The rest of the world knew little of what had transpired in northern Vietnam over the previous two years. A Chinese-backed puppet broadcast released new information daily discussing the unprecedented coup attempt within the Vietnamese government, and how the Chinese had come to help stabilize the democracy. Vietnamese dissidents abroad painted a uniquely different picture of a brutal Chinese takeover—an assertion Beijing categorically denied. Beijing officials even released video of the supposed coup attempt, which the dissidents called a deep fake. Either way, the information flow out of northern Vietnam had been tight-lipped since the Chinese invasion. They had jammed signals, cut off power, destroyed cell networks, severed every Internet cable coming into the country, and constructed their own proprietary communication system. Even so, black market images and video of the truth still surfaced overseas, though no one on the outside could confirm that reality. One Vietnamese dissident set up a demon warrior website which highlighted all sightings, encounters, and video which existed outside Hanoi of Sun Quan. Of course, no one knew his name, nor could they verify the veracity of the website. The dissident went missing one day from his California home. Authorities found his body a week later floating the surf off one of the beaches in Southern Cal. His website had been hacked and destroyed from within. The LA County police had no suspects in the suspected homicide.
The mysterious Chinese man had been in Hanoi since the beginning of the invasion and had become the face of the occupation. No one knew his name or understood his connection to Beijing. But Sun Quan always stood at his side, and the generals and subordinates followed his every command.
One of those subordinates stood next to a bright red switch on the top floor of the facility. The Chinese man signaled to him from a short distance away.
“Sir, are you ready?” The general had placed his hand on the switch. The Chinese man looked blankly. “It’s strange, you know,” said the Chinese man. “When I was young, my mother used a red switch made from a Chinese red-bark birch tree. She had a small shoot from a branch she kept in the house, and when I did something wrong, she would hit me with it.”
Sun Quan had entered the room as the Chinese man reminisced.
“Sir?” asked the general for clarification.
“I learned to hold in my tears after a while.”
“You’re quite the fictional storyteller,” said the warrior.
“My dear, Sun Quan. All life is fiction. But we keep flipping the next page to see what will happen. We can’t help it. So, you’ve come to see the red switch? I think I shall have a picture of a Chinese birch drawn on this wall. Does anyone know if those would grow in this climate?”
“Whatever we want to grow, will grow.”
“That is exactly the answer I wanted to hear, Sun Quan.”
“Sir?” the general kept his hand on the switch.
“Sun Quan, tell me about the fight.”
“She’s done.”
“So easily? You truly think so?”
“Yes.”
“Just pass a sword through her and that’s that.”
“It’s done.” Sun Quan walked to the glass wall. The very top of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum could be seen in the distance.
“Well then,” said the Chinese man. “There’s no reason to hold back any longer.”
Sun Quan looked back at the Chinese man. “Did you ever think that perhaps they will learn to hold in their tears also, like you did when you were young?”
The Chinese man walked up beside him, his head coming only to the tip of Sun Quan’s shoulder. “No one has ever seen a red switch like this. General, now.”
The commotion inside the windowless rebel hideout came to an immediate pause when a strange noise pulsed through the air from all directions, like someone searching for a frequency on a cosmic radio. Suddenly, the station came in clear, and an ethereal female voice speaking in perfect Vietnamese wooed the most ardent of unbelievers with her Tokyo Rose insistence and honey sweet tone. But the words were not to be trifled with. Their intent was clear and threatening like the line of tanks which swarmed the border of Vietnam two years ago. The words were bullets, and every single person inside the city of the Red River were the targets. Each person felt the wound from every monosyllabic word.
“Residents of Hanoi. Some of you have been resisting us. There is no resistance of democracy. It is the future. It is now. You have fifteen minutes. The rats of the rebellion must be exposed. Point out their nests within the next fifteen minutes, or you too shall be resisting. You have fifteen minutes to expose the traitors. Open their nests. Turn them in. You have fifteen minutes. And the fifteen minutes start now.”
All the lights in the city switched on. The great blackout gone, a cry of frenzy and confusion rose up into the streets. People, hidden in the shadows, found themselves yelling at their neighbors on the street’s end, but they didn’t know the purpose of the yelling. Women accused men of being with the resistance and threatening the lives of their children. Others feared a ticking time bomb and blurted out the seconds one at a time. Others still looked up into the night sky and worshiped the voice, praying to it and asking it for mercy. There were some who saw the battle of Hoan Kiem Lake and said the voice was that of Lady Trieu. A group of vandals started ravaging the shops in the old town leading to brawls around the edge of the lake. The chaos ripped the city apart long before the fifteen minutes expired.
Minh, Nhan, and the small group of infiltrators from the windowless room, wandered into the middle of the chaotic scene, not sure what to do. Three middle-aged women approached two of the young men standing on the edge of the street at the entrance of the dead-end alleyway.
“You two. We’ve seen you coming and going at all hours of the night. You’re part of the rebellion. You’re putting our families in danger.”
