Revolution in the Underground

by Michaels, S. J.

  Sven slapped his forehead with his palm. “Didn’t it strike you as a bit strange that he, all of the sudden, decided to leave the basement? He said that he wouldn’t leave the plant until he finished sequencing its DNA, remember? He said that the Police were out looking for him, remember?”

  “What was I to do?”

  “Didn’t it strike you as a bit strange that, the day after we told him that the egress to Underground was still open, he decided to walk outside?!”

  Maggie’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped exaggeratingly. “I remember thinking,” she said, “that his reaction to that news was a bit unusual.”

  “And he didn’t even seem to care that we picked up the wrong swords,” Ember added.

  “None of this struck you as out of the ordinary, Luna?” Sven said, now almost condescending in tone.

  “Here, how about we try it this way… Why don’t we let Luna tell everything she knows about this situation? Let’s let her talk before we jump to conclusions,” Kara suggested calmly. “Luna, what do you know?”

  Luna, who was still on her knees, huddled over the plant with a pipet, just now rose to her feet and turned to face Kara and Sven, who were also standing. Ember and Maggie were still sprawled out on the couch—little more than passive observers in the unfolding drama. “Well, we were expecting you to drop by around ten today, but when you didn’t come, Styles decided to go outside. He didn’t tell me where he was going or when he was coming back. He told me to pipet a drop of water around the stem once every minute… and then he asked Mrs. Helsinki for some of Sven’s clothes… and then he left.”

  “He asked my Mom for some of my clothes?” Sven asked. Luna nodded.

  “It was probably to conceal his identity from the Police as he wandered the streets,” Kara suggested.

  “How long has he been gone?” Sven asked, as he made his way to the exit.

  “Five hours and forty-six minutes and thirteen seconds,” Luna replied quickly.

  Sven, seemingly disturbed with her specificity, gave her a strange look, and then left. The sound of his heavy footsteps on the stairwell was interrupted by Sven’s own voice, “Mom?! What clothes did you lend Styles?” No voice answered back, and so the footsteps continued. “Mom?” Sven asked upon reaching the top, his voice now barely audible to the rest of the group down below. Sven moved into the kitchen and, upon seeing his mother, continued his frustrated inquiry. The conversation was, however, no more than faint murmurs to the rest of the group.

  Finding no need to eavesdrop and finding it taxing to attempt to make sense of the muttering of their conversation, Kara decided to continue her investigation without Sven. “So, Luna? What did you talk about before he left?”

  “Nothing much really… he was pretty quiet the whole night… he didn’t sleep at all… We talked a little bit about the sequencing logistics, and then he asked me whether or not I thought you guys were coming over today. I told him that I didn’t know, and then he left.”

  “If he was planning to leave the Underground without us then why would he leave Luna with the task of caring for the plant while he was gone?” Ember asked.

  “Contingency plan… or maybe he still cares about helping us out even if it doesn’t affect him.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “Make no mistake about it, he doesn’t care about us at all. If he had the opportunity to leave without us, he would.”

  “You asked him if he would yesterday, remember?” Luna said to Maggie.

  “Oh ya!”

  “What did he say?” Kara asked.

  “He didn’t say anything,” Maggie frowned, disappointed with how unhelpful the new information was.

  “Do you really think he could reach the egress by himself?” Ember asked. “It was so high up… and there was nothing leading up to it but the dirt walls.”

  “I don’t know…” Kara said. “He seems to be capable of a great many strange things… so… I don’t know.”

  Sven’s heavy footsteps fell once more down the stairs. “He has my hat and a one of my old long-sleeved navy blue sweat shirts,” Sven reported. “My Mom said that he also asked for a pair of scissors.”

  “Whatever that means,” Ember muttered pessimistically.

  “Like I said… it means that he was probably trying to conceal his identity. I’m guessing that he used the scissors to cut his own hair.” Kara opined.

