UnDivided (32 page)

Although Argent didn't say it, he had no intention of ever returning to the life he had led. A new life, perhaps, in a new city, with a new face . . . but having settled in on the
Lady Lucrezia
, Argent's beginning to think his will to live will be so sapped in six months time, he'll choose to stay. He tries not to think about it; instead, he just busies himself doing his daily tasks, which consist of cleaning messes, washing clothes, and being Divan's audience for lectures about life. Divan loves nothing more than to hear himself pontificate, and Argent is the perfect audience because he never disagrees, nor does he ever have an opinion of his own. In fact he's come to see “lack of an opinion” as a key element of his job description.

The arrival of Connor Lassiter, however, has been a major monkey wrench in Argent's mental gear work.

Argent watched from a window as Nelson made the transfer right there on the runway. The sight of Nelson wearing the good half of Argent's face as his own was such a violation, it made Argent's loins feel weak. He thought he hated Connor for what he had done to him, but that pales in comparison to how much he hates Nelson.

He was afraid that Nelson would be invited on board along with his catch, but Divan didn't do that.

“Nelson is a fine parts pirate—perhaps the best,” Divan told Argent, “but that doesn't mean I care for his company.”

Even so, Divan promised to personally deliver him Connor's eyes. As the harvester is fully automated, members of Divan's
staff rarely go inside—even the medic charged with caring for the kids awaiting unwinding rarely goes in, because the machine does all the work.

Lyle, the medic, doesn't know that Argent replaced his spare key with the spare key to Divan's private bath. Occasionally, when he knows the harvester isn't being monitored, Argent sneaks off with his pilfered key and goes down to look at the Unwinds there, imagining their stories, and what their lives were like. Imagining what it might be like to have one of their faces for his own. He's only three years beyond legal unwinding age, but feels so much older. It will be nice when he can get himself a youthful face again.

Today, however, when he comes to the harvester, he has a different objective.

While Divan lines up bidders from around the world on the screens of his entertainment center, Argent slips into the harvester, locates Connor within the cylindrical grid of Unwinds, and rotates the drum until he's right there beside Argent. Then Argent disconnects him from the machine's monitoring system, and shuts off the constant sedative drip that keeps him in that blissful semiconscious state.

“This is all your fault! You hear me?”

Connor's response is just some lazy, incoherent babbling, but that will pass.

“Nelson did this to me on the way to you. He would never have done it if you didn't do what you did first!” He smacks Connor hard enough to make him stir. “Why'd you have to do it? We coulda been a team!” He hits him harder this time. “We coulda done great things! Outlaws with style. But now I don't even get to have a face! Just a scarred mess on one side, and a whole lotta nothing on the other.”

Then he grabs Connor and shakes him. “Where's my sister, damn it?”

Connor turns to face him, blinking, yawning, seeing him for the first time. “Argent?”

“Where's Gracie? If you let Nelson hurt her, I swear I'll kill you!”

Connor doesn't seem to process everything he's saying yet. “If you're here, I must be in hell,” Connor says.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Connor tries to sit up and bumps his head on the roof of his narrow niche. Argent hopes it hurt.

“I woke you to tell you that you've been caught, and are gonna be unwound. Not that I care, but you deserve to know. Divan's got Risa, too, but by the looks of it she'll stay whole.”

“Risa's here? He's got Risa? Who's Divan?”

Argent feels no need to repeat himself. He punches Connor in the side, hard. Connor is still too weak to defend himself, and that suits Argent just fine. “Thought you were so smart smashing my face like you did. Well, how smart are ya now, huh?
And where's my sister?
”

“Antique shop,” mumbles Connor. “That's where I last saw her.” Connor lifts his arms weakly. “What am I wearing? It feels like I'm covered in spiderweb.”

“It's an iron microfiber bodysuit. Kind of like long underwear, but you can be unwound in it. We call them ‘long divisions.' ”

Suddenly the drum of Unwinds grinds into life on its own accord, and Connor is rotated away. It makes a quarter turn and stops, then a pair of mechanical arms unfold, and, like an old-fashioned jukebox choosing a record, they lift an unwind and place her on a short conveyor belt leading to the door of the unwinding chamber, a place that Argent hopes he never sees the inside of. Argent knows what comes next. She'll regain consciousness, find that she can't move, and she'll cry for help, but no one will answer. Then, once the machine deems she's fully conscious, the door of the unwinding cham
ber will open, and the conveyor belt will roll her in.

“They must be fully conscious, or it isn't unwinding,” Divan once told him. “It must be painless and humane, but they must be aware of what's happening to them every step of the way.” Argent once stood beside a kid, trying to calm him down. Telling him his parents really loved him after all, and all that kind of comforting crap, but the kid just panicked, and in the end went into the chamber just like the rest of them. Argent didn't try talking to any of them after that.

Once the drum comes to rest, Argent locates Connor again and manually rotates him back.

“What's happening?” Connor asks, speaking a little more clearly than he had just a few moments ago.

“Today's auction,” Argent explains. “Four kids go on the block today—fewer than usual, but number four is where the big money is. Divan'll auction off the first three to get the bidders all hot for the main event—and it'll be the same for you, when it's your turn! You're even more screwed than I am now. I hope you like it!” Then he shoves Connor for good measure, starts the sedative drip, and leaves.

It never occurs to him that Connor is still awake enough to pull the IV out of his arm.

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 pro
cess, 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.

“Á l'aide! Á 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.”