"And Ai, to answer your concerns." Kamala turns to address Ai directly, her dark skin flaky and dry despite the humidity steaming off the hot river of shit. She has a poised nature that leads me to believe she was a public speaker of some sort in the past. In fact, her tall, imposing figure, rigid cheekbones and pointy nose, to go along with a deep voice all make her perfect for being a dominant figure in an organization that has become a man's world. She has an affirmative tone that makes it seem as if she is an expert on anything she talks about even if she has no clue what she is saying. "You are all here because we have the same mission. Yet we know we can't do this alone. That's why we want to put our pasts behind us as individuals and as a collective and work together to form an amazing future, a future where President Li and the Party leading China don't exist."
"My entire family is dead. I don’t need a canned response from you." Ai is back to speaking hastily again. From the tears watering in her eyes, I can tell it's the first time she has said those words out loud. If she and Jake even talked at all on the aircraft, it was likely about nothing to do with her family. The entire day spanning from us being captured at Gyurtog to my legs being nearly split in half were a nightmare.
“Do any of you people hear me?” Ai looks over the railing, her body dangerously close to plunging a dozen feet into the sewage-filled river. Something seems to have snapped inside her. No longer do I sense the shock in her that we have all been dealing with in waves for hours.
She is furious, and from the determined expression in her eyes, she won’t let those emotions go without making sure everyone knows.
“I sure hear you,” I respond, noticing that no one else seems eager to speak up. Jake’s gaze is finally away from the countless works of neon-colored graffiti adorning the walls and is focused on Ai. I can tell from his slouched-over stance that he wants to take a nap and hopes that when he wakes up all of these problems will be sorted out.
But no amount of sleep will drown these problems away—sleep never worked much in the first place. There’s a ticking time bomb off the coast of this country that will kill hundreds of millions if we don’t diffuse it in time.
“We understand that some unfortunate things have happened.” Kamala’s composure is unfazed by the increasing anger of Ai.
“Some unfortunate things? Unfortunate! That’s how you describe this! Sam has a machine that is making things appear like magic out of thin air, two of you are international fugitives. And you!” She points at Justin. “You appeared out of nowhere and ever since you showed up the world has gone mad, my family is now dead, and you call all this unfortunate?” She looks at Kamala, her fists balled up.
“Ai, calm down.” I sling the bag around my back and grab her waist, hoping to restrain her from clawing forward and attempting to tear Kamala’s face apart. As much as I would love to see that, we can’t have a messy battle take place inside a sewer—not when the people standing across from us may be our only ticket to survival.
“You can’t tell me to do anything.” She jabs her elbow into my gut, which certainly does the trick of making me feel like I am about to puke. “You the one who started all this!” Her words slur together into one breath of fury, her English breaking down by the second as the rage takes full control of her mind. “This your fault! This your fault! Without you my family would still be living! Without you everything would be okay!” Ai screams in my face, spit flying out of her mouth and landing on my nose. I refuse to back down to her screaming despite the fact that with her on her tippy toes she is able to stare me directly in my eyes.
I could tell her to stop. I could push her away from me.
But I know I deserve this.
This is all my fault. And I can’t do anything to fix this. All I can do is add her family to the long list of lives that won’t ever be the same after I have come into contact with them.
“I thought you were my idol! I thought you were the one American that China needed to make this country okay. To make this country one where people like me don’t have to look around every corner waiting for Imperial soldiers to arrest us. But now I realize you are no different than the rest of them.” She has tears in her eyes as her body shakes with every one of her words. Part of me wishes I could hug her, but I know if I do that she will only push me away. I’m the one who caused all this pain—I can’t help her heal from it. “You have your own selfish agenda, and you were willing to destroy anyone and everything in your way to getting it done. You knew my family would die for all those months! You knew exactly why the government was after you! And you never told me. You and Jake never mention a word! How dare you! How dare you!”
She finally takes a deep breath after yelling at me more intensely than my father ever did. He used to get in my face, he used to scream at the top of his lungs how I would never be good enough, but Ai’s rage is even more visceral. There is something about the harshness with which she says her words that leads every sentence to dig under my skin like a knife—these are the kinds of wounds that the Chimera Cube will never be able to heal.
Kamala steps forward but hesitates right before reaching out to comfort Ai. Ai’s gaze is now fixed on the floor, her body frozen. All the angry energy that was inside of her a moment ago fades from her body as an odd silence blankets the air. With the echoes of her screaming losing enough intensity to be registered by human ears, the somewhat soothing sound of shit flowing by is the only thing that stops me from going insane.
I take a deep breath. Tears are in my eyes from the pure rancid smell of the sewer but mainly because of the energy of Ai’s body. Her words will take weeks to set in, but I recognize the nature of her pain instantly. For seven straight months she was one of the only people I ever talked to, and now part of her looks like it is shattered.
She feels the same way I did about my father.
For years I idolized him. For years I wanted to be exactly like him. But then I found out that he was the one who let the Syndicate kill my mother and he was the one who was prepared to sacrifice everything in my life for his dream.
