Argent swallows hard. His hands shake a bit, and he tells himself it’s because of the espresso.
“Fine, so I won’t go with him. I’ll go out alone—I’ll bring you back tons of AWOLs. You saw how good I am at it, right? I could be one of your best suppliers!”
Divan sighs. “I’m sure you could be. However, my arrangement with Jasper makes that impossible as well.”
“Wait—what arrangement?”
But the sympathetic look on Divan’s face makes the truth all too clear. Whatever that arrangement is, it doesn’t involve things ending well for Argent. He tries to rise—as if there were somewhere to run—but he can’t get up. He can’t even feel his legs. He tries to lift his arms, but they just hang scarecrow-limp by his side. It takes all his effort just to remain upright in the chair.
“Never trust espresso,” Divan tells him. “Its bitter taste can mask a multitude of things. This time, it masked a powerful muscle relaxant—a natural compound—designed to calm you and ease your handling.”
Argent glances to the dull-eyed bonsai over Divan’s shoulder. “Are you going to make me one of them? I won’t make a good potted boy,” Argent pleads.
“Of course not,” Divan says with compassion that must be well practiced. “That’s only for my enemies. I do not see you as an enemy, Argent. You are, however, a commodity.”
Argent loses the battle with gravity, and falls to the soft grass. Divan kneels beside him. “Your name means ‘silver,’ but sadly, as an Unwind, I suspect you’ll be worth little more than brass.”
And then something Divan had said when they first sat down comes back to him. Divan spoke of the six Unwinds that Argent provided. Argent is the sixth. Divan does not do anything by mistake.
Servants arrive to take Argent away. “Please,” he says, his teeth locked and his voice beginning to slur. “Please . . .” But the only answer he receives are the dispassionate stares from the bonsai . . . and as he’s carried off, Argent holds on to the last glimmer of light left to him. Whatever happens now, he knows he’ll receive mercy. Divan is all about mercy.
Part Three
A Path to Penance
BELGIUM FIRST COUNTRY TO ALLOW EUTHANASIA FOR CHILDREN
By David Harding / New York Daily News
Saturday, December 14, 2013 2:43 PM
Belgium has voted to extend euthanasia laws to cover children.
The Belgian Senate backed the plan on Friday, which means the controversial law will now cover terminally ill children.
It means Belgium is the first country in the world to remove any age limits on euthanasia. The country first adopted euthanasia in 2002, but restricted it to those over 18. . . .
Any child seeking euthanasia under the law must understand what is meant by euthanasia and the decision must be agreed by their parents.
Their illness must also be terminal.
Belgium recorded over 1,400 cases of euthanasia in 2012. . . .
The full article can be found at: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/belgium-country-euthanasia-children-article-1.1547809#ixzz2qur84gzr
18 • Cam
Meals with Roberta on the veranda. Always so formal. Always so genteel. Always a reminder to Cam that he is forever beneath her thumb. Even when he’s miles away at West Point, he knows he will still feel her manipulations. Her puppeteer’s strings are woven through his mind just as effectively as the “worm” that makes him forget that which is truly important.
During breakfast, a few days before he’s scheduled to leave, he asks her the question point-blank. The question that sits between them at every meal like a glass of poison that neither is willing to touch.
“What was her name?”
He doesn’t expect an answer. He knows Roberta will evade.
“You’re leaving for a grand new life soon. What’s the point?”
“There’s no point—I just want to hear you say it.”
Roberta takes a small bite of her eggs Benedict and puts down the fork. “Even if I tell you, the nanites will break the synapses and rob the memory within seconds.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Roberta sighs, crosses her arms, and to Cam’s amazement, says, “Her name was Risa Ward.”
. . . but the moment the words are spoken, they’re gone from his mind, leaving him to wonder if she had told him at all.
“What was her name?” he asks again.
“Risa Ward.”
“What was her name?”
“Risa Ward.”
“WHAT WAS HER NAME?!”
Roberta shakes her head in a belittling show of pity. “You see, it’s no use. Best to spend your time thinking of your future, Cam, not the past.”
He looks at his plate feeling anything but hungry. From deep within him comes a desperate whisper of a question. He can’t even remember why he’s asking it, but it must have some significance, mustn’t it?
“What . . . was . . . her . . . name?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roberta says. “Now finish up—we have a lot to do before you leave.”
19 • Risa
The girl who Cam can’t remember is running for her life.
It was a bad idea—actually, a whole series of them—that brought her to this circumstance. Only now does Risa comprehend how monumentally bad those ideas were, as she races from armed security guards in a massive research hospital complex. There are windows, but they only look out on other wings of the complex, so there’s no way to get one’s bearings. Risa is convinced they’re running in circles, spiraling toward inevitable doom.
• • •
There was little choice but to go on this fool’s mission.
If the organ printer arrived as stillborn technology when they made their grand play, then all their efforts will have been for naught. It was crucial that they find a way to test it, for only by demonstrating what it could do, would the world sit up and take notice.
“Making sure it works should have been your job,” Connor pointed out to Sonia as they discussed it in a relatively private corner of her basement. “You’ve been sitting on the thing for thirty years—you could have checked that it worked before you brought us into it.”
Sonia glared at him. “So sue me,” she said, and then added, “Oh, that’s right, you can’t—because for the past two years you’ve had the legal status of a canned ham.”
Connor matched her glare, dagger for dagger, until Sonia backed down. “I never thought I’d get the chance to bring it out again,” she said, “so I never bothered.”
“What changed?” Connor asked.
“You showed up.”
Although Connor couldn’t get why that should matter, Risa did. It’s their notoriety that makes all the difference. They have become the royalty of AWOLs. Attach their names to something, and suddenly people listen, whether they want to or not.
“OSU Medical Center,” Sonia said, “is one of the only research hospitals in the Midwest that does curative biological research. Everyone else is just trying to figure out better ways of using parts from Unwinds. Plenty of funding for that—but try to fund alternatives, and you get nothing but tumbleweeds.”
“OSU? Connor said. “As in Ohio State University? As in, the one in Columbus?”
“You got a problem with that?” Sonia asked. Connor gave her no answer.
She went on to tell them of one rogue doctor who was still seeking cures for systemic diseases, the kind that can’t be cured by transplantation. “And guess what’s at the heart of that research?” Sonia asked mischievously. The answer, of course, was adult pluripotent stem cells—the very sort of cells needed for the printer.