Revolution in the Underground (35 page)

             
The double doors opened abruptly, instantly filling the back of the vehicle with light and the image of three silhouettes—that of two security guards symmetrically arranged around what appeared to be a shorter woman with some foreign object on her head.  As the guards tossed the woman into the back of the vehicle, the shadowy figure was momentarily illuminated.  Her body crashed into the hard floorboards as the guards slammed shut the doors.

             
Through the flickering light of a dull fluorescent overhang Ember casted his eyes on the helpless object.  Instantly he threw himself down on top of her and wept.  The vehicle accelerated.

             
“Ember?  Ember?!  Is that you?!  I can’t see!” Maggie exclaimed with a hopeful but disbelieving heart.

             
Ember, who could not possibly manage words, nodded his head dumbly.  “She can’t see you,” Sven reminded in a broken voice.

             
“Sven?!  And Kara?”

             
“I’m here,” Kara reported.

             
Ember whose hands, like everyone else’s, was handcuffed, wormed his way to Maggie’s head and fumbled clumsily with the burlap sac, using his fingertips to take hold.  Maggie pulled backward, freeing herself from the veil of darkness.

             
“Oh Ember!  You’re alive!” she screamed as she crawled up next to him.

             
Ember embraced his sister the best he could with bound hands.  “Maggie, I knew you were okay!  I knew it!”

             
“Ember, what… happened to you?” she said, noticing for the first time the heavy indentations along his forehead and chin, and re-discovering his black-and-blue eye.

             
“Oh… this?  It’s nothing.  Really.  I’ll be okay.  What did they do to you?”

             
“They tried to hang—Sven, what happened to your face?!” Maggie exclaimed, observing his scratched, tattered, and bloodied visage.  His facial hair had since grown from an afternoon shadow into a short, but unruly beard, only further magnifying his disheveled appearance.

             
“They made me talk,” he admitted ashamedly as tears fell from his eyes.

             
“Kara?” Maggie asked.

             
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said, also holding her head in shame.

             
“When—” Maggie began.

             
“Instantly.  As soon as we entered.”

             
“What about—”

             
“We think,” Ember said slowly, still trying to collect himself, “that it has been about two days…. and as far as we know, the Gate has yet to be opened.  Of course, we can’t say for sure.”

             
“I suspect,” Sven said gloomily, “that Luna and Styles are… gone.”

             
Maggie pondered briefly before reasoning aloud, “If they caught them, then why would they need to get information out of you?  What reason would they have for doing what they did to you?”

             
Sven considered her logic, and though he approved of it, he answered indifferently, “I suppose that makes sense.”

             
“Doesn’t really matter,” Kara added pessimistically.

             
As Maggie sat up, a sharp pain rang through her ribs.  She tried ineffectually to stretch her legs, which were numb with pins-and-needles.  Through this discomfort she scrutinized the faces of her compatriots.

             
In her brother, whom she naturally analyzed first, she saw a profound sense of relief but also a powerful, and emerging unrest.  He was, in some ways the most composed of the bunch, but in other ways, the most destroyed.  He stared outwardly—absent mindedly, as if his universe had somehow been stolen from him.  In him she saw a harbored sadness—a desolation, a despair.  Beyond Sven’s superficial injuries was an almost catatonic weariness, and the appearance of a cemented mortification.  Kara was the most difficult to read, perhaps, Maggie decided, because she was most in denial.

             
All-in-all, they were ghosts—stitched together and bound to the earth by their very own unwilling bodies—convenient and temporary vessels for their haunted spirits.  What was once full of life now seemed empty and dead.  There was, of course, the broken remnants of identity and the shattered traces of character.  A grating misery filled their empty spaces, a cold dead ether filled their voids.

             
Maggie closed her eyes and realized that she was no different.  Though before her sat the bodies of those she had most longed to see, it somehow made complete sense not to look at them.  Sometimes things were best left in memory.  Suddenly it seemed perfectly natural that they should sit in perfect mutual silence.  It was enough to coexist.  There were questions—important questions even—but somehow, none of them needed to be asked.

             
“It will be okay,” Ember murmured as if to excuse the world.

***

              “We’ve stopped,” Sven said, reporting the obvious.  He considered suggesting a break-away plan but ultimately decided that if there was going to be any last-ditch heroics, it would have to be in response to innumerable variables and therefore would necessarily be spontaneous in nature.

             
Maggie’s heart dropped as the tingly sensation returned to her lower abdomen.  She moved closer to her brother, nudging his shoulder with her own.  Ember bit his lip nervously, but otherwise maintained his absent-minded stare.

             
“Is this it?” Kara asked rhetorically, convinced of her own anti-climatic end—a death so simple and so mundane that it had no other choice but to be symbolically tragic.

             
The double doors opened once more.  It was the silhouette of a single tall woman, with long flowing hair.  Ember, Maggie, Kara and Sven, gazed at the mysterious outline, each pondering the horrors of their nameless fate.

             
“Here,” she said softly, tossing something in their direction.  The object made a hard, metallic twang as it hit the floorboards.  “It’s okay,” she said, recognizing their hesitancy, “I won’t hurt you.  Go on, take off your hand cuffs.”

             
Kara seized the keys apprehensively, and then clumsily unlocked Sven’s cuffs.  Sven reciprocated the favor, and then handed the keys back to Kara.  With her hands now free, she proceeded to free everyone else with increasing rapidity.  Ember rotated his wrists liberally, a motion which Maggie promptly imitated.

             
“Can we come outside?” Kara asked diffidently.

             
The woman stepped back from the doors to make room for their exit and then responded sweetly, “Of course.  You’re safe now.  I’m rescuing you.”

             
“But why?” Sven asked suspiciously.

