Unwind

32. The Admiral

The blazing sun bakes the Arizona hardpan by day, and the temperature plunges at night. More than four thousand planes from every era of aviation history shine in the heat of that sun. From cruising altitude, the rows of planes look like crop lines, a harvest of abandoned technology.

#1) YOU ARRIVED HERE BY NECESSITY. YOU STAY HERE BY CHOICE.

From way up there you can’t see that some of those grounded jets are occupied. Thirty-three, to be exact. Spy satellites can catch the activity, but catching it and noticing it are two different things. CIA data analysts have far more pressing things to look for than a band of refugee Unwinds. This is what the Admiral’s counting on—but just in case, the rules in the Graveyard are strict. All activity takes place in the fuselage or under the wings, unless it’s absolutely necessary to go out into the open. The heat helps enforce the edict.

#2) SURVIVING HAS EARNED YOU THE RIGHT TO BE RESPECTED.

The Admiral doesn’t exactly own the Graveyard, but his management is undisputed, and he answers to no one but himself. A combination of business sense, favors owed, and a military willing to do anything to get rid of him are what made such a sweet deal possible.

#3) MY WAY IS THE ONLY WAY.

The Graveyard is a thriving business. The Admiral buys decommissioned airplanes and sells the parts, or even resells them whole. Most business is done online; the Admiral is able to acquire about one retired jet a month. Of course, each one arrives loaded with a secret cargo of Unwinds. That’s the real business of the Graveyard, and business has been good.

#4) YOUR LIFE IS MY GIFT TO YOU. TREAT IT LIKE ONE.

Buyers do, on occasion, come to inspect or to pick up merchandise, but there’s always plenty of warning. From the time they enter the gate, it’s five miles to the yard itself. It gives the kids more than enough time to disappear like gremlins into the machinery. These types of business-related visitors come only about once a week. There are people who wonder what the Admiral does with all the rest of his time. He tells them he’s building a wildlife preserve.

#5) YOU ARE BETTER THAN THOSE WHO WOULD UNWIND YOU. RISE TO THE OCCASION.

There are only three adults in the Admiral’s employ; two office workers stationed in a trailer far from the Unwinds, and a helicopter pilot. The pilot goes by the name of Cleaver, and he has two jobs. The first is to tour important buyers around the lot in style. The second is to take the Admiral on trips around the Graveyard once a week. Cleaver is the only employee who knows about the hoard of Unwinds sequestered in the far reaches of the lot. He knows, but he’s paid more than enough to keep quiet; and besides, the Admiral trusts Cleaver implicitly. One must trust one’s personal pilot.

#6) EVERYONE IN THE GRAVEYARD CONTRIBUTES. NO EXCEPTIONS.

The real work in the yard is done by the Unwinds. There are whole teams specially designated to strip the jets, sort parts, and get them ready for sale. It’s just like any other junkyard, but on a larger scale. Not all the jets get stripped.

Some remain untouched, if the Admiral thinks he can resell them whole. Some are retooled as living quarters for the kids who are, both literally and figuratively, under his wing.

#7) TEENAGE REBELLION IS FOR SUBURBAN SCHOOLCHILDREN. GET OVER IT.

The kids are grouped in teams best suited for their jobs, their ages, and their personal needs. A lifetime of experience molding military boeufs into a coherent fighting force has prepared the Admiral for creating a functional society out of angry, troubled kids.

#8) HORMONES WILL NOT RULE MY DESERT.

Girls are never grouped with boys.

#9) AT EIGHTEEN YOU CEASE TO BE MY CONCERN.

The Admiral has a list of his ten supreme rules, posted in each and every plane where kids live and work. The kids call them “The Ten Demandments.” He doesn’t care what they call them, as long as each and every one of them knows the list by heart.

#10) MAKE SOMETHING OF YOURSELF. THIS IS AN ORDER.

It’s a challenge keeping almost four hundred kids healthy, hidden, and whole. But the Admiral has never walked away from a challenge. And his motivation for doing this, like his name, is something he prefers to keep to himself.

33. Risa

For Risa, the first days in the Graveyard are harsh and seem to last forever.

Her residency begins with an exercise in humility.

Every new arrival is required to face a tribunal: three seventeen-year-olds sitting behind a desk in the gutted shell of a wide-bodied jet. Two boys and a girl.

These three, together with Amp and Jeeves, who Risa met when she first stepped off the plane, make up the elite group of five everyone calls “the Goldens.” They’re the Admiral’s five most trusted kids—and therefore the ones in charge.

By the time they get to Risa, they’ve already processed forty kids.

“Tell us about yourself,” says the boy on the right. Starboard Boy, she calls him, since, after all, they’re in a vessel. “What do you know, and what can you do?”

The last tribunal Risa faced was back at StaHo, when she was sentenced to be unwound. She can tell these three are bored and don’t care what she says, just as long as they can get on to the next one. She finds herself hating them, just as she hated the headmaster that day he tried to explain why her membership in the human race had been revoked.

The girl, who sits in the middle, must read her feelings, because she smiles and says, “Don’t worry, this isn’t a test—we just want to help you find where you’ll fit in here.” It’s an odd thing to say, since not fitting in is every Unwind’s problem.

Risa takes a deep breath. “I was a music student at StaHo,” she says, then immediately regrets telling them she’s from a state home. Even among Unwinds there’s prejudice and pecking orders. Sure enough, Starboard leans back, crossing his arms in clear disapproval, but the port-side boy says: “I’m a Ward too. Florida StaHo 18.”

“Ohio 23.”

“What instrument do you play?” the girl asks.

“Classical piano.”

“Sorry,” says Starboard. “We’ve got enough musicians, and none of the planes came with a piano.”

“ ‘Survival has earned me the right to be respected,’ ” Risa says. “Isn’t that one of the Admiral’s rules? I don’t think he’d like your attitude.”

Starboard squirms. “Can we just get on with this?”

The girl offers an apologetic grin. “As much as I hate to admit it, in the here and now, there are other things we need before a virtuoso. What else can you do?”

“Just give me a job and I’ll do it,” Risa says, trying to get this over with. “That’s what you’re going to do anyway, right?”

“Well, they always need help in the galley,” says Starboard. “Especially after meals.”

The girl gives Risa a long, pleading look, perhaps hoping that Risa will come up with something better for herself, but all Risa says is “Fine. Dishwasher. Am I done here?”

She turns to leave, doing her best to douse her disgust. The next kid comes in as she’s heading out. He looks awful. His nose is swollen and purple. His shirt is caked with dried blood, and both his nostrils have started bleeding fresh.

“What happened to you?”

He looks at her, sees who it is, and says, “Your boyfriend—that’s what happened to me. And he’s gonna pay.”

Risa could ask him a dozen questions about that, but the kid’s bleeding all over his shirt, and the first priority is to stop it. He tips his head back.

“No,” Risa tells him. “Lean forward, otherwise you’ll gag on your own blood.”

The kid listens. The tribunal of three come out from behind their desk to see what they can do, but Risa has it under control.

“Pinch it like this,” she tells him. “You need to be patient with this kind of thing.” She shows the kid exactly how to pinch his nose to stem the flow of blood.

Then, once the bleeding stops, Port-side comes over to her and says, “Nice work.”

She’s immediately promoted from dishwasher to medic. Funny, but it’s indirectly Connor’s doing, since he’s the one who broke that kid’s nose in the first place.

As for the kid with the bloody nose, he gets assigned to dish washing.

The first few days, actually trying to act like a medic without any real training is terrifying. There are other kids in the medical jet who seem to know a lot more, but she quickly comes to realize they were thrown into this just like she was, when they first arrived.

“You’ll do fine. You’re a natural,” the senior medic, who is all of seventeen, tells her. He’s right. Once she gets used to the idea, handling first aid, standard illnesses, and even suturing simple wounds becomes as familiar to her as playing the piano. The days begin to pass quickly, and before she realizes it, she’s been there a month. Each day that goes by adds to her sense of security. The Admiral was an odd bird, but he’d done something no one else had been able to do for her since she’d left StaHo. He’d given her back her right to exist.

34. Connor

Like Risa, Connor finds his niche by accident. Connor never considered himself mechanically capable, but there are few things he can stand less than a bunch of morons standing around looking at something that doesn’t work and wondering who’s going to fix it. During that first week, while Risa’s off learning how to be an exceptionally good fake doctor, Connor decides to figure out the workings of a fried air-conditioning unit, then find replacement parts from one of the junk piles and get it working again.

He soon comes to realize it’s the same way with every other broken thing he comes across. Sure, it began with trial and error, but the errors become fewer and fewer as the days go by. There are plenty of other kids who claim to be mechanics, and are really good at explaining why things won’t work. Connor, on the other hand, actually fixes them.

It quickly gets him reassigned from trash duty to the repair crew, and since there are endless things to repair, it keeps his mind off of other things . . . such as how little he gets to see Risa in the Admiral’s tightly structured world . . . and how quickly Roland is advancing through the social ranks of the place.

Roland has managed to get himself one of the best assignments in the Graveyard. By working the angles and applying plenty of flattery, he’s been taken on as the pilot’s assistant. Mostly, he just keeps the helicopter cleaned and fueled, but the assignment reeks of an apprenticeship.

“He’s teaching me how to fly it,” he overhears Roland tell a bunch of other kids one day. Connor shudders to think of Roland behind the controls of a helicopter, but many kids are impressed by Roland. His age gives him seniority, and his manipulations gain him either fear or respect from a surprising number of others. Roland draws his negative energy from the kids around him, and there are a lot of kids here for him to draw from.

Social manipulation is not one of Connor’s strengths. Even among his own team, he’s a bit of a mystery. Kids know not to tread on him, because he has a low tolerance for irritation and idiocy. But there’s no one they’d rather have on their side than Connor.

“People like you because you’ve got integrity,” Hayden tells him. “Even when you’re being an ass.”

Connor has to laugh at that. Him? Integrity? There have been plenty of people in Connor’s life who would think differently. But on the other hand, he’s changing. He’s been getting into fewer fights. Maybe it’s because there’s more room to breathe here than in the warehouse. Or maybe he’s been working out his brain enough for it to successfully muscle his impulses into line. A lot of that has to do with Risa, because every time he forces himself to think before acting, it’s her voice in his head telling him to slow down. He wants to tell her, but she’s always so busy in the medical jet—and you don’t just go to somebody and say, “I’m a better person because you’re in my head.”

She’s also still in Roland’s head, and that worries Connor. At first Risa had been a tool to provoke Connor into a fight, but now Roland sees her as a prize.

Now, instead of using brute strength against her he tries to charm her at every turn.

“You’re not actually falling for him, are you?” he asks her one day, on one of the rare occasions he can get her alone.

“I’ll pretend you didn’t just ask that,” she tells him in disgust. But Connor has reasons to wonder.

“On that first night here, he offered you his blanket, and you accepted it,” he points out.

“Only because I knew it would make him cold.”

“And when he offers you his food, you take it.”

“Because it means he goes hungry.”

It’s coolly logical. Connor finds it amazing that she can put her emotions aside and be as calculating as Roland, beating him at his own game. Another reason for Connor to admire her.

“Work call!”

It happens about once a week beneath the meeting canopy—the only structure in the entire graveyard that isn’t part of a plane, and the only place large enough to gather all 423 kids. Work call. A chance to get out into the real world. A chance to have a life. Sort of.

