UnWholly (29 page)

She awakes in a different cell. A little newer and larger, perhaps, but still a cell. She has no idea where she has been transported this time, or why. This new cell is not at all designed for a paraplegic, and her captors have offered no help since she arrived. Not that she’d accept it if they did, but it’s as if they want her to struggle over the lip of the bathroom threshold, or onto her bed, which is abnormally high—just enough to make getting into it an ordeal.

She suffers a week of food brought in by a silent guard in a rent-a-cop uniform. She knows she’s no longer in the hands of the Juvenile Authority, but who her new captors are
is a mystery. These new jailers ask no questions, and that concerns her the same way that Connor is always concerned by the fact that the Graveyard has never been taken out. Are they so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that the Juvenile Authority won’t even torture her to get the information they want? Have they been deluding themselves into thinking they’re making a difference?

All this time she’s forced out thoughts of Connor, because it simply hurt too much to think about him. How horrified he must have been when she turned herself in. Horrified and stunned. Well, fine, let him be; he’ll get over it. She did it for him just as much as she did it for the injured boy, because as painful as it is to admit, Risa knows she had become just a distraction to Connor. If he’s truly going to lead those kids in the Graveyard like the Admiral did, he can’t be giving Risa leg massages and worrying whether her emotional needs are being met. Maybe he does love her, but it’s obvious there’s no room in his life at this moment to pay it any more than lip service.

Risa has no idea what her future holds now. All she knows is that she must focus on that future and not on Connor, no matter how much that hurts.

•   •   •

A few days later Risa finally has an actual visitor: a well-dressed woman with an air of authority.

“Good morning, Risa. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the girl behind the hullabaloo. “

Risa immediately decides that anyone who uses the word “hullabaloo” cannot be her friend.

The woman sits down in the single chair in the cell. It’s a chair that has never been used, because it’s not exactly designed for a paraplegic. In fact, it seems specifically designed
not
to be accessible to Risa, like most everything else in her cell. “I trust they’ve been treating you well?”

“I haven’t been ‘treated’ at all. I’ve been ignored.”

“You haven’t been ignored,” the woman tells her. “You’ve just been allowed some time to settle. Some time alone, to think.”

“Somehow I doubt I’ve ever been alone. . . .” Risa throws a glance to a large wall mirror, through which she can occasionally see shadows. “So am I some sort of political prisoner?” She asks, getting right to the point. “If you’re not going to torture me, do you just plan to leave me here to rot? Or maybe you’re selling me to a parts pirate. At least the parts that work.”

“None of those things,” says the woman. “I’m here to help you. And you, my dear, are going to help us.”

“I doubt that.” Risa rolls away, although she can’t roll very far. The woman doesn’t get up from her chair. She doesn’t even move; she just sits there comfortably. Risa wanted to be in control of this situation, but this woman keeps control with her voice alone.

“My name is Roberta. I represent an organization called Proactive Citizenry. Our purpose, among other things, is to do good in this world. We seek to advance the causes of both science and freedom as well as to provide a sense of spiritual enlightenment.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

Roberta smiles and pauses a moment, holding her smile before she speaks. “I’m going to have the charges against you dropped, Risa. But more importantly, I’m going to get you out of that wheelchair and give you a new spine.”

Risa turns to her, filled with more mixed emotions than she can sort right now. “No, you will not! It’s my right to refuse the spine of an Unwind.”

“Yes, it is,” Roberta says, way too calmly. “However, I firmly believe you will change your mind.”

Risa crosses her arms, her belief more firm than Roberta’s that she won’t.

•   •   •

She’s given the silent treatment again—but they must be getting impatient, because it’s only for two days this time instead of a week. Roberta returns and sits once more in the chair designed for people who can walk. This time she has a folder with her, although Risa can’t see what’s inside.

“Have you given any thought to my offer?” Roberta asks her.

“I don’t need to. I already gave you my answer.”

“It’s very noble to stand on principle and refuse an unwound spine,” Roberta says. “It does, however, represent a wrongful mind-set that is neither productive nor adaptive. It’s backward, actually, and it makes you part of the problem.”