But his dream is the dream for the future of the entire world, and once I can get Ai to understand that, maybe I have a shot at letting her heal again.
“I—” I open my mouth, but don’t have the courage to finish my sentence. This is about as shitty a time as possible to explain to her that I was killing her family for a good reason.
She may never understand. She may never forgive me because she will always think there could have been a different way, and what scares me most is finding out one day that she is right.
“What’s unfortunate is that we are here in a sewer beneath Hong Kong with more rats around us than people.” Ai stares at the graffiti on the walls, most of the drawings depicting acts of hatred against the Chinese government. “What’s tragic is that my family had to die just like the tens of thousands of other people who have been erased from this country because their social credit is too low. What is tragic is that they had to die, only for us all to end up here.”
I gulp as I see Kamala visibly shaken by her words. I can sense a genuine sorrow in her eyes. Jake nods along with Ai, his own eyes glazed over, fixated on the rushing water below.
Meanwhile, Justin and Drew look down the dark tunnel in the sewer. Justin eyes me and motions with his finger to the top of the tunnel where the network of millions of security cameras and sensors the Chinese government uses to monitor the citizens of Hong Kong lie above the surface.
There may be some down here.
Li could be watching us right now.
There could be dozens of military personnel on the way to our location, readying to start yet another wild cat-and-mouse chase that this time will surely end up with all of us dead.
I now feel the same anxiety visible in Justin’s face.
Jake and I exchange worried glances.
“This wasn’t all for nothing.” I finally speak up. I hold Justin off with my hand from forcefully leading us down the dark corr
idor. I have no idea where this long, dark tunnel leads, but I know it can’t be good. Somehow, I feel safer being only feet away from the manhole where the Chinese government could easily find us instead of venturing deep into this underground network.
I know this can all easily be a trap.
“Ai, I’m so sorry that all this happened.” I manage to keep my voice steady but tears stream down my face as all the memories flood my mind. “I am so sorry. I wish, I wish things were different, and I know this doesn’t help. I know this doesn’t—”
“Just shut up!” Ai bursts into tears. “Just shut up! I didn’t ask for an apology. I didn’t ask for you to say anything. Just shut up and let me be. If you guys want to explore this sewer or whatever people who are involved in international conspiracies to overthrow foreign governments do, then go for it. Leave me alone! Let me stay here! I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”
Justin, Drew, and Kamala all eye me as if to say yes, that’s a great plan. They couldn’t care less about her. She’s only an extra body they can use in this fight—the second she becomes a liability, they will dispose of her.
I watch as Drew reaches into the pocket of his brown jacket, which matches pretty well with his beige pants. He pulls out a syringe, the same syringe that carries the poison that he has used to knock me out on numerous occasions.
I grab my backpack and open the zipper. It’s my silent way of telling him to cut the shit or I will make a weapon that will end his life right now.
He smiles, keeping the syringe at his side just to spite me. Ai is too caught up in her breakdown to notice this interaction.
“This wasn’t all for nothing.” I speak up, keeping my hand ready to grab the Chimera Cube and command it to deliver a terrible gas that will surely make Drew rethink ever undercutting me again. I won’t even share my plan with the Chimera Cube in front of the Syndicate—they already can guess that I want to do the exact same thing my dad did: start a revolution that will alter society forever. “President Li is about to kill hundreds of millions in this country by artificially engineering an earthquake. And we are the only people that can stop it.”
Drew’s eyes widen at my words.
Jake looks up at the blackness coating the tunnel, as if praying to some higher being that what I said isn’t true. Justin dims the light of the lantern, causing a dark shadow to reside on the graffiti lining the walls.
A bright light illuminates his face in a cool yet creepy way.
“How do you know about this?” Justin leans in. Suddenly his eagerness to head down to the end of the tunnel has gone.
“President Li told me,” I say. “He said I could either give him this cube and he’d use it to dispose of hundreds of millions in a more efficient manner or he will use the research station he has off the coast of China to cause a massive earthquake to rock the eastern seaboard. He will let the people of these cities starve to death without any aid. He wants to kill every Chinese person in this country and destroy everyone in the West who let his people be destroyed.”
Everyone is silent after my words. They don’t come as a surprise to anyone, but even Drew who always has a snarky comeback and evil smile to show off doesn’t have a response.
So, I continue.
“And I never thought I’d say these words. I never thought I’d actually agree to this. But you said you wanted to be friends. So, let’s be friends. I think we are the only people who can stop this man before he blows up the world, and we can’t do this alone.”
Drew slides the syringe back into his pocket and smiles.
My heart is racing, my lips feeling numb after saying a string of words that break everything I thought would ever happen in my life.
Never did I think I would make an alliance with the Syndicate of Truth in the sewers of Hong Kong.
But it just happened.
