Unwind (34 page)

The look on Roland's face is so toxic it could take out an entire unit. “I could have killed you a dozen times. I should have—because then we wouldn't be here.”

“You turned us in at the hospital,” Connor reminds him. “If
you
hadn't done
that
, we wouldn't be here. We all would've made it safely back to the Graveyard!”

“What Graveyard? There's nothing left. You locked me in that crate and let them all destroy it! I would have stopped it, but you never gave me the chance!”

“If you were there, you would have found a way to kill the Admiral yourself. Hell, you would have killed the Goldens if they weren't already dead! That's what you are! That's
who
you are!”

Roland suddenly gets very quiet, and Connor knows he's gone too far.

“Well, if I'm a killer, I'm running out of time,” says Roland. “I better get to it.” He begins swinging, and Connor is quick to defend, but soon it's more than just defending himself. Connor taps into his own wellspring of fury, and he lets loose a brutal offensive of his own.

It's the fight they never had in the warehouse. It's the fight Roland wanted when he had cornered Risa in the bathroom. Both of them fuel their fists with a world's worth of anger. They smash against walls and bedframes, relentlessly pummeling each other. Connor knows this is not like any fight he's ever had before, and although Roland doesn't have a weapon, he doesn't need one. He's his own weapon.

As well as Connor fights, Roland is simply stronger, and as Connor's strength begins to fade, Roland grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall, his hand pressed against Connor's windpipe. Connor struggles, but Roland's grip is way too strong. He slams Connor against the wall over and over, never loosening that grip on his neck.

“You call me a killer, but you're the only criminal here!” screams Roland. “I didn't take a hostage! I didn't shoot a Juveycop! And I never killed anyone! Until now!” Then he squeezes his fingers together and shuts off Connor's windpipe completely.

Connor's struggles become weaker without oxygen to feed his muscles. His chest heaves against the absence of air, and his vision begins to darken until all he can see is Roland's furious grimace.
Would you rather die, or be unwound?
Now he finally knows the answer. Maybe this is what he wanted. Maybe it's why he stood there and taunted Roland. Because he'd rather be killed with a furious hand than dismembered with cool indifference.

Connor's eyesight fills with frantic squiggles, the darkness closes in, and his consciousness fails.

But only for an instant.

Because in a moment his head hits the ground, startling him conscious again—and when his vision starts to clear he sees Roland looking down on him. He's just standing there, staring. To Connor's amazement, there are tears in Roland's eyes that he tries to hide behind his anger, but they're still there. Roland looks at the hand that came so close to taking Connor's life. He wasn't able to go through with it—and he seems just as surprised as Connor.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Roland says. Then he leaves without another word.

Connor can't tell whether Roland is disappointed or relieved that he's not the killer he thought he was, but Connor suspects it's a little bit of both.

The tithes at Happy Jack are like first-class passengers on the
Titanic
. There's plush furniture throughout the tithing house. There's a theater, a pool, and the food is better than homemade. Sure, their fate is the same as the “terribles,” but at least they're getting there in style.

It's after dinner, and Lev is alone in the tithing house workout room. He stands on a treadmill that isn't moving, because he hasn't turned it on. On his feet are thickly padded running shoes. He wears a double pair of socks to cushion his feet even more. However, his feet are not his concern at the moment—it's his hands. He stands there staring at his hands, lost in the prospect of them. Never before has he been so intrigued by the lines across his palms. Isn't one of them
supposed to be a life line? Shouldn't the life line of a tithe divide out like the branches of a tree? Lev looks at the swirls of his fingerprints. What a nightmare of identification it must be when other people get an Unwind's hands. What can fingerprints mean when they're not necessarily yours?

No one will be getting Lev's fingerprints. He knows this for a fact.

There are tons of activities for the tithes, but unlike the terribles, no one is forced to participate. Part of preparation for tithing is a monthlong regimen of mental and physical assessments even before one's tithing party, so all the hard work is done at home, before they get here. True, this isn't the harvest camp he and his parents had chosen, but he's a tithe—it's a lifetime pass that's good anywhere.

Most of the other tithes are in the rec room at this time of the evening, or in any number of prayer groups. There are pastors of all faiths in the tithing house—ministers, priests, rabbis, and clerics—because that notion of giving the finest of the flock back to God is a tradition as old as religion itself.

Lev attends as often as necessary, and in Bible study he says just enough of the right things so as not to look suspect. He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments.

“My uncle got the heart of a tithe and now people say he can perform miracles.”

“I know this woman who got a tithe's ear. She heard a baby crying a block away, and rescued it from a fire!”

“We are Holy Communion.”

“We are manna from Heaven.”

“We are the piece of God in everyone.”

Amen.

Lev recites prayers, trying to let them transform him and lift him up like they used to, but his heart has been hardened. He wishes it could be hard enough to be diamond instead of crumbling jade—maybe then he'd have chosen a different path. But for who he is now, for what he feels and what he doesn't feel, the path is right. And if it's not right, well, he doesn't care enough to change it.

The other tithes know Lev is different. They've never seen a fallen tithe before, much less one who, like the prodigal son, has renounced his sins and returned to the fold. But then, tithes don't generally know many other tithes. Being surrounded by so many kids just like them feeds that sense of being a chosen group. Still, Lev is outside of that circle.

He turns the treadmill on, making sure his strides are steady and his footfalls as gentle as can be. The treadmill is state-of-the-art. It has a screen with a programmable vista: You can jog through the woods, or run the New York Marathon. You can even walk on water. Lev was prescribed extra exercise when he arrived a week ago. That first day, his blood tests showed high triglyceride levels. He's sure that Mai's and Blaine's blood tests showed the same problem as well—although the three of them were “captured” independently and arrived a few days apart from one another, so no connection among the three of them could be made.

