Children of the Underground

  “Please,” I shouted to the Historian in between Michael calling out numbers. The Historian wouldn’t look up at me. Instead he stared down at his hands. “Four. Three.” It was over. I had ended this guard’s life as surely as if I’d shot him myself. “Two. One.” When Michael said the word one, the Historian looked up to see what happened as if watching the end of a magic trick. The word seemed to hang in the air. For a moment there was no other sound. I looked over at Michael. “Fuck,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. Then he took the gun and tucked it back into the waistband of his pants. The guard saw Michael do this and exhaled. He was still on his knees. He thought it was over, that he was being spared. For a second, I thought it was over too. We were wrong. Michael simply realized that the gun would be too loud. He couldn’t risk firing it. Somebody on another floor might hear. He needed something quieter. Michael pulled out his knife. He walked up behind the guard before the guard had a chance to look back, before he had a chance to realize that this was how his life was going to end. Then Michael slit his throat from ear to ear. I heard a gurgling sound, not unlike the sound of a recently unclogged drain. It was the only sound the guard’s body made. He fell to the floor with hardly a twitch. Almost immediately, blood began to pool on the wooden floor beneath his neck.

  I looked away from the guard’s body. I looked through the glass at the Historian. He had come forward and was standing there, both his hands pressed against the glass, his face nearly touching it. He was staring down at the guard’s body in shock. I saw his lips move. “Why?” he said too quietly to hear. I knew that he didn’t expect an answer. He was the Historian. He was supposed to be the one with all the answers.

  Michael stepped closer to the glass. He leaned toward it. Michael’s face was only inches from the Historian’s. “We have the guard on the second floor tied up in the bathroom. If you don’t get out here right fucking now, we’re going to drag him up here and make you watch us kill him too. There’s a female guard on the first floor. We’ll get to her eventually if we have to. How many people do you want to kill tonight, Seymour?”

  Seymour stared at Michael. “Me?” Seymour asked. He stared at Michael through the glass like he was staring at some brutal animal at a zoo.

  “How many, Seymour?” Michael shouted, throwing his reservations about noise to the wind. When Seymour didn’t move, Michael turned to me. “Watch him,” he said loud enough for Seymour to hear him. “I’m going to go get the next one.” Michael started walking away, toward the stairs.

  “Wait,” Seymour yelled as Michael walked away. Michael stopped. “If I give you the key, no one else dies?” Seymour asked. I wanted to shout to him “Yes!” but I’d already said the wrong thing once tonight.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying, Seymour,” Michael said and continued walking away.

  “Okay,” Seymour said. “I’m coming out.” Seymour walked toward the glass door. He pushed a button and swung the door open. I looked over at Michael. Michael was staring through the open door, staring at the pages and books full of information, full of details, full of secrets about the War. He almost looked entranced. Seymour stepped through the archive doors.

  “Where’s the key?” I walked up to him and asked.

  “It’s around my neck,” Seymour said. I reached out and grabbed the lanyard he had around his neck. A small electronic key card was dangling on the end. I took out my knife and cut the lanyard from around Seymour’s neck so that I didn’t have to pull it over his head. Like that, I was holding the key in my hand.

  I stepped away from the Historian and slipped my backpack off my shoulder. “What are you doing?” Michael asked.

  “I’m getting the tape out,” I told him, “so that we can tape him up like we planned.”

  Michael shook his head. “There’s no time for that. We’re behind schedule. Besides, if we bring him with us, he can show you where to look. He can help you find it. Without him, it will take too long.” Michael was right. We couldn’t have more than twenty-five minutes left. We were still going to have to incapacitate the guard on the third floor and then find your file. I looked through the glass at the seemingly endless files in the archives. We’d never make it out if we had to find your file ourselves.

  “You’re right,” I said, pulling my backpack back onto my shoulders. I aimed my gun at Seymour. “Don’t try anything funny,” I said. “We’re going down—”

  “—to the third floor,” Seymour finished my sentence.

