Roland never had it in him to kill, thinks Connor. But I do . . .
It’s harder than Connor could ever imagine. Tears cloud his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.” He doesn’t even know who he’s apologizing to. He holds eye contact with Starkey, whose eyes begin to bulge and dart in physiological panic. His limbs quiver, his face deepens into bruise shades—yet even so, Starkey forces the corners of his mouth up in a faint grin of triumph.
Just a few moments more . . . just a few moments more . . .
Connor knows the exact moment Starkey dies. Not because he sees it in his eyes but because a vital signs transmitter on Starkey’s ankle lets loose a piercing alarm. He pulls his hand from Starkey’s throat and, hearing the outer door being unlocked, Connor leaps to the wall of Unwinds, climbs up to his niche, and vaults himself in just as the inner door opens.
First in is a medic, then the man who must be Divan. Connor watches the drama unfold from his perch, trying to slow his breathing so they can’t hear him.
“How could this happen?” says Divan. “HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?”
“I don’t know,” says the nervous medic. “A heart attack maybe? A congenital condition we didn’t know about?”
“I’ve just auctioned him! Do you have any idea how much money I stand to lose? BRING HIM BACK! NOW!”
The medic scurries off and returns with a defibrillator. Five times he tries to revive Starkey, and although his chest arches with each blast of electricity, the end result is the same. Mason Michael Starkey, the bloodthirsty Lord of Storks, is dead.
Through all the attempts to revive him, Divan paces, and after the final attempt, his fury resolves into direction. “All right, he’s dead, but we can still harvest him.”
“Not his brain,” says the medic. “It will already have started breaking down.”
“We’ll assess its viability later—but even if we lose the brain, we can salvage everything else if we’re fast enough. Set the machine to express mode, skip the anesthesia, and lower the temperature to thirty-six degrees.”
The medic unlocks the control panel and makes the needed adjustments. Then, when the unwinding chamber door opens, Divan physically pushes Starkey’s body inside, not waiting for the conveyor belt to do it for him.
The door on the unit closes, the process begins, and the two relax.
“Too bad,” says the medic. “It’s almost like he died to spite you.”
“If it was intentional,” says Divan, “then he had help.” Divan raises his gaze to look at the Unwinds in the drum all around him.
Connor closes his eyes and remains absolutely still.
“Get back to the control room. I want you to check the telemetry on every Unwind here,” Connor hears Divan say as they leave. “Find out if anyone’s vital signs are unusually elevated.”
• • •
They come for him ten minutes later. Three of them: the medic, some random crewman who looks nervous to even be there, and a silent chisel-faced boeuf who looks born to intimidate. Connor is prepared, or at least as prepared as he can be. Hiding near the door just out of view, he blasts them with a fire extinguisher as they enter, and grabs one of their weapons. A tranq gun. They’re only armed with tranqs. He fires and manages to take down the nervous guy before the weapon is knocked from Connor’s hands.
Then he dodges the grasp of the others, running for cover on the far side of the unwinding chamber, where the medical stasis coolers are stacked, ready for distribution. This fight is just for show, he knows. Escape is impossible, but if thrashing on the end of the line will give his captors grief, then it’s well worth it.
The medic tries to lure him out with poorly delivered lies like, “Divan just wants to talk to you—there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Connor doesn’t even engage him in conversation. For a moment he has the mad thought of opening the hinged nose cone, which is right at the front of the unwinding chamber. It’s a design feature that assumed a cargo of tanks, not teens. If he opens the nose cone in flight, it will suck them all out into the icy, airless void of thirty-seven thousand feet, and most certainly bring down the plane. The control switch is close enough—and he might do it too, if all the other kids weren’t there in the harvester . . . and if Risa weren’t somewhere on board.
In the end, Connor is cornered, and they take him down, but not before Connor gets in a few good swings. His attackers don’t fight back. Mustn’t damage the merchandise. They don’t tranq him either—maybe because they weren’t entirely lying to him. Maybe Divan does want to talk to him, and talk now, rather than after a visit to Tranqistan.
They cinch his hands together with a cable tie—tight enough to do the job, but not tight enough to cut into his skin—and they take him out, stepping over the body of the tranq’d crewman, who, in a state of slumber, doesn’t look nervous at all.
He’s brought to a large, fancy room toward the rear of the jet, where Divan waits. There is a troubling collection of faces on the wall behind him, somehow adding a dark gravity to Divan’s presence.
“Hello, Connor,” he says with a calm he did not express upon Starkey’s demise. “My name is—”
“I know who you are,” Connor says, then covers by saying, “You’re black-market scum, and that’s all I need to know.”
“Divan Umarov,” he continues, ignoring Connor. “And you’ve been quite the irascible camper, haven’t you? How on earth did you wake up?”