“We’ll all Vietnamese,” replied one of the rebels standing next to Minh. “We have to stick together.”
“Here they are!” yelled the other woman.
“Quiet.”
Nhan whispered in Minh’s ear. “We need to get out of here.”
“And go where?”
She didn’t reply, but the two women became more aggressive toward the group. “Last week we had the lights on and food in the market. Things were starting to feel normal, but now—”
One of the female rebels stepped forward. “Normal? They’ve taken over our city. How can you just accept everything? What’s wrong with you?”
“My child goes to sleep hungry every night. I want this to end.”
“It will only end when we kick the Chinese out of here and—”
Someone from behind hit the rebel with a wooden plank, and she fell to the group. Two of the rebel men pounced on the man who had swung the piece of wood, but he turned and ran away screaming. Nhan helped the woozy-headed rebel back on her feet as the women pressed further, bringing more unwanted attention from the rest of the gathering mob. Minh found himself cowering behind Nhan, who took an aggressive stance against the mob. He felt very much thirteen-years-old as they pressed in, and he thought of his mother. He also thought about the day, not even a week ago, when he brought Mr. Tho into their apartment to watch the TV broadcast. It felt like a year had passed. That day seemed normal, compared to this. He caught himself longing for that normality, but then he remembered something. His father had been gone for nearly two years, and he hadn’t heard a word from him. Also, he remembered the times before the war when he was just a boy and would walk to school with his friends. That’s normal, he reminded himself. He closed his eyes and tried to tell himself what he was now. A rebel on the right side. He remembered the stories of his grandmother dragging pieces of artillery up the muddy slopes outside Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This was his Dien Bien Phu, and age had nothing to do with it.
“Nhan, let’s go. We need to get to the facility.”
She nodded. “It won’t be easy through this mess.”
“When is anything important ever easy?”
She gripped his hand. “Hold on to me. Let’s head south.”
One of the rebels made it around the squawking ladies. “Nhan, this way. We’re going to leave the city.”
“No, Minh and I are continuing on.”
“You can’t. This is madness.”
“We have to stop the madness. Go, get word back to my father. And if he—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. Fifteen minutes had expired. Sirens pierced the night. They belted out three loud pulses and the power was cut, leaving the frenzied chaos in the pit of its own darkness. For the first few seconds, a hush fell over the city. Everyone stopped as their eyes tried to adjust to the new reality. But darkness never invites you in; it surrounds you on all sides and whispers terrible fantasies in your ear. It emboldens the fear in your chest, and the fear allows the irrational thoughts to completely overtake what little rational cognition still exists. The silence gave way to panicked fear and senseless screaming. People flailing their arms and running into each other and defending themselves from the demons they held within their own chests. The edge of sanity gave way to the bitter pill of transcendent fear. The organic destruction pitting Hanoi residents against each other paled in comparison to the real assault which commenced.
Simultaneously, on hundreds of Hanoi streets, metal clicking and swooshing sounds could be heard in all directions. Hundreds of four-foot-tall round robotic devices seemed to pop out of nowhere on the streets, all of them broadcasting a steady stream of messages. “Traitors will die.” “Only traitors hide.” “Democracy thrives when we work together.” “First we pluck the weeds, then society will grow.” “Traitors will die.”
The relentless messages soaked the atmosphere, and the robots cycled through the streets. They had wheels for moving quickly and probe arms to maneuver effortlessly around obstacles in the street. Sharp lights beamed off the front of them, and they ran over anyone in their way. The night terror had begun. The robots rolled up to closed doors, then stood on robotic legs and fired through the solid structure, smashing metal bars, and wiping out whoever was in the room, whether a rebel or not.
The machines moved quickly and methodically. They even interacted with people, cornering an old lady against a wall, asking the woman where the rebels were. She told them, even if she had no knowledge of actual rebels. The machines ravaged the streets, and the terror and screams of the voices rose up like a whole civilization questioning the sky if they indeed had the will to survive.
Of the five rebels who had been with Nhan and Minh just moments before, four of them were gunned down by the machines. Only one escaped to the edge of the Red River and swam across to the other side, not even waiting for a rebel raft. She doubted they even existed anymore.
Minh and Nhan found themselves caught in the middle of two machines, each approaching from opposite directions. They came upon them so quickly, they had no time to even conjecture what they witnessed. The darkness of the city still encapsulated everything except for the bright erratic lights from the machines. With the lights shining from both directions, it allowed Minh and Nhan to get a glimpse of what they were facing. The machines had large wheels on each side but also legs which allowed two wheels to be off the ground when not in use. The body of the machine was not solid, but a crisscross of polished metal parts and rods. Its arms were types of weapons, but they didn’t look like rifles. The machine had no head, though it had an engraved image of a head on the top of its chest. Three camera eyes moved around off the top of the chest as well, and though it looked like some sort of steam-punk device, it had an electronic brain with small flashing lights across its top.
