UnSouled (4 page)

“Who, Argie? Nah, he’s okay. He’s just mad at the world, but the world isn’t around to be mad at. Just me.”

Connor smiles at that. “You’re smarter than Argent thinks.”

“Maybe,” Grace says, although she doesn’t seem too convinced. She looks back toward the closed cellar door and then to Connor again. “I like your tattoo,” she says. “Great white?”

“Tiger shark,” Connor tells her. “Only it’s not mine. It belonged to a kid who actually tried to strangle me with this same arm. He couldn’t do it, though. Chickened out at the last second. Anyway, he got unwound, and I wound up with his arm.”

Grace processes it and shakes her head, getting a little red in the face. “You’re making that up. You think I’m dumb enough to believe the Akron AWOL would take an Unwind’s arm?”

“I didn’t have a choice. They slapped this thing on while I was in a coma.”

“You’re lying.”

“Untie me and I’ll show you the scar where it was grafted on.”

“Nice try.”

“Yeah, it would have worked better if I had my shirt on and you couldn’t see the scar for yourself.”

Grace comes closer, kneeling down, examining Connor’s shoulder. “I’ll be damned. It
is
a grafted arm!”

“Yeah, and it hurts like hell. You can’t tie a grafted arm back like this.”

Grace looks at him—maybe searching Connor’s eyes the way Connor searched hers.

“You got new eyes, too?” Grace asks.

“Just one of them.”

“Which one?”

“Right. The left one is mine.”

“Good,” says Grace. “ ’Cause I already decided that’s the
honest one.” She reaches behind Connor for the ropes. “I’m not gonna untie you—I’m not that dumb—but I’ll loosen the rope on this arm a little so it don’t pull at your shoulder so much.”

“Thank you, Grace.” Connor feels the rope loosen. He wasn’t lying. His shoulder was burning from the strain. As the rope gives, Connor tugs his hand. It slips through the loop, and his hand—Roland’s hand—is free. It closes reflexively into a fist ready to swing. Connor’s own instinct is to do it, but Risa’s voice, ever present in his head, as if it has been transplanted there, stops him.
Think
, Risa would say.
Don’t do anything rash
.

The fact is, only one of his hands is free. Will he be able to knock Grace out with one blow, then free his other hand and escape before Argent gets back? In his current state, will he be able to outrun the two of them, and what will the consequences be if he fails? All this flashes through Connor’s mind in a fraction of a second. Grace still stares at Connor’s freed fist in shock, not knowing what to do. Connor makes a decision. He takes a deep breath, loosens his fingers, and shakes his hand. “Thanks. That feels much better,” he says. “Now quick. Tie up my hand again before Argent comes back—only not as tight this time.”

Relieved, Grace redoes the bonds, and Connor allows her to do it without resisting. “You won’t tell him I did that, will you?” Grace asks.

Connor smiles at her. It’s easier to pull off a smile for Grace than for Argent. “It’ll be our secret.”

In a few moments, Argent returns with a BLT heavy on mayo and light on bacon. He feeds it to Connor by hand, never noticing the subtle shift in dynamics. Grace now trusts Connor more than she trusts her own brother.

2 • Clapper

The clapper has misgivings, but he’s beyond the point of no return.

For many months before today, he had suffered on the streets. The things he had to do to survive were horrifying and demoralizing. They were dehumanizing to the point that there wasn’t much left of him that felt remotely human anymore. He had surrendered to the shame of it, resigning himself to a marginal life on the seediest back streets of Sin City.

He’d gone to Las Vegas thinking an AWOL Unwind could more easily disappear there, but Las Vegas treats no one who lands there well. Only those who are free to leave get VIP treatment—and although most of them leave with empty pockets, it’s better than remaining as an empty shell.

By the time he was recruited, the clapper had lost his ability to care. It had been pounded out of him on every level. He had been perfectly ripe for picking.

“Come with me,” the recruiter had said. “I’ll teach you how to make them pay.”

By “them,” he meant everyone. The universal “not me” who was responsible for ruining his life. Everyone else was at fault. Everyone must pay. The recruiter understood that, and so the deal was made.

