“Unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboat.”
Connor just glares at him.
“Fine,” says Lev. “You wanna punch me?”
Connor chuckles at that and looks at his right arm. “Careful what you ask for, Lev—I pack quite a punch these days.” Then he shows Lev the tattoo.
“Yeah, I noticed that. There must be a story there. I mean, you hated Roland, right? Why’d you get the same tattoo?”
Now Connor laughs out loud. Hard to imagine that Lev doesn’t even know—but then, how could he? “Yeah, there’s a story,” he says. “Remind me to tell you about it someday.”
Onscreen, they’ve cut live to the Graveyard, where “an unfolding drama” is taking place. One last batch of AWOLs has held off the Juvies by holing up inside an old World War II bomber.
“It’s the ComBom! Hayden held them off all night!” For Connor it’s almost like victory.
The ComBom hatch opens, and Hayden comes out, carrying a limp kid in his arms. He’s followed by a bunch of other kids, none of them in good shape. The Juvies move in, and so do the media.
“We’re witnessing the capture of the final AWOL Unwinds. . . .”
The reporters don’t get close enough to stick microphones in Hayden’s face, but they don’t have to. In spite of the Juvies’ attempt to spirit him into the transport van, he shouts loud enough for everyone to hear.
“We are not just AWOLs! We are not just parts! We are whole human beings—and history will look back on these times in shame!”
They shove him and the other kids into the van, but before they slam the door, Hayden shouts, “To the new Teen Uprising!”
Then the van carries them away.
“Way to go, Hayden,” says Connor. “Way to go!”
The news briefly reports on the plane that got away, but as that’s an embarrassment to the Juvies, not much is said. At first they had forced a plane to land in Dallas, thinking it was the AWOL Dreamliner, but it turned out to be a passenger flight from Mexico City. There have been unconfirmed reports of a plane going down in a California lake, but nothing further is said. Connor suspects the plane that went down is the Dreamliner—and as much as he’d like to see Starkey at the bottom of a lake, Connor hopes the storks survived the crash. That would be more AWOLs who got away from the Juvies.
Damn Starkey! He brought the Juvies down on them, then took half the weapons, hijacked their only means of escape, and left everyone else high and dry. And yet as much as Connor wants to blame it all on Starkey, he can’t help but feel the brunt of the blame. He was the one who trusted Starkey to begin with, allowing him to amass power among the storks.
When it’s clear that the news has moved on to other subjects—weather woes and celebrities behaving badly—Connor turns off the TV. “Nine thirty. Almost time to move on.”
“Actually, there’s one more thing I want to show you before we go.” Lev goes to the room’s computer and pulls up, of all things, a website for hot tubs.
“Uh . . . sorry, Lev, I’m not in the market for a Jacuzzi.”
Lev is stymied for a moment, until Connor notices the mistake. “YouTube has an e at the end.”
“Duh!” Lev types it over. “I was never good at keyboarding.”
He tries again and this time gets it right. Lev clicks on a video, and Connor’s heart just about stops. It’s yet another news interview with Risa.
“I don’t want to see it.” Connor reaches to turn it off, but Lev grasps his wrist.
“Yes, you do.”
And although the last thing Connor wants to see is another sales pitch for unwinding, he gives in, bracing himself for whatever he’s about to see.
He can tell right away from the look on Risa’s face that she has a single-minded determination she didn’t have in the other interview he saw.
He watches in amazement as, in less than two minutes, she blasts Proactive Citizenry, the Juvies, and unwinding so completely there’s no doubt which side she’s on. The show’s anchorman is left scrambling to pick up the pieces.
“They were blackmailing her!” Connor feels his eyes get moist. He knew there had to be an explanation, but he had become so jaded against everyone and everything, he was willing to believe that Risa had chosen to heal herself at everyone else’s expense. Now he’s ashamed of himself for thinking that.
“Proactive Citizenry has already released a statement denying it,” Lev tells him. “They claim she’s the one who used them.”
“Yeah, right. Let’s hope nobody’s stupid enough to believe them.”
“Some people are, some aren’t.”
Connor looks to Lev and smiles, realizing that getting tranq’d kind of put a damper on their reunion. “It’s good to see you, Lev.”
“Same here.”
“What’s with the hair?”
Lev shrugs. “It’s a look.”
They hear a car pulling up in the sales office parking lot. Time to go.
“So what do we do now? Lev asks. “I’m kind of AWOL from the Anti-Divisional Resistance. . . .”
“The ADR has become useless. If the best they can do is send AWOLs to a holding pen for the Juvies, then something’s not working. Someone needs to rethink things.”
“Why not you?” Lev suggests.
“Why not us?” Connor counters.
Lev considers it. “Well . . . you’re a martyr and I’m a patron saint—I can’t think of anyone better! So where do we start?”