The two machines cornered the teens head-on. “Identify yourselves.”
Neither teen responded. They clung to each other.
Both machines extended a tripod into the air with a camera lens on it. They flashed and scanned the entire bodies of the teens.
“Ly Thi Nhan and Nguyen Van Minh. You are to come with us immediately.”
Nhan grabbed the robotic tripod arm of the machine in front of her and climbed up over top of it. “Minh, run.” She jumped off, and Minh slid out from under the other as the machines repositioned to aim at the girl. They ran down the street with the machines barking out further instructions. “You are to come with us immediately.”
Shots fired, and a layer of bullets peppered the ground around their feet. They jumped into an alleyway and ran as hard as they could with the machines giving chase. They sprinted out across a major street. The commotion had spread, and they saw several bodies lying unresponsive in the middle of the street, but they kept moving. They approached the gate of the ancient citadel. The doors had been blown off their hinges. They ran inside and up the steps to the top of the wall. They climbed to the peak of the flag tower and were alone above this old section of the city. They panted as they looked out over the surroundings. Weapons fired. Flashes of light spread out in all directions.
“What’s happening?” said Minh.
“I don’t know.”
“How did we get away from the machines?”
“They let us go. They could have killed us at any time, but they want us alive. They knew our names.”
“Why did they let us go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nhan, what do you think happened to the rebel cell?” She didn’t respond. “The facility is right over there. It’s not far.”
“Yes.”
“We should go.”
“Into the lair? Minh, this all seems so foolish.”
“I know. But what else can we do?”
“Think. Think. Think. Okay, Minh, what do we know? They know who we are. They don’t want to kill us.”
“Yes, and we know that Lady Trieu once successfully attacked the facility.”
“Yes, but we also heard that she might be dead.”
“Nhan, we don’t know that. It’s all rumors.”
The night terrors continued. The metallic swooshing of the machines sounded from all directions. Desperate screams filled the air, and the two in the watchtower had to remind themselves where they were and what they were experiencing.
“This is war, Minh. We’re on the battlefield. Do you really want to do this?”
“Yes, for my grandmother. For my mother. And for my father.”
“Then let’s go.”
They descended the tower and crept along the inside wall of the citadel. On the western side, they squeezed through the bars of a metal gate and crawled along the shrubbery of a small park. The facility lay across the street about fifty yards in front of them. Soldiers and robotic machines and vehicles hurried to and fro in all directions. The facility was lit up fully. They realized there was no way to approach it without being seen. Minh pulled the marble table out of his pocket and held it up.
“What are you doing?” Nhan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re expecting some magic to help us now? After all the craziness going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what are we going to do when we get in there?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“This isn’t a plan. It’s a suicide mission.”
“All I know is I was rescued from the facility, and I promised Cuong I would come back for him. That’s where Sun Quan is. He’s the one we want to defeat, right?”
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How can we defeat him? Even Lady Trieu couldn’t. Listen to me. I’m talking as if I believe she’s real.”
Minh clung onto the tablet and said a few words. Like a chant or even a prayer. Nhan looked at him like he was insane. Perhaps he was. But Tho had always taught him to believe in your own just cause and allow the universe to show you its inevitability. He knew the cause was just. He had trouble believing in the outcome, but he would make his mother proud, and if he had to go down, he would go down fighting for justice.
“Follow me.”
“Minh, wait!”
Before he stepped out of the bushes, four robotic machines surrounded them and two vehicles of soldiers skidded to a halt in front of the shrubs and ambushed them. The machines blurted out their identities in unison, and the guards had them in custody before Minh even had a chance to see the shocked look on Nhan’s face. He thought only of the tablet in his pocket, wondering if he would have to shove it up inside him again, a thought he did not relish. But he would go to great lengths to secure it. The guards paraded them into the ground floor of the facility. No sign of Sun Quan or the Chinese man. The facility walls opened automatically as they mazed through successive rooms before being instructed to sit against the far wall. They obeyed. The glossy black stone wall closed in front of them, securing the two young rebels. Minh’s breath labored, but he still managed to tell Nhan to relax and wait for Lady Trieu’s sign. Nhan gripped Minh’s hand firmly.
“I’m not afraid of them. None of them.”
“Me either,” replied Minh through a few voice fluctuations which told a different story.
They heard a rumble. The wall in front of them slid upwards into the ceiling. A man stood in the center of the doorway. Minh looked, but shook his head in disbelief. He even unclasped his hand with Nhan and smacked himself on the cheek before looking again. The man took one step into the cell.
“Hello, Minh.”
The man wore a Vietnamese army uniform with a small Sino-Vietnam harmony patch on his left chest. Minh’s entire body shook and his stomach churned.
“Welcome,” the man spoke again.
Nhan looked at the teen and shook Minh from his trance. “Minh, Minh!” She glanced back at the man. “Minh, do you know him?”
“Yes.” He wiped the sweat dripping from his chin. “He’s my father.”