UnSouled

Risa laughs at that. She’s never had a manicure in her life, but she finds the thought of being charged by the finger darkly fu

“From what I hear, you really did a number on that parts pirate.”

Risa pulls herself up on her elbows. “I just took him out; it was nature that wolfed him down.”

“Yeah, nature’s a bitch.” He holds out his hand for her to shake. “Cyrus Finch,” he says, “But I go by CyFi.”

“I know who you are,” she tells him, shaking his hand awkwardly with her left.

Suddenly his face seems to change a bit, and so does his voice. It becomes harsher and loses all of its smooth style. “You don’t know me, so don’t pretend you do.”

Risa, thrown for a bit of a loop, is about to apologize, but CyFi puts his hand up to stop her before she does.

“Don’t mind my lips flapping: That’s Tyler talking,” he says. “Tyler don’t trust folks far as he can throw ’em—and he can’t throw no one, as his throwing arm has left the building; get me?”

It’s a little too much for Risa to process, but the cadence of his forced old-umber speech is soothing. She can’t help but smile. “You always talk like that?”

“When I’m me and not him,” CyFi says with a shrug. “I choose to talk how I choose. It pays respect to my heritage, back in the day, when we were ‘black,’ and not ‘umber.’ ”

Her only knowledge of Cyrus Finch, aside from the TV commercial, is from what little she saw of his testimony to Congress—back when it was all about limiting the age of unwinding to under seventeen, instead of eighteen. Cyrus helped push the Cap-17 law over the top. His chilling testimony involved Tyler Walker describing his own unwinding. That is to say, the part of Tyler that had been transplanted into Cyrus’s head.

“I gotta admit I was surprised to get your call,” CyFi tells her. “Big shots with the Anti-Divisional Resistance don’t usually give us the time a’ day, as we just deal with folks after the unwinding’s done, not before.”

“The ADR doesn’t give anyone the time of day anymore,” Risa tells him. “I haven’t been in touch with them for months. To be honest, I don’t know if they still exist. Not the way they used to.”

“Hmm. Sorry to hear it.”

“I keep hoping they’ll reorganize, but all I see in the news are more and more resistance workers getting arrested for ‘obstructing justice.’ ”

CyFi shakes his head sadly. “Sometimes justice needs obstructing when it ain’t just.”

“So where exactly in Nebraska are we, Cyrus?”

“Private residence,” he tells her. “More of a compound, actually.”

She doesn’t quite know what he means by that, but she’s willing to go with it. Her lids are heavy, and she’s not up for too much talk right now. She thanks CyFi and asks if she can get something to eat.

“I’ll have the dads bring you something,” he says. “They’ll be happy to see you’ve got your appetite back.”

FOLLOWING IS A PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

“Hi, I’m Vanessa Valbon—you probably know me from daytime TV, but what you might not know is that my brother is serving a life sentence for a violent crime. He has put himself on a list for voluntary cranial shelling, which will happen only if Initiative 11 is passed this November.

“There’s been a lot of talk about shelling—what it is and what it isn’t, so I had to educate myself, and this is what I learned. Shelling is painless. Shelling would be a matter of choice for any violent offender. And shelling will compensate the victim’s family, and the offender’s family, by paying them full market value for every single body part not discarded in the shelling process.

“I don’t want to lose my brother, but I understand his choice. So the question is, how do we want our violent offenders to pay their debts to society? Wasting into old age on tax payers’ dollars—or allowing them to redeem themselves, by providing much-needed tissues for society and much-needed funds for those impacted by their crimes?

“I urge you to vote yes on Initiative 11 and turn a life sentence . . . into a gift of life.”

—Sponsored by Victims for the Betterment of Humanity.

Risa sleeps, then sleeps some more. Although she usually loathes lethargy, she decides she’s earned little bit of sloth. She finds it hard to believe it’s been barely three weeks since the Graveyard take down—and the night she exposed Proactive Citizenry’s devious endeavors on national news. Truly, it was another lifetime ago. A life of being in the media spotlight had become a life of hiding from searchlights.

It had been the shadowy movers and shakers of Proactive Citizenry that had gotten the charges against her dropped and allowed her to come out of hiding in the first place. But—big surprise—new charges were filed after the night she made herself their enemy. There are claims that she had stolen huge sums of money from the organization—which she had not. There are claims that she had helped to arm the AWOL Unwinds at the Graveyard—which she did not. All she had done during her tenure at the Graveyard was administer first aid and treat colds. The truth however, is of no interest to anyone but her.

CyFi’s fathers—both of whom are as sie

Her window gives her a view of a garden and not much more, so she really doesn’t know how big the place is and how many are here. Occasionally there are people tending the garden. She would go out to meet them, but her door is locked.

“Am I a prisoner?” Risa asks the taller, kinder-looking of CyFi’s dads.

“Not all locks are about restraint, dear,” he tells her. “Some are merely about timing.”

On the following afternoon, the timing must be right, because CyFi offers to give her the grand tour.

“You’ve got to understand, not everyone here is sympathetic to you,” CyFi warns. “I mean, yeah, people know all that whack campaigning you did in favor of unwinding was bogus. Everyone knows you were being blackmailed—but even so, that interview where you talk about how unwinding is the least of all evils?” He grimaces. “It’s a dish that sticks to your bones, if you know what I mean.”

Risa can’t meet his gaze. “I do.”

“You best be reminding people that the new spine you got is something you didn’t ask for and something you regret having. That’s a sentiment we can all relate to.”

As CyFi had said, the place is more than just a home; it’s a full-fledged compound. Risa’s room is in the main house—but the house has large wings that were clearly added on recently, and across the large garden are half a dozen sizeable cottages that Risa couldn’t see from her window.

“Land is cheap in Nebraska,” CyFi tells her. “That’s why we came here. Omaha’s close enough for folks that got business to go about it and far enough out that strangers leave us alone.”

Some of the people she passes glance at her, then look away without a greeting. Others give her a solemn nod. A few smile, although the smile is forced. They all know who she is—but no one knows what to make of her, any more than she knows what to make of them.

This afternoon there are several people tending to the garden as Risa and CyFi stroll through. On closer inspection, the garden isn’t just ornamental—there are vegetables growing in rows. Off to the left are pens with chickens and maybe other animals Risa can’t see.