It’s a big question. Where do you begin to change the world? Connor thinks he may have the answer. “Have you ever heard of Janson Rheinschild?”
83 - Nelson
Even before he comes fully to his senses, he knows something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. He opens his eyes to scorching daylight. He’s lying in a ditch. His body aches. One side of his face feels as if it’s on fire.
He was tranq’d. Not just once, but repeatedly, and by his own damn gun! Enough sedatives to knock him out for maybe twelve hours. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been eaten alive by desert scavengers—but from the pain in his left leg, and bloody holes in his stolen uniform, clearly something tried. Nelson wonders how long he’s been in the sun. Long enough for half his face to be swollen and throbbing from a second-degree sunburn.
He had him! He had Connor Lassiter, and now he has nothing but the tattered clothes on his back. It was the tithe! How could Nelson have been so careless! He should have killed Lev when he had the chance, but out of the kindness of his heart, he had let the boy live.
And here is the result of kindness.
The two will already be far from here, covering their tracks. His laptop held the codes of Lev’s tracking nanites. Without his computer, they’re useless. Nelson will not give up. He will find them. Tracking has always been his specialty, and this setback? It’s nothing! It will only make him more determined, more ruthless in achieving his goal.
He climbs out of the ditch and marches, weak-legged, but strong-willed, like a zombie, toward Tucson. He will catch the Akron AWOL, deliver him to Divan, and be there to witness his unwinding—but the tithe will not meet such a merciful end. When Nelson finds Lev, he will visit upon the boy such wrath it will make the very ground tremble. Of this, Nelson can be sure. Just thinking about it fills him with enough joy and purpose to propel him down the long road to Tucson, and dark destinies beyond.
84 - Connor
“Flagstaff doesn’t look much like south Arizona,” says Lev. “Looks more like Denver or something.”
“Denver doesn’t look like Denver,” Connor tells him. “I was there once. It doesn’t have crazy mountain views like you’d think. The views here are better.” After being so long in the south Arizona desert, Connor is thankful for the dramatic change in scenery. With white-capped mountains to the north and an abundance of pine trees, he knows they can’t be too far from the town of Happy Jack and the dead harvest camp, but he tries not to think about that. The past is the past.
They’ve stopped at a diner on historic Route 66, and, bucking the paranoia that the past year has infused them with, they have dinner in full view of anyone who cares to notice them. No one does.
Their car is a nondescript beige Honda that Connor hot-wired back in Phoenix, after ditching the Ford he hot-wired in Tucson, after ditching Nelson’s van. Anyone trying to track them would be hard-pressed to keep up with their transportation switcheroos.
The Rain Valley Diner boasts “the Best Burgers in the Southwest.” Connor hasn’t had food this good since before his parents signed his unwind order and his life turned upside down. As far as he’s concerned, the Rain Valley Diner has the best burgers in the world.
With one hand he eats his burger, and with the other, he does some information gathering on Nelson’s laptop, which the parts pirate was kind enough to leave for them in his van.
“Find out anything new?” Lev asks.
“It looks like Risa disappeared after the broadcast last night, and Proactive Citizenry wants her head. Not unwound, just her head. Like on a stake.”
“Ew.”
“And Hayden’s being charged with everything they can charge him with.”
“At least they can’t unwind him.”
“But they can unwind everyone else who got caught.”
The thought of the captured Whollies brings Connor waves of anger, chased by sadness that threatens to wash him down into the lightless places within himself. “I should have been able to save them. . . .”
“Hey, you did everything you could—and besides, they’re not unwound yet,” Lev reminds him. “Maybe what we do now can still make a difference for them.”
Connor closes the laptop. “Maybe . . . but what are we going to do now?”
They sit in a long, uncomfortable silence, doing nothing but eating, because that’s easier than answering the question. No plans, no destination, no idea what direction to go from here other than “away.” Connor’s first instinct is to find Risa, but he knows that, like himself, she’ll be completely off radar. He wouldn’t even know where to start looking.
“I could take you to the Cavenaugh mansion,” Lev suggests. “You’d be safe there.”
“Safe would be nice for once, but that’s not happening. Besides, didn’t you bail from there?”
“Yeah, well, if I come back with the one and only Akron AWOL, I think they’ll forgive me.”
“Keep your voice down!” Connor looks around—they’ve chosen a corner booth that’s relatively secluded, but it’s not that big of a diner, and voices carry.
“Maybe we oughta check out that ‘You-Tub’ place, get a Jacuzzi, and turn into a couple of spa potatoes. We deserve some downtime.”
He knows Lev is kidding, but there’s something about what he said that triggers a thought. It’s a small thought at first, but it grows quickly. An inkling becomes a hunch, becomes an idea, becomes a revelation, and Connor flips open the laptop again, clicking and typing furiously.