During breakfast, a few days before he’s scheduled to leave, he asks her the question point-blank. The question that sits between them at every meal like a glass of poison that neither is willing to touch.
“What was her name?”
He doesn’t expect an answer. He knows Roberta will evade.
“You’re leaving for a grand new life soon. What’s the point?”
“There’s no point—I just want to hear you say it.”
Roberta takes a small bite of her eggs Benedict and puts down the fork. “Even if I tell you, the nanites will break the synapses and rob the memory within seconds.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Roberta sighs, crosses her arms, and to Cam’s amazement, says, “Her name was Risa Ward.”
. . . but the moment the words are spoken, they’re gone from his mind, leaving him to wonder if she had told him at all.
“What was her name?” he asks again.
“Risa Ward.”
“What was her name?”
“Risa Ward.”
“WHAT WAS HER NAME?!”
Roberta shakes her head in a belittling show of pity. “You see, it’s no use. Best to spend your time thinking of your future, Cam, not the past.”
He looks at his plate feeling anything but hungry. From deep within him comes a desperate whisper of a question. He can’t even remember why he’s asking it, but it must have some significance, mustn’t it?
“What . . . was . . . her . . . name?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roberta says. “Now finish up—we have a lot to do before you leave.”
19 • Risa
The girl who Cam can’t remember is running for her life.
It was a bad idea—actually, a whole series of them—that brought her to this circumstance. Only now does Risa comprehend how monumentally bad those ideas were, as she races from armed security guards in a massive research hospital complex. There are windows, but they only look out on other wings of the complex, so there’s no way to get one’s bearings. Risa is convinced they’re running in circles, spiraling toward inevitable doom.
• • •
There was little choice but to go on this fool’s mission.
If the organ printer arrived as stillborn technology when they made their grand play, then all their efforts will have been for naught. It was crucial that they find a way to test it, for only by demonstrating what it could do, would the world sit up and take notice.
“Making sure it works should have been your job,” Connor pointed out to Sonia as they discussed it in a relatively private corner of her basement. “You’ve been sitting on the thing for thirty years—you could have checked that it worked before you brought us into it.”
Sonia glared at him. “So sue me,” she said, and then added, “Oh, that’s right, you can’t—because for the past two years you’ve had the legal status of a canned ham.”
Connor matched her glare, dagger for dagger, until Sonia backed down. “I never thought I’d get the chance to bring it out again,” she said, “so I never bothered.”
“What changed?” Connor asked.
“You showed up.”
Although Connor couldn’t get why that should matter, Risa did. It’s their notoriety that makes all the difference. They have become the royalty of AWOLs. Attach their names to something, and suddenly people listen, whether they want to or not.
“OSU Medical Center,” Sonia said, “is one of the only research hospitals in the Midwest that does curative biological research. Everyone else is just trying to figure out better ways of using parts from Unwinds. Plenty of funding for that—but try to fund alternatives, and you get nothing but tumbleweeds.”
“OSU? Connor said. “As in Ohio State University? As in, the one in Columbus?”
“You got a problem with that?” Sonia asked. Connor gave her no answer.
She went on to tell them of one rogue doctor who was still seeking cures for systemic diseases, the kind that can’t be cured by transplantation. “And guess what’s at the heart of that research?” Sonia asked mischievously. The answer, of course, was adult pluripotent stem cells—the very sort of cells needed for the printer.
They had to talk Sonia out of going after the cells herself. A few days before, she had twisted her ankle and bruised her hip in a fall that no one had seen, probably back at her home. She tried to downplay it, but clearly she’d been in pain ever since. She couldn’t go, but someone had to.
They discussed the possibility of sending some of the kids from the basement to retrieve the biomatter, but they didn’t discuss it for long. This batch of AWOLs wasn’t exactly the secret-mission type. Risa hated to judge any AWOLs the way the world judged them, but these poor kids had none of the skill sets needed to pull it off, and a grab bag of personal issues that would do nothing but hinder them. The kids in Sonia’s basement would be liabilities on this mission. All of them, that is, except for Beau. For all his cockiness, he was capable—but was he capable enough to pull this off? Risa didn’t think so.
