The counselor motions to the pastors and everyone rises. It is 1:04. Lev wants to race out the door, but he knows that will just get him another therapy session. He leaves the office with the pastors, who babble about his place in the scheme of things and the joys of tithing. It's only as Lev gets outside that he becomes aware of the commotion. Kids are all running from their activities and into the commons between the dormitories and the Chop Shop. Have Blaine and Mai gone off already? He didn't hear any explosions. No, this is something else.
'It's the Akron AWOL,' he hears one of the kids shout. 'He's being unwound!'
That's when Lev spots Connor. He's halfway down the red carpet, marching with two guards right behind him. Kids have gathered in the grassy commons, but they keep their distance as more kids arrive. They're spilling out of the dormitories, the dining hall—everywhere.
The band has stopped playing in the middle of a tune. The keyboardist—a girl—wails at the sight of Connor on the red stone path. Connor looks up at her, halts for a second, and blows her a kiss before continuing on. Lev can hear her crying.
Now guards, staffers, and counselors converge on the quad in panic, trying to herd this volatile gathering of kids back to their places, but no one will leave.
The kids just stand there—maybe they can't stop this, but they can witness it.
They can be there as Connor strides out of this life.
'Let's hear it for the Akron AWOL!' one boy shouts. 'Let's hear it for Connor!' and he starts to applaud. Soon the entire crowd of kids is applauding and cheering Connor as he marches down the red carpet.
Suddenly Lev realizes what's about to happen. He can't let Connor go in there! Not now! He's got to stop him.
Lev breaks away from the pastors. Connor is almost to the steps of the Chop Shop. Lev races between the kids, but he can't push his way through them. If he does, he knows he'll detonate. He must be quick, but he must be careful—and being careful slows him down.
'Connor!' He screams, but the cheers all around him are too loud. And now the band has begun to play again. They're playing the national anthem, just like they do at the funerals of great Americans. The guards and the staff can't stop this. They try but they can't—and they're so busy trying to control the crowd, they let Lev slip right past onto the red carpet.
Now he has a clear path to Connor, who has begun climbing the steps. Lev screams his name again, but Connor still can't hear. Although Lev races down the path, he's still twenty yards away when the glass doors open and Connor steps inside with the guards.
'No! Connor! No!'
But the doors close. Connor is inside the Chop Shop. But he won't be unwound. He's going to die just like everyone else inside . . . and as if to complete Lev's failure, he finally takes a look up at the roof to catch the gaze of the keyboard player looking down at him.
It's Risa.
How could he have been so stupid? He should have known it was her from the way she wailed, and from the kiss that Connor blew her. Lev stands there, petrified with disbelief . . . And then the world comes to an end.
Blaine still stands at the end of the hall, waiting for someone else to go first.
'Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?' a guard shouts at Blaine.
'Stay back!' Blaine says. 'Stay back, or else!'
The guard pulls out his tranq pistol and speaks into his radio. 'I got an Unwind loose up here. I need backup!'
'I'm warning you,' says Blaine. But the guard knows exactly how to deal with an Unwind loose in the Chop Shop. He aims his tranq gun at Blaine's left thigh, and fires.
'No!'
But it's too late. The impact of a tranq bullet is more effective than any detonator. Blaine and the guard are instantly incinerated as the six quarts of liquid explosive coursing through Blaine's body ignites.
Mai hears the explosion. It shakes the entire storage room like an earthquake. She doesn't think about it. She can't. Not anymore. She looks at the detonators on her palm. This is for Vincent. This is for her parents, who signed the Unwind order. This is for the whole world.
She claps once.
Nothing.
She claps twice.
Nothing.
She claps a third time.
The third time is the charm.
The moment Risa sees Lev standing below, on the red carpet, an explosion rips through the north wing of the Chop Shop. She turns to see the entire wing crumble. 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!'
'We gotta get out of here!' yells Dalton, but before he can make a move, a second explosion roars beneath them, sending the air-vent caps shooting skyward like rockets. The roof beneath their feet cracks like thin ice, and the entire roof gives way. Risa plunges with the rest of the band into the smoky abyss, and in that instant all she can think of is Connor, and how the band never got to finish playing his farewell anthem.
Lev stands there as the glass blows past him. He sees the band fall as the roof collapses. A howl builds up inside him, escaping his mouth, an inhuman sound born of an agony he can't describe. His world has truly ended. Now he must finish the job.
Standing there before the ruined building, he pulls out the sock in his pocket. He fumbles with it until he finds the detonators. He peels the backs, revealing the adhesive, and sticks them to his palms. They look like stigmata, the nail wounds in the hands of Christ. Still wailing his agony, he holds his hands up before him, preparing to make the pain go away. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him.
And he cannot bring them together.
He wants to. He needs to. But he can't.
No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much his mind wants to end this here and now, another part of him—a
The crowd, which had run at the sound of the blasts, has come back. They ignore Lev, because there's something else they see.
'Look!' someone shouts.
Lev turns to see where the kid is pointing. Coming out of the ruined glass doors of the Chop Shop is Connor. He's stumbling. His face is a shredded, bloody mess. He's lost an eye. His right arm is crushed and mangled. But he's alive!
'Connor blew up the Chop Shop!' someone yells. 'He blew it up and saved us all!'
And then a guard bursts onto the scene. 'Get back to your dormitories. All of you! Now!'
No one moves.
'Didn't you hear me?'
Then a kid slams the guard with a right hook that practically spins his whole body around. The guard responds by pulling out his tranq gun and shooting the kid in the offending arm. The kid goes to dreamland, but there are other kids, and they tear the gun out of the guard's hand, using it against him. Just like Connor once had.
The word that the Akron AWOL blew up the Chop Shop zigs like lightning through every Unwind in Happy
