Revolution in the Underground (20 page)

             
“And what of the bombs?!” Bradbury reminded.  “Fifteen people were injured yesterday in the downtown district of Matsi.”

             
“You don’t suppose,” Sven said aloud, motioning for Maggie and Ember to sit down, “that there is any connection to the fake bombings at the rave a few weeks ago, do you?” 

“I doubt it.  The rave was nothing more than a prank,” opined one of the quieter men.  What followed was a raucous debate amongst the revolutionaries.  Though there was by no means a consensus, most ended up taking the position that the events were somehow related.

“And who is responsible for this?”

“It must be Imperium or Auctoritas!” Bradbury said convincingly.  “They are trying to destroy the revolution.  This is why we cannot be meeting like this.  If we spread out we will be immune to their efforts.  We are vulnerable in this concentrated form.”

“Or,” said another man, “perhaps it was an opposing revolutionary party… one that wants to overthrow the establishment but not to open the Gate.”

“I heard,” said a man who seemed to be reciting a very distant and tertiary-sourced rumor, “that the Abyssians are planning to rise up and make a third state of their own.”

“Hogwash!”

“They essentially already have their own isolated state… no one goes down there… not even Imperium’s Police.”

“They do not have the means.”

“And how do you know?  No one knows how deep the Abyss goes.  For all we know there can be tends of thousands of them… waiting… sitting… and waiting…”

“That is nothing but childhood rumors.  The Abyssians have made it perfectly clear that they don’t want anything to do with our affairs.  So long as we leave them alone, they will leave us alone.”

“Have you seen them?  They are hardly human!”

“Jericho!  That’s irrelevant!” one man chastised.

“I know… but still…  their eyes are so small… and their skin so hairless…  I have seen one, you know?!”

“No one cares…  back to the issue of the bombs.”

“It is from Imperium,” Bradbury reassured, his face redder than ever.  “And, I suspect, if we should meet again like this, a bomb will be our fate.  We must separate!”
              “Give it a rest Bradbury!” came an ostensibly omnipresent voice.

“No!  I am trying to save the revolution here!  You need to listen to me!  You will see!  You will all see that I am right!  And when you do… you’ll come crawling back to me!”  Bradbury got up violently, proceeding to the exit.  On his way, he whispered angrily to Maggie and Ember, intending for Kara and Sven to hear as secondary targets, “You have set the revolution back one hundred years.”

Though neither Maggie nor Ember was bothered by his words, it did seem to affect them in other ways.  For one, it marked the first time that a revolutionary had lamented their arrival.  It also seemed to signify a transition in their relationship to others—no longer were they strangers deserving of pampering.  They were regular revolutionaries now, with nothing more than their unusual origins to their names.  Maggie and Ember felt uncomfortable with the new roles.  They did not want to give their opinions on revolutionary matters—they had no opinions to offer.  They felt their celebrity status slipping away from them.

***

After the meeting, which continued for another meandering hour, they walked over to Sven’s basement to inform Styles about the news.  Ember and Maggie were so exhausted and overwhelmed by all the new information that, when they plopped down on the couch, they initially failed to notice that it was Luna, and not Styles who was tending to the plant.

“Where is Styles?” Kara asked.

“Don’t know,” Luna responded. 

“What do you mean, you don’t know?!” Sven exclaimed, becoming the first one in the bunch to find alarm with the situation.

“I don’t know where he went.  He didn’t tell me.  How was your day?” Luna asked, innocently unaware of the growing concern brewing in others.

“Wait a minute…  what?” Kara said, just now suspecting something bad.

“You were here the whole time, right?” Sven interrogated further.

“That’s correct.”

“So you saw him leave?”

“Affirmative.”

“Did you ask him where he was going?”

“Yes.”

“And?” Sven was quickly becoming annoyed with Luna.

“And… he said he didn’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s it?  You didn’t press him for answers?!” Sven said, no longer hiding his frustration.

“Nope.”

“And why not?!”
              “He said he didn’t want to talk about it.”

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 this 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.