Now, two months later, he walks gingerly with the girl of his dreams into a neighborhood sports club in Portland, Oregon. It’s far from Las Vegas, far from what had once been his life before that. The farther the better. This new life, brief though it may be, will be bright. It will be loud. It will be
impossible to ignore. This random target was chosen for them by someone farther up the clapper chain. Funny, but he never thought of clappers as being so organized—but there is definitely a structure and a hierarchy behind the chaos. It gives him some comfort to think that there’s a method behind the madness.

His is a cell of two. He and the girl have been prepped, primed, and pointed by a gung-ho trainer who must have been a motivational speaker in a previous life.

“Randomness will change the world,” they’d been told. “Your act will be smiled upon years from now—and in the meantime, your revenge will be sweet.”

The clapper cares less about changing the world and more about revenge. He knows he would have died ignobly on the streets, but now at least his bitter end will have meaning. It will be under his control by the sheer power of his applause. Or is he just deluding himself?

“Are you ready for this?” the girl asks as they approach the gym.

He doesn’t share his doubts with her. He wants to be strong for her. Resolute. Brave. “Maximum carnage,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

They go into the gym. He holds the door for her, and she smiles at him. Such smiles and gentle moments between them is the furthest their relationship will ever go. They wanted more, but it was not to be. Their explosive blood had made intimacy an impossibility.

“Can I help you?” asks the guy at the front desk.

“We’d like to talk to someone about a gym membership.”

“Excellent! Let me get someone to help you.”

The girl takes a deep, shuddering breath. The boy holds her hand. Gently. Always gently, because you don’t always need
a detonator to set yourself off. The detonators make it quick and clean, but accidents do happen.

“I want to be with you when we . . . complete our mission,” she tells him.

“Me too, but we can’t. You know that. I promise I’ll be thinking about you.” Their orders are to be at least ten meters apart. The farther apart they are, the more effective they’ll be when their mission completes.

A ripped dude with an expensive smile approaches them. “Hi, my name is Jeff. I’m the new member coordinator. And you are?”

“Sid and Nancy,” the clapper says. The girl chuckles nervously. He could have said Tom and Jerry; it didn’t matter. He could even have given their real names, but fake names somehow add to the authenticity of the deception.

“Come on. Let me give you both the grand tour.” Jeff’s wholesome smile is reason enough to blow the place sky-high.

He leads them past the manager’s office. The manager, on the phone, glances out at the clapper, catching a moment of eye contact. The clapper looks away, feeling read. He feels as if every stranger he sees can read his intentions, as if his hands are already spread wide, ready to swing together. But the manager has a real air of suspicion. The clapper moves out of his sight range quickly.

“Over here we have our free weight area. Our resistance machines are to the right. All state of the art, of course, with holographic entertainment consoles.” Neither of them is listening, but Jeff doesn’t seem to notice. “Our aerobics deck is upstairs.” Jeff beckons for them to follow him up the stairs.

“You go, Nancy,” the clapper says. “I’m going to check out the free weights.” They share a brief nod. Here is where they put distance between themselves. Here is where they say good-bye.

He moves away from the stairs and toward the free weight area. It’s five o’clock—a crowded time. Does he feel remorse for coming at this time of day? Only when he looks at people’s faces, so he tries not to. They are not people—they are ideas. They are just extensions of the enemy. Besides, he didn’t choose to come at the gym’s most crowded time. They were told to come precisely now, precisely on this day—and when an event is this big, it’s easy to hide behind “I’m just following orders.”

Stepping behind a pillar, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the circular Band-Aid-like detonators, affixing them to his palms. This is real. This is going down.
Oh my God. Oh my God—

And as if to echo his thoughts, he hears, “Oh Jesus.”

He looks up to see the manager standing there, catching him with the penny-sized detonators glaring from the clapper’s palms like stigmata—there’s no mistaking what he means to do.

The manager grabs his wrists, keeping his hands apart.

“Let go of me!”

“There’s something you need to know before you do this!” the manager hisses in a loud whisper. “You think this is random, but it’s not. You’re being used!”

