Connor doesn’t hide his fury as he storms into GymBo, where Starkey works out like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell you don’t!”
Around them other kids leave their equipment and slowly approach, taking menacing positions. Only now does Connor realize that Starkey has completely surrounded himself with members of the Stork Club. There’s not a single bio-raised kid there.
“How many of you were with him?” Connor demands. “How many of you are as crazy as he is?”
“Let me show you something, Connor.” Starkey saunters over to a kid sitting on a side bench, who looks both angry and scared at the same time. “I’d like you to meet Garrett Parks, the newest member of the Stork Club. We liberated him last night.”
Connor looks the kid over. He has a black eye, a swollen lip. He was pretty roughed up during his “liberation.”
“They burned down your house—you know that, don’t you?” Connor asks him.
The kid can’t look Connor in the eye. “Yeah, I know.”
“He also knows,” adds Starkey, “that his so-called parents were about to have him unwound. We saved him, and sent a message.”
“Yeah, you sent a message, all right. To the Juvies. You told them that it’s time to take every last one of us out. You didn’t save him, you’ve condemned him. You’ve condemned all of us! Do you really think they’ll stand for us burning down homes?”
Starkey crosses his arms. “Let them try to take us down. We’ve got weapons. We’ll fight them off.”
“How long do you think we can last? An hour? Two? No matter how many weapons we have, they have more, and they’ll just keep coming and coming until we’re all dead or captured.”
Finally Starkey begins to show a hint of uncertainty.
“You’re just a coward,” shouts Bam, glowering at him just as she did the day Connor fired her.
“Yeah, yeah, a coward,” the others echo.
The chorus of support gives Starkey all the justification he needs to bury any doubts beneath his own blind confidence. “I’ve been here long enough to know that you’re nothing but a babysitter. We need more than that. We need someone who’s not afraid to take this battle to the streets. I gave you every chance to leave on your own, but you wouldn’t go. You leave me no choice but to take you down.”
“Not gonna happen.”
Connor is clearly outnumbered. Starkey’s inner circle of storks advance on him—but Starkey’s not the only one with tricks up his sleeve. Suddenly Hayden and half a dozen others, who’ve been waiting outside, begin piling through the door, firing tranq pistols at every stork in their path until half of Starkey’s inner circle is unconscious on the floor of the jet, and the others drop their weapons.
Connor looks straight into Starkey’s eyes. “Cuff him.”
“With pleasure,” says Hayden, pulling Starkey’s hands behind his back and cuffing them together.
Connor has been foolish enough to trust him, and to believe that Starkey’s ambition was healthy, not blind.
“The difference between me and you, Connor,” Starkey says, still defiant, “is that—”
“—is that you’re in handcuffs and I’m not. Get him out of here.”
Hearing the gunfire of tranq pistols, dozens of kids have gathered in front of GymBo, as they haul Starkey out and down the stairs.
“Put his little mutiny team in the detention jet with two armed guards,” Connor says.
“Starkey, too?” Hayden asks.
Connor knows he can’t put Starkey in the same holding pen as his coconspirators. It would just lead to more plotting.
“No. Lock him in my jet,” Connor orders, and one of the kids holding Starkey throws him to the ground, but Connor pulls the kid back.
“No! We are not the Juvies. Treat him with dignity. Whether he deserves it or not.”