47 * Connor

The instant Argent is gone, Connor takes action-but even awake and alert, Connor can find no way to give himself an advantage, and no way out of the harvester in one piece. The door through which Argent came and went requires a key. Not a code, or key card, or anything defeatable by technology, but an actual old-fashioned key. Connor might as well be sealed in the Great Pyramid. As for the machine itself, it's a soulless thing. A black rectangular box suspended from spring-loaded support legs that absorb the unpredictable motion of air turbulence. The thing looks like a spider, a massive daddy longlegs. There's a control panel, but he can't figure out how to open it, much less access it.

"Help me! Help me, please! DO something!"

When the girl awaiting unwinding on the conveyor belt gets enough of her wits about her to understand at least part of what's happening, Connor tries to lift her from the steel sled she rests upon, but she doesn't budge. He realizes why when he gets too close, and his wrist becomes stuck to the steel. The sled is powerfully magnetized-and once that magnet is engaged, the "long divisions," as Argent called their iron fiber bodysuits, are locked in place more powerfully than if they had been chained there. It takes all his strength and leverage to free his wrist. In the end, he can only be a witness to the girl's end, as the belt starts rolling and she's drawn into the unwinding chamber. The door closes, and the soundproof walls of the machine silence her. There's a small round window on the side of the machine, but Connor can't bring himself to look into it. As if anyone would want to see what happens in there.

Fifteen minutes later stasis containers of various sizes begin to roll out of the other end of the chamber and are neatly stacked in the cargo hold by mechanical arms. Her unwinding is complete in forty-five minutes-far more quickly than in a standard Chop Shop. Could this be the future of unwinding? Will machines like this eventually be approved for legal use? The great barrel of Unwinds begins to turn-a wheel of fortune selecting the next unlucky winner.

"Hey! You're the Akron AWOL! You're him! You can save me! You have to save me!"

Connor watches the second kid go the way of the first. Again he tries to do something-anything-to stop the process, but the machine ignores him. Connor almost loses a hand himself when the unwinding chamber door nearly closes on it. The harvester doesn't seem to have a protocol at all for outside interference, or even awareness of it-and although a single security camera constantly sweeps the room, apparently no one's watching, because Connor's sure it's caught him once or twice, but no one has come to investigate. Security here is about as necessary as in a mausoleum. No one's getting in, and none of the residents will be causing problems.

" l'aide! l'aide! Je ne veux pas mourir!"

The next victim-a girl who doesn't even speak English-is pulled into the machine against all of Connor's attempts to save her. He knows it's futile even trying, but what else can he do? Then with the first three kids unwound, and the bidders primed, the final specimen of the day is plucked by the hydraulic arms from his niche, and placed before the mouth of the machine. At first Connor thinks what he's seeing must be a hallucination brought on by the drugs still in his system, but as he draws closer, there's no mistaking the face. It's Starkey.

Connor stands there numbly as Starkey regains full consciousness and looks at him much the same way Connor had looked at Argent. Not so much with disbelief, but with a curious detachment from reality.

"You?" Starkey says. "Where am I? Why are you here?"

But he's quick to figure out his predicament, and the moment he does, Connor turns from sworn enemy into savior. He begins pleading just like the others.

"Please, Connor! However much you hate me, you have to do something!"

Connor actually goes through the motions of trying to free him at first-but only for Starkey's benefit. He knows that he can't do a thing. If an escape artist like Starkey can't do it, what hope does Connor have? Based on what he's already seen, Connor knows Starkey has only five minutes before he's unwound, but there's nothing Connor can do other than stand beside him, keeping him final company. The helpless above the hopeless.

"Fund-raising!" Starkey wails. "The clappers told me I had a new job in their fund-raising division. How could I have been so stupid!"

He struggles, fighting the magnetic restraint just as the other kids did, and in tears he says, "All I wanted was to give storks a fighting chance! And revenge for all the mistreatment and unfairness. I did that, didn't I? I made a difference! Tell me that I made a difference!"

Connor considers how me might respond, and says, "You made people take notice."

If he could save Starkey, would he? Knowing all the death and destruction Starkey has caused? Knowing the maniacal direction his vendetta took? How his personal war actually furthered the cause of unwinding? If anyone deserves to be unwound, it's Starkey . . . and yet Connor would stop it if he could.

He puts a firm hand on Starkey's shoulder. "This is one escape you're not going to make, Mason. Try to relax. Use this time to prepare yourself."

"No! This can't be it! There's got to be a way out!"

"You're on a plane in the middle of God knows where!" yells Connor. "You are in front of a machine that can't be stopped. Use these last minutes to focus, Mason. Use what time you have left to put your life in order!"

And all at once Connor realizes he's not saying these words just to Starkey-he's saying them to himself as well. Conner thought that being awake would give him an advantage, but it has only emphasized how dire the situation is. He tries to tell himself he's been through worse, but there's an intuition as solid as the airframe carrying them across the sky that tells Connor he's not getting out in one piece. It's only a matter of time until he's the one lying before the mouth of the monster.

