. “We can't be early. This all has to happen at exactly the same time.”

Reggie looked down at his watch and nodded to Christopher. “Eighty seconds,” he said, putting his hand near the button that he would press to trigger the alarm.

The six of them wouldn't hear the sounds outside when the Uprising finally began. They were too far removed from it, too far below the city. They wouldn't hear the explosions as they detonated all over the city. They wouldn't hear a television or a radio as they began to report unconfirmed stories about explosions and violence erupting, seemingly simultaneously, all over the world. They would watch the feeds from the security cameras as everyone but a handful of dedicated, hard-core soldiers ran out of the building. Then Christopher, Reggie, and the others would begin their climb up the stairs.

Christopher took the earpiece out of his backpack and put it in his ear. He knew he wouldn't be able to hear anything yet. They were too far underground, but he wanted to be ready. Once he'd climbed two flights of stairs, he wanted to hear Evan's voice informing him about everything that was going on.

The bartender strolled down to where Jared was sitting, slumped over at the bar. “It's eleven fifty-five,” he informed Jared.

“What's that?” Jared asked, squinting at the bartender, trying to get his eyes to focus. He hadn't stopped drinking since he got to the bar at five o'clock. He'd barely even slowed down.

“You told me to tell you when it was eleven fifty-five.”

“That's right,” Jared said, finally remembering through the alcohol-filled haze. “It's time.”

“Time for what?” the bartender asked, skeptical that this drunk actually had an appointment that he had to keep.

“Time to watch the chaos start,” Jared said, smiling at the bartender. He dropped two hundred-dollar bills on the bar. “Keep the change,” he said, slipping off his barstool. It took him a moment to find his footing and stand up straight. Then he began to walk ever so gracelessly toward the door. When Jared opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sky was quiet.

Brian looked at
his watch. It was time. He was standing on the roof of a building near the East River. He did a visual scan of the targets one more time. He had already dialed the number into his phone. All he had to do now was hit Send and it would begin. Brian ran his thumb over the button. He looked out over the city, dark but alive. Then Brian pressed down on the Send button with his thumb.

Jared was standing
on the sidewalk staring up at the sky when he heard the first rumble. The fresh air had sobered him up enough that he could look up without keeling over. The first rumble came from somewhere in the distance. Jared couldn't even determine from which direction the sound was coming as it echoed down to him through the streets. The George Washington Bridge? The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge? Jared waited, listening, wondering what he would hear next. He wondered if he would hear the screaming first or the sirens or maybe another explosion.

The next explosion was closer, not more than a few dozen blocks from Jared. It came like a series of bellowing thunderclaps, one after the other. The whole city must have heard it. Behind Jared, the patrons in the bar ran to the window to see what was happening, but no one actually stepped outside. Jared kept looking up, wondering if he would see the explosions at the top of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building when they blew, wondering how the rest of the world would react to entering into the chaos that he'd already lived his entire life in. Then the sky lit up with color.

Purple was first, flashing against the gray night clouds. Then green, an unnatural green that looked almost chemical. Then Jared heard another rumble—closer than the first but farther away than the second—and another and another as the whole city began to fill with thundering noise in every direction. It was here. The beginning of the end was here, but the colors—Jared couldn't figure out the colors. It wasn't long before he heard the first siren, added to the cacophony. The sirens were mixed in with the still-cascading sounds of explosions. The sky turned red, then orange, then blue. Confused, Jared shuffled as best he could to the corner to see if he could get a clearer view of the explosions.

