UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

“You’ll require a lot of physical therapy, of course. Not as much as you might think, though.” The nurse checks the devices that are attached to her legs. They are electrical stimulators, which cause her muscles to contract, awakening them from their atrophied state, building them back to prime body tone. Each day she feels like she’s run miles, although she hasn’t left the bed.

She’s no longer in a cell. It’s not really a hospital, either. She can tell it’s some sort of private home. She can hear the roar of ocean surf outside her window.

She wonders if the staff knows who she is and what happened to her. She chooses not to bring it up, because it’s too painful. Better just to take it day by day and wait until Roberta comes for her again, to tell her what more she has to do to fulfill the terms of her so-called contract.

It’s not Roberta who visits her, though, it’s Cam. He’s the last person she wants to see, if she indeed can call him a person. His hair has filled in a bit since the time she first saw him, and the scars on his face from the various grafts are slimmer. You can barely see the seam where the different skin tones touch.

“I wanted to see how you were feeling,” he says.

“Sick to my stomach,” she tells him, “but that only started when you walked in.”

He goes to the window and opens the blinds a bit more, letting in bars of afternoon light. A particularly loud wave crashes on the shore outside the window. “ ‘The ocean is a mighty harmonist,’ ” he says, quoting someone she’s probably never even heard of. “When you can walk,” Cam tells her, “you should look at your view. It sure is pretty this time of day.”

She doesn’t answer him. She just waits for him to leave, but he doesn’t.

“I need to know why you hate me,” he asks. “I’ve done nothing to you. You don’t even know me, but you hate me. Why?”

“I don’t hate you,” Risa admits. “There’s no ‘you’ to hate.”

He comes up beside her bed. “I’m here, aren’t I?” He puts his hand on hers, and she pulls away.

o;Yeah, yeah, sure,” Connor says absently.

Starkey grips his shoulder. “It’s okay, you’ll get over it. We’re all here to support you.” Then he leaves, his mission of enlightenment accomplished.

Connor sits for a long time without moving. Although he knows he needs to be strong enough to carry this burden, he feels so shredded inside, he doesn’t know how he can make it through the night, much less take care of hundreds of Unwinds in the days ahead. All those lofty ideas of exposing history to end unwinding implode into a single desperate thought.

Risa. Risa. Risa.

He is hobbled. How could Starkey not know how devastated he would be? Either he’s stupider than Connor thought . . . or he’s much, much smarter.

42 - Starkey

Jeeves brings Starkey a copy of the list of local unwind orders. There are only three kids on this list deemed savable, and none of them are storks. But today is the day that things change. There is a storked kid on the list, ignored and forgotten.

Jesus LaVega

287 North Brighton Lane

Well, Connor doesn’t have a monopoly on rescuing Unwinds. It’s high time Starkey took things into his own hands.

“Hey, we’re saving Jesus, instead of him saving us,” someone says when Starkey tells the Stork Club his plan. Another kid raps him on the head. “It’s pronounced Haysoos, moron.”

But regardless of how he pronounces his name, Jesus is about to get a wholly visitation.

- - -

At eleven o’clock p.m., one day before the Juvies are due to come for Jesus, Starkey and nine Stork Clubbers storm the house at 287 North Brighton Lane. They have weapons, because Starkey picked the arsenal lock. They have cars, because the kid in charge of vehicle maintenance is a loyal member of the Stork Club.

They don’t knock, they don’t ring. They break down the doors, front and back, crashing the place like a SWAT team taking down a crack house.

A woman screams and herds two younger kids to a back room. Starkey doesn’t see anyone the right age to be the target of their rescue. He goes into the living room in time to see a man pull down a curtain rod and turn to him—it’s the closest thing to a weapon the man can find on such short notice. Starkey easily disarms him and pushes him up against the wall with the muzzle of a submachine gun to his chest. “Jesus LaVega. Tell me where he is. Now!”

The father’s eyes dart back and forth in panic, then fix on something behind Starkey. Starkey turns in time to see a baseball bat swinging at him. He ducks, and the bat breezes past an inch from his head. The kid holding the bat is the size of a linebacker.

“No! Stop! You’re Jesus LaVega, right? We’re here to save you!”

But that doesn’t stop him from swinging the bat again. It connects with Starkey’s side. An explosion of pain. Starkey goes down, his weapon flies behind a sofa, and now the kid is over him, hefting the bat once more. Starkey can’t catch his breath. His side hurts so much he can only breathe shallow gulps of air.