UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

“Lock the door!” shouts Miracolina, and doesn’t wait. She pushes Timothy out of the way to get to the driver’s unlocked door—but she’s not fast enough. Just as she reaches for the lock, the door is pulled open, and the assailant hits the button that pops all the locks. All the van’s doors are pulled open at once by the masked attackers. Clearly these attackers have done this before and have gotten good at it. Timothy screams as hands reach in, pulling him out. He tries to wriggle free, but it’s useless. If his fear is a web, then the spiders have got him.

Two more figures reach for Miracolina, and she drops to the floor, kicking at them.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

Her fear, which had been so well under control, explodes from her now, because this violation of her journey is a far greater unknown than harvest camp. She kicks, and bites, and claws in terror and outrage, but it’s no use—because in the end, she hears the telltale pffft of a tranq gun firing. She feels the sharp jab of the tranq bullet as it embeds itself in her arm, and the world goes dark as she spirals helplessly into that timeless place where all sedated souls go.

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“You don’t know me, but you know someone like me. I was diagnosed with liver cancer the same week I got my acceptance letter to Harvard. My parents and I didn’t think it was a problem, but when we talked to our doctor, we found out there was an organ shortage, and livers were in short supply. They told me I’d have to be on a waiting list. Now, three months later, my name still hasn’t come up, and that acceptance letter? Well, I guess my education is going to have to wait.

“And now the same people who lowered the age restriction on unwinding want to have a six-month waiting period once parents sign an unwind order, in case they change their minds. Six months? I won’t be here in six months.”

WAFFLING KILLS! VOTE NO ON PROP 53!

Paid for by Parents for a Positive Future

Waking up after being tranq’d is not a pleasant experience. With consciousness comes a splitting headache, a terrible taste in one’s mouth, and the disturbing feeling that something has been stolen from you.

Miracolina awakes to the sound of someone crying beside her, begging for mercy. She recognizes the voice as Timothy’s. He’s definitely not the kind of boy built to handle something like this. She can’t see him, though, because her eyes are covered by a thick blindfold.

“It’s all right, Timothy,” she calls to him. “Whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay.” Hearing her voice makes his pleas and sobs settle into whimpers.

Miracolina shifts to feel the position of her body. She’s sitting upright, and her neck aches from the position in which it had hung while she slept. Her hands are behind her back, tied together. Her legs are tied to the chair she sits in. Not painfully, but tight enough to ensure she won’t break free.

“Okay,” says the voice of a boy in front of them. “You can take off their blindfolds.”

Her blindfold is pulled off, and although the light around her is not bright, it’s still painful to keep her eyes open. She squints, slowly letting her eyes adjust and focus.

They’re in some sort of grand, high-ceilinged ballroom. Crystal chandeliers, artwork on the walls—it looks like the kind of place where French royalty would have entertained high society before getting themselves beheaded. Except that this place is falling apart. There are holes in the ceiling through which pigeons freely fly in and out of the daylight. The paintings are peeling with weather damage, and the rank smell of mildew fills the air. There’s no telling how far they’ve been taken from their destination.

“I’m really sorry we had to do it this way,” the boy sitting in front of them says. He’s not dressed like any sort of royalty. Even moldy royalty. He wears simple jeans and a light blue T-shirt. His hair is pale brown, almost blond, and too long—like he hasn’t had a haircut in recent memory. He seems to be her age, but the tired look around his eyes makes him appear older, like he’s seen many more things than anyone ought to see at their age. He also seems a little bit frail in some indefinable way.

“We couldn’t risk you getting hurt, or figuring out where we were taking you. It was the only way to safely rescue you.”

“Rescue us?” says Miracolina, speaking up for the first time. “Is that what you call this?”

“Well, it might not feel that way at the moment, but yes, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

And all at once, Miracolina knows who this is. A wave of rage and nausea courses through her. Of all the unfair things to happen to her, why did she have to face this? Why did she have to be captured by him? She feels the kind of anger, the kind of hatred she knows is not good for her soul, especially this close to her tithing—but try as she might, she can’t purge herself of the bitterness.

Then Timothy gasps, and his watery eyes go wide.

“You’re him!” he says with the kind of enthusiasm boys like Timothy usually save for encounters with sports stars. “You’re that tithe who became a clapper! You’re Levi Calder!”

The boy across from them nods and smiles. “Yes, but my friends call me Lev.”

3 - Cam

Wrists. Ankles. Neck. Strapped down. Itching. Itching all over. Can’t move.

He flexes his hands and feet in the bonds. Side to side, up and down. It scratches the itch, but makes it burn.

“You’re awake,” says a voice that’s familiar, and yet not. “Good. Very good.”

He turns his neck. No one. Just white walls around him.

The scrape of a chair. Closer. Closer. The person who spoke comes into blurry view, moving her chair into his line of sight. Sitting. Legs crossed. Smiling, but not smiling. Not really.