“Let go or I swear—”

“You’ll what? Blow me up? That’s what they want. I’m an organizer with the Anti-Divisional Resistance. Whoever sent you here has been targeting us! This isn’t about chaos. It’s about taking us out! You’re working for the wrong side!”

“There are no sides!”

He pulls away, ready to swing his hands together . . . but suddenly not as ready as he was a moment ago. “You’re ADR?”

“I can help you!”

“It’s too late for that!” He can feel his adrenaline surge. He
can feel his heartbeat in his ears and wonders if a pounding heart is enough to detonate him.

“We can clean your blood! We can save you!”

“You’re lying!” But he knows it’s possible. They disarmed Lev Calder, didn’t they? But then the clappers came after him and tried to kill him for not clapping.

Finally one of the various self-absorbed weight lifters notices the nature of the conversation and says, “Clappers?” and backs away. “CLAPPERS!” he yells, and makes a beeline to the door. Others quickly size up the situation, and the panic begins—but the manager doesn’t take his eyes off the clapper.

“Let me help you!”

Suddenly an explosion rocks the gym, and the cardio deck comes crashing down upon the first floor. She did it! She did it! She’s gone, and he’s still here.

Bloody people stumble past him coughing, wailing, and the manager grabs him again almost hard enough to detonate him. “You don’t have to follow her! Be your own man. Fight for the right side!”

And although he wants to believe there
is
a right side—that this hint of hope is real, and not false—his head is as confused as the burning rubble still raining down around him. Can he betray her? Can he close the door that she opened and refuse to finish what she has begun?

“I can get you to a place of safety. No one has to know you didn’t detonate!”

“Okay,” he says, making his decision. “Okay.”

The manager breathes a gasping sigh of relief, letting him go—and the instant he does, the clapper holds his hands wide and swings them together.

“Nooo!”

And he’s gone, along with the ADR organizer, the rest of the gym, and any question of hope.

3 • Cam

The world’s first composite human being is in black-tie attire.

His tailored tuxedo is of the highest quality. He looks handsome. Impressive. Imposing. He looks older in the tux—but as age is a fuzzy concept for Camus Comprix, he can’t quite say how old he should look.

“Give me a birthday,” he says to Roberta as she works on his tie. Apparently of all the sundry bits and pieces of kids in his head, not a single one of them knew how to tie a bow tie. “Assign me an age.”

Roberta is the closest thing he will ever have to a mother. She certainly dotes on him like one. “Choose your own,” she tells him as she tucks, tugs, and tightens the bow tie. “You know the day you were rewound.”

“False start,” Cam says. “Every part of me existed before I was rewound, so it’s not a day to celebrate.”

“
Every
part of
everyone
exists before they are presented to the world as an individual.”

“Born, you mean.”

“Born,” Roberta admits. “But birthdays are random. Babies come early; babies come late. Defining one’s life by the day one was cut from an umbilical cord is completely arbitrary.”

“But they
were
born,” Cam points out. “Which means
I
was born. Just not all at the same time, and to multiple mothers.”

“Very true,” says Roberta, stepping back to admire him. “Your logic is as impeccable as your looks.”

Cam turns to look at himself in the mirror. The many symmetrical shades of his hair have been cut and combed into a perfect style. The various skin tones bursting forth from a single
point in the center of his forehead only add to the stunning nature of his looks. His scars are no longer scars, but hairline seams. Exotic, rather than horrible. The pattern of his skin, his hair, his whole body is beautiful.

So why would Risa abandon me?

“Lockdown,” he says reflexively, then clears his throat and tries to pretend he didn’t say it. Lockdown is the word that comes out of him lately whenever he wants to purge a thought from his mind. He can’t stop himself from saying it. The word brings an image of iron blast doors falling into place, locking the thought in, refusing to give it purchase anywhere in his mind. Lockdown has become a way of life for Cam.

Unfortunately, Roberta knows exactly what the word means.

“October tenth,” Cam says quickly, before Roberta has a chance to commandeer the conversation. “My birthday will be October tenth—Columbus Day.” What could be more appropriate than a day commemorating the discovery of a land and people who were already there and didn’t need discovering? “I will be eighteen on the tenth of October.”