UnDivided (2 page)

“I don't think the Akron AWOL would climb into a sewer.”

The kid grunts and leads them to a place where the sewer line is fractured, and they climb out into a concrete utility conduit that's hung with wires and lined with hot steam pipes, which make the air oppressive.

“So who are you?” the AWOL asks his rescuer.

“Name's Argent,” he says, “Like ‘sergeant' without the
S
.” He holds out his hand for the AWOL to shake, then turns and leads the way down the steamy, narrow conduit. “This way, it's not far.”

“Not far to where?”

“I got a pretty sweet setup. Hot food and a comfortable place to sleep.”

“Sounds too good to be true.”

“I know, doesn't it?” Argent offers him a smile almost as greasy as his hair.

“So what's your story? Why'd you risk your ass for me?”

Argent shrugs. “Isn't much of a risk when you know you've got 'em outsmarted,” he says. “Anyway, I figure it's my civic duty. I escaped from a parts pirate a while back, now I help others less fortunate than myself. And it wasn't just any parts pirate I got away from—it was the ex-Juvey-cop who Connor Lassiter tranq'd with his own gun. He got drummed out of the force, and now he sells the kids he catches on the black market.”

The AWOL reaches through his memory for the name. “That Neilson guy?”

“Nelson,” Argent corrects, “Jasper T. Nelson. And I know Connor Lassiter too.”

“Really,” says the AWOL, dubiously.

“Oh, yeah—and he's a real piece of work. A total loser. I showed him hospitality like I'm showing you, and he did this to my face.”

Only now does the AWOL see that the left half of Argent's face is badly damaged from wounds that are still healing.

“I'm supposed to believe that the Akron AWOL did that?”

Argent nods. “Yeah, when he was a guest in my storm cellar.”

“Right.” Obviously the guy is making all of this up, but the AWOL doesn't challenge him any further. Best not to bite the hand that's about to feed him.

“Just a little farther,” says Argent. “You like steak?”

“Whenever I can get it.”

Argent gestures to a breach in the concrete wall through which cool air spills, smelling like fresh mold, instead of old rot. “After you.”

The AWOL climbs through to find himself in a cellar. There are other people here, but they're not moving. It takes a moment for him to register what he's seeing. Three teens lying on the ground, gagged and hog-tied.

“Hey, what the—”

But before he can finish the thought, Argent comes up behind him and puts him in a brutal choke hold that cuts off not just his windpipe, but all the blood to his brain. And the last thing that strikes the AWOL's mind before losing consciousness is the bleak realization that he's been swallowed by a snake after all.

He's on top of the world. He's at the peak of his game. Things couldn't be going better for Argent Skinner, apprentice parts pirate, who's learning the trade from Jasper T. Nelson, the best there is.

Argent didn't land in Nelson's service under the best of circumstances, but he certainly has made the best of the circumstances he was given. He has proven himself so valuable that Nelson had no choice but to keep him on. The evidence of Argent's value is tied up in the U-Haul behind him.

The small van, a one-way rental, had replaced a rented car that they had left abandoned in a suburban Walmart parking lot. Argent doesn't worry that they'll be tracked down for these little bits of petty larceny, because Nelson is a true master of evading so-called justice and keeping under the radar. Having been a Juvey-cop for so many years, Nelson knows all the angles, all the ropes. He knows how to skate smoothly across the slick surface of the law.

Nelson is Argent's new hero. Connor Lassiter, the previous
object of Argent's hero worship, was a disappointment. Now both Argent and Nelson are united in hatred against the Akron AWOL—and such hatred can be as powerful a bonding force as love.

Argent turns around to take another look at the kids in the van behind him: four of them bound and gagged, practically gift wrapped for delivery. The AWOLs are all awake and squirming. Some cry, but silently and to themselves, because they don't want to incur Argent's wrath—which he has threatened to rain upon them several times. Of course, it's all blustering on Argent's part, because Nelson won't let him physically hurt them.

“Bruises reduce their market value,” Nelson pointed out. “Divan does not like his fruit bruised. He's already going to be aggravated that he's getting a consolation offering from me, instead of the grand prize.”

