Read Online Z 2134 by Sean Platt, David W. Wright - Free Book Online

with her entire
hand.
    Ana turned to Duncan. “Mind if I sit?”
she asked, then made her way across the room to a tattered fabric chair in the
corner — the only unoccupied seat in the room — before Duncan could answer. Ana
tried to swallow her rising tide of panic while slowly breathing through an
obvious new truth: the church, and everyone in the basement, were clearly
members of The Underground.
    She couldn’t hear their words or be
completely certain they were Underground Rebels, but the same father who had
murdered her mother had also sharpened Ana’s instincts. She imagined Watchers
bursting through the doors, arresting them all. If that happened, she was done
for. And her brother would have nobody to look after him.
    She had to get out of the basement.
    But she also had to find out why she’d
been summoned.
    “You’re part of The Undergound?” she
said, half-statement and half-question.
    “Yes, I am.” Duncan nodded. “And so was
your father.”
    Ana was about as surprised to hear her
father was part of The Underground as she would have been to hear a City Watch
broadcast announcing early curfew. “Why did you ask me to come here?”
    Duncan smiled, slowly rubbing his hands
across his knees. He looked like he was about to say one thing, but then drew
in his breath and said something else. “Before I start, Ana,” he narrowed his
eyes. “I want to thank you for coming here today. I know it wasn’t easy, and
that getting brought down into a basement by someone you don’t trust, well,
that’s scary, and I admire you for swallowing your fear and listening to your
gut long enough to get here and maybe listen. Your father would’ve been proud.”
Duncan smiled.
    Ana didn’t want to admit it, not to
Duncan, Michael, Adam, or anyone else, not even to herself, but Duncan was
right. The layers of her last two months were horrible — every one — and
walking up the church steps and following the address on a paper shred slipped
to her in secret by someone who could be seen as an enemy of The State. It was
all a bit much.
    “I want to know,” she said. “The truth.
What was my dad doing before…you know, before he got into trouble.”
    “You deserve to know,” Duncan nodded.
“Would you like anything first? Sugar bread, or water?”
    Ana shook her head, then Duncan started
his story.
    “Your dad came in here one day, slipped
into a pew, and sat for a sermon — as if he’d been coming to church forever,
even though he’d never been here before, and I’d not seen him other than as a
wave across the street since I stopped working City Watch. Your daddy sat in
the back pew, two behind where you were sitting beside Iris tonight. He
listened to the entire sermon, then, when it was over, he didn’t want to leave.
He stayed in his pew for several minutes until I was finished shaking hands,
then when I approached him, he asked if we could speak, said he wanted to clear
his guilty conscience.”
    “Why?” Ana raised her eyebrows. “What did
he do?”
    “He said he couldn’t stand the horrible
things he’d been forced to do in the law’s name. Your daddy said he wasn’t sure
if there was a God, but respected that I did, then said it seemed hard to
swallow, seeing as how there was so much sickness in the world, both in and
outside The Wall. Your dad said that if there was a God, he didn’t want Him
thinking he enjoyed doing what he had to do, and wanted a pardon if possible,
at least until he could figure out a way not to do it any longer.”
    Ana said, “And you gave him a way?”
    “That I did.”
Duncan smiled, then gestured around the room. “These fine folks, and many more
who aren’t with us tonight, look to me. They trust I’ll guide them right, make
the right decisions. I’m a man of faith, acting on my instincts and His
guidance. I trusted your father the second I saw him, Anastasia, so I saw no
reason to wait.”
    Ana leaned forward, starving for the
rest. “Wait for