UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

And although he can’t think of anything that his personality has won, he says, “Sure, why not?” Because he realizes he has absolutely nothing left to lose. He thinks back to the days after he left CyFi, and before he arrived at the Graveyard. Dark days, to be sure, but punctuated by a bit of light when he found himself on a reservation, taken in by People of Chance. The Chance folk had taught him that when you have nothing to lose, there’s no such thing as a bad roll of the dice. And then something occurs to him. Something that has been in the back of his mind for a while, but today has risen to the forefront.

“One thing, though,” Lev says.

“Yes?”

“I want to have my last name legally changed. Can you do that?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Of course, if that’s what you want. May I ask what you would like to change it to?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “Just as long as it’s not Calder.”

22 - Trust

There’s a home on a street in northern Detroit. It is now the official legal residence of one Levi Jedediah Garrity. It’s a small home, but adequate, and comes through the generosity of the Cavenaugh trust, dedicated to helping wayward youth. There is a full-time valet to take care of Lev’s needs, and a new tutor to take care of his lessons. The trust has even planted a permanent rent-a-cop out front to deter any unwanted guests and suspicious solicitors. No clappers are getting anywhere near the front door here.

It would be a perfect situation for Lev, except for the fact that he doesn’t actually live there. True, there’s that subcutaneous tracking chip embedded in his neck that swears he does, but the chip was easily compromised. Now the chip can ping out a signal from wherever they want Lev to appear to be.

No one knows he’s being brought to the Cavenaugh mansion, almost forty miles away.

The Cavenaugh mansion is a behemoth of a building resting on seventy-five secluded acres in Lake Orion, Michigan. It was designed to look like Versailles and was built with motor money in the days before the American automotive industry had done its own version of clapping and applauded itself into nonexistence.

Most people don’t know the mansion is still there. They’re mostly right, because it’s barely there at all. Exposure to the elements all these years has left it one storm short of surrender.

The mansion served as the Midwest headquarters for the Choice Brigade during the Heartland War, until it was captured and became headquarters for the Life Army. Apparently both the Lifers and Choicers saw great value in having their own personal Versailles.

The place was under attack constantly until the day the Unwind Accord ended all battles, putting forth the worst possible compromise and yet the only one both sides could agree to: sanctity of life from conception to thirteen, with the option of unwinding teenagers whose lives were deemed to have been a mistake.

For many years after the war, the Cavenaugh mansion lay crumbling, too expensive to repair yet too large to tear down, until Charles Cavenaugh Jr., to assuage his guilt at still having old money in new times, donated the mansion to a trust fund, which was owned by another trust fund, which was laundered through yet another trust fund, which was owned by the Anti-Divisional Resistance.

23 - Lev

Charles Cavenaugh Jr. meets Lev personally at the entrance of the crumbling mansion. He’s dressed like he’s too rich to worry about how he’s dressed. Even with the Cavenaugh family fortune long gone, Lev figures there must be enough residual wealth to keep at least his generation living elite. The only thing that betrays his allegiance to the resistance is his thinning hair. Nowadays the rich don’t have thinning hair. If they do, they just replace it with someone else’s.

“Lev, it’s an honor to meet you!” He grasps Lev’s hand with both of his, shaking it firmly and maintaining a steady eye contact that Lev finds awkward.

“Thanks. Same here.” Lev isn’t sure what else to say.

“I was so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend and your brother’s injuries. I can’t help but think if we had approached you earlier, the tragedy never would have happened.”

Lev looks up at the mansion. Barely a window is intact. Birds fly through the jagged, broken panes.

“Don’t let it fool you,” Cavenaugh says. “She still has some life in her—and the way she appears is actually an asset. It’s camouflage for anyone who tries to look too closely.”

Lev can’t imagine anyone looking too closely. The place is on seventy-five fenced-in acres, in the middle of a weedy field that was once a lawn, which is surrounded on all sides by dense woods. The only way to even see the mansion would be from above.

Cavenaugh pushes open a rotted door and leads Lev into what was once a grand foyer. Now the foyer has no roof. Two sets of stairs climb to the second floor, but most of the wood on the stairs has caved in, and weeds grow through cracks in the floor, pushing up the marble tiles, making it randomly uneven.

True to her word, the nurse tells him that Marcus is in room 408, and so after dark, when all the questioning is over and the halls have quieted, Lev ventures out of his room, ignoring the aches that fill most of his body. Just outside his door, he sees that the cop assigned to guard him is down the hall, flirting with one of the younger nurses. Lev quietly slips away to visit Marcus.

As he pushes open the door to room 408, the first thing he sees is his mother sitting in a chair, her eyes fixed on Marcus, who is unconscious and intubated, and connected to a hissing breathing machine. His father is there too, his hair looking a little grayer than it did a year ago. Lev feels tears threatening to rise, but he wills them away, sucking his emotions in and locking them tight.

His mother sees him first. She reaches over to get his father’s attention. They look at each other for a moment, sharing whatever pseudo-telepathy married couples have. Then his mother stands, crosses to Lev, and never once looking at him, hugs him awkwardly, then leaves the room.

His father doesn’t look at him either. Not at first anyway. He just looks to Marcus, watching his chest rise and fall in a slow, steady, machine-regulated rhythm.

“How is he?” Lev asks.

“He’s in an induced coma. They said they’ll keep him like this for three days, so the nanos can speed the healing.”