UnSouled

When he showed up for his shift the next morning, half his face in a bandage, customers and coworkers all feigned to care.

“Oh my, what happened?” they all asked.

“Gardening accident,” he told them, because he couldn’t come up with anything better at the time.

“Wow, musta been one nasty hedge.”

At home he stews, he curses, then stews some more, for what else can he do? Argent knows he can’t tell the police the truth of what happened. He can’t tell anyone, because his fool friends have bigger mouths than he does. The Juvenile Authority and FBI have dismissed him as a dumbass yokel who concocted a lie and almost made it stick. They see him as a joke. Even his own half-wit sister managed to turn him into a joke of a man, and all because of Connor Lassiter.

Can you despise your personal hero?

Can you long to share in his light and at the same time want to slit his throat the way he almost slit yours?

Argent’s only consolation is that Grace is no longer his problem. He doesn’t have to feed her; he doesn’t have to scold her and make her mind. He doesn’t have to worry about her leaving the water running, or the gas on, or the freaking back door open for the raccoons. He can have his own life. But what is that life, really?

Argent knows that these thoughts will fill his head for months to come as he mindlessly scans canned corn and pocket-damp coupons. “Did you find everything okay?” his mouth will say. “Have a good one!” But his heart will be wishing them worms in their meat, disease in their produce, and swollen, rancid canned goods. Anything that will inflict upon them a small fraction of the misery that now resides within him.

• • •

A week after Connor’s escape, a visitor shows up at Argent’s door just before he’s about to leave for his morning shift.

“Hello,” the man says. His voice is a little bit ragged and his smile suspiciously broad. “Would you happen to be Argent Skinner?”

“Depends on who’s asking.” Argent figures this might be one of the feds, come to tie up loose ends. He wonders if he’s going to be arrested after all. He wonders if he cares.

“May I come in?”

The man steps forward a bit, and now Argent can see something that was hidden by the oblique morning light. There’s something wrong with the right half of the man’s face. It’s peeling and infected.

“What’s the deal with your face?” Argent asks, point-blank.

“I could ask the same of you,” he answers.

“Gardening accident,” Argent volunteers.

“Sunburn,” the man counters—although to Argent it looks more like a radiation burn. A person would have to lie beneath an unforgiving sky for hours to get a burn that bad.

“You oughta take care of that,” Argent says, not even trying to mask his disgust.

“I will when time allows.” The man steps forward again. “May I come in? There’s something I need to discuss with you. Something of mutual interest and benefit.”

Argent is not so stupid as to let a stranger into his house at the crack of dawn—especially one who looks as wrong as this man does. He blocks the threshold and takes a stance that would resist any attempt for the man to barge his way in. “State your business right there,” Argent tells him.

“Very well.” The man smiles again, but his smile seems like a silent curse. Like the smile Argent gives people in the ten-items-or-less line who violate the limit. The smile he gives them while wiping just a little bit of snot on their apples.

“I happened to catch that picture you posted of you and Connor Lassiter.”

Argent sighs. “It was a fake, all right? I already told the police.” Argent steps back to close the door, but the man moves forward, planting his foot in just the right spot to keep the door from budging.

“The authorities may have fallen for your story—mainly because they truly believe that Lassiter is dead—but I know better.”

Argent doesn’t know what to make of this. Half of him wants to run, but the other half wants to know what this guy is all about.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Just like you, I caught him, yet he managed to slither away. And just like you, I want to make him pay for what he’s done.”

“Yeah?” Now Argent begins to get the slightest glimmer of hope. Maybe his life won’t be all about ringing up groceries in this town.

“Now can I come in?”

Argent steps back and lets him enter. The man closes the door gently and looks around, clearly unimpressed by the lived-in look of the house.

“So did he screw up your face too?” Argent asks.

The man glares at him, but then his gaze softens. “Indirectly. This was the fault of his accomplice. He left me unconscious by the side of the road, and when morning came, I roasted in the Arizona sun. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to.”

“Sunburn,” says Argent. “So you were telling the truth.”

“I’m an honest man,” Nelson says. “And I’ve been wronged, just like you. And just like you, I want to settle the score. That’s why you’re going to help me find Connor and his little friend.”

“And my sister,” Argent adds. “She took off with Connor.”

The idea of going after Connor and Grace had crossed Argent’s mind, but not seriously. It’s not the kind of thing you do alone. But now he wouldn’t be alone. Then it occurs to Argent what this man is.

“Are you some kind of parts pirate?”

That smile again. “The best there is.” He tips an imaginary hat. “Jasper T. Nelson, at your service.”