  “But why would he cut his hair with scissors if he was going to wear a hat? And why couldn’t he just use his sword? Hey where are his swords? Did he take them?” Sven asked.

  “He only took the long sword and its sheath. He left the daggers,” Luna replied.

  “Won’t the clothes be big on him?” Maggie asked.

  “I think that’s the point,” Kara said, slightly enjoying the detective work.

  ***

  As the hours passed, the tension mounted. Soon the realization came that, if he did not return, they would have to plan everything out themselves. Luna insisted that she was okay with the sequencing and that she could probably figure out how to do the DNA extraction, but this did little to relieve the party of its growing anxiety. What was most troubling, however, wasn’t obtaining the code, but rather reaching the Gate. No one had any idea how such a feat could be accomplished, and quickly the burden of responsibility became suffocating.

  The passing hours had a unique effect on everyone. Maggie was lulled to sleep on the couch. Ember felt increasingly despondent but found some lasting comfort by resigning himself to a passive position. All he had to do was sit back and hope that others would come up with a plan. This passivity offered him a degree of optimism, and he, in a way, pitied Kara and Sven for having to deal with bulk of the burden. Likewise, Sven was also struggling with his deluded sense of hopefulness. Kara felt the revolution slipping through her fingers and felt sadness, gloom, and anger in succession. Luna seemed, more or less, as contented as usual—but perhaps a bit melancholy at the thought of losing a new friend.

  Shortly after midnight a pair of footsteps were heard descending the stairs. Luna gently shook Maggie by the shoulders. When Maggie awoke, it was to the image of Styles casually walking into the secured sub-section of the basement. Without so much of a glance at his incredulous audience, he pushed Luna aside and resumed his position as the plant’s primary caregiver. As Kara had expected, he had cut his hair. Though the cut was in the haphazard fashion of one who had cut one’s own hair, it somehow, in a savage, rugged way, looked good on him. While the bulk of his hair was frayed forward, a few longer, stubborn bundles stuck out chaotically on the sides.

  “And where have you been?” Sven asked, hardly believing his insolence.

  “What’s it to you?” he rejoined promptly.

  “I… We… think that you left to check out the egress,” Kara said, looking at the group to see if it was okay if she spoke on everyone’s behalf.

  “What of it?”

  “Is it true?” she pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s true! You were going to leave us?!”

  “How could you!” Sven added, desiring to team up on him.

  “It was, as expected,” Styles replied cryptically.

  “Meaning?” asked Ember for clarification.

  “It was a trap,” Styles said, with an unusually affected manner.

  “But you were going to leave us? You were going to leave everyone behind?! You were going to just forget about the cause?!” Sven said, seizing the opportunity to take pot shots at Styles’ amorality.

  “What does it matter what my intentions were? It is over and done with. I am here now and that is all,” Styles said, once again with an usual exasperation in his voice.

  “But you were planning on leaving us?!” Kara continued.

  “I said ‘that is all.’”

  “But were you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore!” he exclaimed viciously.

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to talk about thi
s anymore!”

  “But—”

  “It’s over and done with! You all need to grow up! I can’t have you acting this way! You are pathetic excuses for revolutionaries and perhaps even more pathetic excuses for human beings! I constantly need to hold your hands because you are all too obtuse to think for yourselves! It’s over and done with! Why can’t you idiots understand that?!” His rhetorical question came so violently and with such out-of-character emotion that everyone else was left dumbstruck.

  “Is everything okay down there?” shouted Mrs. Helsinki from above.

  For a moment, no one answered out of awkwardness. “Everything’s fine Mrs. Helsinki,” Kara shouted back at last.

  “Okay dear, play nicely.”

  Ember and Sven looked down at the ground. They felt too embarrassed for Styles to look at him directly. Styles had lost his composure and it was readily apparent that he had, at least momentarily, let his emotions triumph over his reason. While this, in and of itself, was by no means a crime, it would forever taint his representation as a calculating, rational leader. Never again, Maggie felt, would he have the same aura. Something was lost by his outburst, and everyone seemed to recognize that.