The Admiral never attends, but there are video feeds from the meeting canopy, just as there are feeds all over the yard, so everyone knows he’s watching.

Whether or not every camera is constantly monitored, no one knows, but the potential for being seen is always there. Connor did not care for the Admiral the first day he met him. The sight of all those video cameras shortly thereafter made Connor like him even less. It seems each day there’s something to add to his general feeling of disgust with the man.

Amp leads the work call meeting with his megaphone and clipboard. “A man in Oregon needs a team of five to clear cut a few acres of forest,” Amp announces.

“You’ll be given room and board, and taught to use the tools of the trade. The job should take a few months, and at the end you’ll get new identities. Eighteen-year old identities.”

Amp doesn’t let them know the salary, because there is none. The Admiral gets paid, though. He gets paid a purchase price.

“Any takers?”

There are always takers. Sure enough, more than a dozen hands go up.

Sixteen-year-olds, mostly. Seventeens are too close to eighteen to make it worth their while, and younger kids are too intimidated by the prospect.

“Report to the Admiral after this meeting. He’ll make the final decision as to who goes.”

Work call infuriates Connor. He never puts his hand up, even if it’s something he might actually want to do. “The Admiral’s using us,” he says to the kids around him. “Don’t you see that?”

Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden’s there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. “I’d rather be used whole than in pieces,” Hayden says.

Amp looks at his clipboard and holds up the megaphone again.

“Housecleaning services,” he says. “Three are needed, female preferred. No false IDs, but the location is secure and remote—which means you’ll be safe from the Juvey-cops until you turn eighteen.”

Connor won’t even look. “Please tell me no one raised their hand.”

“About six girls—all seventeen years old, it looks like,” says Hayden. “I guess no one wants to be a house-girl for more than a year.”

“This place isn’t a refuge, it’s a slave market. Why doesn’t anyone see that?”

“Who says they don’t see it? It’s just that unwinding makes slavery look good. It’s always the lesser of two evils.”

“I don’t see why there have to be any evils at all.”

As the meeting breaks up, Connor feels a hand on his shoulder. He thinks it must be a friend, but it’s not. It’s Roland. It’s such a surprise, it takes Connor a moment before he reacts. He shakes Roland’s hand off. “Something you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“Don’t you have a helicopter to wash?”

Roland smiles at that. “Less washing, more flying. Cleaver made me his unofficial copilot.”

“Cleaver must have a death wish.” Connor doesn’t know who he’s more disgusted with: Roland, or the pilot for being suckered in by him.

Roland looks around at the thinning crowd. “The Admiral’s got some racket going here, doesn’t he?” he says. “Most of the losers here don’t care. But it bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Your point?”

“Just that you’re not the only one who thinks the Admiral needs some . . . retraining.”

Connor doesn’t like where this is going. “What I think of the Admiral is my business.”

“Of course it is. Have you seen his teeth, by the way?”

“What about them?”

“Pretty obvious that they’re not his. I hear he keeps a picture of the kid he got them from in his office. An Unwind like us, who, thanks to him, never made it to eighteen. Makes you wonder how much more of him comes from us. Makes you wonder if there’s anything left of the original Admiral at all.”

This is too much information to process here and now—and considering the source, Connor doesn’t want to process it at all. But he knows he will.

“Roland, let me make this as clear to you as I can. I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

“I can’t stand you, either,” Roland says, then he points to the Admiral’s jet. “But right now, we’ve got the same enemy.”

Roland strolls off before anyone else can take notice of their conversation, leaving Connor with a heaviness in his stomach. The very idea that he and Roland could in any way be on the same side makes him feel like he swallowed something rancid.

For a week the seed that Roland planted in Connor’s brain grows. It’s fertile ground, because Connor already distrusted the Admiral. Now, every time he sees the man, Connor notices something. His teeth are perfect. They’re not the teeth of an aging war veteran. The way he looks at people—looking into their eyes—it’s as if he were sizing those eyes up, looking for a pair that might suit him. And those kids that disappear on work calls—since they never come back, who’s to know where they really go? Who’s to say they don’t all get sent off to be unwound? The Admiral says his goal is to save Unwinds, but what if he’s got an entirely different agenda? These thoughts keep Connor awake at night, but he won’t share them with anyone, because once he does, it aligns him with Roland.

And that’s an alliance he never wants to make.

During their fourth week in the Graveyard, while Connor is still building his case against the Admiral in his own mind, a plane arrives. It’s the first one since the old FedEx jet that brought them here, and like that jet, this one is packed full of live cargo. While the five Goldens march the new arrivals from their jet, Connor works on a faulty generator. He watches them with mild interest as they pass, wondering if any of them would be more mechanically skilled than him and bump him into a less enviable position.

Then, toward the back of the line of kids is a face he thinks he recognizes.

Someone from home? No. Someone else. All at once it comes to him who this is.

It’s the boy he was sure had been unwound weeks ago. It’s the kid he kidnapped for his own good. It’s Lev!

Connor drops his wrench and runs toward him, but gains control before he gets there, burying his mixed flood of feelings beneath a calm saunter. This is the kid who betrayed him. This is the kid he once swore he’d never forgive. And yet the thought of him unwound had been too much to bear. But Lev hasn’t been unwound—he’s right here, marching off to the supply jet. Connor is thrilled.

Connor is furious.

Lev doesn’t see him yet—and that’s fine, because it gives Connor some time to take in what he sees. This is no longer the clean-cut tithe he pulled out of his parents’ car more than two months before. This kid has long, unkempt hair and a hardened look about him. This kid isn’t in tithing whites but wears torn jeans and a dirty red T-shirt. Connor wants to let him pass, just so he can have time to process this new image, but Lev sees him, and gives him a grin right away. This is also different—because during that brief time they knew each other, Lev had never been pleased by Connor’s presence.

Lev steps toward him.

“Stay in line!” orders Amp. “The supply jet’s this way.”

But Connor waves Amp off. “It’s okay—I know this one.”

Amp reluctantly gives in. “Make sure he gets to the supply jet.” Then he returns to herding the others.

“So, how are things?” says Lev. Just like that. How are things. You’d think they were buds back from summer vacation.

Connor knows what he has to do. It’s the only thing that will ever make things right between him and Lev. Once again, it’s instinctive action without time for thought. Instinctive, not irrational. Impassioned, but not impulsive. Connor has come to know the difference.

He hauls off and punches Lev in the eye. Not hard enough to knock him down, but hard enough to snap his head halfway around and give him a nasty shiner. Before Lev can react, Connor says, “That’s for what you did to us.” Then, before Lev can respond, he does something else sudden and unexpected. He pulls Lev toward him and hugs him tightly—the way he hugged his own little brother last year when he took first place in the district pentathlon. “I’m really, really glad you’re alive, Lev.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

He lets Lev go before it starts feeling awkward, and when he does, he can see Lev’s eye is already beginning to swell. And an idea occurs to him. “C’mon—I’ll take you over to the medical jet. I know someone who’ll take care of that eye.”

It isn’t until later that night that Connor gets an inkling of how much Lev has truly changed. Connor is shaken awake sometime during the night. He opens his eyes to a flashlight shining in his face, so close the light hurts.

“Hey! What is this?”

“Shhh,” says a voice behind the flashlight. “It’s Lev.”

Lev should have been in the newcomers’ jet—that’s where all the kids go until they get sorted into their teams. There are strict orders that no one is to be out at night. Apparently Lev is no longer a boy bound by rules.

“What are you doing here?” Connor says. “Do you know the trouble you could be in?” He still can’t see Lev’s face behind that flashlight.

“You hit me this afternoon,” says Lev.

“I hit you because I owed that to you.”

“I know. I deserved it, and so it’s okay,” says Lev. “But don’t you ever hit me again, or you’ll regret it.”

Although Connor has no intention of ever punching Lev out again, he does not respond well to ultimatums.

“I’ll hit you,” says Connor, “if you deserve it.”

Silence from behind the flashlight. Then Lev says, “Fair enough. But you better make sure that I do.”

The light goes off. Lev leaves, but Connor can’t sleep. Every Unwind has a story you don’t want to know. He supposes that Lev now has his.

The Admiral calls for Connor two days later. Apparently he has something in need of repair. His residence is an old 747 that was used as Air Force One years before any of the kids here were born. The engines had been removed and the presidential seal painted over, but you could still see a shadow of the emblem beneath the paint.

Connor climbs the stairs with a bag of tools, hoping that whatever it is, he can get in and out quickly. Like everyone else, he has a morbid curiosity about the man, and he wonders what an old presidential jet looks like on the inside. But being under the Admiral’s scrutiny scares the hell out of him.

He steps through the hatch to find a couple of kids tidying up. They’re younger kids that Connor doesn’t know; he thought the Goldens might be in here, but they’re nowhere to be seen. As for the jet, it’s not nearly as luxurious as Connor had expected. The leather seats have tears, the carpet is almost worn through. It looks more like an old motor home than Air Force One.

“Where’s the Admiral?”

The Admiral steps out from the deeper recesses of the jet. Although Connor’s eyes are still adjusting to the light, he can see the Admiral is holding a weapon. “Connor! I’m glad you could make it.” Connor winces at the sight of the gun—and at the realization the Admiral knows him by name.

“What do you need that for?” Connor asks, pointing at the gun.

“Just cleaning it,” says the Admiral. Connor wonders why he would still have a clip in a gun he was cleaning, but decides it’s best not to ask. The Admiral puts the gun into a drawer and locks it. Then he sends the two kids off and seals the hatch behind them. This is exactly the kind of situation Connor feared most, and he can feel a rush of adrenaline begin to tingle in his fingers and toes. His awareness becomes heightened.

“You need me to fix something sir?”

“Yes, I do. My coffeemaker.”

“Why don’t you just take one from the other planes?”

“Because,” says the Admiral calmly, “I prefer to have this one repaired.”

He leads Connor through the jet, which seems even larger on the inside than out, filled with cabins, conference rooms, and studies.

“You know, your name comes up quite often,” the Admiral says.

This is news to him, and not welcome news, either. “Why?”

“First, for the things you repair. Then for the fighting.”

Connor senses a reprimand on the way. Yes, he’s had fewer fights here than usual, but the Admiral is a man of zero tolerance. “Sorry about the fighting.”

“Don’t be. Oh, there’s no question that you’re a loose cannon, but more often than not you’re aimed in the right direction.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“From what I can see, each fight you’ve engaged in has resolved one problem or another. Even the fights you lose. So, even then, you’re fixing things.”

He offers Connor that white-toothed smile. Connor shudders. He tries to hide it, but he’s sure the Admiral sees it.

They come to a small dining room and galley. “Here we are,” says the Admiral. The old coffeemaker sits on a counter. It’s a simple device. Connor’s about to pull out a screwdriver to open up the back when he notices that it’s not plugged in. When he plugs it in, the light comes on, and it starts to gurgle out coffee into the little glass pot.

“Well, how about that,” says the Admiral, with another of his terrible grins.

“I’m not here for the coffeemaker, am I?”

“Have a seat,” the Admiral says.

“I’d rather not.”

“Have one anyway.”

That’s when Connor sees the picture. There are several photos up on the wall, but the one that captures Connor’s attention is of a smiling kid about his age. The smile looks familiar. In fact, it looks exactly like the Admiral’s smile. It’s just like Roland had said!

