The Wire Hanger

Chapter Twenty-five

The next morning the house seemed to have shrunk, with everyone crowding in the living room and winding through the kitchen and stepping on each other on their way to the bathroom. “Will you move,” I heard David snap at Felix, trying to get down the front stairway. I had just exited the bathroom myself and was heading downstairs for some breakfast when an arm darted out and grabbed me around the wrist, yanking me sideways.

            “Was that necessary?” I asked, rubbing my wrist in an exaggerated fashion.

            Noah wasn’t paying attention. “Look,” he said, brandishing a sheaf of papers at me and reaching around me to shut the door. His earlier shyness in my presence was but a distant dream.

            “What am I looking at?”

            “Anything look familiar?”

            More blueprints. Apparently they were the gift that kept on giving. But I was still feeling good about my success the night before so I gave it a shot, spreading them out on his bedroom floor in case that would help. A crumpled blanket and pillow were off to the side, which reminded me. “Where’s Esau?”

            “Eating, probably,” Noah said with a shrug. “I wanted to run this by you before I told everyone else. Just in case.”

            This was new. I felt a warm flush of pride take hold in my chest as I shuffled the papers around. “It’s a map,” I said slowly, “not a blueprint.”

            “Exactly,” said Noah, who was nearly vibrating.

            “Of the city. I think. I’ve never actually seen a map of it, isn’t that weird?”

            “Not weird, it’s deliberate, on their part,” said Noah. “Keeping us running through the tunnels. Metaphorically speaking. Can’t get above to see what’s going on.”

            “There’s the Centre?” I asked, pointing.

            “Yep.”

            I bent closer. The map seemed to be indicating something like battle stations, as though this were a map for a war. And every battle has its headquarters – I remembered that much from history class, if not much else. Parts of the Centre were marked with little black x’s, with a few scattered to the west in the old City Hall building I’d noticed earlier. There was no legend in this map, though. “You would have to layer them all on top of each other to get something out of this,” I mused out loud.

            “Well, that’s how they were originally,” he said. “But it was too much, way too jumbled, too much…noise, you could say. I had to filter that all out. Down to a few key layers.”

            The black x’s were thicker in some places than others, and all but vanishing towards the outer layers of the map. I leaned back on my heels, considering. Then I stood up. The further away I got, the clearer it was – the x’s were converging in a single place. One spot they were thickest. “The tower,” I said.

            The tower had always loomed over us, visible even from my family’s house, miles away. From there it was just a speck on the horizon, a reminder of the Corporation looking out for us. It was used as a radio and television tower now, sending out the daily programs and traffic and weather reports. There was only one station, so it was particularly powerful, having no other wavelengths to compete with.

            “Exactly.”
            “But that’s just for radio.”

            “Apparently not.”

            We stared at each other. Noah wasn’t smiling but he was practically glowing, light shining out from behind his eyes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d caught fire. But I was still a little bit behind the times. “So…that means what exactly?”

            “It means I can break in to their signal,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for years, it’s second nature now. You remember what I told the Professor the other night? I need more firepower. What better way than to use the Protectors’ own headquarters?”

I could think of about a hundred better ways, frankly, but Noah was paying absolutely no attention to the doubt on my face.

“I just needed a second opinion,” he said, gathering up the papers from the floor. “Come on! Let’s go tell the others!” He opened the door right into Esau’s face.

“Ow,” said Esau, less with actual pain and more with attitude.

“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t realize you were standing there. Lurking,” said Noah.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“I thought I forgot something,” he said. “What were you doing in there?”

“Research,” said Noah. He was taller than Esau by several inches, and has assumed the air of superiority that he had mostly dropped around me. I wasn’t pleased to see it again.

“In his room?” said Esau to me, dubiously.

I felt indignation flare up. Esau had only been here for twenty-four hours and already he was slipping back into his old role of spokesman – asking questions of the Professor, speaking in my place, acting as though he were my father and not my five-minutes-older brother.

So I said, as though speaking to a small child, “Yes. That’s where the computers are, you see,” and swanned between the two of them and went down the stairs for breakfast.

Noah explained his plan while the others were sipping coffee (Obadiah and David), staring aimlessly out the window in a mildly deranged fashion (Adah), or stuffing croissants into their faces (Felix). “It’s simple, really,” he was saying, but even the Professor was looking doubtful.

“You’re sure you can hack into their signal?” he asked.

“I’m positive. I do it all the time. I’ve just never been able to get the radio or television signals because I didn’t realize they had the Protectors’ extra encyption over them. I was just thinking Corporation. But if we get up there I can track it,” said Noah. “I just need to get a little closer. Everything’s wireless so with the right receiving instrument, which I’ve got upstairs, I’ll have all the info I need.”

“To do what?” I asked.

It was Adah who answered, turning from the window and staring at Noah with her wide gray eyes. “To spread the gospel.”

David coughed. “I wouldn’t put it like that exactly, but yeah, to get the message out. You’re saying we can hack into the Corporation network? Really?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying,” said Noah, a touch impatiently.

David was staring at Noah with something almost like respect. The air in the room had changed almost imperceptibly, like the nitrogen tang in the sky right before lightning cracked overhead. “So what are we waiting for?”

“Ready when you are,” said Noah.