The Rising(33)

Alex snapped alert, time fast-forwarding back to the present. The reality, the pain …

“Alex,” he heard his mother mutter again, her voice barely audible now. Alex …

He heard his name, but this time her lips didn’t move, his mother’s eyes meeting his as his name sounded again.

Alex …

In his mind. Her thoughts speaking to his.

What was happening to him?

He let himself believe it wasn’t real, just some horrible nightmare induced by the concussion the CT scan must have spotted. He squeezed his eyes closed, willing himself to wake up from this trance, the same way he did to find fresh pages filled in his sketchbook. When he opened them again, though, it was all still the same, only worse.

Because it was real. All of it.

Alex forced himself to look back toward Sam, who was still frantically pressing keys on her phone. “Sam…”

No response.

“Sam!”

She finally looked at him; she was standing now, leaning against the wall for support.

“Grab my mother’s keys.”

“What? Huh?” she responded dimly.

“My mother’s keys. Get them.”

“Where are they?”

“In the kitchen. Check the hooks by the refrigerator. Or the table.”

She moved tentatively that way, seeming to feel her way through the air.

“Got them,” Sam called, and Alex heard jangling as she made her way through the living room toward him, careful to skirt the remnants of what the now-vanished image of a spectral figure colored ash gray had called “drones.”

She kept her distance while extending the keys downward, keeping an eye on the still standing, and smoking, drone thing in case it showed any signs of life. An Chin grabbed them out of the air, closing her hand on the statuette of Meng Po. Then she pressed it into her son’s hand so the keys dangled over the edge of his palm.

“Take,” she said, struggling for air now. “Take. Yours now. For luck, luck you’re going to need. Promise me, Alex. Promise me.”

“I promise,” he managed, choking up again, although he wasn’t exactly sure what he was promising.

“I’m sorry,” his mother said, eyes starting to fade now.

“Sorry? No!”

“We lied to you. All these years, we lied. This is our fault. Should have told, should have—”

The next words caught in her throat and An heaved for breath, just managing to find her voice again. “Others will come. It will never stop, now that it has begun. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sor—”

She stopped, just like that.

“Mom.”

Alex shook her lightly with no result.

“Mom?”

An Chin’s expression had frozen in mid-thought, mid-sentence, fooling Alex into thinking she was just pausing. But her eyes didn’t blink, just continued to gaze up at him blankly, Alex afraid to let go of their grasp for fear he’d lose his mother forever if he did.

But she was already lost, her final breath crackling from her lips before fading off to nothing.

“We need to go, Alex,” Sam was saying, suddenly hovering over him, having recovered her senses. “You heard what she said.”

Alex glanced up at her, still holding fast to his mother.

“Alex, please,” Sam begged.

She stooped low by An Chin’s body, having noticed the strange bracelet wrapped around An’s wrist. Then she glanced toward Li Chin’s wrist and saw an identical one fastened to his wrist as well. Sam leaned closer to him and started to peel it back.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked her, his own senses sharpening again.

“This looks like an old-fashioned slap bracelet. Not the kind of thing your father would be wearing, and your mother’s wearing one too.”

Alex followed Sam’s gaze to the black piece of fabric jewelry, which looked shiny as steel. She had straightened out the one she’d unfurled from his father’s wrist.

“See?” she whispered.

But then it snapped back into place with a whapping sound.

Alex took it from her grasp and slid the thing that looked like a slap bracelet into his pocket. He lingered over his mother for what seemed like a very long time, before pressing her eyes closed, sobbing and sniffling loudly.

“Alex,” Sam said from above him.

“I know,” he managed, rising stiffly but still unable to take his eyes off his murdered parents, who lay adjacent to each other.

“I’m sorry, Alex, I’m so sorry,” she said, easing a hand to his shoulder, which felt hot and as hard as banded steel.

Alex realized he was still clutching Meng Po. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she corrected. “You heard your mother.”

“She wasn’t making sense.”

Sam looked back toward the pulverized remains of the drones littering the floor like children’s toys or the parts of some massive, unassembled model. “None of this makes sense.”

Alex smelled the noxious stench of burned wires and scorched metal searing the air now.

“I can’t leave them,” he said, looking back down at his parents. “You go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you. And you heard your mother—more will be coming. This is just the beginning.”