Now Connor wants to bolt, but Risa’s voice is in his head again, telling him to scan his options. Sure, he can run. Chances are, he can get to the hatch before the Admiral can stop him—but opening the hatch won’t be easy. He could hit the Admiral with one of his tools. That might give him enough time to get away. But where would he go? Beyond the Graveyard there’s just desert, desert, and more desert. In the end, he realizes his best choice is to do as the Admiral says. He sits down.

“You don’t like me, do you?” asks the Admiral.

Connor won’t meet his gaze. “You saved my life by bringing me here. . . .”

“You will not avoid answering this question. You don’t like me, do you?”

Connor shudders once more, and this time doesn’t even try to hide it. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“I want to know your reasons.”

Connor lets out a single rueful chuckle as his answer.

“You think I’m a slave dealer,” says the Admiral. “And that I’m using these Unwinds for my own profit?”

“If you know what I’m going to say, why ask me?”

“I want you to look at me.”

But Connor doesn’t want to see the man’s eyes—or, more accurately, doesn’t want the Admiral seeing his.

“I said look at me!”

Reluctantly, Connor lifts his eyes and fixes them on the Admiral’s. “I’m looking.”

“I believe you are a smart kid. Now I want you to think. Think! I am a decorated Admiral of the United States Navy. Do you think I need to be selling children to earn money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think! Do I care about money and lavish things? I do not live in a mansion. I do not vacation on a tropical island. I spend my time in the stinking desert living in a rotting plane 365 days a year. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know!”

“I think you do.”

Connor stands up now. In spite of the Admiral’s tone of voice, he feels less and less intimidated by him. Whether it’s wise or whether it’s foolhardy, Connor decides to give the Admiral what he’s asking for. “You do it because of the power. You do it because it lets you keep hundreds of helpless kids in the palm of your hand. And you do it because you can pick and choose who gets unwound—and which parts you’ll get.”

The Admiral is caught off guard by this. Suddenly, he’s on the defensive.

“What did you say?”

“It’s obvious! All the scars. And those teeth! They’re not the ones you were born with, are they? So, what is it you want from me? Is it my eyes, or my ears? Or maybe it’s my hands that can fix things so well. Is that why I’m here? Is it?”

The Admiral’s voice is a predatory growl. “You’ve gone too far.”

“No, you’ve gone too far.” The fury in the Admiral’s eyes should terrify Connor, but his cannon has come loose, and it’s beyond locking down. “We come to you in desperation! What you do to us is . . . is . . . obscene!”

“So I’m a monster, then!”

“Yes!”

“And my teeth are the proof.”

“Yes!”

“Then you can have them!”

Then the Admiral does something beyond imagining. He reaches into his mouth, grabs onto his own jaw, and rips the teeth out of his mouth. His eyes blazing at Connor, he hurls the hard pink clump in his hand down on the table, where it clatters in two horrible pieces.

Connor screams in shock. It’s all there. Two rows of white teeth. Two sets of pink gums. But there’s no blood. Why is there no blood? There’s no blood in the Admiral’s mouth, either. His face seems to have collapsed onto itself—his mouth is just a floppy, puckered hole. Connor doesn’t know which is worse—the Admiral’s face, or the bloodless teeth.

“They’re called dentures,” the Admiral says. “They used to be common in the days before unwinding. But who wants false teeth when, for half the price, you can get real ones straight from a healthy Unwind? I had to get these made in Thailand—no one does it here anymore.”

“I . . . I don’t understand. . . .” Connor looks at the false teeth, and jerks his head almost involuntarily toward the picture of the smiling boy.

The Admiral follows his gaze. “That,” says the Admiral, “was my son. His teeth looked very much like my own at that age, so they designed my dentures using his dental records.”

It’s a relief to hear an explanation other than the one Roland gave. “I’m sorry.”

The Admiral neither accepts nor rejects Connor’s apology. “The money I get for placing Unwinds into service positions is used to feed the ones who remain, and to pay for the safe houses and warehouses that get runaway Unwinds off the street. It pays for the aircraft that get them here, and pays off anyone who needs bribery to look the other way. After that, the money that remains goes into the pockets of each Unwind on the day they turn eighteen and are sent out into this unforgiving world. So you see, I may still be, by your definition of the word, a slave dealer—but I am not quite the monster you think I am.”

Connor looks to the dentures that still sit there, glistening, on the table. He thinks to grab them and hand them back to the Admiral as a peace offering, but decides the prospect is simply too disgusting. He lets the Admiral do it himself.

“Do you believe the things I’ve told you today?” the Admiral asks.

Connor considers it, but finds his compass is out of whack. Truth and rumors, facts and lies are all spinning in his head so wildly he still can’t say what is what. “I think so,” says Connor.

“Know so,” says the Admiral. “Because you will see things today more awful than an old man’s false teeth. I need to know that my trust in you is not misplaced.”

Half a mile away, in aisle fourteen, space thirty-two, sits a FedEx jet that has not moved since it was towed here more than a month ago.

The Admiral has Connor drive him to the jet in his golf cart—but not before retrieving the pistol from his cabinet as “a precaution.”

Beneath the starboard wing of the FedEx jet are five mounds of dirt marked by crude headstones. These are the five who suffocated in transit. Their presence here makes this truly a graveyard.

The hatch to the hold is open. Once they’ve stopped, the Admiral says, “Climb inside and find crate number 2933. Then come out again, and we’ll talk.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’ve already been.” The Admiral hands him a flashlight. “You’ll need this.”

Connor stands on the roof of the cart, climbs through the cargo hatch, and turns on the flashlight. The moment he does, he has a shiver of memory. It looks exactly the same as it did a month ago. Open crates, and overtones of urine. The afterbirth of their arrival. He works his way deeper into the jet, passing the crate that he, Hayden, Emby, and Diego had occupied. Finally, he finds number 2933.

It was one of the first crates to be loaded. Its hatch is open just a crack. Connor pulls it all the way open, and shines his light in.

When he catches sight of what’s inside, he screams and reflexively lurches back, banging his head on the crate behind him. The Admiral could have warned him, but he hadn’t. Okay. Okay. I know what I saw. There’s nothing I can do about it. And nothing in there can hurt me. Still, he takes time to prepare himself before he looks in again.

There are five dead kids in the crate.

All seventeen-year-olds. There’s Amp, and Jeeves. Beside them are Kevin, Melinda, and Raul, the three kids who gave out jobs his first day there. All five of the Goldens. There are no signs of blood, no wounds. They could all be asleep except for the fact that Amp’s eyes are open and staring at nothing. Connor’s mind reels. Did the Admiral do this? Is he mad after all? But why would he? No, it has to have been someone else.

When Connor comes out into the light, the Admiral is paying his respects to the five kids already buried beneath the wing. He straightens the markers and evens out the mounds.

“They disappeared last night. I found them sealed in the crate this morning,” the Admiral tells him. “They suffocated, just like the first five did. It’s the same crate.”

“Who would do this?”

“Who, indeed,” says the Admiral. Satisfied with the graves, he turns to Connor. “Whoever it is took out the five most powerful kids . . . which means, whoever did this wants to systematically dismantle the power structure here, so that they can rise to the top of it more quickly.”

There’s only one Unwind Connor knows of who might be capable of this—but even so, he has a hard time believing Roland would do something this horrible.

“I was meant to discover them,” the Admiral says. “They left my golf cart here this morning so that I would. Make no mistake about it, Connor, this is an act of war. They have made a surgical strike. These five were my eyes and ears among the kids here. Now I have none.”

The Admiral takes a moment to look at the dark hole of the hold. “Tonight, you and I will come back here to bury them.”

Connor swallows hard at the prospect. He wonders who he pissed off in Heaven to get singled out to be the Admiral’s new lieutenant.

“We’ll bury them far away,” says the Admiral, “and we will tell no one that they’re dead. Because if word of it gets out, the culprits will have their first victory. If someone does start talking—and they will—we’ll track the rumors down to the guilty party.”

“And then what?” Connor asks.

“And then justice will be served. Until then, this must be our secret.”

As Connor chauffeurs him back to his plane, the Admiral makes his business with Connor clear. “I need a new set of eyes and ears. Someone to keep me abreast of the state of things among the Unwinds. And someone to ferret out the wolf in the herd. I’m asking you to do this for me.”

“So you want me to be a spy?”

“Whose side are you on? Are you on my side, or the side of whoever did this?”

Connor now knows why the Admiral brought him here and forced him to see this for himself. It’s one thing to be told, and another one entirely to discover the bodies. It makes it brutally clear to Connor where his allegiance must lie.

“Why me?” Connor has to ask.

The Admiral gives him his white-dentured smile. “Because you, my friend, are the least of all evils.”

The next morning, the Admiral makes an announcement that the Goldens were sent off to organize new safe houses. Connor watches Roland for a reaction—perhaps a grin, or a glance at one of his buddies. But there’s nothing. Roland gives no telltale sign that he knows what really happened to them. In fact, throughout the morning announcements he seems disinterested and distracted, like he can’t wait to get on with his day. There’s a good reason for that. Roland’s apprenticeship with Cleaver, the helicopter pilot, has been paying off. Over the past weeks Roland has learned to fly the helicopter like a pro, and when Cleaver isn’t around he offers free rides to those kids he feels deserve it. He says Cleaver doesn’t care, but more likely he just doesn’t know.

Connor had assumed that Roland would offer rides to his own inner circle of kids, but that’s not the case. Roland rewards work well done—even by kids he doesn’t know. He rewards loyalty to one’s team. He lets other kids vote on who should get a chance to do a flyby of the yard in the helicopter. In short, Roland acts as if he’s the one in charge, and not the Admiral.

When the Admiral is present, he feigns obedience, but when others are gathered around him—and there are always others gathered around Roland—he takes every opportunity to cut the man down. “The Admiral’s out of touch,” he would say. “He doesn’t know what it’s like to be one of us. He can’t possibly understand who we are and what we need.” And in groups of kids he’s already won over, he whispers his theories about the Admiral’s teeth, and his scars, and his diabolical plans for all of them. He spreads fear and distrust, using it to unite as many kids as he can.

Connor has to bite his lip to keep himself quiet when he hears Roland mouth off—because if he speaks out in defense of the Admiral, then Roland will know which side of the line he’s on.

There’s a recreation jet at the Graveyard, near the meeting tent. Inside there are TVs and electronics, and under its wings are pool tables, a pinball machine, and reasonably comfortable furniture. Connor proposed setting up a water mister, so that the area beneath the wings will stay at least a little bit cooler during the heat of the day. But even more importantly, Connor figures the project will allow him to be a fly on the wall, hearing conversations, cataloguing cliques, and performing general espionage. The problem is, Connor is never a fly on the wall. Instead, his work becomes the center of attention. Kids offer to help him like he’s Tom Sawyer painting a fence. They all keep seeing him as a leader when all he wants is to be ignored. He’s glad that he never told anyone he’s the so-called “Akron AWOL.” According to the current rumors, the Akron AWOL took on an entire legion of Juvey-cops, outsmarted the national guard, and liberated half a dozen harvest camps. He has enough attention from other kids without having to contend with that kind of reputation.

While Connor works to install the mister line, Roland keeps an eye on him from the pool table. He finally puts down the cue and comes over.

