"Which is why they won't be expecting it. You can continue your policy of executing the staff, and you won't add any new mouths to feed, because there won't be any storks. Let the tithes do whatever they want once you've liberated them. They can stay, they can run-either way it's not your problem. This will give you time to continue training the kids you have before you're saddled with more."

"That's not the way I do things! My instincts tell me to hit Pensacola, and I can't go against my instincts."

Dandrich leans closer. His face fills the screen. Starkey can practically feel the man's hand reaching through the ether and grasping Starkey's shoulder. A gentle grasp, but with enough pressure for Starkey to feel a subtle increase in the earth's gravity.

"Yes, you can," says Dandrich.

Starkey rages through the power plant, venting his indignation at anyone who crosses his path. He yells at Jeevan for not being aggressive enough during their last attack.

"You're a soldier now, not a computer nerd, so start acting like one!"

He rips into kids who are laughing while coming back from weapons training.

"Those things aren't toys, and this is no laughing matter!" He tells them to drop and give him twenty, and when they say, "Twenty what?" he storms off, too irritated to tell them.

Hayden strides past him with a nod, and he's so furious at the casual way Hayden saunters, he complains about yesterday's dinner, even though it was fine. "If you're in charge of food then do your freaking job!"

And Bam.

He's glad he doesn't encounter Bam until he's calmed down a bit, because he might do something he'd regret later. Bam has become a liability, but he can put her in her place. Although Garson DeGrutte doesn't know it yet, the reward for his loyalty isn't just getting the girl. Starkey's going to put him in charge of a team on their next mission-and Bam will be part of that team. She will have to take orders from Garson, and it will humble her. It will remind her who is in charge. And if it doesn't, he'll simply have to step things up with her. It's a shame, really. Bam had been so loyal for so long. But when loyalty runs out, so would any leader's tolerance.

He finds her in the weapons locker. In spite of her concerns about arming the storks, the weapons locker seems her favorite place to be. When she sees him, she doesn't come to crisp attention. She doesn't even stop assembling the weapon she's working on. She just glances up at him, then back down at her work.

"I heard about the call from Mr. Big. Do you have your orders?"

"I give the orders."

"Whatever." She wipes some sweat from her brow. "Is there something you want, Mason? Because I have to make sure these weapons are assembled correctly. Unless, of course, you'd rather go in with water balloons."

Starkey considers telling her about her demotion, but decides against it. Let her find out the day of the attack, when it will hit her hardest. Maybe it will make her mad enough to take out some harvest camp personnel for once.

"I came to tell you that I've changed my mind," he says. "We won't be going after Pensacola right now."

Bam finally stops what she's doing and gives him her full attention. "You have another place in mind?"

"We'll be going north instead. Mousetail Divisional Academy, in Tennessee."

"But isn't that place tithes-only? I thought you hated tithes."

Starkey frowns, feeling his anger rekindling toward Dandrich and his lack of faith. Well, maybe Starkey can turn this into an event just as iconic as he would have had in Pensacola.

"Tithes are filthy unwinding sympathizers," Starkey tells her. "Which is why, when we go in, our objective will be a little bit different." Then he takes a deep breath, hardening his resolve.

`"This time, we're not just taking out the staff. We're killing every last tithe as well."

26 * Podcast

"This is Radio Free Hayden, podcasting from a place that's toxic in more ways than one. I'm not myself today. I'm not in my happy place at all-which is why the image accompanying today's podcast is Dali's Persistence of Memory. Time melting on a bleak landscape of doom. Yeah, that about sums it up.

"Everything changes today. Or nothing changes. If things go right, and we find a way to stop what's about to happen, I'll be in a much better place than I am now. Hell, I might even play some music for your listening pleasure. And if things go wrong, then the next sound you hear will be a collective scream that may never end.

"I can't tell you the specifics, you'll just have to trust me that big things are brewing, and this stew promises to be lethal. So in the next couple of days, if you hear something more horrific than usual in your evening news, and you're faced with more dead kiddos than you're comfortable with, then you'll know that things did not go well.

"I suspect I'll be one of the casualties if we can't stop this particular speeding train, so you may never hear from me again. And, in which case, I hope you'll dedicate our little uprising to my memory.

"And speaking of the uprising, I've been considering how it might go down. I know such an event needs some rallying point. A date, a time, a place. I've been thinking of maybe Monday, November first, in Washington-the day before Election Day. It somehow seems appropriate to me that Election Day falls so close to Halloween this year, considering some of the measures on the ballot. Voluntary unwinding for cash. Tossing the brains of criminals and unwinding the rest of them. The "three strikes" law that allows the Juvenile Authority to arrest and unwind teenage offenders without parental consent. It certainly feels to me like a trip through the haunted mansion, and not even that unwound witch's head in the crystal ball can predict where it's going to end.

"So that's my proposal. A challenge for anyone who opposes unwinding to gather on November first, in Washington, DC. That gives you three weeks to make it happen. And if I don't make it-maybe you can carve my name on some random memorial so the world knows I was here."