             
“The truth is, you are rescuing me,” she answered indirectly.  “You have done a great thing.”  Kara rolled her eyes in disbelief.  Seeing this, the woman added, “Your two other friends are up ahead.  Without them, you know, I would never have been able to find you.”

“What… do you mean?” Ember asked, stumbling on his words.

The woman was slow to respond.  “Just come outside.  They’re about to finish…  It should be spectacular.”

Kara rose to her feet and tentatively walked to the exit.  As the woman leaned forward and extended a helping hand, her long silver bangs were illuminated.  She grabbed Kara lightly by the hips, as she helped her to the ground.  Sven, who followed closely behind, jumped down unassisted.  Maggie, who also sought no assistance, scooted over to the edge and slowly, and rather clumsily lowered herself to the ground.

Ember watched as the woman walked dramatically closer to his sister.  Maggie stammered backwards as she approached her personal space, but steadily the woman gained on her.  The woman stretched out her right hand and delicately stroked Maggie’s cheek, giving full eye contact.  Initially Maggie resisted the touch with a passive turn of the head, and a gentle backwards lean, but slowly her body posture became more accepting.  Staring back at the woman’s green eyes, Maggie even began to inch closer.  The woman moved her soft fingertips over the rest of Maggie’s face, delicately gracing her lips and studying the contours of her nose.  Maggie squinted her eyes, trying to make sense of the face before her.  The woman tucked away an unruly bang of hair behind Maggie’s ear and proceeded to kiss her up and down her forehead and cheeks, before ultimately falling to her knees with a sudden outpour of tears.

“Mom?” Maggie said shyly, tears rapidly filling her own eyes.  Unable to speak, the woman nodded affirmatively, her hands crossed over her clavicle.  “Mom!” Maggie cried out again as she tackled her mother flat to the ground.

Ember climbed down and in disbelief approached the rolling bodies.  “Mom?”

“Ember?  My how you have grown.”  Ember fell to his knees, joining the pair on the ground.

“All this time,” Maggie expressed feebly.

“You’re so much bigger… my little girl,” she said rubbing away the dirt from underneath Maggie’s eye.  “Where has all the time gone?”

“We’ve… missed you Mom,” Ember said with a quivering lip.

“Not a day has gone by, when I haven’t thought about you two,” she said, drawing them close with her arms.  “Every night I would lie awake, wondering about your days...  How many times I thought it was over… How many times I thought about giving up…  How many times I kept fighting in hope that I could one day see you again…”

“We’ve missed you so much,” Ember repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“I love you.”

“I love you!”

“I love you!”

“Mom, my favorite color is green!  When I was thirteen I climbed the tallest tree.  I have a lot of friends back in Erosa.  Everyone comes to me to hear about the latest happenings.  I’m really friendly and kind…  I smile all the time…  Mom, I want you to know me!” Maggie blurted all out at once, hardly stopping between sentences.

“But I do dear…  I saw everyting in your eyes, even as a child.  I have known you in my dreams.”

“I have seen you in my dreams too,” Ember admitted.

“Magenta, you look just like your grandmother,” she said, lovingly running her fingers through Maggie’s hair.

“Actually Mom, I go by Maggie now,” she said with a simultaneous chuckle and sniffle.

“They appointed me Chief Protégé just before I left!  Sometimes I stare out into the forest and think about you and Dad!  I think about exploring… and I have these dreams…  and sometimes I daydream…  and I’m not always happy… but Maggie always reminds me of the good things.”

“Ember’s really smart,” Maggie tacked on kindly.  “He’s also really humble.  Everyone back home kind of looks up to him,” she added generously.

“Oh, my little Ember…  How proud your father would’ve been… of both you.  We always knew you two would do great things.”

“Dad?” Maggie and Ember asked in unison.

She shook her head forlornly.  “Shh…  It’s okay dear.  It will all be okay now.”

A harsh deafening noise—the sound of steal grating against rock—boomed violently from the nearby dirt perimeter.  Kara and Sven gawked at the falling clumps of dirt.  The Oak family rose from the ground to observe the emerging portal.  The steal gate creaked open, ceaselessly pushing against the walls of dirt.  The ground shook forcefully as the strident sound resonated throughout the Underground.

“They’re over there, just up ahead!” Maggie said, jumping up and down, pointing to Styles and Luna.  “Heeeellllooo!” she shouted gaily, waving her arms freely.  Luna waved back casually, evoking a soft chuckle from both Sven and Kara.

“That’s Luna,” Maggie explained to her mother.  “She’s our friend…  She said that she was an android.”

Their mother nodded and with tears and a broken heart explained how she needed to go.  “You have done your part, now I have to do mine.  Go now…  Go to Erosa and don’t come back until all this madness is over.  I’ll be okay…  Don’t worry about me…”

“I love you…  Don’t go!” Maggie said, feeling childishly selfish yet somehow justified with her request.

“I have to go now,” their Mom said, dramatically wiping away her tears.  “I love you both and always will.  It is a great, great thing that you have done.  We will see each other on the other side.”  She kissed Maggie and Ember on their cheeks, and hugged them both tightly for a full minute.  “Thank you for looking out for them,” she said to Kara and Sven.  They nodded.  She walked back slowly to the car and started the engine.  “Go back to Erosa!” she instructed once more, peering her head through the car door.  “I will be with you soon enough.  I love you!”

“I love you!”

“I love you!”

They stood in silence for sometime, quietly appreciating the surprising tranquility of their out-of-place idyllic landscape.  The light from the outside world radiated through the open gate, bathing their rolling hills with glorious sunshine and sweet air.  Maggie grabbed Ember’s hand, Ember grabbed Kara’s and Kara grabbed Sven’s.