UnSouled

Lev looks to her, a little shocked, a little angry. He had told no one of his decision yet. No one. How did she know?

“Don’t look at me so funny. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain. You keep talking about Connor going to Ohio and his mission to find Sonia. You’ve already cut yourself out of that picture in your head. Which is why I gotta go with him. So there’s two of us to keep Cam in line.”

“You’re relieved that I’m not coming, aren’t you?”

Grace looks away from him. “I never said that.” Then she adds, “It’s because I know you don’t like me!”

Lev grins. “No, actually, you’re the one who doesn’t like me.”

“That’s because I keep thinking you’re gonna blow up! I know you say you can’t, but what if you can? People step on mines that aren’t supposed to work no more and blow themselves up, so what if you’re like one of those mines?”

Lev responds by swinging his hands together. Grace flinches, but nothing comes from Lev’s clap but a clap—and not even a loud one.

“Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“Actually,” says Lev, “there are a lot of people I’ve come across that think ‘once a clapper, always a clapper.’ But I didn’t blow us all sky-high when I got hit by the car, did I? If I was gonna blow, that would have done it.”

Grace shakes her head. “You’re still not safe. Maybe you won’t blow up, but you’re not safe in other ways. I can just tell.”

Lev isn’t exactly sure what she means, but he senses that she’s right. He’s not a clapper anymore, but neither is he the model of stability. He’s not sure what he’s capable of—good or bad. And it scares him.

“I’m glad you’re going with Connor,” Lev tells her. “And he’ll take good care of you.”

“I’ll take care of him, you mean,” Grace says, a bit offended. “He needs me, because you can’t win a thing like this without the brains. I know they call me low-cortical and all, but even so, I got this one corner of my brain that’s like Grand Central Station. Stuff that other people can’t figure out comes easy to me. Argent always hated that and called me stupid, but only because it made him feel stupid.”

Lev smiles. “Connor told me all about how you got him out during the raid at your house. You were the one who thought to send the Juvies looking elsewhere for us, and you also figured out the shooter wasn’t trying to kill us.”

“Right!” Grace says proudly. “And I even know who the shooter was—but like my mama always said, tellin’ all you know just gets your head empty. Anyways, I thought on it and saw no need to tell.”

Lev feels himself really warming to Grace for the first time. “I figured it out too. And I agree with you. No one needs to know.” But, thinks Lev, maybe there are things Grace needs to know. He thinks about the situation with Starkey and realizes that if Grace is the strategist she appears to be, perhaps the challenge should be put to her. “I have a train for you to run through Grand Central Station,” he says.

“Send it on through.”

“The question is: How do you win a three-sided war?”

Grace frowns as she considers it. “That’s a tough one. I’ll think on it and give you an answer.” Then she crosses her arms. “ ’Course I can’t give you an answer if you don’t come with us, can I?”

Lev offers her an apologetic smile. “Then don’t give the answer to me. Give it to Connor.”

49 • Connor

Holding tightly to Cam’s arm, Connor escorts him down the stairs. Una is in the back room of her shop, building a new guitar, escaping into her work.

“You sent him up there without warning any of us!”

Una looks up from her work with only mild interest, as if, in her mind, they’ve already left. “I sent him to the bathroom. It’s not like he was going to escape.”

Connor doesn’t bother to explain his anger. It’s a waste of his breath. He continues down to the basement with Cam, who doesn’t resist.

“So,” says Cam, with irritating nonchalance. “Someone named Sonia in Akron.”

Connor lets him loose. “We could have the Arápache lock you up as an enemy of the tribe, and you’ll rot in a tribal jail for the rest of your miserable life.”

“Maybe,” says Cam, “but not without a trial—and everything I tell them will become a matter of public record.”

Connor turns away from him, clenching his fists, growling in utter frustration—then turns back and finds Roland’s hand swinging, connecting with Cam’s jaw. Cam is knocked down, falling over a rickety wooden chair, and Connor prepares to hit him again. But then he looks at the arm. He holds eye contact with the shark. This might be satisfying, but it’s not helping the situation. If he lets Roland’s muscle memory rule that arm, then Connor loses more than just his temper. In a sense he loses a part of his soul.

“Stop,” he tells the shark. Reluctantly, the muscles of Roland’s fist relax. Cam is the prisoner here, not Connor. He has to remind himself that no matter how compromised he feels, he still has the upper hand in the situation. He reaches down, rights the chair, and backs away. “Take a seat,” he tells Cam, folding his anger back in on itself.