“I plan to keep my ‘wrongful mind-set’ as well as my wheelchair.”

“Very well. I won’t deny you your choice.” Roberta shifts in her chair—perhaps a little irritated, or maybe just in anticipation. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Then she stands and opens the door. Risa knows that whoever it is has been waiting in the other room, watching through the oneway mirror.

“You can come in now,” Roberta says cheerfully.

A boy steps in cautiously. He seems sixteen or so. He has multicolored skin and multicolored streaks in his hair. At first she assumes it’s some sort of extreme body modification, but she quickly realizes it’s more than that. There is something profoundly wrong about him.

“Hi,” he says, and smiles tentatively with perfect teeth. “I’m Cam. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Risa.”

Risa backs away, her wheelchair bumping the wall. Now it strikes her exactly what she’s seeing—exactly why this boy seems so “off.” She has seen a news report about this creation. Her flesh starts to crawl. If it could, it would crawl right through the air vents to escape what she’s seeing.

“Get that thing away from me! It’s disgusting! Get it away!”

His expression mirrors Risa’s horror. He backs away and hits the wall as well.

“It’s all right, Cam,” Roberta says. “You know people always have to get used to you. And she will.” Roberta offers him the chair, but suddenly Cam doesn’t want to be there, he wants to escape just as much as Risa does.

Risa looks to Roberta so she doesn’t have to look at Cam. “I said get it out of here.”

“I’m not an it,” Cam insists.

Risa shakes her head. “Yes, you are.” She still won’t look directly at him. “Now get it out of here, or I swear I will rip every stolen part out of its body with my bare hands.”

She tries not to catch his gaze, but she can’t stop herself. The thing has begun to cry tears from someone else’s stolen tear ducts, and it just makes her angry.

“Dagger plunged deep,” he says. Risa has no idea what he’s talking about but doesn’t really care.

“Get it out of my sight,” she yells at Roberta, “and if you have any decency in you at all, you’ll kill it!”

Roberta looks at her sternly, and then turns to Cam. “You can go, Cam. Wait outside for me.”

Cam quickly, awkwardly, leaves, and Roberta closes the door. Now she’s fuming. If Risa can take anything positive out of this, it’s that she’s gotten the better of Roberta.

“You’re a cruel girl,” Roberta says.

“And you’re a monster to create a thing like that.”

“History will be the judge of who we are, and what we’ve done.” And then she puts a piece of paper down on the table. “This is a consent form. Sign it and you can have a new working spine by the end of the week.”

Risa picks it up, tears it to shreds, and throws the pieces in the air. Roberta must have been expecting this, because she
instantly pulls out a second consent form from her folder and slaps it down on the table.

“You
will
be healed, and you
will
make up to Cam for how badly you’ve treated him today.”

“Not in this life, or any other.”

Roberta smiles like she knows something Risa doesn’t. “Well then . . . here’s hoping you have a sudden change of heart.” Then she exits the room, leaving the pen and the consent form on the table.

Risa looks at the consent form long after Roberta has gone. She knows she won’t sign it, but the fact that they want her to intrigues her. Why is it so important to them that her broken body be repaired? There’s only one answer to that: For some reason Risa is much more important than she ever dreamed she was. Important to both sides.

He sits in the observation room. He’s been there more often than he’d like to admit, spying on Risa—although when it’s officially allowed through a one-way mirror, it’s not called spying. It’s called surveillance.

On the other side of the glass, Risa stares at the contract Roberta put before her. Her face is stony, her jaw clenched. Finally she picks up the page . . . then folds it into a paper airplane and throws it at the mirror. Cam jolts in spite of himself. He knows she can’t see him, but still she looks into the mirror at almost the right spot to make eye contact. For a moment Cam feels like she can see not only through the glass, but through him as well, and he has to look away.

