Children of the Uprising Read Online Free PDF

in the morning. Christopher hadn’t slept, hadn’t even considered it. He wasn’t tired. The way he felt, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever sleep again.
    Christopher ate the last two bites of his breakfast. He reached into his pocket again, reaching past his phone, and ran his fingers over the cool metal of the key. A real key to a safe-deposit box. It seemed so antiquated, like trying to kill someone with a hatchet. Christopher stood up. He had already paid. He eyeballed the room one more time before leaving, trying to see if anyone looked like they were going to follow him. Nobody moved. Christopher knew that this didn’t mean that no one was watching him. It only meant that they were good at it. His phone buzzed in his pocket again. He ignored it. He didn’t have anything to say yet, but the answers were close. He could feel it. He only needed to survive the next hour.
    Christopher stepped toward the door to leave. Despite the noise and chatter in the café, everything seemed calm. As he stepped closer to the door, someone in a booth near the exit stood up behind him. The stranger began to follow right behind Christopher. The stranger was close, close enough that he could reach out and touch Christopher if he wanted to. Christopher made it to the door and pushed it open with one arm. Then he stepped aside, holding the door open for the stranger behind him, motioning politely for the stranger to exit first. Christopher had never liked being followed, but he really didn’t have any stomach for it today.
    â€œAfter you,” the stranger said to Christopher, his tone oddly formal. The stranger was relatively young, no older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was at least six feet tall, a good two inches taller than Christopher. He had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a light jacket despite the warm summer weather.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Christopher replied. “I left something at my table,” he lied.
    The stranger took a deep breath and shook his head. “I spend way too much time in this business sitting in cafés.” The man looked straight at Christopher. “What do you think you forgot, Christopher? There is nothing at your table.”
    Christopher felt his heart speed up again, the same way he’d felt it last night while being hunted in the woods. “I’m not going outside with you,” Christopher said to the stranger. He didn’t even bother asking the stranger how he knew his name. He had half expected the man to know it. The man scared him, maybe even more than the men in the woods. The way the stranger carried himself scared him. The stranger was calm. Everything in the woods had been utterly insane, but the stranger was the picture of sanity. To Christopher, after all the waiting and the paranoia, after what he’d done to those men in the woods, nothing was more frightening than sanity. “If you’re going to kill me, you’re going to have to do it right here in this restaurant.”
    â€œI’m not going to kill you, Christopher,” the stranger said, not at all surprised that Christopher thought such a thing.
    â€œThen what are you here for?” Christopher asked him. The stranger’s words didn’t make him feel any better.
    â€œI’m here to keep you from going inside that bank,” the stranger said, motioning over his shoulder at the bank across the street.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause if you go inside that bank, you’ll be dead within half an hour of leaving it,” the stranger said calmly and quietly. The two men stopped speaking for a moment as an elderly couple walked out of the café. Christopher stood there, barely breathing, still holding the door open with his outstretched arm. The old man tipped his hat to Christopher as he walked by.
    â€œI don’t understand,” Christopher whispered to the stranger once the old couple was gone. The confusion was almost as bad