Unwind

'Yeah. What do you want?'

'Your presence is requested at the harvest clinic,' says the first guard. The other guard doesn't talk. He just chomps on chewing gum.

Connor's first reaction is that this can't be what it sounds like. Maybe Risa sent them. Maybe she wants to play something for him. After all, now that she's in the band, she has more influence than the average Unwind, doesn't she?

'The harvest clinic,' echoes Connor. 'What for?'

'Well, let's just say you're leaving Happy Jack today.'

Chomp, chomp, goes the other guard.

'Leaving?'

'C'mon, son, do we have to spell it out for you? You're a problem here. Too many of the other kids look up to you, and that's never a good thing at a harvest camp. So the administration decided to take care of the problem.'

They advance on Connor, lifting him up by the arms.

'No! No! You can't do this.'

'We can, and we are. It's our job—and whether you make it hard, or easy, it doesn't matter. Our job gets done either way.'

Connor looks to the other kids as if they might help him, but they don't.

'Good-bye, Connor,' says one, but he won't even look in Connor's direction.

The gum-chewing guard looks more sympathetic, which means there might be a way to get through to him. Connor looks at him pleadingly. It makes him stop chewing for an instant. The guard thinks for a moment and says, 'I got a buddy looking for brown eyes, on account of his girlfriend don't like the ones he got. He's a decent guy—you could do a lot worse.'

'What!'

'We sometimes get dibs on parts and stuff,' he says. 'One of the perks of the job. Anyways, all I'm saying is I can give you some peace of mind. You'll know your eyes won't go to some lowlife or nothin'.'

The other guard snickers. 'Piece of mind. Good one. Okay, time to go.' They pull Connor forward, and he tries to prepare himself, but how do you prepare yourself for something like this? Maybe what they say is right. Maybe it's not dying. Maybe it's just passing into a new form of living. It could be all right, couldn't it? Couldn't it?

He tries to imagine what it must be like for an inmate to be led to his execution. Do they fight it? Connor tries to imagine himself kicking and screaming his way to the Chop Shop, but what would be the use of that? If his time on Earth as Connor Lassiter is ending, then maybe he should use the time well. He should allow himself to spend his final moments appreciating who he was. No! Who he still is! He should appreciate the last breaths moving in and out of his lungs while those lungs are still under his control. He should feel the tension and release in his muscles as he moves, and see the many sights of Happy Jack with his eyes and store them in his brain.

'Hands off me, I'll walk by myself,' he orders the guards, and they instantly release him, perhaps surprised by the authority in his voice. He rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and strides forward. The first step is the hardest, but from that moment on he decides that he will neither run nor dawdle. He will neither quiver nor fight. He will take this last walk of his life in steady strides—and in a few weeks from now, someone, somewhere, will hold in their mind the memory that this young man, whoever he was, faced his unwinding with dignity and pride.

65. Clappers

Who can say what goes through the mind of a clapper in the moments before carrying out that evil deed? No doubt whatever those thoughts are, they are lies. However, like all dangerous deceptions, the lies that clappers tell themselves wear seductive disguises.

For clappers who have been led to believe their acts are smiled upon by God, their lie is clothed in holy robes and has outstretched arms promising a reward that will never come.

For clappers who believe their act will somehow bring about change in the world, their lie is disguised as a crowd looking back at them from the future, smiling in appreciation for what they've done.

For clappers who seek only to share their personal misery with the world, their lie is an image of themselves freed from their pain by witnessing the pain of others.

And for clappers who are driven by vengeance, their lie is a scale of justice, weighted evenly on both sides, finally in balance.

It is only when a clapper brings his hands together that the lie reveals itself, abandoning the clapper in that final instant so that he exits this world utterly alone, without so much as a lie to accompany him into oblivion.

Or her.

The path that brought Mai to this place in her life was full of fury and disappointment. Her breaking point was Vincent. He was a boy no one knew. He was a boy she met and fell in love with in the warehouse more than a month ago.

He was a boy who died in midair, crammed into a crate with four other kids who choked on their own carbon dioxide. No one seemed to notice his disappearance, and certainly no one cared. No one but Mai, who had found her soul mate, and had lost him that day she arrived in the Graveyard.

The world was to blame, but when she secretly witnessed the Admiral's golden five burying Vincent and the others, she was able to give faces to her fury.

The Goldens buried Vincent not with respect, but with profanities. They cracked jokes and laughed. They covered the five dead boys carelessly with dirt like cats cover their turds. Mai had never felt such rage.

Once Cleaver befriended her, she told him what she had seen, and he agreed that revenge was in order. It was Cleaver's idea to kill the Goldens. It was Blaine who drugged them and brought them to the FedEx jet—but it was Mai who sealed the hatch of the crate. It was amazing to her that killing could be as easy as closing a door.

After that, there was no turning back for Mai. Her bed had been made; all that remained was for her to lie in it. She knows that today will be the day she climbs in and goes to her rest.

Once inside the Chop Shop she finds a storage room full of surgical gloves, syringes, and shiny instruments she cannot identify. She knows Blaine is somewhere in the north wing of the building. She expects Lev is in position too, standing on the loading dock at the back of the Chop Shop—at least that's the plan. It is now one o'clock on the nose. Time to do this.

Mai enters the storage room and closes the door. And waits. She will do this, but not quite yet. Let one of the others go. She refuses to be the first.

* * *

Blaine waits in a deserted hallway on the second floor. This area of the Chop Shop doesn't appear to be in use. He has decided not to use his detonators.

Detonators are for wimps. For a hardcore clapper, a single, powerful clap is enough to bring it on, even without detonators—and Blaine wants to believe he's hardcore, like his brother was. He stands at the end of the hallway, legs spread to shoulder width, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a tennis player awaiting a serve. His hands are held apart. But he waits. He's hardcore, yes—but he's not going first.

* * *

Lev has convinced the psychologist that he's suitably relaxed. It's the best acting performance of his life, because his heart is racing and there's so much adrenaline flooding his blood, he's afraid he'll spontaneously combust.

'Why don't you go back to the tithing house?' the doctor suggests. 'Spend some time getting to know the other kids. Make an effort, Lev—you'll be glad you did.'

'Yes. Yes, I'll do that. Thank you. I feel better now.'

'Good.'