He hates the fact that she hates him. He should have expected it, but still, her words hurt him deeply and make
him want to hurt her back. But no. That’s just the reaction of the various Unwinds in his head; kids who would lash out at the slightest provocation. He won’t give in to those impulses. There are enough sensible parts of him to balance things and allow him to control those parts that threaten to disturb the peace. He reminds himself that, as Roberta has said, he is the new paradigm—the new model of what humanity could, and should, be. The world will get used to him, and in time revere him. And so will Risa.

Roberta comes into the room behind him and speaks quietly. “There’s no point staying here.”

“Jericho,” he says. “She’s a wall, but she’ll crumble. I know she will.”

Roberta smiles at him. “I have no doubt that you’ll win her over. In fact, I suspect she’ll change her mind sooner than you think.”

Cam tries to read between the lines of her smile, but she reveals nothing. “Cat that ate the canary—I don’t like when you keep secrets.”

“No secret,” Roberta tells him. “Just an undying faith in human nature. Now come, it’s almost time for your photo shoot.”

Cam sighs. “Another one?”

“Would you prefer a press conference?”

“A sharp stick in the eye? No thank you!”

Cam has to admit that this new approach to the media is far better than press conferences and interviews. Roberta and her friends at Proactive Citizenry have cooked up a first-class advertising campaign. Billboards, print ads, digital, the works. All just photos, but even so, the ads are powerful.

The first round of ads will feature extreme close-ups of various parts of him. An eye; streaks of his multicolored hair; the starburst of flesh tones on his forehead. Each image will be
accompanied by a pithy but enigmatic caption like, “The Time Has Come,” or “The Brilliant Tomorrow,” with no other clue as to what’s being advertised. Then, when public curiosity is piqued, they move to phase two, where the ads will feature his face, his body, and finally his whole self.

“We’ll create a mystique around you,” Roberta told him. “Play into their puerile fascination with the exotic until they’re champing at the bit to see more.”

“Striptease,” Cam had said.

“An elevated version of the same concept, I suppose,” Roberta admitted. “Once the ad campaign has rolled out, you will enter the public eye not as an oddity, but as a celebrity—and when you finally deign to do interviews, it will be on our terms.”

“My terms,” Cam corrected.

“Yes, of course. Your terms.”

Now, as Cam watches Risa through the one-way glass, he wonders what could possibly make her live by his terms too. Roberta has told him that he can have anything he desires, but what if the thing he desires most is Risa choosing to be with him of her own free will?

“Cam, please—come now, or we’ll be late.”

Cam stands, but before he leaves, he spares one last glance through the mirror at Risa, who has struggled onto her bed. Now she lies stretched out on her back, looking morosely at the ceiling. Then she closes her eyes.

The eternally sleeping princess,
thinks Cam.
But I shall free you from those poisoned brambles that surround your heart. And then you will have no choice but to love me.

The Juvey-cop turned parts pirate makes a side trip to check one of his most successful traps. It is, however, in an unfortunate location. Unfortunate because it’s in a field that floods during storms. Nothing’s more irritating than a drowned AWOL. Except maybe disposing of one. He would rather continue searching for safe houses, with hopes of finding Connor Lassiter in one of them, but with major storms projected throughout the Midwest, checking this particular trap is worth the effort.

The trap is a piece of drainage pipe—a concrete cylinder five feet high and twenty feet long, lying in a fallow field that no one has farmed for years. Half a dozen such pipes rest in the field, surrounded by weeds—all abandoned when some public works project got canceled. It’s a nice hiding spot for runaway Unwinds—and in fact, one of the tunnel segments has a store of canned food right in the middle. The inside surface of that same cylinder, however, is painted with super-adhesive resin that sticks to clothes and flesh with such tenacity that anyone caught in the pipe might as well be nailed to the concrete. It tickles Nelson that he can catch Unwinds the way other people catch roaches.

Sure enough, there’s a kid stuck in the pipe. “Help me!” the boy shouts, kind of like the Fly caught in the spiderweb. “Help me, please!” The kid is scrawny and acne-ridden, with crooked teeth yellowed from chewing tobacco or just bad genetics. Either way, he’s not a prime specimen and won’t fetch much on the black market. His hair is plastered with glue, although Nelson suspects it doesn’t look much better clean.