The grand prize, of course, is Connor Lassiter.

Nelson could tranq them into silence, but he won't. “I have to conserve,” Nelson told Argent. “Tranqs are expensive.”

However that doesn't seem to apply where Argent is concerned. Argent once tried to turn up the volume on the radio, and Nelson tranq'd him for it. Not for the first time either. Nelson seems to take great pleasure in rendering Argent unconscious. “It's like shocking a monkey to teach it not to take the banana,” Nelson had said. The next song on the radio had been “Shock the Monkey.” Argent is convinced that Nelson is psychic.

The prewar oldies station now plays Pearl Jam at the volume Nelson prefers: just loud enough to almost hear. Argent must constantly resist the impulse to turn up the annoyingly low music.

As Argent looks at the AWOLs in the back, the last kid that Argent caught locks eyes with him. He's a harsh-faced boy
with gentle amber eyes that clash with the severity of his face. His eyes beg for something from Argent, but what? Release? Mercy? An explanation of why his life has come to this?

“Stop it!” Argent tells him. “Whatever you want, you're not gettin' it.”

“Bff-foo,” he mumbles through his gag.

“No bathroom stops!” Argent growls. “You'll hold it until we decide to stop—and don't give me those puppy-dog eyes unless you want 'em punched black-and-blue.” Another idle threat, but the kid doesn't know that. The boy casts his eyes to the scuffed floor of the van in defeat, which cheers Argent up.

“Hey,” Argent says to him. “Funny that we're in a U-Haul, because we're hauling
you.
Get it? Hauling
U
?”

“Do your lips ever stop flapping?” Nelson asks.

“Just having some fun.” Argent has to admit that there's something very rewarding in talking to people who can't talk back. “Hey—I think you're gonna want this kid's eyes,” Argent tells Nelson. “They're even nicer than the ones you got now.”

And after an uncomfortable pause, Nelson says, “There's only one pair of eyes I want.”

Even without Nelson telling him, Argent knows whose eyes he wants as his ultimate trophy. “You know, one of them's not even his,” Argent points out. “Connor got stuck with a new eye along with his new arm.”

“That doesn't matter,” Nelson snaps. “It's not about whose eyes I
receive
; it's about whose eyes I
take
.”

“Yeah, I get that. If you're seeing through his eyes it means he's not seeing through them anymore.” Then Argent grins. “And besides, who wants a trophy on a shelf somewhere, when it can be right in your face. Get it?
In
your
face
?”

Nelson doesn't even offer him the courtesy of a groan. “I don't want to hear your voice anymore,” Nelson says. “Just
because you're a waste of life doesn't mean you have to be a waste of breath as well.”

“Yeah? Well, this waste of life just caught four prime AWOLs for you to sell to your black-market buddy.”

Nelson turns to him, revealing the good half of his face—the half that wasn't burned when he lay unconscious in the Arizona sun. Here is something else that bonds them beyond their shared hatred: They both have half of a face. Put Nelson's left half together with Argent's right, and you've got a whole. That proves they belong together as a team.

“He's not my buddy!” Nelson says. “Divan is the premier flesh trader in the western world. He even gives the Burmese Dah Zey a run for its money. He is a gentleman who appreciates formality, and when you meet him, you will treat him as such.”

“Whatever,” Argent says. Then he has to ask “So does this Divan guy treat Unwinds like the Dah Zey? Without anesthesia and stuff?”

The suggestion elicits groans and muffled sobs from the back, and Nelson throws Argent a searing glance. “Do I really need to tranq you again to get you to shut up?”

Argent, not caring for those little glimpses of death and the headaches that follow, zips his lips, determined to stay quiet for the duration.

Nelson tells him they're still not done.

“We'll catch one more AWOL before we bring them to Divan,” he says. “If I'm not bringing him Lassiter, I want to show up with a full load.” Then Nelson glances at Argent again. “I need to know that you'll make good on your promise once we arrive.”