“You’re just a busy little worker bee, ain’t ya,” Roland says, loud enough for all the kids around to hear. Connor’s up on a stepladder, attaching mist piping to the underside of the wing. It allows him the satisfaction of carrying on this conversation while looking down on Roland. “I’m just trying to make life a little easier,” Connor says. “We need a mister down here—wouldn’t want anyone to suffocate in this heat.”

Roland keeps a cool poker face. “It looks like you’re the Admiral’s new golden boy, now that the others have left.” He looks around to make sure he has everyone’s attention. “I’ve seen you go up to his jet.”

“He needs things fixed, so I fix them,” says Connor. “That’s all.”

Then, before Roland can push his interrogation, Hayden speaks up from the pool table.

“Connor’s not the only one going up there,” Hayden says. “There’s kids going in and out all the time. Kids with food. Kids cleaning—and I hear he’s taken an interest in a certain mouth breather we all know and love.”

All eyes turn toward Emby, who has become a fixture at the pinball machine since he arrived. “What?”

“You’ve been up to the Admiral’s, haven’t you,” Hayden says. “Don’t deny it!”

“So?”

“So, what does he want? I’m sure we’d all like to know.”

Emby squirms, uncomfortable at the center of anyone’s attention. “He just wanted to know about my family and stuff.”

This is news to Connor. Perhaps the Admiral’s looking for someone else to help him ferret out the killer. True, Emby’s much less visible than Connor, but a fly on the wall shouldn’t actually be a fly on the wall.

“I know what it is,” says Roland. “He wants your hair.”

“Does not!”

“Yeah—his own hair is thinning, right? You got yourself a nice mop up there. The old man wants to scalp you, and send the rest of you to be unwound!”

“Shut up!”

Most of the kids laugh. Sure, it’s a joke, but Connor wonders how many think Roland might be right. Emby must suspect it himself, because he looks kind of sick. It makes Connor furious.

“That’s right, pick on Emby,” says Connor. “Show everyone just how low you are.” He climbs down off the ladder, facing Roland eye to eye. “Hey—did you notice Amp left his megaphone? Why don’t you take his place? You’re such a loudmouth, you’d be perfect for it.”

Roland’s response comes without the slightest smile. “I wasn’t asked.”

That night Connor and the Admiral have a secret meeting in his quarters, drinking coffee made by a machine rumored to be broken. They speak of Roland and Connor’s suspicions about him, but the Admiral is not satisfied.

“I don’t want suspicion, I want proof. I don’t want your feelings, I want evidence.” The Admiral adds some whiskey from a flask to his own coffee.

When Connor is done with his report, he gets up to leave, but the Admiral won’t let him. He pours Connor a second cup of coffee, which will surely keep him up all night—but then, he doubts he’ll be sleeping well tonight anyway.

“Very few people know what I’m about to tell you,” says the Admiral.

“So why tell me?”

“Because it serves my purposes for you to know.”

It’s an honest answer, but one that still keeps his motives hidden. Connor imagines he must have been very good in a war.

“When I was much younger,” begins the Admiral, “I fought in the Heartland War. The scars you so impertinently assumed were transplant scars came from a grenade.”

“Which side were you on?”

The Admiral gives Connor that scrutinizing look he’s so good at. “How much do you know about the Heartland War?”

Connor shrugs. “It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it.”

The Admiral waves his hand in disgust. “Textbooks sugar-coat it anyway. No one wants to remember how it really was. You asked which side I was on. The truth is, there were three sides in the war, not two. There was the Life Army, the Choice Brigade, and the remains of the American military, whose job it was to keep the other two sides from killing each other. That’s the side I was on. Unfortunately, we weren’t very successful. You see, a conflict always begins with an issue—a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn’t matter anymore, because now it’s about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.”

The Admiral pours a little more whiskey into his mug before he continues.

“There were dark days leading up to the war. Everything that we think defines right and wrong was being turned upside down. On one side, people were murdering abortion doctors to protect the right to life, while on the other side people were getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue. And everyone was selecting their leaders not by their ability to lead, but by where they stood on this single issue. It was beyond madness! Then the military fractured, both sides got hold of weapons of war, and two opinions became two armies determined to destroy each other. And then came the Bill of Life.”

The mention of it sends ice water down Connor’s spine. It never used to bother him, but things change once you become an Unwind.

“I was right there in the room when they came up with the idea that a pregnancy could be terminated retroactively once a child reaches the age of reason,” says the Admiral. “At first it was a joke—no one intended it to be taken seriously. But that same year the Nobel Prize went to a scientist who perfected neurografting—the technique that allows every part of a donor to be used in transplant.”

The Admiral takes a deep gulp of his coffee. Connor hasn’t had a bit of his second cup. The thought of swallowing anything right now is out of the question.

It’s all he can do to keep the first cup down.

“With the war getting worse,” says the Admiral, “we brokered a peace by bringing both sides to the table. Then we proposed the idea of unwinding, which would terminate unwanteds without actually ending their lives. We thought it would shock both sides into seeing reason—that they would stare at each other across the table and someone would blink. But nobody blinked. The choice to terminate without ending life—it satisfied the needs of both sides. The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences.”

The Admiral’s thoughts go far away for a moment, then he waves his hand.

“I’m sure you know the rest.”

Connor might not know all the particulars, but he knows the gist. “People wanted parts.”

“Demanded is more like it. A cancerous colon could be replaced with a healthy new one. An accident victim who would have died from internal injuries could get fresh organs. A wrinkled arthritic hand could be replaced by one fifty years younger. And all those new parts had to come from somewhere.” The Admiral paused for a moment to consider it. “Of course, if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened . . . but people like to keep what’s theirs, even after they’re dead. It didn’t take long for ethics to be crushed by greed. Unwinding became big business, and people let it happen.”

The Admiral glances over at the picture of his son. Even without the Admiral telling him, Connor realizes why—but he allows the Admiral the dignity of his confession.

“My son, Harlan, was a great kid. Smart. But he was troubled—you know the type.”

“I am the type,” says Connor, offering a slight grin.

The Admiral nods. “It was just about ten years ago. He got in with the wrong group of friends, got caught stealing. Hell, I was the same at his age—that’s why my parents first sent me to military school, to straighten me out. Only, for Harlan there was a different option. A more . . . efficient option.”

“You had him unwound.”

“As one of the fathers of the Unwind Accord, I was expected to set an example.” He presses his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, stemming off tears before they can flow. “We signed the order, then changed our minds. But it was already too late. They had taken Harlan right out of school to the harvest camp, and rushed him through. It had already been done.”

It had never occurred to Connor to consider the toll unwinding had on the ones who signed the order. He never thought he could have sympathy for a parent who could do that—or sympathy for one of the men who had made unwinding possible.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, and means it.

The Admiral stiffens up—sobers up—almost instantly. “You shouldn’t be. It’s only because of his unwinding that you’re all here. Afterward, my wife left me and formed a foundation in Harlan’s memory. I left the military, spent several years more drunk than I am now, and then, three years ago, I had The Big Idea. This place, these kids, are the result of it. To date I’ve saved more than a thousand kids from unwinding.”

Connor now understands why the Admiral was telling him these things. It was more than just a confession. It was a way of securing Connor’s loyalty—and it worked. The Admiral was a darkly obsessed man, but his obsession saved lives.

Hayden once said that Connor had integrity. That same integrity locks him firmly on the Admiral’s side, and so Connor holds up his mug. “To Harlan!” he says.

“To Harlan!” echoes the Admiral, and together they drink to his name. “Bit by bit I am making things right, Connor,” the Admiral says. “Bit by bit, and in more ways than one.”

35. Lev

Where Lev was between the time he left CyFi and his arrival at the Graveyard is less important than where his thoughts resided. They resided in places colder and darker than the many places he hid.

He had survived the month through a string of unpleasant compromises and crimes of convenience—whatever was necessary to keep himself alive. Lev quickly became street-smart, and survival-wise. They say it takes complete immersion in a culture to learn its language and its ways. It didn’t take him very long to learn the language of the lost.

Once he landed in the safe-house network, he quickly made it known that he was not a guy to be trifled with. He didn’t tell people he was a tithe. Instead, he told them his parents signed the order to have him unwound after he was arrested for armed robbery. It was funny to him, because he had never even touched a gun. It amazed him that the other kids couldn’t read the lie in his face—he had always been such a bad liar. But then, when he looked in the mirror, what he saw in his own eyes scared him.

By the time he reached the Graveyard, most kids knew enough to stay away from him. Which is exactly what he wanted.

The same night that the Admiral and Connor have their secret conference, Lev heads out into the oil-slick dark of the moonless night, keeping his flashlight off. His first night there he had successfully slipped out to find Connor, in order to set him straight about a few things. Since then, the bruise from Connor’s punch has faded, and they haven’t spoken of it again. He hasn’t spoken much to Connor at all, because Lev has other things on his mind.

Each night since then he’s tried to sneak away, but every time, he’s been caught and sent back. Now that the Admiral’s five watchdogs have left, though, the kids on sentry duty are getting lax. As Lev sneaks between the jets, he finds that a few of them are even asleep on the job. Stupid of the Admiral to send those other kids away without having anyone to replace them.

Once he’s far enough away he turns on his flashlight and tries to find his destination. It’s a destination told to him by a girl he had encountered a few weeks before. She was very much like him. He suspects he’ll meet others tonight who are very much like him as well.

Aisle thirty, space twelve. It’s about as far from the Admiral as you can get and still be in the Graveyard. The space is occupied by an ancient DC-10, crumbling to pieces in its final resting place. When Lev swings open the hatch and climbs in, he finds two kids inside, both of whom bolt upright at the sight of him and take defensive postures.

“My name’s Lev,” he says. “I was told to come here.”

He doesn’t know these kids, but that’s no surprise—he hasn’t been in the Graveyard long enough to know that many kids here. One is an Asian girl with pink hair. The other kid has a shaved head and is covered in tattoos.

“And who told you to come here?” asks the flesh-head.

“This girl I met in Colorado. Her name’s Julie-Ann.”

Then a third figure comes out from the shadows. It’s not a kid but an adult—midtwenties, maybe. He’s smiling. The guy has greasy red hair, a straggly goatee to match, and a boney face with sunken cheeks. It’s Cleaver, the helicopter pilot.

“So Julie-Ann sent you!” he says. “Cool! How is she?”

Lev takes a moment to think about his answer. “She did her job,” Lev tells him.

Cleaver nods. “Well, it is what it is.”

The other two kids introduce themselves. The flesh-head is Blaine, the girl is Mai.

“What about that boeuf who flies the helicopter with you?” Lev asks Cleaver. “Is he part of this too?”

Mai gives a disgusted laugh. “Roland? Not on your life!”

“Roland isn’t exactly . . . the material for our little group,” Cleaver says. “So, did you come here to give us the good news about Julie-Ann, or are you here for another reason?”

“I’m here because I want to be here.”

“You say it,” says Cleaver, “but we still don’t know you’re for real.”

“Tell us about yourself,” says Mai.

Lev prepares to give them the armed-robbery version, but before he opens his mouth, he changes his mind. The moment calls for honesty. This must begin with the truth. So he tells them everything, from the moment he was kidnapped by Connor to his time with CyFi and the weeks after that. When he’s done, Cleaver seems very, very pleased.

“So, you’re a tithe! That’s great. You don’t even know how great that is!”

“What now?” asks Lev. “Am I in, or not?”

The others become quiet. Serious. He feels some sort of ritual is about to begin.

