Resonance

"Auggie, Come on! Move your freaking legs! Now... Please!" Rae Mi all but shrieked through her tears. Panic was in higher supply than oxygen.  August planted himself like the roots of some great and ancient tree into the sidewalk as soon as he and his sister emerged from the alley.  The very topography of Rae Mi's flesh changed as she conjured thoughts of escaping the narrowing maw of a red throated behemoth. With her last bit of energy left she pulled August tightly to her chest.  Tight enough so that she was certain it hurt her as much as it did the freshly uprooted, great and ancient five year old in her arms. The vehicles beyond the curb raced by at impossible speeds, but space was molasses.  The HAT was now no more than twenty terrible yards from success. She could not allow them to be captured. Rae Mi battened her eyes shut and took ten desperate steps into traffic.  

Flanked on two sides by the roaring mechanical stampede was sanctuary.  The Hemitropic Aerometry & Aether Anomalies Task Force agent (HATF aka Hats) reached the curb.  His head on a swivel, snake like, blind and listening.  Precious few footfalls away a twelve year old girl and her brother were hidden in the tune of a mad city.  

Frantically scanning east to west, north and south, Rae Mi hadn't felt more trapped last night squatting behind the false wall of her family's dining room.  Dr. Helmholtz, their father, had tucked them both into that quiet place with fear in his eyes.  She felt the sweat from his palms wet on the surface of the little black Moleskine he rested in her hands, gently using his unsteady fingers to curl hers over "the atlas."  The atlas he called it and gave her directions on where it needed to be tomorrow with only seconds to spare. He lifted a single shaking finger to his lips and put the false front back in position. There were no parting endearments.  The Hats filled the room like the figments of nightmares filled REM sleep. Twins, all of them, Identical to the very detail. More creature than man.  

Their long night-grey coats stopped and floated just above black leather shoes, polished to a weaponized point. peering through the tiny slit in the panel she almost thought she could see her reflection in them, cooling the temperature of her blood.  She would not bring herself to look at the pale blind globes that rested between the night-grey coats and charcoal bucket hats with the too long brims. The hands she couldn't see were enough. The hands that ushered her father away from her sight forever were concealed like an assassin's blade in the baggy sleeves of their coats, calling back memories of Merlin, Auggie's favorite bedtime tale. No, she could not see these devil hands, but she could sense their cold seething hatred. The yarn weavers were positive that all Hats were blind, but their hearing capacity made them as sure footed as any sighted man.  A tear rolled from her chin and finished its journey in August's wavy blond hair. For perhaps one terrible second, she was certain they heard the splash.  

They were no longer snug in the nothingness of a void in the wall.  The world was bright and the imminent threat was vivid. The commuters began to stop at the sight of two distraught children standing panicked in the middle of four lane-two way traffic.  This was much less help than they could imagine. "Go! Drive! Move! Leave us alone!" Rae Mi screamed through sobs, slashing the air with her one August-less hand as the drivers began exiting their vehicles. The Hat registered the guttural pleadings of the girl and stepped from the curb. Just as Rae Mi steeled herself to flee again a sewer cap to her left slid away from its cradle.  

"In! Now!" An unfamiliar voice called out.  Rae Mi had little time to weigh the consequences one way or the other.  She hadn't nearly enough energy left to keep running with Auggie's fifty pounds in tow. She made the only choice she had, really no choice at all.  Rae Mi handed August down to the waiting arms of the stranger then followed onto the top rung of the ladder. "Wait." The stranger commanded. He lowered August down to another set of unknown hands and climbed behind Rae Mi standing double on the rung. He reached up and replaced the sewer cap, immediately snuffing out the sunlit trepidation of the world above.

"We must move... Now, quickly!" The stranger declared while igniting a luminary device that was as foreign to Rae Mi as the sewers themselves. It painted everything within a few feet in a Stygian ember orange. She drew August in close taking measure of these new predators' claws.  "The cloak will only be active for so long, we must move... Now, quickly!" Exclaimed the stranger, the words coming to Rae Mi one at a time in an almost hypnotic fashion.  The second man stepped forward into the false fire light, bending towards the children and nudging them both onward, to some hidden destination.      

There was a strange vibration, more feeling than sound, lending to the air an even stranger lifelikeness. The further they walked the more Rae Mi lessened her strides to a creep.  The vibration was growing in intensity now having a visible effect on the light.  It made the tunnel feel alive with a pulse even faster than her own. It is as if They had escaped one beast only to find themselves adrift in the bloodstream of another.  August was whimpering with his head nestled firmly into her hip. 