  Even Styles seemed to regret his eruption. He straightened his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, and breathed in to regain his composure. “Sven, tomorrow I will need you to come with me and help me lift something. Maggie, I want you to take this dagger. Luna, you will stay with me tonight. Tomorrow we will begin the next phase.” Styles looked at Maggie with some uncertainty and handed her the dagger. She received it with disbelief and even greater hesitancy. “Now go! Get out of here. I don’t want to look at any of you.”

  “You want me to go too?” Luna asked, standing up to join the rest.

  “No,” he said with great frustration. “You stay... Everyone else goes.”

  As Ember went towards the exit he inquired from Kara, in a whispering tone, whether or not they should inform Styles about Daryl’s return. Kara shook her head, and Sven, agreeing with the decision, gently pushed Ember out of the room. Maggie, who intentionally lagged behind, waited for the rest of the group to go up the stairs before approaching Styles.

  “I said that I only want Luna here. Leave now!” he said rudely.

  Although Maggie did not have the best impression of Styles, she couldn’t help but find him more likeable as the result of his outburst. She empathized with his vulnerability. His failed attempt to restrain his emotion and the subsequent cathartic release of it reminded her of the Ember of old, and the memory softened her heart and made her nostalgic. Furthermore, she was hit by a wave of calm kindness not all that uncommon after a brief, soothing nap. All this combined to give her a more favorable view of him. “You know what I think?” she said.

  “No, and I don’t care.”

  “I think you could have escaped but just chose not to.” He did not answer. “I think you stayed for us. I think you have a heart.”

  “You’re wrong. I didn’t do this for you… It’s just… It can’t be left unfinished.”

  Maggie walked out with a smile, gripping her new weapon tightly as she left.

  Chapter 16: Mysterious Pasts

  When Ember awoke the next morning, he was alone with his sister in Kara’s living room. He knew from last night that Sven had to go with Styles to pick something up, but he could not account for Kara’s disappearance. They had never been left alone at Kara’s place before and, for some reason, he found this desertion more vexing and more curious than Sven and Styles’ mysterious mission. Not wanting to wake his sister, who just now rolled drowsily onto one side, Ember crept quietly into the kitchen to search for Kara.

  There was a faint muttering from behind the door connecting the kitchen to the family room. As Ember walked nearer to it, the voice did not grow in volume nor did it lessen in indistinction. The door was cracked open just enough to tease the eyes without offering anything of value. He approached it cautiously and crouched down beside it. The voice resembled Kara’s in both tempo and tone, yet seemed to possess some indescribable quality that made it both foreign and distressing. What was most concerning wasn’t the incomprehensibility of the murmurs, which could have been incidental, but rather its inaudibility—which is to say that the speaker spoke with the disturbingly clear intent of concealing herself.

  Though he could not resolve a single word, he could tell, by syntactical breaks and varied syllabification, that sentences were being said and thoughts were being explained. In fact, Ember could even surmise by the changing pace of delivery, that the speaker was describing something, perhaps even in considerable detail. A clause of rapid mutterings sandwiched between two longer, and slower garbles, for example, suggested the offering of superficial information—as if given as a parenthetical aside. The relative brevity of one fragment, contrasted with the drawn-out groans of another, suggested complex thoughts with both independent and subordinate clauses.

  So pointed and unbroken were the mumbles that Ember couldn’t help but ponder the recipient for which they were intended. Through the crack in the door Ember saw a crippled hand with fingers that contorted inwards in what appeared to be an uncomfortably forced position—and although he did not readily recognize the hand, there seemed be something faintly familiar about it.