  “How did you know?” I asked. I could feel Michael becoming impatient behind me.

  “I recognize you,” the little man said with no pride in his voice. “I know why you’ve come.”

  For the first time that I could remember, I was happy to be recognized. “You know where my son’s file is?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then take me to it,” I ordered him.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” the Historian asked. “Are you sure that’s what’s best for him?” Who was he to ask what is best for you? He was a nobody—a file clerk. I’m your mother.

  “Let’s go,” I said, waving the gun toward the stairs. Seymour started walking. I walked behind him. Michael followed me. I kept the gun aimed at Seymour’s back. We stepped into the dark stairwell. “Can you see enough to walk down?” I asked Seymour, speaking as quietly as I could.

  “I think so,” Seymour answered. We started descending through the darkness, praying we were alone. Seymour moved slowly, testing each step before moving.

  “Fuck this,” Michael whispered in my ear. I could just make out the outline of his face. “I’m going ahead. I’ll take out the guard while you guys are coming down. Give me the key card. Once I finish with the guard, I’ll start going through the files. We need every minute.”

  “Okay,” I answered. I handed Michael the key card.

  Michael slipped past Seymour. Seymour kept walking, slowly, carefully. The shadow that was Michael disappeared around the corner as he passed the entrance to the fourth floor. I kept the gun aimed at the old man. A second after Michael disappeared around the corner, the stairwell lit up for a moment, the light leaking through the doorway as Michael opened the door to the third floor. For a second, I saw us—the feeble man in front of me, me aiming a gun at him—and no one else. When the door closed, the darkness swallowed us up again.

  The old man almost slipped once. I had to reach out to grab his arm to keep him steady, but eventually we made it. I ordered Seymour to open the door to the third floor. He hesitated and then he pushed it open. It was quiet on the other side. We stepped into the hallway. It was empty. I saw no sign of Michael or the guard. “Keep moving,” I said to Seymour, pushing his shoulder with the nozzle of the gun. The old man turned down the hallway and began walking toward the archives.

  We turned the corner. I still didn’t see anyone. The doors to the archives were propped open. Someone had jammed books against the base of the doors, using them as doorstops. Seymour stopped walking for a second when he saw those books, as if he’d come upon another dead body. I pushed him forward.

  After a few more steps, I could see inside the archives. I could see Michael. He was alone. Clearly, he had already disposed of the guard. Michael hadn’t left a trace. Behind the glass, Michael was pulling file after file off the bookcases and rummaging through the file cabinets. He was glancing at them, looking at the names on the top, and then hurling the papers in the air behind him. The paper amassed on the floor like snow.

  “What are you doing?” Seymour yelled. He broke out into a trot toward Michael. It was the fastest he’d moved all night. “You can’t do that!” Seymour shouted as he ran.

  Michael didn’t even bother to look in Seymour’s direction until the old man was only two or three feet away from him. Then Michael flicked out his knife, as if he’d been holding it up his sleeve, waiting for an opportunity to perform
the trick. The Historian stopped, his nose only a centimeter from the tip of Michael’s knife.

  “I can do whatever I want,” Michael said to the little old man. “There aren’t any rules when you’re not playing the game.” Michael didn’t tell the Historian what he was really doing. We had discussed this beforehand. This was part of the plan. We had to create a diversion. We had to make sure that they didn’t know what information we’d actually come for. If they realized that we were looking for you, they’d move you before I ever got a chance to take you back. So instead we decided that we would take nothing from the building. We would leave every slip of paper. I would memorize your address. And we would wreak havoc with the information so that they would never know what we cared about and what was merely garbage on the floor.

  The Historian looked at the papers strewn about his feet. He didn’t cry when Michael killed the security guard on the fifth floor, but I thought he might cry now. “Where’s my son’s file?” I asked him.

