The stiff breeze is chilly, but still he removes his shirt, ignoring the rise of goose bumps as he reveals another hundred and sixty names on his shoulders, chest, and back. As he nears the stage, he kicks off his sneakers and unbuttons his jeans, taking a moment to slip them off without tripping. Now the people he pushes past notice that there's an illustrated kid stripping and heading toward the stage. No one knows what to make of it yet. Perhaps it's part of the protest.

By the time he reaches the stage, he's down to his underwear, and most, if not all, of the 312 names written on his body are exposed to the world, and to the camera crew, which has taken a sudden interest in him, filming him as he climbs to the stage. The Albanian rights speaker halts in midsentence. People in the audience laugh, or gasp, or mutter to one another . . . until Lev holds his hands out wide. He says nothing. Just holds out his hands . . . and swings them together.

The reaction is instantaneous. The crowd panics and begins to bolt.

He spreads his hands once more, and, like a bird beating its wings against the wind, he swings them together again, and again. People are screaming now, climbing over one another. They can't get away fast enough.

He keeps swinging his hands together-but nothing happens. Because there is nothing in his blood but blood. No chemicals, no explosives. He does not explode-but that doesn't stop the security forces from taking action, just as he knew they would.

The first gunshot blasts out from one of the Juvey-cops protecting the island. The ceramic bullet rips through the right side of Lev's chest, spinning him around. He doesn't know who fires the second and third shots, because they both hit him in the back. His knees buckle beneath him. He goes down. A fourth bullet hits him in the gut, and a fifth whizzes past his ear, missing, but that's all right, because the first four have done the job.

The world will know what happened here today. That an unarmed boy was shot in broad daylight before hundreds of witnesses. And when they learn who that boy was, it will stop everyone in their tracks for a long painful moment.

WHY, LEV, WHY? the headlines will read once more-only this time people will know the answer, and the answer shall be the names written on his flesh. Then people's fury will turn on the ones who shot him beneath the unblinking eyes of liberty. And his sacrifice will change the world.

With blood pouring from his wounds, he lies on his back, eyes wide from the pain, looking up at the sky. High above him, the torch of the great statue points toward the moon, a pale specter almost directly overhead.

He reaches for it, his fingers sticky with blood. It seems to swell as he focuses his fading attention on it.

And Lev is happy . . . because he knows he's finally grabbed the moon, and has pulled it from the sky.

60 * Mail

2162 letters were in Sonia's trunk. 751 of them were lost in the fire, but 1411 were stamped and mailed by Grace Skinner, then delivered dutifully by the postal service from coast to coast-because the AWOLs who passed through Sonia's basement over the years hailed from everywhere.

A woman in Astoria, Oregon, opens the letter with no return address, not recognizing the handwriting because it's been almost three years since her daughter found the unwind order and went AWOL.

She begins to read, and from the very first line, the woman knows who wrote it. As much as she wants to run from the room, she is glued to her kitchen chair, unable to stop reading. When she's done, she sits there in silence, not sure what to do next, but knowing she must do something.

A man in Montpelier, Vermont, arrives home before his wife today. He scans through the various bills and solicitations, until coming across a curious envelope, and he recognizes his son's handwriting-a son who was sent off for unwinding almost five years ago. Although the Juvenile Authority wouldn't officially admit it, the man and his wife found out that he escaped before arriving at his assigned harvest camp.

The man stands the envelope up against a vase in the dining room, and sits there staring at it a full ten minutes before summoning the nerve to open it.

When he first begins to read, he thinks the letter was written recently-but no, there's a date written on the first page. His son wrote this more than three years ago. He's still out there somewhere. Maybe. Afraid to come home? Refusing to come home? Or did they catch him after all? For a time, the man and his family had considered moving for fear that he'd return and exact retribution on them. How ashamed he now feels for even thinking that.

His wife will be home from work any minute now. Should he show her the letter? Should he show his daughter when she's home from swim practice? He doesn't even know if she remembers her brother.

Although there's no one in the room but the dog, he covers his eyes as he cries, shedding grief he's denied since the day they came to take his son away.

A couple in Iowa City sits by the fireplace, and the two share the task of opening mail that accumulated while they were traveling. The man comes across a seemingly innocuous letter. He opens it, begins reading, then suddenly stops, folds the letter, and puts it back in the envelope.

"What is it?" asks his wife, having seen the way he's suddenly gone pale.

"Nothing," he says. "Junk mail."

But she reads the truth in his face as clearly as if she had opened the letter herself. She knows there's only one thing to be done. "Throw it into the fire," she says.

And so he does, ending the matter once and for all.