Cam gets up off the dusty ground and pulls himself into the chair, rubbing his jaw. “That grafted arm of yours has its own set of talents, doesn’t it? And is that someone else’s eye, too? That puts you two steps closer to being just like me.”

Connor knows Cam is trying to goad him into losing control again, but Connor won’t let it happen. He brings the focus back to the matter at hand.

“You have nothing but a name and a city,” Connor says, with relative calm. “It’s more than I want you to know, but even if you bring it back to the people who made you, it won’t make a difference. And Sonia’s just a code name, anyway.”

“A code name, huh?”

“Of course.” Connor shrugs it off like it’s nothing. “You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to say a real name when anyone could hear.”

Cam gives him a Cheshire smile. “Like a rug,” he says. “I believe there’s a brain bit in my right frontal lobe that’s a BS detector, and it’s pinging in the red.”

“Believe what you want,” Connor says with no choice but to stick to his story. “Una will keep you locked in this basement as long as she feels like it, and when she lets you go—if she lets you go—you can tell Proactive Citizenry whatever you want; they still won’t find us.”

“Why are you so convinced I’ll crawl back to them? I already told you, I hate them just as much as you do.”

“Do you expect me to believe you’d bite the hand that made you?” says Connor. “Yes, maybe you’d do it for Risa, but not for me. The way I see it, you’ll go to them, and they’ll take you back with open arms. The prodigal son returns.”

And then Cam asks a question that will linger in Connor’s mind for a long, long time. “Would you ever go back to the people who wanted to unwind you?”

The question throws Connor for a loop. “Wh—what has that got to do with anything?”

“Being rewound was a crime every bit as heinous as unwinding,” Cam tells him. “I can’t change the fact that I’m here, but I owe nothing to the people who rewound me. I would uncreate my creators if I could. I was hoping Risa would help me do that. But in her absence, it looks like I’ll have to rely on you.”

Although Connor doesn’t trust him, there’s a deep and indelible bruise to his words. His pain is real. His desire to bring down his creators is real.

“Prove it,” Connor says. “Make me believe you want to tear them down as much as I do.”

“If I do, will you take me with you?”

Connor has already realized they have little choice but to take him, but he plays this hand close. “I’ll consider it.”

Cam is silent for a moment, holding emotionless eye contact with Connor. Then he says “P, S, M, H, Y, A, R, E, H, N, L, R, A.”

“What?”

“It’s a thirteen-character ID on the public nimbus. As for the password, it’s an anagram of Risa Ward. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

“Why should I care what you have stored on the cloud?”

“You’ll care when you see what it is.”

Connor looks around the cluttered basement, finding a pen and a notepad among the debris on a table. He tosses them to Cam. “Write down the ID. Not all of us have photographic memories stitched into our heads. And I’m not guessing at passwords, so you’ll write that down too.”

Cam sneers at him, but obliges the request. When Cam is done, Connor takes the paper, putting it in his pocket for safekeeping, then locks Cam in the basement and returns to Una’s apartment.

“I’ve decided to take Cam with us,” he tells Lev and Grace, neither of whom seem surprised.

50 • Lev

He breaks the news to Connor in the morning—just a few hours before Pivane is due to take them to the car that’s waiting for them outside the north gate. He thinks Connor will be furious, but that’s not his reaction. Not at first. The look on Connor’s face is one of pity—which Lev finds even worse than anger.

“They don’t want you here, Lev. Whatever fantasy you’ve got in your head about staying here, you’ve gotta lose it. They don’t want you.”

It’s only half-true, but it hurts to hear all the same. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells Connor. “It’s what I want that matters, not what they want.”

“So you’re just going to disappear here? Pretend you’re a ChanceFolk kid, living the simple life on the rez?”

“I think I can make a difference here.”

“How? By going hunting with Pivane and reducing the rabbit population?” Now Connor’s voice starts to rise as his anger comes to the surface. Good. Anger is something Lev can deal with.

“They need to start listening to outside voices. I can be that voice!” he tells Connor.

“Listen to yourself! After all you’ve been through, how can you still be so naive?”

Now it’s Lev’s turn to get angry. “You’re the one who thinks talking to some old woman is going to change the world. If anyone is deluding themselves, it’s you!”

That leaves Connor with nothing to say, maybe because he knows Lev is right.

“How can you walk away,” Connor finally says, “when they’re about to overthrow the Cap-17 law?”

“Do you really think anything you or I can do will change that?”

“Yes!” Connor yells. “I do. And I will. Or I’ll die trying.”

“Then you don’t need my help. I’ll just be an anchor around your neck. Let me do something useful here instead of just tagging along.”