UnDivided
Page 35
“Sharply was fired?” says Connor.
“Had his nuts handed to him, is more like it.”
“He was Proactive Citizenry’s favorite puppet.” Risa says.
Hayden offers up his famous grin. “I thought I’d get arrested the moment I showed up, but the powers that be are all scrambling like AWOLs. No telling where they’re going to land, but I hope they all splat like tomatoes.”
As they reach the line of riot police, Hayden says, “Open sesame,” and they actually let him pass, but close their ranks again and grip their weapons before Connor and Risa can get through.
“Uh, excuse me,” Hayden says. “Can’t you see who they are?”
One of the guards looks at Connor, then at Risa, and the moment he recognizes them, he pulls his gun from its holster. She doesn’t know if it’s loaded with tranqs or real bullets, but it doesn’t matter. If he shoots them, the crowd will attack, and it will be a bloodbath. So she looks into the officer’s angry eyes.
“Are you willing to be the man who starts the war?” she asks. “Or do you want to be the man who prevents it?”
Although the anger never leaves his face, it’s caressed by a little humanity, and maybe a little bit of fear. He holds his position for a moment more, then steps aside to let them pass.
Climbing the Capitol steps is clearly difficult for Connor. He grimaces with every step, and Risa helps him as much as she can. When Brick McDaniel sees them approaching, he stops speaking midsentence and yields the microphone, a little bit awed. The entire crowd from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial falls silent in anticipation.
Risa stops a few steps short of the podium, hanging back with Hayden. “It’s you they need to hear from,” she tells Connor. “I’ve already been in the media spotlight. Now it’s your turn.”
“I can’t do this alone,” he says.
Risa smiles. “Does it look like you’re alone?”
81 • Connor
Gripping the letter in his hand to the point of crumpling it, Connor approaches the podium, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating. He’s never seen so many people in his life. He leans forward into the microphone.
“Hi . . . I’m Connor Lassiter.”
His voice booms out over the crowd, and the collective cheer it brings forth nearly knocks him off his feet. It’s a roar that echoes back from the Capitol behind him. It even seems to sway the trees. He imagines it surging forth along the Potomac, out into Chesapeake Bay, and across the Atlantic, where it can be heard around the world. And then he realizes it will be! Everything that happens here today will be seen and heard everywhere!
“I’m here to tell you that I’m alive. And so is Risa Ward.” He pauses for more cheers, once more waiting for the crowd to settle before he says, “And there’s something I need to tell you.”
He looks down to the letter in his hands, then realizes he doesn’t have to. He’s read it so many times since Aragon gave it to him, he’s memorized it. He had to—it was the only way he could convince himself it was real.
“I’m happy to announce that the president has just vetoed the Parental Override bill.”
This time the cheer begins tentatively, but rises to a fever pitch. He doesn’t wait for them to quiet down to continue. “And there’s more. The president is also calling on the legislature to place a moratorium on unwinding. And to shutter the Chop Shops of all harvest camps until every voice is heard!” He feels his own voice gathering strength from the crowd, gathering strength from deep within himself. “And we will stand here!” Connor yells. “In front of the Capitol! Until! They! Are!”
The roar from the crowd is an earthquake rumbling up the steps. He can feel it vibrating in his feet, shaking the foundations of the great domed building behind him. He doesn’t know if this is what Aragon wanted, but it’s what Connor wants: the galvanizing of millions—not to wage acts of violence or revenge, but to hold their ground against the institutionalized murder that has defined a generation.
“Stand with me!” Connor commands. “And I swear to you EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE!”
Up above, the news helicopters circle, and down below, media crews broadcast his message into every home, every workplace, every newsfeed. And he knows for each soul here today, there are a thousand more that at this very moment are rising up to join them. Not a teen uprising as Hayden thought this would be, but the awakening of a nation from its darkest nightmare.
Then, amid the tumult of the crowd, Connor hears his name called. Not just by some random person, but by a familiar voice. A little deeper perhaps, a little older than he remembers, but a voice he can never forget. He looks down to the front of the crowd and sees a boy emerging. A boy almost as tall as him.
“Lucas?”
And behind him, Connor sees them. His mother. His father. Fighting their way forward in the crowd. They came to the rally. They didn’t even know he’d be here, but they still came!
That’s when people begin to recognize them. They realize that these are the people who signed the order to unwind the Akron AWOL.
And the crowd begins to turn.
“They’re unwinders!” the mob yells. “Unwind the unwinders!”
