UnSouled

The room, which Co

It turns out that Cam wasn’t bluffing. Once logged in, he’s given access to page after page of files Cam was hiding on the public nimbus. Files that had been digitally shredded but painstakingly reconstituted. These are communications within Proactive Citizenry that no one else was ever supposed to see. Much of it seems useless: Corporate e-mails that are mind-numbingly bland. Co

Co

“Eye-opening, isn’t it? Even if one of those eyes isn’t yours.”

Co

“I don’t get it.” Co

“Two-headed coin,” Cam says. Then he asks the strangest question. “Tell me, Co

“What?”

“Just answer the question, yes or no.”

“Yes. I mean no! Shut up! What kind of stupid-ass question is that?”

Cam smiles. “You see? You’re damned no matter how you answer. By playing both sides, Proactive Citizenry keeps people focused on choosing between two different kinds of unwinding, making people forget that the real question . . .”

“Is whether or not anyone should be unwound at all.”

“Nail on the head,” says Cam.

Now it makes perfect sense. Co

“So whichever side wins, it keeps the status quo,” Co

“The Unwinding Consortium?”

“It’s what a friend once called all the people who make their money from unwinding. The companies who own the harvest camps, hospitals who do the transplants, the Juvenile Authority . . .”

Cam considers it with a single raised eyebrow that throws the symmetrical seams on his forehead out of balance and says. “All roads lead to Rome. Unwinding is the single most profitable industry in America—maybe even the world. An economic engine like that protects itself. We’ll have to be smarter than they are to break it down.” And then Cam smiles. “But they made one big mistake.”

“What’s that?”

“They built someone who’s smarter than they are.”

•   •   •

Cam and Co

“There are financial records,” Cam tells Co

“Or a rabbit hole,” suggests Co

“Exactly. If we can figure out where that money’s going, I think we’ll have the sword upon which Proactive Citizenry will impale itself.” Then Cam gets quiet. “I think they’re funding something very, very dark. I’m almost afraid to find out what it is.”

And although Co

53 • Bam

She carries out orders. She takes care of the new arrivals. She tries not to think about the MoonCrater five. That’s what the media calls the harvest camp workers whom Starkey hung. They’re martyrs now—evidence, according to some political pundits, of why certain incorrigible teens simply need to be unwound.

Two storks were killed and seven injured in the fake battle that Bam waged at the outer gate, for while Bam and her team weren’t actually trying to kill anyone, the guards firing at them were. That they even made it out of there was a miracle. In the end, their assault served its purpose. It appeared to be a botched attempt to break into the camp—until the security force released the dormitory building from lockdown and found what they found.

Five people lynched in the MoonCrater dormitory.

The pictures are as disturbing as anything Bam has seen in history books.

Busy. She must keep herself busy. The storks were separated from the nonstorks right after they arrived back at the mine. This time rather than just leaving the unchosen to fend for themselves in the middle of nowhere, Bam arranged for them to be taken to Boise—the nearest major city. They’d be on their own, but at least they’d have the camouflage of concrete and crowds to keep them hidden. And who knows, maybe the ADR will find them and give them sanctuary. That is if the ADR even exists anymore.

Five people.

The boys’ head counselor, a janitor, an office worker, a chop-shop nurse, and the chef’s boyfriend, who was visiting the wrong place on the wrong weekend.

And now, thanks to the one woman whose life he spared, everyone knows the name Mason Michael Starkey.

“Congratulations,” she told him when she had calmed down enough to speak to him without raging. “You’re now Public Enemy Number One.” To her disbelief, it actually made him smile.

“How could that possibly be a good thing?”

“I’m feared,” he told her. “I’m a force to be reckoned with. They know that now.”

And in the two days since the MoonCrater liberation, the fervent, ferocious, and almost viral support he gets from storks attests to his new larger-than-life status. It’s not just from the Stork Brigade, either. Whole online communities have sprung up out of nowhere. “Storks unite!” they proclaim and “Ride, Starkey, ride,” like he’s some sort of Jesse James robbing stagecoaches. It seems everyone who’s ever known him has tried to hop on his coattails to steal their own fifteen minutes of fame, posting stories and pictures of him, so the world knows every bit of his pre-AWOL life and every angle of his face.

It comes to light that he shot and killed one of the Juvey-rounders who picked him up from his home for unwinding, painting him in an even more dangerous light—and yet incredibly, the more vilified he is by polite society, the more support he gets from the disenfranchised.