Chapter 6
“I never imagined a place for shit could be so beautiful.” I stare at the murals lining the cement walls, bringing the dull gray wall an explosion of light and color as meadows of flowers, fire-breathing dragons, and beautiful symbols all coalesce to form scenes on the walls that are only rivaled in magnitude by those of Zion.
In fact, this entire place reminds me of Zion except without the ultra-fresh air and exotic animals that don’t exist on Earth flying around.
This place is hidden beneath the world, an entire compound formed out of an old run-down tunnel in the sewer system that was supposed to service an entire neighborhood of Hong Kong that no one moved into. The river of shit that is supposed to flow with sea water through the bottom of this tunnel is absent and in its place dozens of people have set up a makeshift city full of tents, random chairs and tables, and even a few mattresses scattered across the tunnel. Without any electricity, the entire settlement is illuminated by a series of battery-powered lanterns that have been bolted into the cement along the sides of the tunnel and some have even been hooked on the top of the roof.
To combat the terrible smell that perforates from the nearby operating sewers just a few hundred yards down the tunnel, they have added weird fixtures and glorious works of street art that keep one’s eyes entranced with bright colors and intricate designs and hopefully one’s nose blind to the stench of shit.
Their smokescreen in the form of dragons, tigers, and tall mountains with pandas standing on the top does not do a good job at distracting my nose from the smell, but it surely makes my eyes forget for a brief moment that we are currently dozens of feet below the ground, roaming through a sewer.
“What is this place?” I stare at the firepit at the center of the camp, old pieces of furniture and boxes being used as fuel for the fire as one woman holds a large slab of meat on a skewer over the flame.
“It’s where the leaders of the rén live,” Justin says, yet his face looks as surprised as mine at the way in which these people live. It almost feels like we walked into a settlement in another galaxy, the fundamental way in which people live drastically different due to the wildly different environmental conditions.
“Have you been here before?” Jake asks, his tone a bit uneasy. He has his glance fixated on the darkness in the tunnel that lies beyond the camp. As soon as the light from the lanterns scattered throughout the sewer decrease in intensity, the character of the art shifts from rosy and colorful to dark images of the communist state and brutal dictators leading armies of figures with no detail covered in black.
“None of us have.” Justin speaks for Kamala and Drew, who look equally surprised. “When we heard the rén had a camp down here, we were expecting something, but not this.”
“Hello, good people.” A young man who looks to be no older than twenty-five approaches us from the camp as a few heads peer out of their tents. They don’t look at us like we are outsiders; most have warm smiles when they see our faces.
They have no idea that in the team of people who have been assembled standing right outside the perimeter of the camp are three men who allowed fourteen million people to die in America. If they knew the truth about our reputation, they would be chasing us away with guns, not welcoming us with open arms.
“You must be Zhang Cái.” Justin smiles, extending his hand as the man approaches our little group at the fringe of the camp. He has no shoes on and is wearing clothes that look multiple sizes short on him and are covered in dirt. From Ai’s expression, I can tell she is appalled.
I’m right with her. I have no idea what we have just walked into, but it feels like we are being welcomed into a settlement of modern-day Chinese hippies.
“Yes, it is nice to meet you.” Zhang shakes his hand in return, his grip way softer than Justin’s, which leads to Justin awkwardly jerking Zhang’s hand up and down. “And I think I remember your face after studying you online. You are Senator Winslow, correct?”
“Yes, just over here for a few more days before I have to head back to my duties in the States.” The second Justin responds, I realize that I have no idea what his duties c
omprise of in the States anymore. I have purposely taken advantage of China’s firewall in most instances to filter out that kind of content; after all, even the supposed loopholes in the Great Firewall have been exploited by the government to monitor any dissidents. I have next to no clue what has happened in the United States over the last seven months and I don’t want to know.
I don’t need to see my name in the headlines every day to know that I messed up. I don’t need to see the suffering of a nation reeling in the wake of the Chimera Conspiracy with the Syndicate playing the political machine of the country to get what they want to know that the system is fucked.
I don’t need to see the pain of the millions of people whose lives I was responsible for destroying to feel like shit every time I wake up.
Most days it’s just easier to tell myself that none of it is real. That none of it ever happened, when in reality, I was at the heart of one of the worst genocides of the twenty-first century.
And every night that I close my eyes, I know the United States government is out to get me. And all it will take is the Chinese surrendering a bit of their massive troves of data that they have collected on me for the United States military to plan a covert operation to murder me.
“Well, thank you so much for coming all the way out here and supporting our cause, we are really excited to have you guys on board.” Even with his accent I can tell he is a smooth talker.
He introduces himself to each one of us, making sure to shake our hands in a way that seems unnatural for him, but the expression of happiness in his eyes is as genuine as can be.
“I know I said we would take a few days to plan things out,” Drew says after Zhang introduces himself to him. From Drew’s body language, it is obvious he is the one who set this whole thing up. He doesn’t even seem surprised to be in the middle of a sewer looking at a camp of at least a hundred people all living in squalid conditions amidst artwork of extraordinary beauty.
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