UnWholly

Co

Risa is gone.

It’s been almost a month now. For all he knows she’s dead at the hands of the Juvenile Authority, or Proactive Citizenry, or whoever has their clutches on her. It doesn’t matter that she’s seventeen and disabled—unable to be unwound. The all-seeing government can be very nearsighted when it comes to scrutinizing the actions of its own appendages.

Co

He feels his old patterns and habits returning. The same ones that earned him an Unwind Order to begin with. He thinks back to the days before he was AWOL—when he was just a problem kid. He’s back in that place again, only now he’s a problem kid responsible for hundreds of other problem kids. He can’t help but think that it’s not all him. His anger always seems to settle in Roland’s hand.

“If you want out, no one would blame you,” Starkey tells him over a game of pool one evening. “You should go and try to find Risa. There are others who could take over this place. Trace could do it. Even Ashley or Hayden.” He leaves himself out, far too conspicuously. “Maybe we could put it to a vote, once you’re gone. Make the whole thing democratic.”

“And you’re already guaranteed at least a quarter of the vote, aren’t you?” says Co

Starkey doesn’t break his gaze, nor does he deny it. “I could run this place if I had to.” Then he sinks the eight ball too soon and loses the game. “Damn, you win again.”

Co

“You’re good at getting food on the table, and you gave the storks some self-respect,” Co

“No,” says Starkey. “I guess that spot’s reserved for you.” Then he puts down his cue stick and leaves.

Co

Used to be he could share his private insecurities with Risa. She was good at shoring him up by putting Band-Aids on his questionable sense of character long enough for him to heal and get the job done. He could try to confide in Hayden, but Hayden makes a joke out of everything. Co

“We’ve all lost people one way or another, and Risa is no different, so stop your bellyaching and do your job.”

“I’m not a boeuf,” Co

“It’s not that we don’t have feelings, we just know how to harness them and direct them toward specific goals.”

Which Co

Someone—Co

He arrives at the Graveyard in a black limo waxed to such a smooth sheen it doesn’t collect the dust it kicks up. Co

Co

“You’ve put on some muscle since I last saw you,” the Admiral tells him. “I hope to God you’re not shooting up those damn military steroids they have the boeufs on; they shrink your testicles down to peanuts.”

“No sir.”

“Good. Because your genes might actually be worth passing on.”

He invites Co

They make small talk just a bit. The Admiral tells him of the Great Harlan Reunion: a huge party with all the people who had received his son’s parts.

“I’ll swear till the day I die that Harlan was there, alive in that garden, and no one can prove he wasn’t.”

He tells Co

“Not the shiniest Easter egg on the lawn,” the Admiral says, “but he’s very sincere.”

He also tells Co

“Of course, that was almost a year ago. Doctors are mostly imbeciles.”

Co

Finally he gets down to the real reason for his visit. “I hear that this thing with Risa is getting to you,” the Admiral says, then holds his silence, knowing Co

“What do you want me to do? Just go on like it never happened? Like she never existed?”

The Admiral holds a steady demeanor, in spite of Co

“I’m not feeling sorry! I’m angry!”

“Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.”

That makes Co

“Someone did. It’s on page ninety-three of the Military Academy Freshman Ordinance Manual, fifth edition.” The Admiral turns to look out of the tinted windows at the activity of the Graveyard. “The problem with all you AWOLs is that you use your anger like a grenade, half the time blowing off your own hands.” Then he looks at Co

“None taken.”

But now that the Admiral’s attention has been drawn to the arm, he looks at it more closely. “Do I know that tattoo?” Then he snaps his fingers. “Roland. Wasn’t that his name? A real pain in the ass.”

“That’s the one.”

The admiral ponders the shark a moment more. “I don’t suppose it was your choice to get his arm.”

“It wasn’t my choice to get any unwound arm,” Co

“And well you should keep it!” the Admiral says. “Roland may have been a miscreant, but he was a human miscreant, and deserved better. I’m sure he’d be satisfied to know that his arm is ruling the Graveyard with an iron fist.”

Co