Read Children of the Uprising for Free Online

woman said to him before turning back to the queue of customers.
    â€œThe stairs,” Christopher said. The woman looked back up at him, annoyed. “I have a thing about elevators,” he finished.
    â€œKeep going past the elevators,” the woman said. “The stairs are on your right.”
    â€œThanks,” Christopher said and began moving quickly toward the stairs.
    Christopher ran up the first two flights of stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. When he got to the third floor, he began to walk again, trying to calm down. His head was spinning. The bank. The mystery safe-deposit box. The men in the woods. The stranger. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket again. Evan. His parents. What was he going to tell his parents? He blocked it all out and counted the steps as he climbed them. He tried to decide if he could take the stranger in a fight if it came to that. He didn’t know. He could usually size someone up pretty quickly. With the stranger, he had no idea.
    The stranger had chosen a room close to the elevator so that he could get in and out quickly without being seen. Christopher was still climbing the stairs when the stranger reached the door to his room. He unlocked the door with his key and stepped inside. The stranger wasted no time. He walked into the bathroom first. He pulled the shower curtain back, revealing the empty bathtub. He opened the cabinets under the bathroom sink and peered inside. Then he walked back into the main room. He opened the closet doors, staring into the closet’s dark corners. He dropped to the floor and lifted up the bed skirt, peering under the bed. Finally, the stranger walked over to the windows. He pulled the thick curtains wide open. Light cascaded into the room from outside. The stranger pulled the bunched-up curtains away from the wall at the bottom, running his hand along the insides of the folds. He felt nothing. Then he let the curtains drop back into place and pulled them closed again, shutting out the light. The room was clean. The stranger walked back toward the door, finally ready to greet his guest.
    When Christopher got to the fourth floor, he slowly pushed his way through the door leading from the staircase into the hallway. It was a long hallway. The carpet was an ugly golden color with a maroon pattern crisscrossing over it. The doors on either side of the hallway were evenly spaced. Christopher couldn’t see any windows, only the dim lights from the ceiling. There were so many doors. Christopher stood alone in the hallway. He didn’t see any sign of the stranger. He was unsure of what he was supposed to do. He thought about moving down the hallway, placing his ear on each door, trying to figure out which door was the right one, but that seemed absurd.
    Christopher was about to take a step forward when he heard a clicking sound coming from one of the doors at the other end of the hallway. His first instinct was to hide, but the only place to hide was the stairwell and Christopher refused to ever go backward. Instead, he girded himself, readying to charge like a bull. The door swung open. The stranger stepped out from behind it, into the hallway. Without a word, he waved Christopher toward him. Christopher moved silently toward him. As Christopher approached, the stranger stared down the hallway toward the elevators. Finally, when Christopher was only a few steps from him, the stranger looked at Christopher again. “Get inside,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He held the door open as Christopher slipped past him.
    The room appeared to be in a shambles. The closet doors were all open. The bathroom door was open too, and the shower curtain was pulled back. The room appeared empty. The curtains were drawn. The only light in the room came from a small lamp sitting on the desk. The stranger closed the door behind him. “Can I get you something?” the stranger asked Christopher, stepping around him to get to