******
On the flight back, John kept his eyes fixed on the blurred landscape out the window, and Vincent and Jessica looked straight down, completely still. The slightest sound seemed to bring them back. The silence was their only hint of escape.
The transport descended to its previous spot in the disguised rubble, and John was out of it before the ramp had extended. Vincent and Jessica followed, having to track John’s footsteps at times through the dark – the sun had set long before their landing. Goodwin’s meeting would have started without them.
They scaled down the ladder and back into the tunnel before any of them spoke again.
“If we hurry we can still make the bulk of the meeting,” said John. His voice sounded detached. His eyes were still glazed over, his posture slumped – it was impossible for such normal words to have come from him.
“John maybe you should rest,” said Jessica. “If you show us where to go, we can fill you in tomorrow.”
John shook his head. “I’m going.” He started off down the tunnel. Jessica sighed, then started after him with Vincent. They kept walking until they were back at the solid wooden door Goodwin had disappeared through. John pushed inside without hesitation. Immediately, the space opened up, and the silence erupted. The low-ceilinged tunnel became an enormous cavern, lined along the perimeter with giant, pitch black holes for the other sewer lines. Outside each of these holes was a steel platform, each packed to the edges with its own, wildly cheering crowd. Below, a round slab of pavement three men long had been raised up like a stage from the ground around it. On the slab, stood Goodwin, his arms raised, his eyeless face lit yellow from the wire-strung bulbs overhead. He was preaching to a crowd much bigger than Vincent had expected: several hundred strong, bunched together on the metal platforms to watch from above, or huddled into a single, writhing mass next to the slab of stone below. The door John had led them through was on the bottom story. Vincent had to rise to the tips of his toes to see Goodwin’s face. When he did so, he noticed the men around him, as well: three at his front and three at his back, staring out at the crowd with steely eyes.
“Who are they?” Vincent had to shout to be heard.
“Goodwin’s Officers,” John shouted back.
Vincent looked again at the circle of men surrounding Goodwin. The man had replaced his own eyes with a dozen others.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Goodwin called out to them, motioning for silence. Vincent had to read the man’s lips to discern the words – the cheering was deafening.
“Quiet!” he called again, and his voice was actually audible this time. “Please, quiet.”
He waited for the remaining applause and whistles to die down before continuing.
“We have been waiting,” he said. His voice carried through the entire cavern with unamplified power. “But we will wait no more.”
More applause, more whistles – the place seemed already prepared to erupt again, and the feeling was contagious. A needling heat was beginning to itch beneath the skin of Vincent’s face. Goodwin raised his hands once more.
“You would charge headlong into every city and every Seclusion armed with only your bare fists,” said Goodwin. More cheers. “But I will not ask that of you.” A moan of disappointment rose up from the crowd. Most of them looked frenzied, their muscles tensed, their eyes wild and bloodshot, and they swayed together, pushed and pulled by the sound of Goodwin’s words.
“We must be calculating,” continued Goodwin. “Our chance to strike will come only once. We cannot waste it on ill-timed acts of blind rage and carnage.”
The words may have calmed a normal crowd, but this one had already been pushed to the brink of a mob. Goodwin’s calm demeanor only seemed to inflame them.
“There is no giant switch,” he continued. “No trigger that kills the Newsight network. But there are switches. There are triggers that if pulled will fire fatal bullets at their small portion of the Newsight beast.”
Goodwin paused. Even in the cavern, even over the constant seething shouts of the crowd, the echo of his words seemed to hang in the air.
“For each city,” he continued, “there is one such switch. One such trigger. And one by one, we will pull them all.”
The crowd erupted once again. The young and wrinkle-lined called out as one, shouting words so indiscernible they blended together into a single, resounding roar. The needle pricks under the skin of Vincent’s face grew hotter.
Goodwin held up his hands. Slowly, the crowd quieted.
“Before this, however,” he called out, “we must arm ourselves. We must strengthen our numbers with the oppressed. We must cripple the Newsight Seclusion to render a counterattack impossible.”
The crowd cheered again, and Vincent found himself joining in this time.
“We begin with arms,” called Goodwin. He made a flourish with his hand, a signal of sorts, and the wall at his back lit up with a giant projection. It was a map. On it, Hux was near the center; to the northwest, Washing; to the east, a dome-shaped structure Vincent didn’t recognize; to the south, the labels of other cities equally unfamiliar; and finally, to the north, the Newsight Seclusion.
“Our first mark is northeast,” continued Goodwin. With surprising accuracy, he pointed to the domed structure on the map. “The Newsight defense factory. We will overtake the facility and its stockpile of weapons to increase our arsenal by tenfold.”
Another roar. A man in front of Vincent yelled his appreciation so loudly his face turned beat red, and a vein in his neck throbbed from the effort. Even so, the man’s yell was drowned out by Vincent’s own.
“With these arms,” continued Goodwin, “we will launch a direct attack on the Newsight Seclusion.” He pointed, flawlessly, once again. The cheering began to rise. “We will rescue their prisoners, we will destroy their factories–” he had to shout to be heard, “-we will bring Fatrem to his knees!”
Vincent roared his approval with the rest of the crowd. The man in front of him beat his own chest as he yelled out. Spittle flew from his lips. His teeth seemed suddenly sharp and animal-like. To the side, Vincent could hear the growling, crazed yells of John, and the higher pitched but no less murderous ones of Jessica. Their voices faded seamlessly into the rest of the mob.
“We attack at first light!” shouted Goodwin. His voice was barely intelligible over the roar. “We attack at first light!”
The man in front of Vincent shook his head so violently Vincent thought his neck would snap.
“Now!” he called out. “Do it now!”
The rest of the crowd took up similar calls, more aggressive than ever. They seemed to surge in on Goodwin, flinging their fists in protest, wide-eyed and red-faced, not chanting, not having the presence of mind to chant, nor any presence of mind at all, merely screaming their discontent, no longer voices but noise, guttural, uncontained noise. Vincent screamed along with them, pressed deeper into the crowd by those around him, pressed into the mob as another suit of flesh, swaying and flailing his arms in time with his neighbors.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Goodwin mouthed the words, though he may have shouted them – Vincent couldn’t tell. “Quiet!”
It was several seconds before the noise lowered to a level over which Goodwin could speak. The crowd had collectively leaned forward, their jaws jutted out, primal, daring Goodwin to deny them. The man with no eyes merely grinned.
“If you cannot wait,” he said to them – there were shouts and curses of affirmation. Goodwin paused. “Then we attack tonight.”
Vincent’s eardrums might have gone mute for the explosion of sound that followed. More beating of chests, beating of one’s neighbor’s chest, clawing of skin in grim satisfaction. The man in front of Vincent staggered where he stood, leaning on those around him for support, near the brink of passing out from exertion. And still, he yelled.
“Captains!” Goodwin called. “My Captains! Gather your men! Tell them our plan!” The crowd surged this way and that. They anticipate
d his words. They could feel them. “We will attack!”
Another eruption. Vincent joined in. He felt the veins in his neck starting to protrude, felt his head growing light and dazed from the effort, saw the crowd as if through a red haze. Then he was moving backward, away from the slab as the crowd expanded. John turned to him – he too was being pushed back – and cleaved through the crowd toward the door, the flesh of his face still inflamed and hot. Vincent knew without a doubt the young, exiled Newsight employee was thinking about the Hole.