“I’ll go,” Risa offered. Bad idea number one.
“I’ll go with you,” Connor chimed in. Bad idea number two.
Sonia raged about it, insisting that they’d be recognized, and that, of all the people who shouldn’t go, Connor and Risa topped the list. She was, of course, right.
“Well, I ain’t going,” Grace was quick to announce. “I’ve had quite enough excitement over the past few weeks, thank you very much.” To Sonia’s absolute chagrin, Grace had appointed herself as Sonia’s personal caregiver, minding that she didn’t fall again.
“I don’t need a nursemaid!” Sonia kept telling her, which just doubled Grace’s resolve.
Risa knew a team of two was iffy. They needed at least one more as a fail-safe. And so Risa suggested that Beau be added to team. Bad idea number three.
“Are you kidding me? You want to ask Beau to come?” Connor said back in the basement. He raised his eyebrows at Risa. “Beau? Really?” He was amused, and it ticked Risa off.
“We’re going to have to interact out there—we need at least one face that people aren’t currently wearing on T-shirts.” Connor couldn’t argue with that logic.
Beau, of course, was thrilled to be included, although he tried to feign being blasé. “I’ll drive,” he proclaimed.
“You’ll sit in the back,” Connor told him, then handed him an old GPS he had pulled from a bin of marginal technology in Sonia’s shop. “We’ll need you to navigate.”
Risa had to grin at the way Connor put Beau in his place without making him lose face.
It was Sonia’s idea to arm them all with tranq-loaded pistols. Risa couldn’t stand the things, because they reminded her of the Juvies. She hated the idea of using the Juvenile Authority’s weapon of choice.
“Tranqs are quick, effective, and leave no mess, and even a peripheral hit does the job,” Sonia told her. “That’s why the Juvies use them.”
Risa was quick to remove the tranqs from Beau’s gun when he wasn’t looking. The last thing she or Connor wanted was a trigger-happy Beau.
That was this morning. Now as they run through the hospital complex, Beau insists he knows where he’s going even though neither of them has a clue about the mazelike facility. The blueprint they studied in preparation was hopelessly out of date and didn’t include the newer buildings, or renovations in the older ones.
It’s Sunday, and the particular office wing they’ve barged into is full of empty waiting rooms with generic art prints on the walls. Another place that’s not on the map they studied.
“This way!” Beau says, and although Risa’s sure it’s going to take them back where they’ve been, she goes along, because at this point, any direction seems as good as another. She can only hope that Connor, wherever he is, hasn’t been caught.
Connor took a different passageway—one that theoretically leads to the research wing of the massive complex. They hadn’t planned on splitti
ng up, but Connor had already turned a corner when a hospital rent-a-cop spotted Risa and Beau. Since the guard hadn’t seen Connor, it seemed the clear choice to Risa that she and Beau act as decoys, luring the somewhat hefty guard away. The trick is to stay far enough ahead not to be caught, but close enough so that the guard doesn’t give up the chase and go for donuts in the cafeteria, maybe encountering Connor along the way. The guard, however, is determined, and soon he’s joined by a slimmer, faster comrade. That’s when things begin to get serious.
Risa and Beau come to a dead end in the radiology wing. A locked door. The only way out is the way they came. The moment they turn, the two guards come around the corner, and, seeing that the two kids are cornered, they slow down and get a little smug in anticipation of the capture.
“Gave us a good workout, didn’tcha!” the chubby one says, huffing and puffing.
“Put your hands where we can see them,” says the slim one.
Risa turns to Beau and speaks under her breath. “We’ll talk our way out of it,” she says. “We haven’t done anything but make them chase us. If they don’t recognize me . . .”