As high as spirits were an instant ago, the energy flips into fury, and his parents are attacked.
“No!”
Connor bolts down the Capitol steps, ignoring the pain in his joints. The crowd around his parents has gone mad! He can’t even see them anymore—they’ve been taken down in a lethal screaming scrum.
“Stop!”
But they can’t hear him over their own rage.
The riot police move toward the crowd wielding their weapons. Connor breaks through their ranks and gets to the rioting mob first.
“Connor, stop them!” begs Lucas.
Connor runs past him and hurls himself into the tangle of bodies, pushing people away. When they see him, they back off one by one, until he’s at the epicenter of the attack, and he finds them.
His parents lie on the ground, their clothes torn, their faces and bodies bloody.
But they’re alive! They’re still alive.
Connor grabs his mother and helps her to her feet. He reaches out to his father, who takes his hand and rises. The two of them look like refugees. Desperate. Alone against a force that outnumbers them. They look like AWOLs.
Around them the crowd still seethes, and the riot police are on the verge of attack. The powder keg is about to blow, and who knows how bad it will be once it does? Everything hinges on this moment.
Connor knows what he must do to defuse this. He knows what the crowd needs to see.
He throws his arms around both his mother and his father and holds them with all the strength he has. Lucas, pulled in by their gravity, joins them in this odd and awkward familial embrace, and for Connor it’s as if the crowd and the police and the world have gone away. But he knows they haven’t. They’re all there, waiting to see how this hair-trigger reunion will end.
Connor’s father, his lips close to Connor’s ear, whispers, “Can you forgive us?”
And Connor realizes he doesn’t have an answer. Right now the yes and the no of his own pie chart are overwhelmed by the part of him that’s undecided.
“I’m doing this to save your lives,” Connor tells him. But he knows it’s more than that. It’s as if his embrace can rewind them—not into the family they once were, but into the one they may still have a chance to be. Connor knows he can’t forgive them today; they will have to fight for his forgiveness. They will have to earn it. But if they all survive today, there will be time for that.
His father now sobs uncontrollably into Connor’s shoulder, and his mother holds his gaze as if looking at him gives her strength. The crowd watches. The crowd waits. And the moment of crisis passes.
It is then that Connor realizes that Aragon was absolutely right. Connor has won. Which means they’ve all won.
“Can we go home now?” Lucas asks.
“Soon,” Connor tells hi
m gently. “Very soon.”
And so, as the mob backs away to give them space . . . and as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he’ll never let them go.
Neal Shusterman, New York Times bestselling author, has written more than thirty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including the Unwind Dystology (Unwind, UnWholly, UnSouled, and UnDivided), the Skinjacker Trilogy (Everlost, Everwild, and Everfound), Full Tilt, Bruiser, and The Schwa Was Here, which won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for fiction. Several of his books are now in development as feature films. Neal lives in Southern California when he’s not traveling the globe, and can be found online at storyman.com.
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Also by Neal Shusterman
NOVELS
Antsy Does Time
Bruiser
The Dark Side of Nowhere
Dissidents
Downsiders
The Eyes of Kid Midas
Full Tilt
The Schwa Was Here
The Shadow Club
The Shadow Club Rising
Speeding Bullet
Tesla’s Attic with Eric Elfman
What Daddy Did
THE UNWIND DYSTOLOGY
Unwind
UnWholly
UnSouled
UnStrung (an original novella)
THE SKINJACKER TRILOGY
Everlost
Everwild
Everfound
THE STAR SHARDS CHRONICLES
Scorpion Shards
Thief of Souls
Shattered Sky
THE DARK FUSION SERIES
Dreadlocks
Red Rider’s Hood
Duckling Ugly
STORY COLLECTIONS
Darkness Creeping
Kid Heroes
MindQuakes
MindStorms
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Neal Shusterman
Jacket photo-illustration copyright © 2014 by Aaron Goodman
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Jacket design by Chloë Foglia
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky based on a design by Al Cetta.
The text for this book is set in Fairfield.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shusterman, Neal.
UnDivided / Neal Shusterman.
pages cm.—(Unwind dystology ; 4)
Summary: Three teens band together in order to sway the government to repeal all rulings in support of a procedure in which unwanted teenagers are captured and are unwound into parts that can be reused for transplantation.
ISBN 978-1-4814-0975-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-4814-0977-3 (eBook)
[1. Fugitives from justice—Fiction. 2. Revolutionaries—Fiction. 3. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S55987Und 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014003060