“Tell me, Lev,” says Cleaver. “How much do you hate the people who were going to unwind you?”

“A lot.”

“Sorry, that’s not good enough.”

Lev closes his eyes, digs down, and thinks about his parents. He thinks about what they planned to do to him, and how they made him actually want it.

“How much do you hate them?” Cleaver asks again.

“Totally and completely,” answers Lev.

“And how much do you hate the people who would take parts of you and make them parts of themselves?”

“Totally and completely.”

“And how much do you want to make them, and everyone else in the world, pay?”

“Totally and completely.” Someone has to pay for the unfairness of it all.

Everyone has to pay. He’ll make them.

“Good,” says Cleaver.

Lev is amazed by the depth of his own fury—but he’s becoming less and less frightened of it. He tells himself that’s a good thing.

“Maybe he’s for real,” says Blaine.

If Lev makes this commitment, he knows there’s no turning back. “One thing I need to know,” Lev asks, “because Julie-Ann . . . she wasn’t very clear about it. I want to know what you believe.”

“What we believe?” says Mai. She looks at Blaine, and Blaine laughs.

Cleaver, however, puts his hand up to quiet him. “No—no, it’s a good question. A real question. It deserves a real answer. If you’re asking if we have a cause, we don’t, so get that out of your head.” Cleaver gestures broadly, his hands and arms filling the space around him. “Causes are old news. We believe in randomness. Earthquakes! Tornados! We believe in forces of nature—and we are forces of nature. We are havoc. We’re chaos. We mess with the world.”

“And we messed pretty good with the Admiral, didn’t we,” says Blaine slyly.

Cleaver throws him a sharp gaze, and Mai actually looks scared. It’s almost enough to give Lev second thoughts.

“How did you mess with the Admiral?”

“It’s done,” says Mai, her body language both anxious and angry. “We messed, and now it’s done. We don’t talk about things that are done. Right?”

Cleaver gives her a nod, and she seems to relax a bit. “The point is,” says Cleaver, “it doesn’t matter who or what we mess with, just as long as we mess. The way we see it, the world doesn’t move if things don’t get shaken up—am I right?”

“I guess.”

“Well, then, we are the movers and shakers.” Cleaver smiles and points a finger at Lev. “The question is, are you one too? Do you have what it takes to be one of us?”

Lev takes a long look at these three. These are the kinds of people his parents would hate. He could join them just out of spite, but that’s not enough—not this time. There must be more. Yet, as he stands there, Lev realizes that there is more. It’s invisible, but it’s there, like the deadly charge lurking in a downed power line. Anger, but not just anger: a will to act on it as well.

“All right, I’m in.” Back at home Lev always felt part of something larger than himself. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he missed that feeling.

“Welcome to the family,” says Cleaver, and gives him a slap on the back so painful, he sees stars.

36. Risa

Risa is the first to notice something’s wrong with Connor. Risa is the first to care that something’s wrong with Lev.

In a moment of selfishness, she finds herself aggravated by it, because things are going so well for her now. She finally has a place to be. She wishes this could remain her sanctuary beyond her eighteenth birthday, because in the outside world she’d never be able to do the things she’s doing now. It would be practicing medicine without a license—fine when you’re in survival mode, but not in the civilized world. Perhaps, after she turned eighteen, she could go to college, and medical school—but that takes money, connections, and she’d have to face even more competition than in her music classes. She wonders if maybe she could join the military and become an Army medic. You don’t have to be a boeuf to be in a medical unit. Whatever her choice ends up being, the important thing is that there could be a choice. For the first time in a long time she can see a future for herself. With all these good thoughts in her life, the last thing she wants is something that will shoot it all down.

This is what fills Risa’s mind as she makes her way to one of the study jets.

The Admiral has three of his most accessible and well-appointed jets set aside as study spaces, complete with libraries, computers, and the resources to learn anything you want to learn. “This is not a school,” the Admiral told them shortly after they arrived. “There are no teachers, there are no exams.” Oddly, it’s precisely that lack of expectation that keeps the study jets full most of the time.

Risa’s duties start shortly after dawn, and it has become her habit to begin her day at one of the study jets, since at that time of the morning she’s usually the only one there. She likes it that way, because the things she wants to learn make other kids uncomfortable. It’s not the subject matter that bothers them, it’s the fact that Risa’s the one studying it. Anatomy and medical texts, mostly. Kids assume that just because she works in the medical jet, she knows all there is to know. It disturbs them to see her actually having to learn it.

When she arrives today, however, she discovers Connor already there. She stops at the hatch, surprised. He’s so absorbed in whatever he’s reading that he doesn’t hear her come in. She takes a moment to look at him. She’s never seen him so tired—not even when they were on the run. Still, she’s thrilled to see him.

They have both been so busy, there hasn’t been much time to spend together.

“Hi, Connor.”

Startled, he looks up quickly and slams his book closed. When he realizes who it is, he relaxes. “Hi, Risa.” By the time she sits down beside him, he’s smiling, and doesn’t seem quite so tired. She’s glad she can have that kind of effect on him.

“You’re up early.”

“No, I’m up late,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came here. He glances out one of the little round windows. “Is it morning already?”

“Just about. What are you reading?”

He tries to push it out of view, but it’s too late for that. He has two books out. The bottom volume is a book on engineering. That’s no surprise, considering the interest he’s taken in the way things work. It’s the book on top—the one his nose was in when she arrived—that catches her by surprise, almost making her laugh.

“Criminology for Morons?”

“Yeah, well, everyone needs a hobby.”

She tries to take a long look into him, but he looks away. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” she asks. “I don’t need to read Connor for Morons to know that you’re in some kind of trouble.”

He looks everywhere but into her eyes. “It isn’t trouble. At least not for me. Or maybe it is in some ways, I don’t know.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“That,” says Connor, “is the last thing I want to do.” He takes a deep breath and shifts in his chair. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

He looks at Risa, then looks at the hatch, making sure they’re still alone.

Then he leans in close to her and says, “Now that the Goldens are . . . no longer around, the Admiral’s going to be looking for replacements. I want you to promise me that if he asks you to help him, you’ll turn him down.”

“The Admiral doesn’t even know I exist. Why would he ask me for anything?”

“Because he asked me,” Connor says in an intense whisper. “And I think he’s asked Emby, too.”

“Emby?”

“All I’m saying is that I don’t want you to be a target!”

“A target for what? For whom?”

“Shhh! Keep your voice down!”

She looks again at that book he was reading, trying to piece it all together, but there just aren’t enough pieces. She gets close to him, forcing him to look at her. “I want to help you,” she says. “I’m worried about you. Please let me help you.”

He darts his eyes back and forth, trying to find an escape from her gaze, but he can’t. Suddenly, he bridges the small distance between them and kisses her.

She did not expect it, and when he breaks off the kiss she realizes from the look on his face that he hadn’t expected it either.

“What was that for?”

It takes a moment for him to get his brain functioning again. “That,” he says, “is in case something happens and I don’t see you again.”

“Fine,” she says, and she pulls him into another kiss—this one longer than the first. When she breaks it off, she says, “That’s in case I do see you again.”

He leaves, awkwardly stumbling out and nearly falling down the steel steps to the ground. In spite of all that just went on between them, Risa has to smile.

It’s amazing that something as simple as a kiss can overpower the worst of worries.

Lev’s troubles appear to be of a different nature, and Risa finds herself frightened by him. He comes to infirmary call that morning with a bad sunburn.

Since he’s a fast runner, he’s been assigned messenger duty. Mostly, it involves running back and forth between the jets carrying notes. It’s one of the Admiral’s rules that all messengers wear sunscreen, but it seems Lev is no longer bound by anyone’s rules.

They make small talk for a bit, but it’s awkward, so she quickly gets down to business. “Well, now that your hair is longer, at least your forehead and neck seem to have been spared. Take off your shirt.”

“I kept my shirt on most of the time,” he says.

“Let’s have a look anyway.”

Reluctantly, he removes his shirt. He’s burned there as well, but not as badly as on his arms and cheeks. What catches her attention, however, is a welt on his back in the faint shape of a hand. She brushes her fingers across it.

“Who did this to you?” she asks.

“Nobody,” he says, grabbing the shirt back from her and slipping it on. “Just some guy.”

“Is someone on your team giving you trouble?”

“I told you, it’s nothing—what are you, my mother?”

“No,” says Risa. “If I were your mother, I’d be rushing you off to the nearest harvest camp.”

She means it as a joke, but Lev doesn’t find it funny, “Just give me something to put on the burns.”

There’s a deadness to his voice that’s haunting. She goes to the cabinet and finds a tube of aloe cream, but she doesn’t hand it to him just yet. “I miss the old Lev,” she says.

That makes him look at her. “No offense, but you didn’t even know me.”

“Maybe not, but at least back then I wanted to.”

“And you don’t want to anymore?”

“I don’t know,” says Risa. “The kid I’m looking at now is a little too creepy for my taste.” She can tell that gets to him. She doesn’t know why it should, because he seems proud of his new creep factor.

“The old Lev,” he says, “tricked you into trusting him, then turned you in to the police the first chance he got.”

“And the new Lev wouldn’t do that?”

He thinks about it, then says, “The new Lev has better things to do.”

She puts the tube of burn cream in his hand. “Yeah, well, if you see the old one—the one who always thought about God and his purpose and stuff—tell him we want him back.”

There’s an uneasy silence and he looks down at the tube in his hand. For a moment she thinks he might say something that brings a hint of that other kid back into the room, but all he says is, “How often do I put this on?”

There’s a work call the following day.

Risa hates them, because she knows there isn’t going to be anything for her, but everyone must attend work call. Today, the gathering isn’t run by an Unwind, it’s run by Cleaver. Apparently he’s temporarily taken over the job, since no one’s been found to fulfill Amp’s duties. Risa doesn’t like him. He’s got an unpleasant, slimy look about him.

There are only a few calls for work today. Someone wants a plumber’s assistant in some godforsaken town named Beaver’s Breath; there’s some farm work out in California; and the third job is just plain weird.

“Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,” Cleaver says. “You’ll be working on an oil pipeline until you’re eighteen. From what I hear, it’s one of the coldest, most brutal places on Earth. But, hey, it’s a way out, right? I need three volunteers.”

The first hand up belongs to an older kid who looks like punishment is his middle name—like he was born for brutal work, right down to his shaved head.

The second hand raised catches Risa by surprise. It’s Mai. What is Mai doing volunteering for work on a pipeline? Why would she leave the boy she was so attached to back in the warehouse? But then, come to think of it, Risa hasn’t seen that boy around the Graveyard at all. While she tries to process this, a third hand goes up. It’s a younger kid. A smaller kid. A kid with a bad sunburn. Lev’s hand is held high, and he gets chosen for the pipeline job.

Risa just stands there in disbelief, then she searches for Connor in the crowd. He’s seen it too. He looks at Risa and shrugs. Well, maybe this is just a shrug to Connor, but it’s not to her.

When the meeting breaks up, she makes a beeline for Lev, but he’s already vanished into the mob. So the instant Risa gets back to the infirmary, she calls for a messenger, and another and another, sending them each off with redundant notes reminding kids to take their medications. Finally, after her fourth call, the messenger they send is Lev.

He must see the look on her face, because he just stands there at the hatch not coming in. One of the other medics is there, so Risa glares at Lev, pointing toward the back. “That way. Now!”