  He looked back at me, then turned and glared at Michael one last time. “This way,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. We walked past row after row of files. I counted eight rows before Seymour stopped. Then he turned and started walking down one of the small corridors in between the bookshelves. He walked about two-thirds of the way to the end. I followed right behind him, still pointing the gun at him. We were in the middle of the floor, lost amid the records, lost amid the secrets. In each bookshelf were stacks of files, each one full of somebody’s story. “It’s here,” Seymour said, motioning toward one of the file cabinets on the floor.

  “Get it out,” I ordered him. I tried my best not to let him see that my hand was shaking. He bent down and pulled on the small handle on the top drawer of the file cabinet. The cabinet opened slowly but silently. Inside the drawer were dozens of hanging paper files, each with a typed label on the top. The Historian, with practiced hands, riffled through them. His eyes scanned the label on each file before he flipped to the next one. Then he stopped, his hands gripping a green folder containing only two or three papers.

  “Ah,” he said, “here it is.” He sounded somewhat joyful, as if he forgot he had a gun pointing at him. He lifted the folder out of the cabinet.

  “Give it to me,” I ordered him, my heart beating so strongly that I could hear it like a metronome in my head. Seymour handed me the file. I opened it. It was only three pages long. The first page had a picture of your father on it and listed his defining characteristics—his height, estimated weight, eye color, and hair color. The next sheet of paper had a picture of me with the same list beneath it. The third page had a picture of you. It was taken after they’d stolen you from me. You were bigger in the picture. You’d grown. Beneath your picture was typed the name that they’d given you and your actual birth date (Jared must have known exactly when you were born). Beneath your birth date was the phrase, in all capital letters: ADOPTED—ORPHAN OF WAR. Another date was listed beneath that. The second date listed was roughly three weeks after they’d taken you from me. It must have taken them three weeks to settle you into a new home. Beneath that date was a man’s name and a woman’s name, tagged with the labels Father and Mother, respectively. I tried to control my breathing. I tried to remember where I was. Beneath those names was an address. You were in California, in a town called Mendocino. I stared at the address. I said it to myself over and over again to make sure that I wouldn’t forget it, not as long as there was breath in my body. I handed the folder back to the Historian. “Put it back in the cabinet,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Put it back,” I ordered him. He took the file from me, leaned back over the file cabinet, and put the file back in its place.

  “Let’s go,” I said to the old man, motioning for him to walk in front of me, back to where Michael was. He gave me a confused look, like he was actually expecting us to let him go once he’d given us the information I was looking for. “Move,” I ordered the man who had been free to look at your picture and your address every single day. He’d had everything I wanted. He’d had it for months.

  Michael did a number on the archives. I soon found myself walking through nearly ankle-deep streams of paper. Michael was still busy dumping out files when we found him. He had an insane look of pleasure on his face, as if creating this chaos was one of the greatest things he’d ever done. Michael threw another set of files in the air and let the paper drift down around him. Then he noticed us coming toward him. “Did you get it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Good,” Michael said. I stepped closer to him, farther away from Seymour. Killing Seymour hadn’t been part of the plan, but we both knew that we couldn’t avoid it now. He knew too much. He knew why we were there. He could have ruined everything. I don’t feel bad. Seymour wasn’t innocent. Who’s guiltier: the man who pulls the trigger or the man who tells him where to aim the gun?

  Seymour figured it out too. “You promised me,” he said, his voice shaking as he backed away from us.

  “I’m sorry, Seymour,” I said as he began to backpedal faster.

  “You said that no one else would get hurt,” Seymour stammered.