Parts pirates, Argent knows, are like cowboys of old. Lawless bounty hunters who play by their own rules, bringing in AWOL Unwinds and collecting official rewards—or better yet—selling those Unwinds for more money on the black market. Argent can see himself living life on the edge like that. He lets the idea linger, trying on the label like a new pair of jeans. Argent Skinner, parts pirate.

“The fact is, you’re in a lot of trouble, son. You just don’t know it yet,” Nelson tells him. “You may think the authorities are done with you, but tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, someone in some lab is going to run a routine forensic analysis of that picture you took, and they’re going to discover that it’s not a fake after all.”

Argent tries to swallow, but his throat is too dry. “Yeah?”

“Then you will be arrested. And interrogated. And interrogated some more. You will be charged with obstruction of justice, harboring a known criminal, and maybe even conspiracy to commit terrorism. You’ll end up in prison for a good long time. You might even get unwound if one of those new laws pass allowing the unwinding of criminals.”

Argent feels the blood drain from his sore face. He has to sit down, but doesn’t, because he’s afraid he might not have the strength to get up. So instead he locks his knees and sways a little bit on feet that suddenly feel too far away from the floor.

And all this because of Connor Lassiter.

“I’m sure if they interrogate you, you’ll sing to them everything Lassiter told you. But I would much prefer it if you sang for me instead. And you do have things to sing about, don’t you?”

Argent racks his brain for anything useful Connor might have said, but nothing comes to mind. Still, that won’t be what the parts pirate wants to hear.

“He told me some stuff,” Argent says. Then more forcefully, “Yeah. He told me stuff. Maybe enough to figure out where he’s going.”

Nelson laughs gently. “You’re lying.” He pats the good side of Argent’s face. “That’s all right. I’m sure there are things you know that you don’t even know you know. And besides, I need an associate. Someone to whom catching Connor Lassiter is personal, because that’s the only kind of person I can trust. I would have preferred someone a bit higher on the evolutionary ladder, but one takes what one can get.”

“I’m not stupid,” Argent tells him, intentionally avoiding the word “ain’t” to prove it. “I’m just unlucky.”

“Well, today your luck has changed.”

Perhaps it has, Argent thinks. Maybe this partnership is fated. The right side of Nelson’s face is ruined, as is the left side of Argent’s. They both bear the marks of their struggle with the Akron AWOL. It makes them a team perfectly suited for the mission.

Nelson looks toward the window, as if checking to see if the coast is still clear. “Here’s what you’re going to do, Argent. You’re going to fill a backpack with only the things you need, and you’ll do it in less than five minutes. Then you’ll come with me to take down the Akron AWOL once and for all. What do you say to that?”

Argent offers a feeble smile on the side of his face that still can. “Yo-ho, yo-ho,” Argent says. “A pirate’s life for me.”

Part Three

* * *

Sky-Fallers

Documented cases of cellular memory being transferred to heart transplant recipients:

CASE 1) A Spanish-speaking vegetarian receives the heart of an English speaker and begins using English words that were not part of his vocabulary but were words habitually used by the donor. The recipient also begins craving, and eventually eating, meat and greasy foods, which were mainstays of the donor’s diet.

CASE 2) An eight-year-old girl receives the heart of a ten-year-old girl who was murdered. The recipient begins having nightmares about the murder, remembering details that only the victim could know, such as when and how it happened and the identity of the murderer. Her entire testimony turns out to be true, and the murderer is caught.

CASE 3) A three-year-old Arab child receives the heart of a Jewish child, and upon waking, asks for a Jewish candy the child had never heard of before.

CASE 4) A man in his forties receives a heart from a teenaged boy and suddenly develops an intense love of classical music. The donor had been killed in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case as he died.

CASE 5) A five-year-old boy receives the heart of a three-year-old. He talks to him like an imaginary friend, calling him Timmy. After some investigation, the parents discovered the name of the donor was Thomas. But his family called him Timmy.

A total of 150 anecdotal cases have been documented by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, PhD.

http://www.paulpearsall.com/info/press/index-h

The Rheinschilds

She’s worried about him. He’s always been obsessed with their work, but she’s never seen him like this. The hours he spends in his research lab, the dark circles beneath his eyes, all the mumbling in his sleep. He’s losing weight, and no wonder; he seems to never eat anymore.

“He’s like this superbrain with no body,” says Austin, his research assistant, who has grown from an emaciated beanpole to a much more healthy weight since Janson hired him six months ago.

“Will you tell me what he’s working on?” Sonia asks.

“He said you didn’t want any part of it.”