As the guards get closer, Risa sees a determined look in Beau’s eye, and his hand is still in the pocket of his hoodie.
“No one runs without a reason,” says the chubby one. “My bet is that you’re a couple of AWOLs, aren’tcha!”
“Hands where we can see them!” insists the other again, unsnapping the holster on his weapon.
So Beau pulls out his hand. And in his hand is a pistol. And he aims that pistol at the slim rent-a-cop. Bad idea number four.
Beau levels his pistol at the slim guard. Risa knows exactly how this will go down, and she can only hope that the rent-a-cops are armed with tranqs and not real bullets—but she doubts it. The instant the targeted guard sees the weapon in Beau’s hand, he reaches for his own gun. So Beau pulls the trigger—
—and to Risa’s amazement, Beau’s pistol goes off! She hears the telltale PFFFT! of a tranq shot. It hits the guard in the shoulder, before he can raise his own gun—and in a second he’s down on his knees, and in another second, he’s falling facedown onto the institutionally carpeted floor, unconscious.
The other cop, who probably never actually had to draw a gun in his life, is fumbling with the holster, and Beau tranqs him right in the chest. The man lets out a squeak that sounds like “Pshaw,” stumbles a bit like a dying diva, and falls back against the wall, sliding to the ground, out cold.
“C’mon,” Beau says, “let’s get out of here.” He takes her hand and pulls her away from the scene. She’s too flabbergasted to resist his grasp.
“But . . . but how . . . ?”
“You think I didn’t know what you did? I wasn’t coming in here with an empty gun!”
Risa finally pulls out of his grasp and turns around.
“What are you doing?”
“We can’t just leave them there,” she says. “Someone will find them. We need to hide them.”
Beau goes back with her, and together they drag the men down the hall. Then, when a faint voice comes through one of the guard’s earpieces, asking for the status of the “unsubs,” Beau grabs it and says in a very convincing voice, “Ten-four. Just a couple of local ferals. They ran out a back door. Not our problem anymore.”
“Amen to that,” says the voice on the other end, and they’ve bought themselves at least ten minutes until someone wonders about the two guards’ mysterious disappearance.
“Ten-four?” Risa asks. “Did you actually say ten-four?”
Beau shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it?”
They put the thin guard inside a wooden toy box in a deserted pediatric waiting room. The corpulent one fits nicely in the cabinet underneath a huge fish tank, ironically populated by puffer fish that somewhat resemble the man.
Now that the unconscious guards are safely tucked away, Risa begins to relax. There’s an exhilaration to a narrow escape that Risa had almost forgotten. A physiological payoff to the adrenaline rush of danger.
Beau, feeling his own relief, begins to laugh. It makes Risa laugh in spite of herself, which makes Beau laugh even harder, pushing Risa toward an unwanted giggle fit that is suddenly silenced by Beau grabbing her and kissing her.
Her response is immediate and reflexive—although even if it wasn’t a reflex, she’s pretty sure she would have done the same thing. She pushes him off and pops him in the eye with such force that his neck snaps back and his head hits the fish tank with a thud, scattering puffer fish in all directions. Risa doesn’t want to stay for whatever the aftermath will be—apologetic or angry, she doesn’t care. She storms away.
“Risa, wait!”
Of all the things to deal with at this particular moment, why must she have to suffer the advances of yet another hormonal douche?
“Risa!”
She turns to him with fury and has to restrain herself from slugging him again. “Are you an idiot? Stop saying my name! They don’t know who we are, and if there happens to be anyone in these offices who can hear you . . .”
“Sorry.” His eye is already swelling. Good.
“If Connor had seen that, your face would look a whole lot worse!” she tells him.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Why is it that every loser with a penis feels the obligation to put moves on me?”
He looks at her like the answer is obvious. “Because you’re Risa Ward,” he says. “And whatever happens now, I’ll go to my grave knowing that once—just once—I kissed the one and only Risa Ward.”
