Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

backs, twisted from hard labor, attracted to the blood on their raw hands and feet. The view slowly zoomed out, revealing more slaves in the surrounding jungle, thousands of them, carrying stones to the clearing from nearby quarries. Andie could hear their cries of pain and smell the sweat and blood coagulating in the brutal heat.

On and on it went, the scenes more familiar as they moved forward in time. The history of Southeast Asia told in full-sensory vignettes that spoke of leaps and bounds of progress—or was it regression?—marked by a terrible human toll. The diorama did not seem to take a position. It conveyed simple truths, spoken without words.

She witnessed the arrival of the French and other colonizers. The intermingling of Hinduism and Buddhism with indigenous religion. Tantalizing hints of lost civilizations and technology far ahead of its time. The Vietnam War and the spread of Communism.

The narrative continued all the way to modern day, and always the single plum was present and placed in a prominent position. Inside an open mass grave in Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Carried by a Hmong tribeswoman from her rural Laotian village to a tourist shop in downtown Bangkok, a flyspeck of purple swallowed by the concrete matrix of skyscrapers.

As the rickshaw slowed and finally came to rest, the images flickered and then died. Andie had lost track of time. How long had they been watching—half an hour? An hour?

“What was that?” Cal said in a shaky voice.

“I don’t know,” Andie said as she retrieved the Star Phone and let out a deep breath, moved by the exhibition and full of questions. “I don’t know.”

“That plum—do you think it’s something we’re supposed to find?”

“I don’t think it was a plum. I think it was . . . a spark.”

As Cal looked over at her, thoughtful, the door creaked open, exposing the familiar din of a Hanoi city street. They both tensed, unsure what to expect. Outside was a busy commercial center with masses of pedestrians and lines of buses, cars, and taxis. It was unclear who had opened the door, and the driver was nowhere in sight.

But neither were the Ascendants.

Andie took a long look around. “He left us at a bus station?”

“Take a look at this,” Cal said, peering inside the driver’s door.

While there was no sign of the elderly Vietnamese man, Andie saw a worn interior that looked as she imagined the front seat of an old rickshaw would look: a padded bench for the driver, handlebars wrapped in black tape, a set of prayer beads on the dash below the windshield. The only anomaly was a business card placed in the center of the driver’s seat.

Cal picked it up. “The Belle Riviere, in Hoi An. A business card for a hotel? Bizarre.”

He handed it to her. Andie read the name on the back, flipped it over—and her heart skipped a beat. Depicted on the face of the card was a photo of a narrow Vietnamese street lined with two- and three-story French colonial buildings, lit by hundreds of illuminated globe lanterns.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said, studying it closely.

“You have? Where?”

“Through the Star Phone, right in front of the Temple of Literature. It’s the exact same street.” She slowly looked up. “I don’t know why, but this has to mean we’re supposed to go to Hoi An. And apparently to this guesthouse.”

Without waiting for a response, she shouldered her backpack and entered the bus station, searching for a list of times and destinations. Cal followed her, unusually silent. It did not take them long to discover a sleeper bus that ran from Hanoi to Hoi An. Though the distance was not that far—less than two hours by air—the bus journey was a grueling eighteen hours.

“There’s a reason we were dropped here,” Andie said as they huddled in front of the ticket window. “Someone wants to help us leave the city.”

“I can think of better ways.”

“Maybe, maybe not. The Ascendants will be watching the airports and checking the car rental agencies.”

“True. I doubt anyone will suspect we’d take a chicken bus completely off the grid to some random Vietnamese town.”

Andie’s eyes lifted to the terminal board. “The next bus to Hoi An leaves in half an hour. The Ascendants are probably still searching near the Temple of Literature, thinking we couldn’t have made it very far.”

They locked eyes, and Cal offered his arm. “Fancy a ride through the countryside, milady?”

Two hours later, Cal finally stopped glancing outside the rear window. He and Andie had paid cash for their tickets, left Hanoi without incident, and hunkered down in two conjoined sleeper seats in the back of the bus. Though not full of chickens, it was a school bus retrofitted to accommodate nighttime journeys. It smelled like old socks, and the entire bus was filled with rows of sleeper seats, which could either be laid out flat or reclined at a forty-five-degree angle. Because someone had the greedy idea to create an upper level of these monstrosities, packing more people inside, there was not enough room for the seats to sit up straight. Cal was too tall to stretch out, so his choices were sitting at a weird, crunched angle or lying on his side with his knees pulled to his chest.

As soon as they cleared the city limits, Andie had collapsed like she hadn’t slept in a week. He was glad to see her resting. After a spell, she shifted so close to him their cheeks were almost touching. He knew she had not done it consciously, but it still caused his pulse to quicken. He could feel her breath against his cheek, soft and warm.

As nice as it was, he had to change positions or risk getting muscle cramps. After extricating himself, he stood in the aisle and bounced on his toes to get the blood flowing. Outside the window, the scenery had turned shockingly beautiful: they were driving through emerald-green rice paddies punctuated by