27 * Mousetail

The story, far too old to be corroborated by anyone living, is that when the old tannery burned down, it was so infested with mice that they all ran out at once to escape the fire. The massive pack of mice raced toward the nearby Tennessee River, landing in a flood of vermin that rivaled the plagues on Egypt. And so, henceforth, and likely forevermore, the place came to be known as Mousetail Landing.

In the spot where the tannery once stood is now a harvest camp so picturesque it is often the subject of watercolors painted by vacationers camping across the river. The closest thing to mice at Mousetail now are the mild-mannered boys and girls all dressed in white, who arrive the day after their thirteenth birthdays. Happy children, all bright-eyed and trusting that the staff will ease them into a divided state with kindness and a reverence for the sanctity of their sacrifice.

The cabins of Mousetail Divisional Academy are heated in the winter by induction floorboards and cooled in the summer by multizone circulation systems that keep each tithe's sleeping area at precisely the temperature the tithe prefers. Spectacular meals are supervised by a chef who once had his own TV show and served by graduates of the International Institute of Modern Butlers.

Tithes are accepted to Mousetail through a rigorous and competitive application process akin to that of the most exclusive universities. To be chosen for the academy is a source of pride for a tithe and his or her family-and to receive a Mousetail transplant is something bragged about in society's highest strata.

Until recently, the academy's front gate was not locked. In fact, there's a sign just inside the gate in bright yellow and red that reads THOSE WHO WISH TO LEAVE UNDIVIDED MAY EXIT HERE. Yet in fourteen years of operation, there have been only four tithes who went AWOL. One of them was later found frozen in the woods. He was buried in a highly visible and well-maintained tomb in the camp, testifying to the love and care that Mousetail provides its guests-even the AWOL ones. And it also stands as a reminder to other tithes that the wage of cowardice is death.

In recent weeks, by request of the Juvenile Authority, the gate has been locked, and the minimal security staff has been augmented by three additional armed guards. It's nowhere near the protection required for more likely targets of Mason Starkey's wrath: nonvoluntary harvest camps, where the campers don't actually want to be there.

The new security measures frighten the tithes, reminding them that there's evil out in the world-but they take comfort in knowing that it won't be coming for them. Very soon the evil of this world will no longer be their concern. In fact they are taught to pity the kind of ignorance that leads to violence against harvest camps.

The tithes of Mousetail Divisional Academy do not know and cannot see the dark thunderheads growing to the south. It is a tempest far more devastating than they dare imagine, which threatens to end them before the scalpel can.

On the night before the Stork Brigade's planned attack, the tithes take to their beds after gentle prayer and the brushing of teeth, never suspecting that judgment will soon rain upon them with ballistic intensity, unless an unexpected front moves in to quiet the storm.

28 * Starkey

He is abducted in the middle of the night. It's different from the time the clappers came for him. This time his attackers are of the stealth kind, rather than from the school of brute force. They sneak up to him instead of bludgeoning their way through the rank and file. Without a commotion to alert him, Starkey has no warning before the tranq bullet pierces his thigh. Not a tranq dart, which is kinder and gentler, but a full-payload chemical bullet that explodes like a bug on a windshield but only after penetrating deep into the epidermis. Tranq bullets hurt like hell, even if they don't do any real damage.

The pain jolts Starkey awake just long enough to register that he's been tranq'd, then he's swallowed by unconsciousness once more.

He's awakened sometime later by a slap to the face. A hard one. Then another, because the first slap didn't quite do the job. The third slap is purely gratuitous on the part of the assailant, whoever he is.

"Awake yet, stork boy?" says a man with tousled hair and a severe expression. "Or do you need another one?"

"Go to hell," Starkey grunts out. That summons forth another slap, this one backhanded and brutal. It would sting quite a lot if he weren't still numb from the tranqs. He feels blood on his face, though. The guy has a ring that cut Starkey's cheek.

"Whoever you are, you're a dead man," Starkey tells him, trying not to slur his words. "My storks will find you, kill you, and string you up as a warning for all the other idiots out there."

"Will they, now?" The man is amused. Sure of himself. This does not bode well for Starkey, and so Starkey takes a moment to measure the situation.

He's outside in the woods. It's chilly. Starkey can see only in scant grays and deep royal blues. It must be dawn. He's bound but not gagged, which means they want him to be able to talk. Negotiate perhaps. His attacker, however, is angry. Very angry.

"Let me go, and we'll pretend this never happened," Starkey suggests. He knows it won't work, but how the man responds will define Starkey's parameters.

The man's response is a swift kick to Starkey's ribs, and he feels at least two of them crack. Starkey falls to the side, moaning in pain that can't be quelled by the tranqs still in his system. He now knows his parameters. They're roughly the dimensions of a coffin.