In Indianapolis, the letter arrives on the very day a woman's divorce is final. She reads it, her hands unable to keep from shaking. She signed the unwind order after her son's awful fight with her husband-his stepfather. It took nearly two years for her to realize she had taken the wrong side of that fight. But this letter gives her hope. It means her son might still be whole, and out there somewhere. If he is, she'd welcome him back in a heartbeat, shark tattoo and all.

Of the various people touched by the 1411 letters, some remain coldhearted, or just in adamant denial-but more than a thousand find reading the words of their lost son or daughter to be a life-changing event. In a population of hundreds of millions, such a small number of people is a mere drop in the bucket . . . but enough drops can make any bucket overflow.

61 * Nelson

More than a dozen small private jets wait on the taxiway of a remote airfield outside of Calgary, Canada. This far north, the leaves have fully turned and are beginning to fall. The forest around the airstrip ripples fiery orange, yellow, and red as the wind passes through. Then the air falls still. The wind itself seems to anticipate the arrival of lot 4832: Connor Lassiter, divided.

Out of place among the sleek jets is a Porsche, whose driver watches as Divan's behemoth craft drops through the low-hanging clouds and toward the runway, looking massive even from far away.

Jasper Nelson anxiously awaits a fresh pair of eyes in the car that Divan gave him as a reward for capturing the Akron AWOL. Let the rest of Connor Lassiter be dispersed to various billionaires around the world; Nelson is happy to possess his vision. He knows it will bring everything full circle. Once he's seeing the world through those eyes, he will be able to bring his life back from the septic fringe, to a respectable place at last. Today, the troublesome young man that was Connor Lassiter will go the way of turning forest leaves, but the long winter of Jasper Nelson's discontent will be made glorious summer once he has the sight of the boy who took his life away.

The plane lands with the gargantuan roar of airborne armageddon, and the moment it rolls to a halt, Divan's ground crew gets to work refueling, The side passenger hatch opens, and stairs fold out for Divan. This is only the second time Nelson has come to Divan's North American airfield. Either business is so brisk Divan must stay on top of it, or he has reasons not to stay in one place for too long. Divan makes his appearance a moment later, along with his harvest medic, who carries a small medical stasis cooler. They come directly to Nelson.

"Use them in good health, my friend," Divan tells him as the nose cone of the jet begins to grind open for the transfer of the remaining cargo. Even before it's fully raised, it becomes clear that something is very wrong.

A flood of kids bursts from the cargo hold, sprinting, running, limping in every direction. Not just a few, but dozens of them. All of them!

Suddenly Divan has more important things to do than bother with Nelson. He points to his bodyguard. "Stop them! Now!" The beefy man fumbles with his tranq gun, running and firing at the same time, missing as often as he takes one down. Tranqing AWOLs is not this man's job. But it is Nelson's.

"I've got this," Nelson tells Divan. He pulls out his own tranq pistol and takes aim. "I love a shooting gallery." Sure enough, every one of Nelson's shots hits its mark, and in ten seconds he's taken down ten kids-but there are simply too many for even Nelson to stop.

"Who is responsible for this?" Divan demands, and he runs to get more help from his staff. It's Nelson who sees the answer to that question. She's easy to spot, because of all the escaping kids, she's the only one who's not in a gray bodysuit. Risa Ward is up to her old tricks. But not for much longer.

Nelson ignores the others, taking aim at the prize.

Then just as he pulls the trigger, he's grabbed from behind. The shot flies wild as his attacker puts him in a skillful choke hold so tight that it cuts off blood to Nelson's brain. Darkness squirms in from his periphery, his legs buckle beneath him, and before he loses consciousness, he gets a brief glimpse of the face of his assailant.

And to his own personal horror, he sees it's barely a face at all.

62 * Argent

The medic still has no idea that Argent took his spare key to the harvester.

Divan has no idea that Argent knows the code to access the UNIS control panel, which he copied from a small notebook on Divan's nightstand.

Argent has found many times in life that people are never so clueless as when they think you're stupid.

Thirty minutes before the Lady Lucrezia landed, the medic left the cargo hold with a small stasis cooler labeled LOT 4832-EY-L/R. Argent couldn't help but snicker to himself. As a grocery checker, he knows better than anyone that labels are only as good as the idiot doing the labeling.

As the plane began its descent, Argent snuck into the harvester, knowing that even though the hapless medic basically lived his life at thirty-seven thousand feet, he was a nervous flier, and always buckled himself into a chair in the crew lounge. That gave Argent a window to do what he had to do-what Connor Lassiter would have done, were he not in a gazillion pieces. Argent shut off the sedation system to all the Unwinds and twisted the security camera to face the wall, just in case someone got the bright idea to monitor it. He waited for the first one to wake up, an umber kid whose eyes got a little buggy when he found out where he was and what was happening to him.

