UnWholly

“Maybe,” says Trace, “you need to take a look at who you’re delegating to.”

Co

6 • Risa

There is only one permanently disabled resident of the Graveyard. Since the disabled are a protected class, they’re never at risk for being unwound, so they never turn up at the Graveyard with all the other kids who ran from their unwind order. It’s a testimony to the swiss-cheese nature of public compassion. Lucky for those to whom grace is extended, but unlucky for those who wind up in the holes.

Risa is disabled by choice. That is to say, she refused surgery that would repair her severed spine, because it involved giving her the spine of an unwound kid. It used to be that spinal damage was irreversible, and if that was the card you were dealt, you spent the rest of your days with it. She wonders if it’s harder to live like that, or to live knowing you can be fixed but choose not to.

Now she lives in an old McDo

The only other plane with a ramp is the infirmary jet, where she works. It leaves Risa with a very limited choice of interior spaces, so she spends her free time outside when she can stand the heat.

Every day at five o’clock, Risa waits for Co

The bomber’s expansive black wings create a huge wedge of shade, and its radar-resistant skin wicks heat right out of the air. It’s one of the coolest spots in the Graveyard, in more ways than one.

She finally sees him approaching: a figure in blue camo that sets him apart from anyone else in the Graveyard. “I thought you weren’t coming,” Risa says as he reaches the shade of Hush Puppy.

“I was supervising an engine dismantling.”

“Yeah,” says Risa with a grin. “That’s what they all say.”

Co

Hard to imagine that so much notoriety came from merely surviving the blast at Happy Jack Harvest Camp. Merely because Co

A breeze blows beneath Hush Puppy’s belly, getting even more dirt in Risa’s eyes. She blinks it away.

“Are you ready?” Co

“Always.”

Then Co

“Something’s bothering you even more than usual,” Risa says. A statement of fact, not a question. “Go on, spill it.”

Co

“Why are we here, Risa?”

She considers the question. “Do you mean why are we here philosophically, as a species, or why are we here, doing this in full view of anyone who cares to watch?”

“Let them watch,” he says. “I don’t care.” And clearly he doesn’t, because privacy is the first casualty when you live in the Graveyard. Even the small private jet Co

“What I mean is, why are we still here in the Graveyard? Why haven’t the Juvies tranq’d and yanked us all?”

“You’ve said it yourself—they don’t see us as a threat.”

“But they should,” Co

Risa reaches over, rubbing Co

Co

“Well, your brain is making up for lost time.”

“After what we’ve been through—after what we’ve seen—can you blame me?”

“I like you better as a man of action.”

“Action has to be well thought out. You taught me that.”

Risa sighs. “Yes, I suppose I did. And I created a monster.”

She realizes that both of them have been profoundly changed in the wake of the Happy Jack Harvest Camp revolt. Risa likes to think that their spirits have been galvanized like iron in a furnace, but sometimes it feels like they’ve only been damaged by those harsh flames. Still, she’s glad she had survived to see the far-reaching effects of that day. Like Cap-17.

Even before Happy Jack, there had been a bill in Congress calling for the lowering of the legal limit of unwinding by a whole year, to one’s seventeenth birthday instead of eighteenth. The “Cap-17” bill had never been expected to pass—in fact, most people didn’t even know about it until Happy Jack made the news—and until poor Lev Calder’s face became plastered on the cover of every major magazine: the i

“You’re thinking about Lev again, aren’t you?” Co

“How do you know?”

“Because whenever you do, time stops, and your eyes go to the dark side of the moon.”

She reaches down to touch his hands, which have stopped massaging, and he gets back to coaxing her troubled circulation.

“It’s because of him that the Cap-17 law passed, you know,” Risa says. “I wonder how he feels about that.”

“I’ll bet it gives him nightmares.”