The Admiral’s thoughts go far away for a moment, then he waves his hand.
“I’m sure you know the rest.”
Connor might not know all the particulars, but he knows the gist. “People wanted parts.”
“Demanded is more like it. A cancerous colon could be replaced with a healthy new one. An accident victim who would have died from internal injuries could get fresh organs. A wrinkled arthritic hand could be replaced by one fifty years younger. And all those new parts had to come from somewhere.” The Admiral paused for a moment to consider it. “Of course, if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened . . . but people like to keep what’s theirs, even after they’re dead. It didn’t take long for ethics to be crushed by greed. Unwinding became big business, and people let it happen.”
The Admiral glances over at the picture of his son. Even without the Admiral telling him, Connor realizes why—but he allows the Admiral the dignity of his confession.
“My son, Harlan, was a great kid. Smart. But he was troubled—you know the type.”
“I am the type,” says Connor, offering a slight grin.
The Admiral nods. “It was just about ten years ago. He got in with the wrong group of friends, got caught stealing. Hell, I was the same at his age—that’s why my parents first sent me to military school, to straighten me out. Only, for Harlan there was a different option. A more . . . efficient option.”
“You had him unwound.”
“As one of the fathers of the Unwind Accord, I was expected to set an example.” He presses his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, stemming off tears before they can flow. “We signed the order, then changed our minds. But it was already too late. They had taken Harlan right out of school to the harvest camp, and rushed him through. It had already been done.”
It had never occurred to Connor to consider the toll unwinding had on the ones who signed the order. He never thought he could have sympathy for a parent who could do that—or sympathy for one of the men who had made unwinding possible.
“I’m sorry,” Connor says, and means it.
The Admiral stiffens up—sobers up—almost instantly. “You shouldn’t be. It’s only because of his unwinding that you’re all here. Afterward, my wife left me and formed a foundation in Harlan’s memory. I left the military, spent several years more drunk than I am now, and then, three years ago, I had The Big Idea. This place, these kids, are the result of it. To date I’ve saved more than a thousand kids from unwinding.”
Connor now understands why the Admiral was telling him these things. It was more than just a confession. It was a way of securing Connor’s loyalty—and it worked. The Admiral was a darkly obsessed man, but his obsession saved lives.
Hayden once said that Connor had integrity. That same integrity locks him firmly on the Admiral’s side, and so Connor holds up his mug. “To Harlan!” he says.
“To Harlan!” echoes the Admiral, and together they drink to his name. “Bit by bit I am making things right, Connor,” the Admiral says. “Bit by bit, and in more ways than one.”
35. Lev
Where Lev was between the time he left CyFi and his arrival at the Graveyard is less important than where his thoughts resided. They resided in places colder and darker than the many places he hid.
He had survived the month through a string of unpleasant compromises and crimes of convenience—whatever was necessary to keep himself alive. Lev quickly became street-smart, and survival-wise. They say it takes complete immersion in a culture to learn its language and its ways. It didn’t take him very long to learn the language of the lost.
Once he landed in the safe-house network, he quickly made it known that he was not a guy to be trifled with. He didn’t tell people he was a tithe. Instead, he told them his parents signed the order to have him unwound after he was arrested for armed robbery. It was funny to him, because he had never even touched a gun. It amazed him that the other kids couldn’t read the lie in his face—he had always been such a bad liar. But then, when he looked in the mirror, what he saw in his own eyes scared him.
By the time he reached the Graveyard, most kids knew enough to stay away from him. Which is exactly what he wanted.
The same night that the Admiral and Connor have their secret conference, Lev heads out into the oil-slick dark of the moonless night, keeping his flashlight off. His first night there he had successfully slipped out to find Connor, in order to set him straight about a few things. Since then, the bruise from Connor’s punch has faded, and they haven’t spoken of it again. He hasn’t spoken much to Connor at all, because Lev has other things on his mind.
Each night since then he’s tried to sneak away, but every time, he’s been caught and sent back. Now that the Admiral’s five watchdogs have left, though, the kids on sentry duty are getting lax. As Lev sneaks between the jets, he finds that a few of them are even asleep on the job. Stupid of the Admiral to send those other kids away without having anyone to replace them.
Once he’s far enough away he turns on his flashlight and tries to find his destination. It’s a destination told to him by a girl he had encountered a few weeks before. She was very much like him. He suspects he’ll meet others tonight who are very much like him as well.
Aisle thirty, space twelve. It’s about as far from the Admiral as you can get and still be in the Graveyard. The space is occupied by an ancient DC-10, crumbling to pieces in its final resting place. When Lev swings open the hatch and climbs in, he finds two kids inside, both of whom bolt upright at the sight of him and take defensive postures.
“My name’s Lev,” he says. “I was told to come here.”
He doesn’t know these kids, but that’s no surprise—he hasn’t been in the Graveyard long enough to know that many kids here. One is an Asian girl with pink hair. The other kid has a shaved head and is covered in tattoos.
“And who told you to come here?” asks the flesh-head.
“This girl I met in Colorado. Her name’s Julie-Ann.”
Then a third figure comes out from the shadows. It’s not a kid but an adult—midtwenties, maybe. He’s smiling. The guy has greasy red hair, a straggly goatee to match, and a boney face with sunken cheeks. It’s Cleaver, the helicopter pilot.
“So Julie-Ann sent you!” he says. “Cool! How is she?”
Lev takes a moment to think about his answer. “She did her job,” Lev tells him.
Cleaver nods. “Well, it is what it is.”
The other two kids introduce themselves. The flesh-head is Blaine, the girl is Mai.
“What about that boeuf who flies the helicopter with you?” Lev asks Cleaver. “Is he part of this too?”
Mai gives a disgusted laugh. “Roland? Not on your life!”
“Roland isn’t exactly . . . the material for our little group,” Cleaver says. “So, did you come here to give us the good news about Julie-Ann, or are you here for another reason?”
“I’m here because I want to be here.”
“You say it,” says Cleaver, “but we still don’t know you’re for real.”
“Tell us about yourself,” says Mai.
Lev prepares to give them the armed-robbery version, but before he opens his mouth, he changes his mind. The moment calls for honesty. This must begin with the truth. So he tells them everything, from the moment he was kidnapped by Connor to his time with CyFi and the weeks after that. When he’s done, Cleaver seems very, very pleased.