“Either it runs in your family or you've had a diet high in fats,” the doctor had said. He prescribed a low-fat diet during his stay at Happy Jack, and suggested additional exercise. Lev knows there's another reason for the high triglyceride level. It's not actually triglyceride in his bloodstream at all, but a similar compound. One that's a little less stable.

Another boy enters the workout room. He has fine hair so blond it's practically white, and eyes so green, there must have been some genetic manipulation involved. Those eyes will go
for a high price. “Hi, Lev.” He gets on the treadmill next to Lev and begins running. “What's up?”

“Nothing. Just running.”

Lev knows the kid didn't come here of his own accord. Tithes are never supposed to be left alone. He was sent here to be Lev's buddy.

“Candlelighting will be starting soon. Are you coming?”

Every evening, a candle is lit for each tithe being unwound the next day. The honored kids each give a speech. Everyone applauds. Lev finds it disgusting.

“I'll be there,” Lev tells the kid.

“Have you started working on your speech yet?” he asks. “I'm almost done with mine.”

“Mine's still in bits and pieces,” Lev says. The joke goes over the kid's head. Lev turns off the machine. This kid will not leave him alone as long as he's here, and Lev really doesn't want to talk to him about the glory of being a chosen one. He'd rather think about those who aren't chosen, and are lucky enough to be far from the harvest camp—like Risa and Connor, who to the best of his knowledge are still in the sanctuary of the Graveyard. It's a big comfort to know that their lives will continue even after he's gone.

*   *   *

There's an old trash shed behind the dining room that's no longer in use. Lev found it last week, and decided it was the perfect place for secret meetings. When he arrives that evening, Mai is pacing in the small space. She's been getting more and more nervous each day. “How long are we going to wait?” she asks.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Lev asks. “We'll wait until the time is right.”

Blaine pulls out six small paper packets from his sock, tears one open, and pulls out a little round Band-Aid.

“What's that for?” Mai asks.

“For me to know and for you to find out.”

“You're so immature!”

Mai always has a short fuse, especially when it comes to Blaine, but tonight there seems to be more rumbling beneath the surface of her attitude. “What's wrong, Mai?” Lev asks.

Mai takes a moment before answering. “I saw this girl today playing piano on the Chop Shop roof. I know her from the Graveyard—and she knows me.”

“That's impossible. If she's from the Graveyard, why would she be here?” asks Blaine.

“I know what I saw—and I think there are other kids here I know from the Graveyard too. What if they recognize us?”

Blaine and Mai look to Lev as if he can explain it. Actually, he can. “They must be kids who were sent out on a job and got caught, that's all.”

Mai relaxes. “Yeah. Yeah, that must be it.”

“If they recognize us,” says Blaine, “we can say the same thing happened to us.”

“There,” says Lev. “Problem solved.”

“Good,” says Blaine. “Back to business. So . . . I'm thinking we go for the day after tomorrow, on account of I'm scheduled for a game of football the day after that, and I don't think it'll go very well.”

Then he hands two of the little Band-Aids to Mai and two to Lev.

“What do we need Band-Aids for?” Mai asks.

“I was told to give these to you after we got here.” Blaine dangles one from his fingers, like a little flesh-colored leaf. “They're not Band-Aids,” he says. “They're detonators.”

*   *   *

There was never a job on an Alaskan pipeline. After all, what Unwind would volunteer for such a job? The whole point was
to make sure no one but Lev, Mai, and Blaine volunteered. Their van had taken them from the Graveyard to a run-down house, in a run-down neighborhood where people who had been run down by life plotted unthinkable deeds.

Lev was terrified of these people, and yet he felt a kinship with them. They understood the misery of being betrayed by life. They understood what it felt like to have less than nothing inside you. And when they told Lev how important he was in the scheme of things, Lev felt, for the first time in a long time, truly important.

The word “evil” was never used by these people—except to describe the evils of what the world had done to them. What they were asking Lev, Mai, and Blaine to do wasn't evil—no, no, no, not at all. It was an expression of all the things they felt inside. It was the spirit, and the nature, and the manifestation of all they had become. They weren't just messengers, they were the message. This is what they filled Lev's mind with, and it was no different than the deadly stuff they filled his blood with. It was twisted. It was wrong. And yet it suited Lev just fine.

“We have no cause but chaos,” Cleaver, their recruiter, was always so fond of saying. What Cleaver never realized, even at the end of his life, is that chaos is as compelling a cause as any other. It can even become a religion to those unlucky enough to be baptized into it, those whose consolation can only be found in its foul waters.

Lev does not know of Cleaver's fate. He does not know, or care, that he himself is being used. All Lev knows is that someday soon the world will suffer a small part of the loss and the emptiness and the utter disillusionment he feels inside. And they will know the moment he raises his hands in applause.

Connor eats his breakfast as quickly as he can. It's not because he's hungry but because he has somewhere else he wants to be. Risa's breakfast hour is right before his. If she's slow, and he's quick, they can force their paths to cross without attracting the attention of the Happy Jack staff.

They meet in the girls' bathroom. The last time they were forced to meet in a place like this, they took separate, isolated stalls. Now they share one. They hold each other in the tight space, making no excuses for it. There's no time left in their lives for games, or for awkwardness, or for pretending they don't care about each other, and so they kiss as if they've done it forever. As if it is as crucial as the need for oxygen.

She touches the bruises on his face and neck, the ones he got from his fight with Roland. She asks what happened. He tells her it's not important. She tells him she can't stay much longer, that Dalton and the other band members will be waiting for her on the Chop Shop roof.

“I heard you play,” Connor tells her. “You're amazing.”