  He gasped slightly and, at that very moment, the voice stopped its rant. His heart beat fast. He heard some pacing in the room behind him, and for a brief moment he was sure that the speaker would open the door and discover him. Instead, however, another voice, different in tone but similar in nature, started up. The ringing voice was quiet and forcefully childish in tenor—as though it were from an adult who was imitating the sounds of a juvenile. As with the last voice, it was feminine in quality and slightly reminiscent of Kara’s.

  So similar and yet, so different, were the voices that Ember found himself constantly vacillating between the notion that it originated from the same speaker or different ones. The juxtaposition of the two voices, which came in the form of rapid alternating interjections, but never at the same time, as if a question-and-answer interrogation, removed all doubt. It was the same speaker.

  The implications were not lost on Ember and he jolted back almost immediately upon their realization. The situation had been strange enough when Ember had thought that someone was talking to herself. Ember had many times before, especially during moments of deep introspection, spoken to himself, and although he had spoken far more tersely and disjointedly with himself than this voice did with itself, he could have forgiven the incident if this was all. The assumption of a second character by the singular person and the subsequent apparent chatter of engaged discourse between the two, however, was a derangement that could not be overlooked.

  He was not all that entirely sure of what to do. If he returned back to bed now, the thought of the episode would forever weigh in his mind. If he opened the door and confronted the speaker, however, he was sure to inspire embarrassment and perhaps even provoke fear. In fact, the anticipation of confronting the speaker frightened Ember. He did not worry that the speaker would assault him, but rather that the expression of her horrored mortification would stop his heart’s beating. He could see the ghostly terror of the speaker’s face in his mind, and the thought of gazing at it terrified him.

  So bare and exposed would be the encounter that there would be no hiding from the one simple, and inescapable truth—that the speaker was conversing with herself. It would become immediately obvious, upon the instantaneous opening of that door, that something had occurred that probably shouldn’t have. Both speaker and eavesdropper, though they might initially pretend otherwise, would be instantly and completely aware of one another’s understanding of the situation.

  He listened to the spirited banter of the two-voiced mutterings until he could take it no longer. Ember stood up, whipped open the door, and to his horror saw Kara gesticulating to some empty void, mid-syllable.

  Her face, like her fingers, were
artificially contorted in a way that could not be accidental. Though vicious, unbalanced, and unmistakably deranged, the face still possessed an alluring beauty. What haunted Ember most, however, was the gaped mouth and ghostly horror that fell upon her face, which was made ten times worse by his previous anticipation. So raw, so unbridled was its dread and so visceral was her reaction, that Ember’s heart momentarily stopped its beat. He grabbed at his chest where the sharp pain struck and gawked back at the terrorized face in startled bewilderment. Both speaker and eavesdropper were paralyzed.

  As the breath returned to her lungs, Kara put down her hand, which was in the midst of some gesture, and normalized her face as inconspicuously as possible. Ember, for his part, slowly wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and breathed in heavily.

  Now was the awkward phase. Engage too soon and you risk making apparent that something required being covered-up. Engage too late and you risk drawing attention to the very thing that had just passed. Their sub-optimization was of the latter variety.

  Their eyes caught each other’s for a few chilly seconds. It was Kara who was first to speak. “How long were you standing there?” The inquiry was a half-hearted attempt to see if feigning ignorance was a reasonable course of action. More accurately put, the inquiry was designed to probe whether or not Ember would agree to play ignorant with her—she knew that he knew, and she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew, all that was left was to decide what to do about it. She looked down, now not only embarrassed for getting caught but also ashamed for trying to deny it. “Well… ya… okay,” she said as if finally accepting reality, but then walked towards the exit, as if intent to discuss nothing further. Ember blocked the way.

  Ember knew that Kara was the type of person perfectly capable of leaving things unsaid. She could be caught doing something and even indicate her involvement through some tacit admission or gesture, and then just walk away and never discuss anything. He knew that if he let her go now, he might never get the chance to discuss the incident with her. He did not want to have that sort of relationship, but, more importantly, he didn’t think it was healthy for her. As she made for the door, therefore, he did not budge.