“You’ll go to your grave?” says Risa, still outrageously bitter about the whole thing. “That’s just wishful thinking. More likely your memories will get ripped out and planted in someone else’s head!”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he tells her. Then he finally reaches up to touch his swelling eye. He doesn’t seem angry that she hit him. It’s as if the act was well worth the consequences.
Risa feels a buzz in her pocket and pulls out the old flip phone Sonia gave them. Such phones and the fading providers that serviced them were considered “retirement sector technology.” They were perfect for communicating under the radar, because the network was too antiquated for the Juvies to bother with.
“U OK?” reads Connor’s text.
She lets out a breath of relief to know that he hasn’t been caught. “YES, U?” She texts back.
“FOUND THE LAB,” he texts. “MEET U AT CAR.”
And although she doesn’t want to just leave him, she knows further wandering through the hospital will just jeopardize things.
“Is that him?” Beau asks. “What does he say?”
“He says you’re a lousy kisser, and I have to agree.”
Beau gives a halfhearted laugh, maybe thinking that she forgives him a little. Which she doesn’t. She realizes she doesn’t care enough to hate him or to forgive him.
“We’ll take the nearest stairs down,” Risa says, “then slip out a back way—just like you told them we did. We’ll meet Connor at the car.”
He nods, accepting the plan, but then he’s got to go ask, “What if Connor doesn’t show?”
“You want another black eye?” Risa says, and so he backs down from the question, and opens the stairwell door for her.
“Oh, and for the record, I’m not a loser,” Beau tells her. “No matter what my unwind order says.”
20 • Connor
The plan is simple. Plans can be simple when you’re dealing with the human mechanics of an institution that has no reason to expect intrigue and subterfuge. The hospital personnel are more on the lookout for slippery floors that might lead to lawsuits than for AWOLs stealing biomatter. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
When Risa and Beau were spotted by security, Risa made the right decision to lure security away. It wasn’t like the guard had any idea who they were and what they were up to. Of course, Connor’s instinct was to go after Risa, but he knew it would be the wrong
thing to do. That could just result in all of them getting caught. He had to trust that Risa was clever enough to play a successful cat and mouse, even if Beau couldn’t.
Connor now wanders down corridors in the wings that don’t cater to inpatients. It’s mostly deserted on a Sunday. He finds the research building, connected to the rest of the complex by a glass-enclosed skywalk—which would give the world a clear view of him, if anyone in the world was looking. If someone is, he’ll know soon enough.
He finds the lab he’s looking for in the basement. While the rest of the research building is richly appointed, the basement is utilitarian and institutional. Dimly lit corridors floored with puke-colored linoleum tiles. The low-rent district of an otherwise upscale facility. Apparently the rogue research team that insisted on playing with pointless cellular manipulation is kept out of sight as an embarrassment to medical science. Shunned as if they were studying the use of leeches and snake oil.
There seems to be barely any security down here. The lab has a lock with no alarm, and it’s easily picked—and with security focused on Risa and Beau, the basement of the research building is as silent as a morgue, which is probably in another basement not too far away.
He takes a gamble and texts Risa that he’s found the lab, and he’ll meet them at the car. If she’s been caught, that text will give him away to whoever caught her, but he has to have faith that she evaded the slow-moving guard that was in pursuit. He waits for an agonizing few moments until she texts back “K,” then he releases his breath, not even realizing he had been holding it.
He opens the door of the lab and flicks on a light. It’s a simple repository of specimens in glass-front refrigerators. There are racks of test tubes, and petrie dishes growing questionable cultures. There are also specimens sealed in plastic stasis containers, and the sight of them makes Connor shudder. These are the same kind of containers that are used to transport unwound parts. Modern stasis containers can preserve living tissue almost indefinitely. It’s one of the many unwind-related technologies that sprang up after the signing of the Unwind Accord.
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