• • •
Connor has not been in Sonia’s basement for almost two years. He came here on his second day AWOL. He had taken a tithe hostage, tranq’d a Juvey-cop with his own gun, and gotten caught up with an orphan girl who’d escaped from a bus headed to a harvest camp. What a mismatched band of fools they had been! Connor still feels the fool from time to time, but so much has changed, he can barely even remember the troubled kid he used to be. Now Lev—once an innocent kid brainwashed to want his own unwinding—was an old soul in a body that had stopped growing. Risa, who at first just scrambled to survive, had taken on Proactive Citizenry on national TV—but not before having her spine shattered, and then replaced against her will. And as for Connor—he had taken charge of the world’s largest secret sanctuary for AWOL Unwinds . . . only to discover that it wasn’t so secret after all. The memory of the Graveyard takedown is still a fresh wound in his soul. He had fought tooth and nail—valiantly, some might say—but in the end, the Juvenile authority won and sent hundreds of kids to harvest camp.
Kids just like the ones who now occupy Sonia’s basement.
Connor knows it’s crazy, but he feels he somehow let these kids down too, that day in the Graveyard. As he descends behind Risa, he feels apprehension and a vague kind of shame that just makes him angry. He’s got nothing to be ashamed of. What happened at the Graveyard was beyond his control. And then there was Starkey, who double-crossed him and flew off with his storks in the only means of escape. No, Connor has nothing to be ashamed of . . . so why, as kids begin coming out of the basement shadows, can’t he look any of them in the eye?
“Déjà vu?” asks Risa, when she hears him take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Something like that.”
Risa, who has already spent a few weeks helping Sonia, knows all the players down here. She tries to smooth the way for Connor. The kids are either starstruck or threatened by his presence. The resident alpha—a tall meatless kid named Beau—is quick to urinate on his territory by saying, “So you’re the Akron AWOL? I thought you’d look . . . healthier.”
Connor’s not quite sure what that means, and the kid probably isn’t either. While Connor could make an enjoyable pastime of challenging Beau’s bogus sense of testosterone supremacy, he decides it’s not worth the effort.
“What’s that you’re holding?” asks an innocent-looking thirteen-year-old who reminds Connor a little bit of Lev, back in the days before Lev grew his hair long and got jaded.
“Just an old printer,” says Connor. Grace chuckles at that, but doesn’t speak of what she knows. Instead she goes around introducing herself and shaking hands, even with kids who would prefer not to shake hands with anyone.
“An old printer?” says Beau. “Like we need more junk down here.”
“Yeah, well, it has sentimental value.”
Beau hmmphs dismissively and saunters off. Connor suppresses the urge to stick out his foot and trip him.
Connor sets the printer down on a shelf, knowing if he treats it with too much care and attention, the smarter kids will figure something out. Right now, the fewer people who know about it, the better. At least until they can figure out a way to let everyone know about it.
“They’re good kids,” Risa tells Connor. “Of course, they’ve got issues, or they wouldn’t be here.”
Regardless of how much he loves Risa, he can’t help but bristle a little. “I know how to deal with AWOLs. I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”
Risa takes a moment to take an all-too-invasive look at him. “What’s bothering you?” she asks.
And although he still hasn’t gotten a handle on it himself, he finds that his gaze immediately goes to the shark tattooed on his arm. The last time he was in this basement, that arm was part of Roland. Risa catches that gaze and, as always, reads him better than he reads himself.
“Being down here might feel like we’re back where we started—but we’re not.”
“I know,” Connor admits. “But knowing that and feeling it are two different things. And there’s a lot of . . . stuff . . . that being here brings back.”
“Being here?” she asks. “Or being home?”
“Akron isn’t home,” he reminds her. “They might call me the Akron AWOL because it all went down here, but it’s not home.”
She smiles at him gently, and it melts at least some of his frustration. “You know, you never actually told me where home is for you.”
He hesitates, as if saying it might bring it closer. He’s not sure if he wants that or not. “Columbus,” he finally tells her.
She considers it. “About an hour and a half from here?”
“About.”
She nods. “The state home where I spent most of my life is much closer. And you know what? I couldn’t care in the least.”
And she walks away, leaving Connor unsure if her words were an attempt at commiseration, or a gentle slap in the face.
THE FOLLOWING IS A PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT
With all the confusing information out there, it’s hard to know what to vote for. But not when it comes to Measure F—“the Prevention Initiative.” Measure F is simple. It provides special funds to form a new arm of the Juvenile Authority that will monitor thousands of preteens who are at risk, offering counseling, treatment, and alternative options for their futures before they reach divisional age. What’s more, Measure F won’t cost taxpayers a dime! It will be fully funded by harvest camp proceeds.
Vote yes on Measure F. Isn’t an ounce of prevention worth a pound of flesh?
—Sponsored by the Brighter Day Coalition
In Sonia’s basement, it’s hard to tell when night has fallen. There’s a small window high up in a far back corner, but it’s behind such a maze of junk, one has to strain to detect any light coming in through the frosted glass. The few clocks among the junk in the basement don’t work, nor does the TV, and of the dozen kids down there, not a single one has a watch. Either they traded it for food before they landed here, or they were so used to using their phones as timepieces, they never had them. Phones, however, being traceable, are the first accessory ditched by the smart AWOL. Connor, of course, wasn’t too smart his first night on the run. They tracked him by his phone, and he came within a hairsbreadth of getting caught. He wised up fast, though.
While everyone waits for Sonia to bring dinner—an event that never happens on any predictable schedule—Grace weaves the tale of the night before, getting more and more animated as she realizes she has the rapt attention of most of the kids.
“So we’re upstairs in some lady’s house, and I see these special-ops guys in black slinking across the lawn in the middle of the night,” she says. “Prob’ly trained to kill. Hands are lethal weapons, that kind of thing.” Connor cringes at her embellishments. The next time she tells it, they’ll be dropping by helicopter.
“I hear them whispering and there’s something in their words and the way they’re speaking that makes me realize they’re not after Connor or Risa or me—they’re here for Camus Comprix! They want the rewind, and they don’t even know that the rest of us are there!” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Suddenly they crash in through the back door, and they crash in through the front door, and we’re all upstairs, and I tell Cam he’s done for, but the rest of us don’t have to be. Then I push Risa under the bed, and squeeze in after her, and Connor makes like he’s asleep on the bed facedown, and they burst into the room, and tranq Connor and take Cam away, never realizing they just missed a chance at the Akron AWOL—and all because I figured it out!”