UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

“We’ll be there by morning, if we drive through the night.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Driving through the night?”

“We’ll see.” The sun is behind them now, low in the sky. Argent has offered to drive since they left New Orleans, but Nelson will not surrender the wheel. He’s tired. He’s fighting a fever, but he won’t let on.

After more than a week of searching, New Orleans turned out to be a bust. If Connor Lassiter had business at Mary LaVeau’s, that business was done—and no one there could be persuaded to offer him information as to his whereabouts. Although New Orleans was a hot bed of illicit activity, none of it seemed to involve sheltering AWOLs. They wasted three more days heading north to Baton Rouge and searching there for signs of Lassiter or an Anti-Divisional underground that might be giving him sanctuary.

For more than a week they wandered, chasing hunches that Nelson had all over the deep South, until the damn checker said, “I don’t know why we just don’t go on to New York.”

“Why would we go there?” Nelson had asked.

The checker had looked at him with the stupid blinking brainlessness of a rodent. “I told you the other night.”

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

“Yeah, I did. Of course, you were storkfaced on whatever it was you were drinking. That and those pills of yours.”

“You didn’t tell me anything!”

“Okay, suit yourself,” Argent said, way too smug. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

In the end Nelson had to play into it like a goddamn knock-knock joke. “What did you tell me?”

“It was that news report about the Statue of Liberty. How they’re replacing her arm with an aluminum one on account of the copper one’s too heavy.”

Nelson didn’t have much patience for this. “What about it?”

“So it made me remember that Connor talked about having a date with the lady in green. You really don’t remember?”

Nelson had no memory of being told this, but to admit this to the rodent would give him way too much satisfaction. “Now I remember,” Nelson had said.

It wasn’t exactly the smoking gun Nelson wanted—“the lady in green” could mean a whole lot of things . . . but then again, wasn’t the statue a favorite protest spot for AWOL sympathizers? What was Lassiter planning?

What finally propelled Nelson to head north was the news report that he knew would eventually come. Argent’s picture with his hero, the Akron AWOL. Argent had been wandering out in the open for days. Someone will have recognized him; someone would turn him in.

Nelson knew he ought to cut his losses and take off alone, leaving Argent for the lions, but he found within himself the tiniest shred of pity and maybe even sentimentality. Argent had actually captured two AWOLs for him. A useless gesture, but the thought did count for something—because seeing those two bottom-feeders bound and gagged and practically gift-wrapped for him had brought some cheer to an otherwise miserable day. In time Argent could even be useful as a mole, infiltrating packs of AWOLs for him. So he hadn’t cut Argent loose. Instead he took him with him, following the threadbare lead to New York.

Now, as they cross from West Virginia into Pennsylvania, Nelson’s doubts begin to feel like roadblocks before them, and Argent will not shut his mouth.

“We should stop in Hershey,” Argent suggests. “They say the whole town smells like chocolate. There’s roller coasters there too. You like roller coasters?”

A sign up ahead says, PITTSBURGH 45 MILES. Nelson feels his fever coming back. His joints are aching, and his face stings from his own sweat. He resolves to take the night in Pittsburgh. He’s not up to driving through the night. He doesn’t even have the strength to shut Argent up.

o;She’s pretty amazing, but not that amazing,” Connor says. “You want magic, talk to Una. I’m sure the Arápache are more tuned in to magical stuff than the rest of us.”

Una stiffens and frowns at him. “I don’t have to take insults from a runaway Unwind.”

“I was actually being sincere,” Connor admits. “But I’m happy to insult you, if that’s what you want.”

Una holds her glare a moment more before returning her gaze to the ground.

“You said you want to help Risa,” Connor asks the Rewind. “Help her how?”

“That’s between me and her.”

“Wrong,” Connor tells him. “I’m between you and her. You talk to me, or you don’t talk at all.”

The Rewind seethes, breathing through his nose like a dragon about to flare. Then he backs down. “I can help her bring down Proactive Citizenry. I have all the evidence she needs. But I won’t share it with anyone but her.”