"How did y-." "We've been watching," the stranger whose hands still rested on her shoulder cut her off. "Who are you people?  Why are you helping us? Why are we down here?  Are you helping us?"  The last question drowned the others in a river of urgency.  Afraid to turn and look at the man, Rae Mi kept her eyes fixed dead ahead on the back of the other.  "The answer really all depends." The man spoke softly. "To which question?" Rae Mi's fear betrayed her. "To all of them." 

They stopped at what appeared to be a door with a metal wheel attached to the center.  The man holding the light extinguished it.  Rae Mi turned to the wall beside the door steeling herself between the men and August.  "I am nobody. Trust nobody and listen girl, you have something very valuable, unspeakably so in your possession.  Do you know what it is?  It is the key not to this door, but what is on the other side of this door and many others like it.  Nobody can help you if you have what I speak of and you can help everybody."  The man's voice came slow and raspy in the total darkness.  She could tell he was squatting on his haunches before her.  Rae Mi unleashed as powerful a war cry as her larynx would allow and swung her right leg for what she hoped was the man's groin.  

Her hope proved futile as she heard her scream echo back to her.  The man caught her leg and spun her into his grasp, his arm tight across her chest. With his other free hand he yoked August up by the arm and held him as a father would carry any five year old.  She heard the sound of metallic workings and a sudden brilliant light pierced the perfect black curtain. "That a girl." He whispered into her ear as they were ushered into a room of enormous dimensions filled with people, and a machinery the likes of which she'd never seen. He paused at a great brick archway that marked the beginning of the room.  From it hung a banner with a very old photograph duplicated onto it. "The great Hans Pfaal. I guess four times as great for you, as he is your great great great great grandfather."  The man smiled down at Rae Mi then to August as he placed him back at her side.  "Three times as great for me." The man sighed and searched for understanding in Rae Mi's eyes.  "I am August. Your mother Greta was my sister. Your father's directions put you right on the path to us without the burden of specific information. Do you see?  That is the answer to the question you never finished."  Sparks flew from a giant welding mechanism some sixty feet to their left.  Working furiously like ants around the machine were nearly a hundred small people with no ears and extensive snouts. In awe of it all Rae Mi was nearly deaf to the voice of her newly acquainted, only living relative left on this planet.  Without a word while drifting toward the ant-people busy applying their craft, she removed the Atlas from under her sweater and handed it back to the man. "The sewer is no place for children." The man-uncle-August broke her hypnosis with a hand on her shoulder.  He gave her a backpack and an envelope containing a People's Currency card and letter. "There is fresh clothes in the sack and the letter is from your father.  The card has 20,000 PCs to get you by following your father's instructions until we meet again."  "How will I know-" "You will know." He cut her off for the second time.  "Jules here will accompany you to the surface." He introduced the light bearing stranger.  It was abrupt,  whisked away again with no parting endearments. No goodbyes.

Eight months and eleven days have passed since the world they knew and the people they love were torn from the pages of their story. She had read her father's letter aloud to Auggie every night since they left the sewer.  Its final words, their parting endearment, "I love you." She was just about to speak these words for the 254th time when the world changed again.  Quickly and violently the ground beneath them began to shake.  A soft vibration giving off a low thrum was coming from all directions. Rae Mi opened the window to their room at the May Evans boarding house and knew, just as her uncle said she would.  May herself burst through the door and spoke breathlessly. "It's time children!" They hurried to the meeting place at a frantic pace. There in the middle of the park waiting for them next to a curious looking hot air balloon was their uncle August. Rae Mi stared down at Auggie gazing up in wonder.  A monolith of a vessel the size of more than a few city blocks hovered overhead, casting a dominant shadow over the terra firma. Its bright lights were celestial seeming so even in number. "That's home Auggie, I bought it for us. I love you."  

Uncle August loaded them into the hot air balloon's carriage and began to ascend nodding his thanks to May Evans.  A few hundred feet above the city now Rae Mi could see just how mad it truly was.  She longed for everything to be slow.  Slow like this balloon steady rising to meet her new home in the sky.  One last look at the old world revealed a mass of Hats gathering and clawing at their white globe heads. Writhing to and fro, pained and lunatic.  "They were created to find us you know? They wanted Pure Aether for themselves. To harness it. An infinite resource to power infinite war machines. To bow all of humanity with it. See them very well for they can't you. They're deaf. Your father's parting gift. The cloak is perpetual and now so is Peace."  As they made their final approach to the port of the new city in the sky they saw that very word embossed across its great face. PEACE.