"Don't break him," hisses a voice in the shadows. Barely a voice at all-more like the breathy rasp of ghost. Starkey sees a figure shift. The silhouette of a shoulder, but the rest is obscured by a tree. "The less he's broken, the more he's worth."

The man backs off, but he doesn't seem any less angry. Although he's not all that big, not all that muscular, his simmering rage makes up for it. Starkey tries not to let the pain in his side drive him toward panic. There's never been a trap he hasn't been able to get out of. He escaped from the Juvey-rounders who came to unwind him, and killed one of them in the process. He escaped from the Graveyard, even though he had to shatter his own hand to do it. The lesson? He can escape from any situation . . . but he must be willing to do the unthinkable.

"Let me kill him!" says the brutal one, clearly the enforcer of this team. "Let me kill him and be done with it."

"Stick to the plan," rasps the voice in the shadows. "He's worth more to us alive."

Starkey tries to calculate how far he might be from safety. The growing light confirms that it's daybreak. They took him sometime during the night. He could be hours away from his storks, or just outside the gate of the abandoned power plant they've been calling home. The plant is on the banks of the Mississippi. He tries to listen for the river, but realizes that the river moves so slowly, you couldn't hear it if it were right behind you. You can smell it, though. He takes a deep whiff. The air does not have the unpleasant smell of organic decay married to chemical runoff that typifies the Mississippi. His panic begins bubbling to the surface again.

And this on what should be the day of his greatest harvest camp attack.

"What do you want?" he asks.

Finally the second assailant steps out of the shadows. There's a third one too. Shorter than the other two, lingering back. He holds something in his hand. Could be a weapon of some sort. While the enforcer's face is fully exposed, these other two wear black ski masks hiding their faces in wool-knit obscurity.

"Beg for your life," says the third assailant, with the same breathy hiss as the other masked kidnapper.

"I don't beg," announces Starkey, and his posturing is met with silence. As his arms are tied behind his back, he has to squirm up to a sitting position. "But I'm sure we can work this out."

"We know who you are," says the enforcer. "There's a reward on your head-dead or alive. I prefer dead."

Now he thinks he knows their play. They intend to turn him in for the reward-but they could have just kept him unconscious until they handed him over. They want him to make a better offer, and with the clapper movement behind him, he has the resources to do it.

"Name your price," Starkey says. "I pay better than the Juvenile Authority."

The enforcer seethes. "You think this is about money? We're not interested in yours, or the Juvies' money either."

Starkey wasn't expecting that.

The enforcer looks to the second assailant as if for permission. Number two, who is clearly in charge, nods. Starkey suspects that it's a woman, but the shadows are still too thick to be sure.

"The Burmese Dah Zey pays in more than just cash," the enforcer tells him. "It pays in respect. And career advancement."

Starkey's fear, which had just been gnawing at him, now clamps down, driving its teeth deep. His blood literally begins to feel cold within his body, like his veins are being caressed with ice. "You can't be serious."

But their solemn silence proves that they are. There's the black market, and then there's the Dah Zey.

Starkey tries to swallow, but finds his throat too dry. "Okay . . . okay . . . we can work this out. You don't need to do this; we can work this out." Maybe he does beg after all.

"Too late for that," snaps the enforcer.

"No," rasps the whisperer. "Let him talk."

Starkey knows this will be the greatest escape act of his life, if he can pull it off. "I can supply you," he says.

"We don't need supplies," says the enforcer.

"That's not what I mean. If you free me, I can supply you with Unwinds to sell to the Dah Zey. They're AWOL storks marked for unwinding, so no one will miss them. Imagine that-a constant supply . . . and not just any kids-I'll give you the cream of the crop. The strongest, the healthiest, the smartest. I'll keep you flush for a long, long time, and get you that respect you were talking about."

They just stare at him for a moment. Then the enforcer says, "You would do that? Sacrifice the other storks to save yourself?"

Starkey nods without hesitation. "What you don't understand is that they need me. They need me more than they need each other."

Again, weighty silence as they consider it. Starkey wishes he could see their eyes better. He wishes he could see the expressions of the other two behind their ski masks.

"How many will you give us?" the whisperer asks, her voice still a toneless rasp.

"How many do you need?" Starkey forces a smile. "Ten percent? Like a tithing? That's right, they'll be like tithes!"

Starkey knows he's getting somewhere. As for the logistics, those can be worked out later. The consequences of this escape can be dealt with. The aftermath is always manageable. All that matters in the moment is the escape itself.

"How could you do that to them?" says the third one, and his whisper breaks, a bit of roundness coming into his timbre. In the back of Starkey's mind, that voice is familiar, but it's so far back in his mind, he doesn't register it yet.

"I can do it because it's the right thing to do!" Starkey insists. "The idea of a war is more important than any of its warriors. And I am the idea!" Then he looks away. "I don't expect you to understand that."

And suddenly the whispering woman isn't whispering anymore. "We understand a lot more than you think." Starkey realizes who she is the moment before she removes her ski mask.

"Bam?"