"When the rest wake up, keep 'em quiet," Argent said. "Don't let 'em freak out. Then, when that nose cone opens, run like it's the end of the world, because it will be if you don't."

Then he left the harvester, strapping himself in next to the medic like it was any other day.

But his job wasn't over yet.

As soon as the plane had landed and Divan had gone down to the tarmac, he unlocked Risa's room and led her to the harvester, telling her the same thing he'd told the umber kid. By then the entire hold was crawling with scared, wakeful kids, but Risa had a certain presence about her that kept them quiet and in control.

"What about Connor?" Risa asked him, but it was no time for questions.

"I've taken care of it-just trust me."

"That's the problem," Risa said. "I don't."

"Well, too freakin' bad."

He couldn't stay-any second, Divan would demand something from him. A glass of Pellegrino or sunscreen for his delicate complexion. Divan always wanted something.

"If you get free, and you see my sister," he told Risa, "tell her I saved you. She'll get a kick out of it."

"Wait-you're not coming with us?"

Argent left without answering the question, because the answer was obvious. He'd made a deal with Divan. Six months for a face. He doesn't have to be Divan's best friend, he just has to stick to his end of the bargain-and as long as Argent plays dumb lackey, Divan will never suspect he was behind what happened today. For Argent Skinner, stupidity is the best camouflage.

And with the AWOLs all going AWOL, Divan doesn't even notice Argent putting Nelson in that choke hold.

63 * Divan

In his years in the flesh trade, Divan Umarov has had to face many nasty situations. Unsatisfied buyers with dangerous tempers. Unscrupulous competitors whom he's had to take out-and of course, the Dah Zey, who are a constant threat to his business and personal well-being. Through all of these things, Divan triumphed and managed to remain a gentleman. When it comes to handling adversity, Divan knows that calm objectivity will always save the day. He lost his temper when Starkey died, but he is determined not to be ruled by his emotions today.

He takes in the big picture. Kids running everywhere. His ground crew chasing them. Half of the kids are already over the fence.

"Let them go," Divan says. Then, louder: "LET THEM GO!"

His bodyguard turns to him confused.

"But they escape. . . ."

"Why chase silver," Divan says, "when we have gold to move?"

He turns to his valet, who watches the spectacle with one-eyed impotence. It's all Divan can do not to smack him. "Skinner! Go help collect the ones we managed to tranq, and put them back in the hold. The rest are no longer our problem." Then he looks down to see Nelson in a heap on the ground. "What happened to him?"

"Don't know," says Skinner. "Must have been hit by a tranq."

Well, Nelson's not his problem either. "What are you waiting for?" he asks Skinner. "Get to work!"

Skinner bounds off, and Divan focuses his full attention on the real business of the day. He supervises the removal of the active stasis coolers, paying close attention to the ones marked LOT 4832. His big-ticket items. The various and sundry parts of Connor Lassiter.

Only when all the crates have been loaded onto their respective planes bound for their buyers does he relax. Skinner reports that nineteen out of one hundred and seventeen Unwinds were recovered, and are back inside. As for the lost Unwinds, it may sting in the moment, but it's barely a setback at all. One trip around the world, and his suppliers will fill up his harvester once more. Divan looks around. Everything seems to be in order. The smaller jets are lining up to take off, and although Nelson's car is still there, Nelson is nowhere to be seen. Divan doesn't trouble himself with it. His work is done here. He grasps Skinner on the shoulder. "Good work," he says. "Now please draw me a bath."

Skinner trots up the stairs dutifully, but before Divan gets in the plane he takes a moment to consider the events that have just transpired. This was clearly sabotage by the Dah Zey. No question about it. That means there's a traitor on his staff. As far as Divan is concerned, this is the last straw. If the Dah Zey want a war, they'll get one. He'll recruit a militia of skilled mercenaries and fight the Dah Zey to the death.

But in the meantime, Divan must deal with the traitor-and he's pretty certain who it is. The medic was the only one with access to the harvester, both the day Starkey died and today. Divan prides himself on rewarding loyalty and hard work. Disloyalty and sabotage, however, must be met with swift and decisive action. No time to make a bonsai this time. And so before he boards the plane, he makes a request of his bodyguard. "I need you to release the medic from my employment, effective immediately."

"Release from employment," repeats his guard. "Use tranq?"

"Tranqs," says Divan, "are for AWOLs and other naughty children. The medic requires something more permanent. What's our next stop, Korea? We'll pick up a new medic there."

Then Divan, who abhors violence, gets on the plane, happy to let his guard take care of business, as long as it's out of Divan's presence.

64 * Nelson