“I don’t take orders,” he says.

“That way!” she says again, even more forcefully. “NOW!”

Apparently he does take orders after all, because he steps in and marches toward the back of the plane. Once they reach the storage room at the back, she closes the bulkhead door behind them and lays into him.

“What the hell are you thinking?”

His face is steel. It’s the door of a safe she can’t get into. “I’ve never been to Alaska,” he says. “I might as well go now.”

“You’ve barely been here a week! Why are you in such a hurry to leave—and for a job like that?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you or to anyone else. I raised my hand, I got chosen, and that’s all.”

Risa crosses her arms in defiance of his defiance. “You don’t go anywhere if I don’t give you a clean bill of health. I could tell the Admiral you’ve got . . . you’ve got . . . infectious hepatitis.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Just watch me.”

He storms away from her, kicking the wall in fury, then storms back. “He won’t believe you! And even if he does, you can’t keep me sick forever!”

“Why are you so determined to go?”

“There are things I have to do,” Lev says. “I don’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry I’m not who you want me to be, but I’ve changed. I’m not that same stupid, naive kid you guys kidnapped two months ago. Nothing you can do will keep me from leaving here and doing what I’ve got to do.”

Risa says nothing, because she knows he’s right. She can stall him at best, but she can’t stop him.

“So,” says Lev, a bit more calmly now. “Do I have infectious hepatitis or not?”

She sighs. “No. You don’t.”

He turns to leave, opening the bulkhead door. He’s so determined to move on, he doesn’t even think to offer her a good-bye.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” she says before he’s out the door. “You’re just as naive as you were before. And maybe twice as stupid.”

Then he’s gone. That same afternoon, an unmarked white van comes to take him, Mai, and the flesh-head away. Once again, Risa thinks she’ll never see Lev again. Once again, she’ll be wrong.

37. Emby and the Admiral

Emby has no idea of all the gears turning in the Graveyard—or even that he’s one of them. His world is contained within the square panels of his comic books and the well-defined borders of a pinball machine. Staying within those borders has been a successful defense against the injustice and cruelty of life outside of them.

He does not question the oddness of the trio that just left for Alaska; it’s not his business. He does not sense the tension in Connor; Connor can take care of himself. He does not spend time wondering about Roland; he just stays out of Roland’s way.

But keeping his head down does not keep him in the safe zone. Emby is, in fact, the central bumper on the pinball board, and every single ball in play is about to rebound off of him.

The Admiral has called for him.

Emby now stands nervously at the entrance to what was once the mobile command center for a president of the United States. There are two other men here. They are in white shirts and dark ties. The black sedan that waits at the bottom of the stairs must be theirs. The Admiral sits at his desk. Emby tries to decide whether he should enter, or turn around and run away. But the Admiral sees him, and his gaze freezes Emby’s feet in place.

“You wanted me, sir?”

“Yes. Have a seat, Zachary.”

He forces his feet to move toward the chair across from the Admiral.

“Emby,” he says. “Everyone just calls me Emby.”

“Is that your choice, or theirs?” asks the Admiral.

“Well . . . theirs, mostly—but I got used to it.”

“Never let anyone else name you,” says the Admiral. He leafs through a file with Emby’s picture clipped to the cover. It’s a full file, and Emby can’t imagine how there could be enough interesting things in his life to fill a file that thick.

“You may not realize this, but you’re a very special boy,” says the Admiral.

Emby can only look down at his shoelaces, which are, as always, moments away from coming untied. “Is that why I’m here, sir? Because I’m special?”

“Yes, Zachary. And because of it, you’re going to be leaving us today.”

Emby looks up. “What?”

“There’s someone who wants to meet you. In fact, it’s someone who has been looking for you for a very long time.”

“Really?”

“These men will take you there.”

“Who is it?” Emby has a longstanding fantasy that one of his parents is actually still alive. If not his mother, then his father. He has always dreamed that his father was actually a spy—that his death all those years ago was just the official story, and he’s been off in the untamed corners of the world fighting evil, like a real-life comic-book hero.

“It’s no one you know,” says the Admiral, dashing Emby’s hopes. “She’s a good woman, though. Actually, she’s my ex-wife.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“It will be clear to you soon enough. Don’t worry.”

Which, to Emby, is an open invitation to worry without end. It makes him start to hyperventilate, which makes his bronchial tubes begin to constrict. He starts to wheeze. The Admiral looks at him with concern.

“Are you all right?”

“Asthma,” Emby says between wheezes. He pulls out an inhaler from his pocket and takes a puff.

“Yes,” says the Admiral. “My son had asthma—he responded very well to Xolair.” He looks up at one of the men behind Emby. “Please make sure you get some Xolair for that lung.”

“Yes, Admiral Dunfee.”

It takes a moment for this to bounce around on the pegs and pins in Emby’s mind before hitting his mental flippers.

“Dunfee? Your last name is Dunfee?”

“We have no last names in the Graveyard,” says the Admiral, then he stands and grabs Emby’s hand, shaking it. “Good-bye, Zachary. When you see my ex-wife, give her my regards.”

Emby can only squeak a wordless response as the men take him by the arms and lead him out and down toward the waiting sedan.

Once the boy is gone, Admiral Dunfee leans back in his chair. With all the things threatening his domain, here’s one thing he can be pleased with. He allows himself a brief moment of satisfaction, glancing over at the smiling picture of his son Harlan—better known as Humphrey in modern folklore, but those who loved him know his real name. Yes, the Admiral is redeeming himself, and setting things right, bit by bit by bit.

38. Mob

Emby’s disappearance goes undiscovered for almost two days, until someone takes a look at the pinball machine and notices that something is missing.

“Where’s the mouth breather?” people begin to ask. It’s not until nightfall that people start asking seriously, and by morning it’s clear that he’s gone.

Some people claim they saw him wandering off into the desert. Some people claim there was a mysterious car that took him away. Ralphy Sherman claims he saw Emby beamed up to the mother ship to be with his own kind. Every suggestion is mulled over. Every theory is entertained. A search is mounted by Emby’s team. It turns up nothing.

Through all of this, the Admiral is silent.

Now Emby, the kid at the bottom of the pecking order, has suddenly become everyone’s best friend, and his disappearance fuel for everyone’s fire.

Roland uses it to further his own agenda of fear—after all, he was the one who very publicly predicted that Emby would vanish. He didn’t believe it for an instant, but now that his prediction has come true, he has everyone’s attention.

“You watch,” Roland tells all those who will listen. “The Admiral’s going to show up one of these days with a nice, thick head of Emby-hair hidden beneath his hat—and any one of us could be next. Has he been looking at your eyes? Has he been listening to the sound of your voice? If he wants a part of you, you’ll end up just like Emby!”

He’s so convincing, he almost believes it himself. Connor has a completely different view of the situation. He’s certain that Roland did away with Emby so he could use his disappearance to gather support. For Connor, it’s more proof that Roland killed the Goldens—that he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Connor brings his suspicions to the Admiral. He listens, but still says nothing. The Admiral knows that claiming responsibility for Emby’s absence would play right into the mania that Roland is creating. The Admiral could tell Connor that he was the one who sent the boy away, but that would beg questions that he has no desire to answer. He decides to let Connor think that Roland did it—it would motivate Connor even more to find that crucial link connecting Roland to the murders. Because now the Admiral has come to believe in Roland’s guilt as well.

“Forget the missing boy,” he tells Connor. “Concentrate on proving Roland killed the others. Someone must have helped him—someone must know. Right now Roland has too many supporters. We can’t take him down without hard evidence.”

“Then somehow I’ll get you evidence,” Connor tells him. “I’ll do it for Emby.”

After Connor leaves the Admiral’s jet, the Admiral sits alone, pondering the ins and outs of the situation. Things in the Graveyard have gotten dicey before, but dicey situations have always been the Admiral’s specialty. He’s sure he can play this one to a successful conclusion, and get everything back under his control. As he sits there in his jet, he gets an ache in his shoulder that spreads down to his arm. No doubt it’s another manifestation of his various war wounds.

He calls for a medic to bring him some aspirin.

39. Roland

Roland opens the envelope that Hayden has just handed him, and reads the note inside:

The note isn’t signed, but it doesn’t have to be. Roland knows who sent it.

Connor’s the only one with nerve enough to blackmail him. The only one stupid enough. The note sets Roland’s mind spinning. I know what you did. There are quite a lot of activities Connor could be talking about. He might know that Roland has been sabotaging the generators so he can blame the Admiral for outrageous living conditions. Or he might know about the bottle of ipecac he stole from the infirmary while pretending to flirt with Risa. He was planning to use the stuff to spike the drinks, create a puke-fest, and then blame the Admiral for giving them all food poisoning. Yes, there are plenty of things Connor could have found out about. Roland puts the note in his pocket, showing no emotion, and glares at Hayden. “So you’re Connor’s messenger boy now?”

“Hey,” says Hayden, “I’m Switzerland: neutral as can be, and also good with chocolate.”

“Get lost,” Roland tells him.

“Already am.” And Hayden strolls away.

It burns Roland that he might have to bargain with Connor, but there are worse things. And after all, bargains and subterfuge are a way of life for him. So he heads off toward the FedEx jet, making sure he takes a knife with him—in case there’s no deal to be made.

40. Connor

“I’m here,” Roland calls from outside the FedEx jet. “What do you want?”

Connor remains hidden inside the hold. He knows he’s only going to get one chance at this, so he’s got to do it right. “Come inside, and we’ll talk about it.”

“No, you come out.”

Nice try, Connor thinks, but this is going to be on my terms. “If you don’t come in, I’ll tell everyone what I know. I’ll show everyone what I found.”

Silence for a moment, then he sees Roland’s silhouette as he climbs into the hold. Connor has the advantage now. His eyes have adjusted to the dim light of the hold, and Roland’s have not. He leaps forward and firmly plants the muzzle of the Admiral’s gun against Roland’s back. “Don’t move.”

Instinctively Roland’s hands go up, as if he’s been in this position many times before. “Is this your deal?”

“Shut up.” Connor uses one hand to frisk him, finds the concealed knife, and hurls it out of the cargo hold. Satisfied, he pushes the gun harder against Roland.

“Move.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“You know where to go. Crate 2933. Move!”

Roland begins to walk forward, squeezing between the narrow rows of crates. Connor is conscious of every movement of Roland’s body. Even with a gun to his back, Roland is arrogant and sure of himself. “You don’t want to kill me,” he says. “Everyone here likes me. If you do anything to me, they’ll tear you apart.”

They reach crate 2933. “Get in,” Connor says.

That’s when Roland makes his move. He spins, knocks Connor back, and grabs for the gun. Connor expected this. He holds the gun out of reach and, using the crate behind him for leverage, places his foot firmly in Roland’s gut and pushes him back. Roland falls backward into crate 2933. The second he does, Connor lurches forward, slams the hatch, and seals it. While Roland rages inside, Connor takes aim at the crate and fires the gun once, twice, three times.

The blasts echo, blending with the terrified screams from within the crate, and then Roland shouts, “What are you doing? Are you insane?”

Connor’s shots had been very precise; they were low, and directed at a corner of the crate. “I’ve given you something your victims never had,” Connor tells him. “I’ve given you airholes.” Then he sits down. “Now we talk.”