Argent swallows, suddenly feeling bound just as tightly as the kids in the back. “Of course,” he says. “I'm a man of my word. I'll give you the tracking code the second we unload the ‘merchandise.' ”

Nelson nods, accepting it. “For your sake, you'd better hope that your sister's tracking chip is still active—and that she's still with Lassiter.”

“She is,” Argent tells him. “Grace is like a barnacle. Once she clings to a person, it takes an act of God to pull her off.”

“Or a gun to the head,” says Nelson.

It chills Argent to think about it. True, he's furious at Grace for siding with Connor over him, but would Connor kill her to get rid of her? After everything, Argent still doesn't see him as the type to do such a thing. Still, it's something he'd rather not think about, so he lets his thoughts drift to something more pleasant.

“So does this Divan guy have any kids? Like maybe a daughter my age?”

Nelson sighs, pulls out his tranq pistol, and fires a low-dose dart at Argent. The tranq dart hits him painfully in his Adam's apple. He pinches the little flag and pulls the thing out of his neck, but not before it delivers its full dose.

“That's coming out of your pay,” Nelson says, which is a joke because Argent receives no pay from Nelson. He had made it clear it's an unpaid sort of internship. But that's okay. Even getting tranq'd is okay. Because life is good for Argent Skinner.

As he dives down toward tranq sleep, he takes comfort in the absolute knowledge that Connor Lassiter will soon be going down too—but unlike Argent, Connor will never be getting up.

In a dusty corner of a cluttered antique shop on a weedy side street of Akron, Ohio, Connor Lassiter waits for the world to change before his eyes.

“I know it's here somewhere,” Sonia says as she digs
through a pile of obsolete electronics. Connor wonders if the old woman was alive to witness the birth and the death of all that technology.

“Can I help?” Risa asks.

“I'm not an invalid!” Sonia responds.

It's a dizzying prospect to think that they are about to lay eyes upon
the
object on which the entire future hinges. The future of unwinding. The future of the Juvenile Authority's iron grip on kids like him. Then he looks over to Risa, who waits with the same electric anticipation.
Our future
, he thinks. It's been hard to consider the concept of tomorrow, when life has been all about surviving today.

Grace Skinner, sitting beside Risa, wrings her hands with friction-burn intensity. “Is it bigger than a bread box?” Grace asks.

“You'll see soon enough,” Sonia says.

Connor has no idea what a bread box is, yet just like anyone who's ever played twenty questions, he knows its precise size. It's all he can do to keep from wringing his own hands too, as he waits for the device to be revealed.

When Sonia began to tell the tale of her husband, Connor thought he might, at best, get some information—clues as to why Proactive Citizenry was so afraid of not just the man, but the world's memory of him. Janson and Sonia Rheinschild, winners of the Nobel Prize for medicine, were erased from history. Connor thought Sonia might give him information. He never expected
this
!

“What if you invented a printer that could build living human organs?” Sonia said, after telling them of the disillusionment that ultimately took her husband's life. “And what if you sold the patent to the nation's largest medical manufacturer . . . and what if they took all of that work . . . and buried it? And took the plans and burned them? And took every
printer and smashed it, and prevented anyone from ever knowing that the technology existed?”

Sonia trembled with such powerful fury as she spoke, she seemed much larger than her diminutive size—much more powerful than any of them.

“What if,” Sonia said, “they made the solution to unwinding disappear because too many people have too much invested in keeping things exactly . . . the way . . . they are?”

It was Grace—“low-cortical” Grace—who figured out where this was leading.

“And what if there's still one organ printer left,” she said, “hiding in the corner of an antique shop?”

The idea seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Connor actually gasped, and Risa gripped his hand, as if she needed to hold on to him to stave off her own mental vertigo.

Finally Sonia pulls forth a cardboard box that is about exactly the size of what Connor imagines a bread box would be. He makes room on a little round cherrywood table, and she sets the box down gently.

“You can take it out,” Sonia says to him, a bit out of breath from her efforts.

Connor reaches in, gets his fingers around the dark object, then lifts it out of the box and sets it on the table.