Starkey does calm himself. He closes his eyes, takes deep breaths, and then when he opens them again, there's a sense of resolve that wasn't there before.

"I know how you can keep me from being unwound," he says.

Connor shakes his head. "I told you, there's nothing I can do!"

"Yes, there is," Starkey tells him with steely certainty in his voice. "You can kill me."

Connor takes a step back and stares at Starkey, unable to respond.

"Kill me, Connor. I want you to. I need you to."

"I can't do that!"

"Yes you can!" Starkey insists. "Think about the Graveyard. Think about how I stole that plane. And I killed Trace Neuhauser-did you know that? I could have saved him, but I let him drown."

Connor grits his teeth. "Stop it, Starkey."

"Kill me for the things I've done, Connor! I know you think I deserve it, and I'd rather die by your hand than go into that machine!"

"What good will it do? You'll still go into that machine!"

"No, I won't. My body will go in, but I'll be gone. I'll be harvested, but I won't be unwound!"

Connor can't look at Starkey's pleading eyes anymore. He looks away and finds his gaze landing on the shark. The brutal, angry, predatory shark. Connor drops his gaze down to the habitual fist at the end of that same arm. He loosens the fingers, and clasps them again. He feels the strength in them.

"That's right, Connor. Make it fast-I won't resist."

Connor glances to the intake door of the machine. It could open at any moment. "Let me think!"

"No time! Do this for me. Please!"

Can cold-blooded murder be just? Could it be an act of compassion instead of cruelty? If he does this, will Connor ever be the same? If Starkey's alive, he'll be unwound. If he's dead, it will just be a harvest. Starkey's right-Connor has the power to prevent this from being an unwinding. It's a horrible power. But perhaps a necessary one.

"What if it were you?" Starkey asks. "What would you want?"

And when Connor thinks of it that way, his choice is clear. He'd never want to know what lies in store within that awful black box. He'd want to die first.

Before he can change his mind, Connor clamps Roland's hand on Starkey's throat. Starkey gasps slightly, but as he promised, he doesn't resist. Connor squeezes tighter . . . tighter . . . then, the instant he feels Starkey's windpipe close off, something entirely unexpected happens.

Roland's hand unclamps.

"Don't stop," hisses Starkey. "Don't stop now!"

Connor squeezes his fingers closed again around Starkey's neck. He holds it, feeling Starkey's pulse in the tips of his fingers-and again, his hand inexplicably releases. Connor starts gasping for air himself, not even realizing he was holding his breath along with Starkey.

"You're a coward!" Starkey wails. "You've always been a coward!"

"No," says Connor, "that's not it."

And finally it occurs to him what's wrong.

Roland tried to choke Connor with this same arm the day before he was unwound, but he couldn't do it.

Because Roland's not a killer.

Connor slowly looks from his right hand . . . to his left. His own hand. The one he was born with. That's the hand he brings to Starkey's throat. That's the hand that digs in until he feels Starkey's windpipe collapse beneath his fingers. That's the hand that is tenacious and determined enough to do what must be done.

Roland never had it in him to kill, thinks Connor. But I do . . .

It's harder than Connor could ever imagine. Tears cloud his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry." He doesn't even know who he's apologizing to. He holds eye contact with Starkey, whose eyes begin to bulge and dart in physiological panic. His limbs quiver, his face deepens into bruise shades-yet even so, Starkey forces the corners of his mouth up in a faint grin of triumph.

Just a few moments more . . . just a few moments more . . .

Connor knows the exact moment Starkey dies. Not because he sees it in his eyes but because a vital signs transmitter on Starkey's ankle lets loose a piercing alarm. He pulls his hand from Starkey's throat and, hearing the outer door being unlocked, Connor leaps to the wall of Unwinds, climbs up to his niche, and vaults himself in just as the inner door opens.

First in is a medic, then the man who must be Divan. Connor watches the drama unfold from his perch, trying to slow his breathing so they can't hear him.

"How could this happen?" says Divan. "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?"

"I don't know," says the nervous medic. "A heart attack maybe? A congenital condition we didn't know about?"

"I've just auctioned him! Do you have any idea how much money I stand to lose? BRING HIM BACK! NOW!"

The medic scurries off and returns with a defibrillator. Five times he tries to revive Starkey, and although his chest arches with each blast of electricity, the end result is the same. Mason Michael Starkey, the bloodthirsty Lord of Storks, is dead.

Through all the attempts to revive him, Divan paces, and after the final attempt, his fury resolves into direction. "All right, he's dead, but we can still harvest him."

"Not his brain," says the medic. "It will already have started breaking down."

"We'll assess its viability later-but even if we lose the brain, we can salvage everything else if we're fast enough. Set the machine to express mode, skip the anesthesia, and lower the temperature to thirty-six degrees."

The medic unlocks the control panel and makes the needed adjustments. Then, when the unwinding chamber door opens, Divan physically pushes Starkey's body inside, not waiting for the conveyor belt to do it for him.

The door on the unit closes, the process begins, and the two relax.