41. Mob

Half a mile away, a search party returns from the desert. They didn’t find Emby. Instead, they found five unmarked graves behind a distant outcropping of rocks. In a few short minutes, word spreads through the ranks like flames in a steady wind. The Goldens have been found, and apparently they weren’t so golden after all. Someone suggests that the Admiral did it himself. The suggestion becomes a rumor, and the rumor quickly becomes accepted as fact. The Admiral killed his own! He’s everything Roland says he is—and, hey, where is Roland?

He’s missing too? So is Connor! What has the Admiral done to them?!

A mob of Unwinds with a hundred reasons to be angry have all simultaneously found one more, and that’s all it takes to push them over the edge.

The mob storms toward the Admiral’s jet, picking up more and more kids along the way.

42. Risa

A few minutes earlier, Risa had responded to the Admiral’s request and showed up at his jet with some aspirin. She was greeted by the Admiral, who, as she had told Connor, didn’t even know her name. Now he chats with her, telling her that the experience she’s getting here is better than what anyone her age gets in the outside world. She tells him of her thoughts of becoming an Army medic, and he seems pleased. He complains of shoulder pain, and asks her for the aspirin. She gives it to him, but just to be on the safe side, she checks his blood pressure, and he applauds her for being so thorough.

There’s some sort of commotion outside that makes it hard for her to focus on taking the Admiral’s blood pressure. Commotion is not unusual here.

Whatever it is, Risa suspects it will end with bandages and ice packs for someone.

Her work is never done.

43. Mob

Furious kids begin to arrive at the Admiral’s jet.

“Get him! Get him! Pull him out!”

They climb the steel steps. The hatch is open, but just a crack. Risa looks out at the wave of mayhem, like a human tsunami pounding toward her.

“He’s got a girl in there with him!”

The first of the kids reaches the top of the stairs and heaves the hatch open, only to be met by Risa, and a brutal punch to the jaw. It sends him tumbling over the side and to the ground—but there’s more where he came from.

“Don’t let her close that door!”

The second kid is met by an aerosol burst of bactine right to his eyes. The pain is excruciating. He stumbles backward into the other kids coming up the stairs, and they tumble like dominos. Risa grabs the hatch, swings it closed, and seals it from the inside.

Kids are on the wings now, finding every piece of loose metal and prying it up. It’s amazing how much of a plane can be shredded by bare-handed fury.

“Break the windows! Pull them out!”

Kids on the ground throw rocks that hit their comrades as often as they hit the jet. On the inside it sounds like a hailstorm. The Admiral blanches at the scene outside the windows. His heart races. His shoulder and arm ache. “How did this happen? How did I let this happen?”

The barrage of stones batters the fuselage, but nothing breaks the armored steel, nothing cracks the bulletproof glass of the former Air Force One. Then someone tears out the power line connecting the jet to its generator. The lights go out, the air-conditioning shuts down, and the entire jet quickly begins to bake in the broiling sun.

44. Connor

“You murdered Amp, Jeeves, and the rest of the Goldens.”

“You’re crazy!”

Connor sits outside crate 2933, wiping his brow in the heat. Roland’s voice comes from inside, muffled, but loud enough to hear.

“You got rid of them so you could take their place,” Connor says.

“I swear, when I get out of here, I’ll—”

“You’ll what? You’ll kill me like you killed them? Like you killed Emby?”

No response from Roland.

“I said I’d make you a deal,” says Connor, “and I will. If you confess, I’ll make sure the Admiral spares your life.”

In response, Roland suggests Connor perform a physical impossibility.

“Confess, Roland. It’s the only way I’m letting you out of there.” Connor is sure that, if put under enough pressure, Roland will confess to what he’s done.

The Admiral needs evidence, and what better evidence than a full confession.

“I have nothing to confess to!”

“Fine,” says Connor. “I can wait. I have all day.”

45. Mob

The fortress of the Admiral’s jet is impenetrable. The temperature inside is soaring past one hundred. Risa’s handling the heat, but the Admiral doesn’t look too good. She still can’t open the door, because the mob is relentlessly trying to get in.

Outside, whatever kids aren’t swarming over the Admiral’s jet are spreading out. If they can’t get to the Admiral, then they’ll destroy everything else. The study jets, the dormitory jets, even the recreation jet—everything is being torn apart, and whatever can burn is set aflame. They are filled with an insatiable fury, and beneath it is a strange joy that the anger can finally be released. And beneath the joy is more fury.

From halfway across the Graveyard, Cleaver sees the smoke rising in the distance, beckoning him. Cleaver is drawn to mayhem. He must be a witness to it!

He gets into his helicopter and flies toward the angry mob.

He sets down as close to the chaos as he dares to get. Have his deeds in any way led to this? He hopes so. He turns off the engine, letting the blades slow, so he can hear the wonderful sounds of havoc. . . . Then the angry Unwinds turn toward him.

“It’s Cleaver! He works for the Admiral.”

Suddenly, Cleaver is the center of attention. He can’t help but feel this is a good thing.

46. Connor

Roland is slowly breaking. He confesses to many things, petty acts of vandalism and theft, that Connor couldn’t care less about. But this is going to work. It has to work. Connor has no other plan to bring him to justice—it has to work.

“I’ve done a lot of things,” Roland tells him through the three bullet holes in the crate. “But I never killed anybody!”

Connor just listens. He barely speaks to him anymore. Connor finds the less he speaks, the more Roland does.

“How do you know they’re even dead?”

“Because I buried them. Me and the Admiral.”

“Then you did it!” says Roland. “You did it, and you’re trying to make me take the blame!”

Now Connor begins to see the flaw in his plan. If he lets Roland out without a confession, then he’s a dead man. But he can’t keep him in there forever. His options are now narrower than the spaces between the crates.

Then a voice calls to them from outside. “Is anyone there? Connor? Roland? Anybody?” It’s Hayden.

“Help!” screams Roland at the top of his lungs. “Help, he’s crazy! Come in here and let me out!” But his screams don’t make it out of the hold. Connor gets up and makes his way to the entrance. Hayden looks up at him. He’s not his usual cool self, and there’s a nasty bruise on his forehead, like he was hit by something.

“Thank God! Connor, you’ve got to get back there! It’s nuts—you’ve gotta stop it—they’ll listen to you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Admiral killed the Goldens—and then everyone thought he’d killed you. . . .”

“The Admiral didn’t kill anybody!”

“Well, try telling them that!”

“Them who?”

“Everybody! They’re tearing the place apart!”

Connor sees the far-off smoke, and he takes a quick glance back into the hold, deciding that, for the moment, Roland can wait. He hops down to the ground and races off with Hayden. “Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

When Connor arrives at the scene, his mind keeps trying to reject what his eyes are telling him. He stares, part of him hoping the vision will go away. It’s like the aftermath of some natural disaster. Broken bits of metal, glass, and wood are everywhere. Pages torn from books flutter past smashed electronics. Bonfires burn, and kids hurl in more wreckage to feed the flames.

“My God!”

There’s a group of jeering kids near the helicopter, gathered like a rugby scrum, kicking something in the center. Then Connor realizes it’s not something, it’s someone. He races in, pulling the kids apart. The kids who know Connor immediately back off, and the others follow suit. The man on the ground is battered and bloody. It’s Cleaver. Connor kneels down and props up his head.

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” But even as he says it, Connor knows it’s not true: He’s been beaten to a pulp.

Cleaver grimaces, his mouth bloody. Then Connor realizes that this isn’t a grimace at all. It’s a smile. “Chaos, man,” Cleaver says weakly. “Chaos. It’s beautiful. Beautiful.”

Connor doesn’t know what to say to this. The man’s delirious. He has to be.

“It’s okay,” Cleaver says. “This is an okay way to die. Better than suffocating, right?”

Connor can only stare at him. “What . . . what did you say?” No one but Connor and the Admiral knew about the suffocations. Connor, the Admiral, and the one who did it . . .

“You killed the Goldens! You and Roland!”

“Roland?” says Cleaver. In spite of his pain, he actually seems insulted. “Roland’s not one of us. He doesn’t even know.” Cleaver catches the look on Connor’s face and begins to laugh. Then the laugh becomes a rattle that resolves into a long, slow exhale. The grin never entirely leaves his face. His eyes stay open, but there’s nothing in them. Just like his victim, Amp.

“Oh, crap, he’s dead, isn’t he,” says Hayden. “They killed him! Holy crap, they killed him!”

Connor leaves the dead pilot in the dust and storms toward the Admiral’s plane. He passes the infirmary along the way. Everything’s been torn out of there as well. Risa! Where’s Risa? There are still kids all over the Admiral’s jet. The tires have been slashed; wing flaps lean at jagged angles, like broken feathers.

The entire jet lists to one side.

“Stop it!” screams Connor. “Stop it now! What are you doing? What have you done?”

He reaches up to the wing, grabs a kid’s ankle, and pulls him off onto the ground, but he can’t do that to every single one of them. So he grabs a metal pole and smashes it against the wing over and over, the sound ringing out like a church bell, until their attention turns his way.

“Look at you!” he screams. “You’ve destroyed everything! How could you have done this? You should all be unwound, every single one of you! YOU SHOULD ALL BE UNWOUND!”

It stops everyone. The kids on the wings, the kids at the bonfires. The shock of hearing such words from one of their own snaps them back to sanity. The shock of hearing his own words—and knowing that he meant them—frightens Connor almost as much as the scene before him.

The rolling staircase leading to the Admiral’s jet has fallen on its side. “Over here!” says Connor. “Help me with this!”

A dozen kids, their fury spent, come running obediently. Together, they right the stairs, and Connor climbs up to the hatch. He peers in the window.

Connor can’t see much. The Admiral’s there on the floor, but he’s not moving. If the Admiral can’t get to the door, they’ll never be able to get in. Wait—is that someone else in there with him?

Suddenly a lever is thrown on the inside, and the hatch begins to swing open. The heat hits him instantly—a blast furnace of heat—and the face at the door is so red and puffy, it takes a moment for him to realize who it is.

“Risa?”

She coughs and almost collapses into his arms, but manages to keep herself up. “I’m okay,” she says. “I’m okay. But the Admiral . . .”

Together they go in and kneel beside him. He’s breathing, but it’s shallow and strained. “It’s the heat!” says Connor, and orders the kids lingering at the door to swing open every hatch.

“It’s not just the heat,” says Risa. “Look at his lips—they’re cyanotic. And his pressure is down to nothing.”

Connor just stares at her, not comprehending.

“He’s having a heart attack! I’ve been giving him CPR, but I’m not a doctor. There’s only so much I can do!”

“M . . . m . . . my fault,” says the Admiral. “My fault . . .”

“Shh,” says Connor. “You’re going to be okay.” But Connor knows, just as he knew when he said it to Cleaver, the chances of that are slim.

They carry the Admiral down the stairs, and as they do, the kids waiting outside back away, making room for him, as if it’s already a coffin they’re carrying.

They set him down in the shade of the wing.

Then kids around them begin to murmur.

“He killed the Goldens,” someone says. “The old man deserves what he gets.”

Connor boils, but he’s gotten much better at keeping his anger in check.

“Cleaver did it,” Connor says forcefully enough for everyone to hear. That starts a murmur through the crowd, until someone says, “Yeah? Well, what about Emby?”

The Admiral’s hand flutters up. “My . . . my son . . .”

“Emby’s his son?” says one kid, and the rumor begins to spread through the crowd.

Whatever the Admiral meant, it’s lost now in incoherence as he slips in and out of consciousness.