When Jared turned the corner, he looked up and fell to his knees. He finally saw what the buildings in front of him had been blocking.
That idealistic son of a bitch,
Jared said to himself as he watched a burst of yellow fall through the sky like dozens of tiny, twinkling stars. Looking down the avenue, Jared could see tiers of color lighting up the night sky as they sprang from the buildings that he himself had designated for destruction. He could also see people—so many people—standing on the sidewalks, staring up into the sky. Another rocket launched from one of the buildings, whistling as it rose and then exploding into a giant circle of hundreds of tiny red flares. Fireworks. Christopher had taken Jared's plan and replaced the explosives with fucking fireworks. They were exploding in the sky all over the city, off the city's bridges and the city's tallest buildings, in an unprecedented display of light, color, and sound. Jared had been in this city for celebrations, for Fourth of July displays, and nothing he had ever seen came close to lighting up the sky like this. And this time no one had been expecting it. More sirens roared across the city, barely audible amid the sounds of bursting fireworks, rushing God knows where to do God knows what, likely rushing merely for the sake of doing something in response to this act of— Act of what exactly? Not violence. Wonder?

Still on his knees, staring up the sky, Jared whispered the words again, “That idealistic son of a bitch” and then he started laughing. Despite the impact of the fireworks, he knew that his plan was ruined. After all he'd told Christopher—after all he'd tried to teach Christopher—Christopher had still ruined it. This would lead to chaos but not enough chaos. The chaos from real explosions and the damage and death that followed would have lasted for hours. How long after the last rocket exploded would the chaos from this last? One hour while the masses tried to figure out what they had witnessed? One hour while the authorities rushed to each site to make sure that there truly was nothing there but fireworks? “I hope you've given yourself enough time, kid,” Jared whispered, not to himself this time but to Christopher, wherever Christopher was. When the chaos ended, everyone would immediately remember the Intelligence Center. Jared knew that.

Jared stayed on his knees until the fireworks ended, watching the sky light up over and over again. It looked to him like the sky was liquid. Each new burst of color spread out from its center like a raindrop landing in the sea, which meant that Jared, and the rest of the world with him, was underwater. When it was over, almost twenty minutes after it had begun, Jared pulled himself up to his feet again. Christopher was risking everything. “He's your kid, Joe,” Jared whispered, talking to ghosts now, not bothering to remind himself that he'd killed Joe eighteen years ago. “I hope you're proud of him.”

Addy and Evan
watched the fireworks too. While Jared was kneeling on the sidewalk, staring up into the sky, Addy and Evan were watching from the top of the building across from the Intelligence Center. They didn't know. Christopher hadn't told either of them that he'd changed the plan. Barely anyone knew. Not even Brian knew, and he was the one who had to pull the trigger on the whole thing. Christopher told only the people that he thought he had to: Reggie and a few of the others who helped him to arrange the boxes of fireworks. Reggie fought him at first, but Christopher had made up his mind. One thing. Christopher demanded that he get to make this one decision, threatening to derail the whole Uprising if Reggie didn't agree. Reggie didn't need to be threatened, though. All he needed was to see how much Christopher cared. Reggie wanted to help save Christopher, not destroy him. So he gave in.

For Addy and Evan, the fireworks weren't merely loud and colorful displays in the sky. From where they were standing, the fireworks were enormous. Addy and Evan watched each burst as it filled the sky right in front of their eyes. Soon they couldn't see any part of the city except through the haze created by the endless bursts of color. “There are no explosions,” Evan said to Addy, looking through each burst of color for a real explosion emanating from a real bomb. “There's only this.” Evan worried that it wouldn't be enough.

Addy stepped up next to Evan near the edge of the roof. They stood side by side watching what Christopher had created, the colors from the fireworks reflecting off their skin. Addy slipped her hand into Evan's. “Yeah, but
this
is beautiful,” she told him as they watched the sky change color over and over again. Far below them, in the streets and from apartment windows all over the city, people looked up into the sky to see this parade of bursting light. They'd been frightened at first by the sounds, but when they saw what was happening, the fear was replaced by awe. Millions of people watched every burst lift into the heavens, sparkling and then falling or fading into nothing, only to be replaced by the next burst and the one after that. Everyone had seen fireworks before, but never a display like this. This was unexpected. And it was everywhere: above them, beside them, in front of them, behind them, like magic. Millions of people looked up at the sky and saw what Addy and Evan saw. Still, Addy and Evan stood on the roof, hands intertwined, alone together, and watched the spectacle as if it had been created only for them.