"Too bad," says the medic. "It's almost like he died to spite you."

"If it was intentional," says Divan, "then he had help." Divan raises his gaze to look at the Unwinds in the drum all around him.

Connor closes his eyes and remains absolutely still.

"Get back to the control room. I want you to check the telemetry on every Unwind here," Connor hears Divan say as they leave. "Find out if anyone's vital signs are unusually elevated."

They come for him ten minutes later. Three of them: the medic, some random crewman who looks nervous to even be there, and a silent chisel-faced boeuf who looks born to intimidate. Connor is prepared, or at least as prepared as he can be. Hiding near the door just out of view, he blasts them with a fire extinguisher as they enter, and grabs one of their weapons. A tranq gun. They're only armed with tranqs. He fires and manages to take down the nervous guy before the weapon is knocked from Connor's hands.

Then he dodges the grasp of the others, running for cover on the far side of the unwinding chamber, where the medical stasis coolers are stacked, ready for distribution. This fight is just for show, he knows. Escape is impossible, but if thrashing on the end of the line will give his captors grief, then it's well worth it.

The medic tries to lure him out with poorly delivered lies like, "Divan just wants to talk to you-there's nothing to be afraid of."

Connor doesn't even engage him in conversation. For a moment he has the mad thought of opening the hinged nose cone, which is right at the front of the unwinding chamber. It's a design feature that assumed a cargo of tanks, not teens. If he opens the nose cone in flight, it will suck them all out into the icy, airless void of thirty-seven thousand feet, and most certainly bring down the plane. The control switch is close enough-and he might do it too, if all the other kids weren't there in the harvester . . . and if Risa weren't somewhere on board.

In the end, Connor is cornered, and they take him down, but not before Connor gets in a few good swings. His attackers don't fight back. Mustn't damage the merchandise. They don't tranq him either-maybe because they weren't entirely lying to him. Maybe Divan does want to talk to him, and talk now, rather than after a visit to Tranqistan.

They cinch his hands together with a cable tie-tight enough to do the job, but not tight enough to cut into his skin-and they take him out, stepping over the body of the tranq'd crewman, who, in a state of slumber, doesn't look nervous at all.

He's brought to a large, fancy room toward the rear of the jet, where Divan waits. There is a troubling collection of faces on the wall behind him, somehow adding a dark gravity to Divan's presence.

"Hello, Connor," he says with a calm he did not express upon Starkey's demise. "My name is-"

"I know who you are," Connor says, then covers by saying, "You're black-market scum, and that's all I need to know."

"Divan Umarov," he continues, ignoring Connor. "And you've been quite the irascible camper, haven't you? How on earth did you wake up?"

"His IV must have blown," says the medic, his eye almost swollen shut from Connor's punch. "The machine's supposed to alert us."

Behind Divan, Argent fumbles to clean a dining table, clearly too terrified for his own life to even make eye contact with Connor. Does he really think Connor will give him away for waking him, and lose the closest thing he has to an ally right now?

"Wait a second," says Connor, as if it's a total shock. "Is that Argent Skinner?" He looks at Argent with feigned incredulity. "What the hell is he doing here? And what happened to his face?"

"You shut up!" Argent says, playing into Connor's little theatrical, although a bit less convincingly. "I'm here because of you, so just shut up."

Divan apparently knows their unpleasant history together-as Connor hoped he would-and accepts that this is the first Connor is aware of Argent's presence on the plane. Argent's breath of relief would have been suspicious if anyone paid him the slightest bit of attention.

Divan looks Connor over. "Am I right in assuming that you dispatched Mason Starkey prior to his unwinding?" And when he doesn't answer Divan says, "Come now, don't you have anything to say?"

Connor shrugs and obliges. "Nice socks," he says with a satisfied smile.

Divan never breaks eye contact. "Indeed they are. Cervelt. New Zealand deer fiber, a bargain at a thousand dollars a pair." He returns Connor's smile, leaving Connor feeling far less satisfied.

"Skinner! Bring Connor something to drink. Lemonade."

Argent, dusting a piano keyboard flinches and hits a few of the keys. On the wall behind him three adjacent faces open their mouths and voice a dissonant chord. Connor swallows, and tries to convince his rational mind that he didn't just see that.

"I'll confess," says Divan, "I was hoping to spend perhaps a week to build hype among my customers for your auction . . . but now, in light of your interference with Mr. Starkey, I just want to be rid of you."

He gestures to the boeuf and the medic to take him away, and they step forward, grabbing him. "Where's Risa?" demands Connor. "I want to talk to her. If you're going to unwind me, at least let me say good-bye."

"Unwise," he says. "No need to compound her grief."

Argent brings the lemonade but is literally blindsided by a chair. Bumping into it, he drops the glass on the floor, which calls forth a long-suffering sigh from Divan.

"I'm sorry, sir! I'm sorry!"

"Apologize to Connor; it was his drink."

"I'm sorry, Connor."

"It's all good, Argent," Connor says. "All good." And he turns his head just enough to hide from Divan the wink he gives Argent.