“If we don’t get him to a hospital, he’ll die,” says Risa, giving him chest compressions once more.

Connor looks around, but the closest thing to a car on the Graveyard is the golf cart.

“There’s the helicopter,” says Hayden, “but considering the fact that the pilot’s dead, I think we’re screwed.”

Risa looks at Connor. He doesn’t need to read Risa for Morons to know what she’s thinking. The pilot is dead—but Cleaver was training another one. “I know what to do,” says Connor. “I’ll take care of it.”

Connor stands up and looks around him—the smoke-stained faces, the smoldering bonfires. After today nothing will be the same. “Hayden,” he says, “you’re in charge. Get everything under control.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Connor leaves Hayden to grapple with authority and finds three of the largest kids in his field of vision. “You, you and you,” Connor says. “I need you to come with me to the FedEx jet.”

The three kids step forward and Connor leads the way to Crate 2399, and Roland. This, Connor knows, will not be an easy conversation.

47. First-Year Residents

In her six months working in the emergency room, the young doctor has seen enough strange things to fill her own medical school textbook, but this is the first time someone has crash-landed a helicopter in the hospital parking lot.

She races out with a team of nurses, orderlies, and other doctors. It’s a small private craft—four-seater, maybe. It’s in one piece, and its blades are still spinning. It missed hitting a parked car by half a yard. Someone’s losing their flying license.

Two kids get out, carrying an older man in bad shape. There’s already a gurney rolling out to meet them.

“We have a rooftop helipad, you know.”

“He didn’t think he’d be able to land on it,” says the girl.

When the doctor looks at the pilot, still sitting behind the controls, she realizes that losing his license is not an issue. The kid at the controls can’t be any older than seventeen. She hurries to the old man. A stethoscope brings barely a sound from his chest cavity. Turning to the medical staff around her, she says, “Stabilize him, and prep him for transplant.” Then she turns back to the kids.

“You’re lucky you landed at a hospital with a heart bank, or we’d end up having to medevac him across town.”

Then the man’s hand rises from the gurney. He grabs her sleeve, tugging with more strength than a man in his condition should have.

“No transplant,” he says.

No, don’t do this to me, thinks the doctor. The orderlies hesitate. “Sir, it’s a routine operation.”

“He doesn’t want a transplant,” says the boy.

“You brought him in from God-knows-where with an underage pilot to save his life, and he won’t let us do it? We have an entire tissue locker full of healthy young hearts—”

“No transplant!” says the man.

“It’s . . . uh . . . against his religion,” says the girl.

“Tell you what,” says the boy. “Why don’t you do whatever they did before you had a tissue locker full of healthy young hearts.”

The doctor sighs. At least she’s still close enough to medical school to remember what that is. “It drastically lowers his chances of survival—you know that, don’t you?”

“He knows.”

She gives the man a moment more to change his mind, then gives up. The orderlies and other staff rush the man back toward the ER, and the two kids follow.

Once they’re gone, she takes a moment to catch her breath. Someone grabs her arm, and she turns to see the young pilot, who had been silent through all of it. The look on his face is pleading, yet determined. She thinks she knows what it’s about. She glances at the helicopter, then at the kid. “Take it up with the FAA,” she says. “If he lives, I’m sure you’ll be off the hook. They might even call you a hero.”

“I need you to call the Juvey-cops,” he says, his grip getting a little stronger.

“Excuse me?”

“Those two are runaway Unwinds. As soon as the old man is admitted, they’ll try to sneak away. Don’t let them. Call the Juvey-cops now!”

She pulls out of his grip. “All right. Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”

“And when they come,” he says, “make sure they talk to me first.”

She turns from him and heads back into the hospital, pulling out her cell phone on the way. If he wants the Juvey-cops, fine, he’ll get them. The sooner they come, the sooner this whole thing can fall into the category of “not my problem.”

48. Risa

Juvey-cops always look the same. They look tired, they look angry—they look a lot like the Unwinds they capture. The cop who now guards Risa and Connor is no exception. He sits blocking the door of the doctor’s office they’re being held in, with two more guards on the other side of the door just in case.

He’s content to stay silent, while another cop questions Roland in an adjacent room. Risa doesn’t even want to guess at the topics of conversation in there.

“The man we brought in,” Risa says. “How is he?”

“Don’t know,” says the cop. “You know hospitals—they only tell those things to next of kin, and I guess that’s not you.”

Risa won’t dignify that with a response. She hates this Juvey-cop instinctively, just because of who he is, and what he represents.

“Nice socks,” Connor says.

The cop does not glance down at his socks. No show of weakness here. “Nice ears,” he says to Connor. “Mind if I try them on sometime?”

The way Risa sees it, there are two types of people who become Juvey-cops.

Type one: bullies who want to spend their lives reliving their glory days of high school bullying. Type two: the former victims of type ones, who see every Unwind as the kid who tormented them all those years ago. Type twos are endlessly shoveling vengeance into a pit that will never be full. Amazing that the bullies and victims can now work together to bring misery to others.

“How does it feel to do what you do?” she asks him. “Sending kids to a place that ends their lives.”

Obviously he’s heard all this before. “How does it feel to live a life no one else feels is worth living?”

It’s a harsh blow designed to get her to shut up. It works.

“I feel her life is worth living,” says Connor, and he takes her hand. “Anyone feel that way about you?”

It gets to the man—although he tries not to show it. “You both had more than fifteen years to prove yourselves, and you didn’t. Don’t blame the world for your own lousy choices.”

Risa can sense Connor’s rage, and she squeezes his hand until she hears him take a deep breath and release it, keeping his anger under control.

“Doesn’t it ever occur to you Unwinds that you might be better off—happier even—in a divided state?”

“Is that how you rationalize it?” says Risa, “Making yourself believe we’ll be happier?”

“Hey, if that’s the case,” says Connor, “maybe everyone should get unwound. Why don’t you go first?”

The cop glares at Connor, then takes a quick glance down at his socks. Connor snickers.

Risa closes her eyes for a moment, trying to see some ray of light in this situation, but she can’t. She had known getting caught was a possibility when they came here. She knew that being out in the world was a risk. What surprised her was how quickly the Juvey-cops had descended on them. Even with their unorthodox entrance, they should have had enough time to slip away in the confusion. Whether the Admiral lives or dies, it won’t change things for her or for Connor now. They are going to be unwound. All her hopes of a future have been torn away from her again—and having those hopes, even briefly, makes this far more painful than not having had them at all.

49. Roland

The Juvey-cop questioning Roland has eyes that don’t exactly match, and a sour smell, like his deodorant soap hadn’t quite worked. Like his partner in the other room, the man is not easily impressed, and Roland, unlike Connor, doesn’t have the wits to rattle him. That’s all right, though, because rattling him is not what Roland has in mind.

Roland’s plan began to take shape shortly after Connor released him from the crate. He could have torn Connor limb from limb at the time, but Connor had three kids equal in size and strength to Roland to back him up. They were kids who should have been on Roland’s side. Should have been. It was his first indication that everything had drastically changed.

Connor told him about the riot, and about Cleaver. He offered a lame apology for accusing him of killing the Goldens—an apology that Roland refused to accept. Had Roland been at the riot, it would have been organized and successful.

If he had been there, it would have been a revolt, not a riot. By locking Roland away, Connor had robbed him of the chance to lead.

When they had arrived back at the scene of the riot, all focus was on Connor; all questions were directed to him. He was telling everyone what to do, and they were all listening. Even Roland’s closest friends cast their eyes down when they saw him. He instinctively knew that all his support was gone. His absence from the disaster had made him an outsider, and he would never regain what he had lost here—which meant it was time to devise a new plan of action.

Roland agreed to fly the helicopter to save the Admiral’s life, not because he had any desire to see the man live, but because taking that flight provided a new door of opportunity. . . .

“I’m curious,” says the sour-smelling cop. “Why would you turn in the other two kids when it means turning yourself in as well?”

“There’s a reward of five hundred dollars for turning in a runaway Unwind, right?”

He smirks. “Well, that’s fifteen hundred, if you’re including yourself.”

Roland looks the Juvey-cop in the eye—no shame, no fear—and boldly presents his offer. “What if I told you I know where there are more than four hundred AWOL Unwinds? What if I helped you take down a whole smuggling operation? What would that be worth?”

The cop seems to freeze in place, and he regards Roland closely. “All right,” he says. “You have my attention.”

50. Connor

He’s lasted longer than anyone expected. This is the consolation Connor must hold on to as the cop and two armed guards escort him and Risa into the room where Roland is being interrogated. By the smug look on Roland’s face, however, Connor suspects it wasn’t so much an interrogation as a negotiation.

“Please, sit down,” says the cop sitting on the edge of a desk near Roland.

Roland won’t look at them. He won’t even acknowledge their presence in the room. He just leans back in his chair. He’d fold his arms if the handcuffs allowed it.

The cop wastes no time in getting right to business. “Your friend here had quite a lot to say—and offered us a very interesting deal. His freedom, in exchange for four hundred Unwinds. He’s volunteered to tell us exactly where they are.”

Connor knew Roland would give him and Risa up, but giving up all of them—that’s a new low for Roland. He still won’t look at them, but his smug expression seems to have grown a little harder.

“Four hundred, huh?” says the second cop.

“He’s lying,” says Risa, her voice remarkably convincing. “He’s trying to trick you. It’s just the three of us.”

“Actually,” says the cop on the desk, “he’s telling the truth—although we’re surprised the number’s at four hundred. We thought there’d be at least six hundred by now, but I guess they keep on turning eighteen.”

Roland regards him, uncertain. “What?”

“Sorry to tell you this, but we know all about the Admiral and the Graveyard,” the cop says. “We’ve known about it for more than a year.”

The second cop chuckles, amused by the dumbfounded look on Roland’s face. “But . . . but . . .”

“But why don’t we round them up?” says the cop, anticipating Roland’s question. “Look at it this way. The Admiral—he’s like that neighborhood stray cat that nobody likes but no one wants to get rid of because he takes care of the rats. See, runaway Unwinds on the street—that’s a problem for us. But the Admiral gets them off the street and keeps them in that little desert ghetto of his. He doesn’t know it, but he’s doing us a favor. No more rats.”

“Of course,” says the second cop, “if the old man dies, we may have to go in there and clean the place out after all.”

“No!” says Risa. “Someone else can take over!”

The second cop shrugs as if it’s nothing to him. “Better be a good mouser.”

While Roland can only stare incredulously as his plan crumbles, Connor feels relief, and maybe even a bit of hope. “So, then you’ll let us go back?”

The cop on the desk picks up a file. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s one thing to look the other way, but quite another to release a criminal.” Then he begins to read. “Connor Lassiter. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November—until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage and shot a Juvey-cop with his own tranq gun.”

Roland looks at the cop in awe. “He’s the Akron AWOL?!”

Connor glances at Risa, then back at the cop. “Fine. I admit it. But she had nothing to do with it! Let her go!”

The cop shakes his head, scanning the file. “Witnesses say she was an accomplice. I’m afraid there’s only one place she’s going. Same place as you: the nearest harvest camp.”

“But what about me?” asks Roland. “I had nothing to do with any of that!”

The cop closes the file. “Ever hear of ‘guilt by association’?” he asks Roland. “You should be more careful with the company you keep.” Then he signals for the guards to take all three of them away.