  Michael shrugged. “Haven’t you learned anything from all these papers, Seymour? More people always get hurt.” Seymour turned and ran. He had to know that there was no escape, but he fled anyway. He used all the life he had left in him to run. Michael leapt after him, his knife drawn. Seymour ran between the shelves full of files. Michael was quickly catching up to him. When Seymour could feel Michael bearing down on him, he turned down one of the smaller corridors, reaching out and toppling one of the shelves behind him. The shelf fell with a crash, knocking into the shelf beside it. They both came tumbling down. The books on them flew into the air, their pages coming loose and drifting to the ground. Seymour kept running, finding energy that could come only from being chased by death. Michael put away his knife and pulled out his gun. We didn’t have time for the chase. Seymour made it to the end of the stacks and turned down another corridor. Michael sidestepped the clutter and got one clear line of sight through the shelves. He barely had time to aim before pulling the trigger. As fast as Seymour had been going, it wasn’t fast enough. He fell in a ball to the ground. Michael was blocked from walking to Seymour, but my path was clear. When I reached him, I heard him moaning. Michael had aimed for his chest, worrying more about stopping him than killing him. When I got to Seymour, he was still alive. I aimed my gun at Seymour’s head and pulled the trigger. I didn’t need to fire a second shot.

  We had gotten what we came for. Now it was only a matter of getting out before the two remaining guards realized that no one was coming to relieve them from their posts. That’s all that was supposed to be left anyway. I looked down at my watch. We had five minutes before the guards were supposed to change shifts. After that, we had an extra five minutes, tops, before the guards realized something was wrong.

  “Let’s go,” I called across the room to Michael. I was standing over Seymour’s body. “We’re done. We don’t have a lot of time.” Michael was standing on top of pages and pages of paper. Years of secrets were strewn about his feet.

  I expected Michael to look excited. We’d done it. The months we’d spent together running, planning, and fighting had finally paid off. His scars, his injuries, they weren’t for nothing. Instead, Michael’s face was drawn; his eyes were far away. “You go ahead,” he said to me. “I’ll catch up.”

  We had a plan. This wasn’t it. “What do you mean? It’s time to go,” I yelled at him.

  I looked at his hand. He was holding Seymour’s key card. “I need to go upstairs,” he said, “to the fifth floor. I’ve got the key. I can find the answers.”

  I should have known better than to give Michael the key. I should have realized that he wouldn’t be able to help himself once he got this close to all those secrets. “You don’t have time,” I yelled to him.

  “I?
??ll meet you back at the hotel,” he said, refusing to argue. Before I could say anything else, he turned and ran out of the archives, toward the stairwell. I tried running after him. He moved quickly, even on his wounded leg. I had to dodge a few fallen bookshelves and nearly slipped on the fallen papers on the ground. I ran around the corner and made it just in time to see the door leading into the darkness of the stairwell swing closed.

  I didn’t have time to follow him. I had what I’d come for, what I’d sacrificed so much for. Michael was on his own. I could only hope that he’d make it out okay. I took a deep breath and pulled open the door to the stairwell. I stepped into the darkness. I could hear footsteps on the stairs above me—Michael’s footsteps. They were growing quieter as he got farther away. I started running down the stairs as quickly as I could without falling, heading away from Michael, heading for the exit. I’d be outside in a minute, breathing the fresh air, standing beneath the open night sky. I reached the platform between the first and second floors. I rounded the corner. I was almost free.

  I saw the light before I heard the sound. It was a short, quick flash of light, little more than a spark in the darkness. Even that tiny spark made colors dance in my eyes. Was there a bang too? There must have been, but I didn’t notice it. My brain must have been too confused by the light. I heard the bang after I saw the second flash, though. For a split second, the stairs around me were illuminated. I could see into the shadows. I was still alone on the stairwell. Michael wasn’t. The gunshots were coming from different guns. I heard another shot echoing down the staircase like the sound of distant fireworks. I stopped. I was halfway down the last flight of stairs but I wasn’t moving anymore. I was waiting for another gunshot. Everything was quiet. I looked down the stairwell. I could make out the outline of the door to the ground floor. I never would have gotten anywhere without Michael. What if one of those shots hit him? I couldn’t abandon him like that. I turned around. Then I began running back up the stairs.