UnSouled

Wrap it all together, and Starkey has achieved exactly what he wanted. His name has eclipsed the name of Co

Because he hung five people in cold blood. Who knows how many it will be next time?

No! Bam can’t let herself think that way. It’s her job to shed light on the positive side. Hundreds of Unwinds saved. A rattling of the status quo. Bam reminds herself that she agreed to be a part of this. Back in the airplane graveyard, Starkey had put his faith in her when no one else would. He chose her to be his second in command in all things—if not his confidant, then at least his sounding board. She owes him allegiance in spite of everything. He’s taken on this mission to be the Savior of Storks, to be a voice for the voiceless, and he’s succeeding. Who is she to question his methods?

But Hayden has been questioning since the moment he arrived, if only to her and only when she will put up with it. He defied Starkey right to his face, though, when he found out about the hangings, refusing to return to the computer, wanting nothing to do with the next liberation. Starkey was furious, of course. He roared like a hurricane, but Hayden, who Bam never thought had much of a backbone, stood up to him.

“I won’t work for a terrorist,” Hayden had told him. “So behead me right here, or get the hell out of my face.” Had it been in front of anyone other than Bam and Jeevan, Starkey might actually have obliged an old-fashioned head rolling, to set an example for the storks. Those of them who still believed Hayden had collaborated with the Juvies would have welcomed it. But then Starkey’s anger suddenly broke and he began laughing, which somehow gave him more power in the moment than his anger had. If you can’t win, then make a joke out of it. That had always been Hayden’s MO, but Starkey had now stolen that from him.

“Never try to be serious, Hayden—it’s too fu

Well, apparently, Hayden’s mind isn’t as mediocre as Starkey would like to think, because a day and a half later, Starkey sends Bam on a mission to coax Hayden back to the computer room. As if she’ll have any more sway than Starkey. Gentle persuasion is not one of Bam’s gifts—and Hayden has already shown that he won’t be bullied. It’s a fool’s errand, but lately, she’s been feeling very much the fool.

She finds Hayden in the supply room, sitting against a support beam in that central patch of darkness. He’s not doing much in terms of inventory and distribution, it seems. Although he’s writing in the inventory notebook. When the guard on Hayden duty sees her, he stands and hefts his weapon, trying to pretend like he hadn’t been dozing on a sack of rice.

Hayden doesn’t even look up at her as she approaches.

“Why are you writing in the dark?”

“Because I’m such an awful writer, it’s best no one sees it—not even me.”

She steps into the pool of darkness to find it’s not all that dark after all. It just seems that way when coming from the lighter edge. He doesn’t stand up to greet her; he just continues writing.

“So what is it?”

“I’m keeping a journal of my time here. That way, when it’s our turn to hang for the things we’re doing, there’ll be a record of what really happened. I’m calling it ‘Starkey’s Inferno,’ although I’m not quite sure which level of hell this is.”

“They don’t hang people anymore,” Bam points out. Then she thinks of Starkey’s lynchings. “Or at least they don’t hang people officially.”

“True. I suppose they’ll just shell us. Or at least they will if those shelling laws pass.” He closes the notebook and looks up at her for the first time. “The Egyptians were the first to think of shelling. Did you know that? They mummified their leaders to preserve their bodies for the afterlife—but before they sent them on their unmerry way, they sucked their brains out of their heads.” He pauses to consider it. “Geniuses, those Egyptians. They knew the last thing a pharaoh needs is a brain of his own, or he might do some real damage.”

Finally he stands to face her. “So what are you doing here, Bam? What do you want?”

“We need you to show Jeevan how to break through firewalls. You don’t have to do any of the breaking; you just need to show him.”

“Jeevan knows how to defeat firewalls—he did it all the time at the Graveyard. If he’s not doing it, it’s because he doesn’t want to but he’s afraid to tell the Stork Lord.”

“The Stork Lord—is that what the media’s calling him now?

“No. It’s my own term of endearment,” Hayden admits. “But if they did start calling him that, I’m sure Starkey would love it. I’ll bet he’d build himself an altar so that the common folk may worship in song and sacrifice. Which reminds me—I’ve been toying with the idea of an appropriate Stork Lord salute. It’s like a heil Hitler thing, but with just the middle finger. Like so.” He demonstrates, and it makes Bam laugh.

“Hayden, you really are an asshole.”

“Coming from you, I take that as a compliment.” He gives her a hint of his condescending smirk. She’s actually glad to see it.

He hesitates for a moment, takes a glance over at his guard, who is dozing on the rice again; then he steps closer to her and says quietly, “You’d be a better leader than Starkey, Bam.”

There’s silence between them. Bam finds she can’t even respond to that.

“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it,” Hayden says.

He’s right; she has thought about it. And she also dismissed the idea before it could take root. “Starkey has a mission,” she tells him. “He has a goal. What do I have?”

Hayden shrugs. “Common sense? A survival instinct? Good bone structure?”

Bam quickly decides this is not a conversation she’s going to have. “Put down the notebook and start doing your job. There wasn’t enough food yesterday—make sure there is tonight.”

He gives her a middle-finger heil, and she leaves, chucking a potato at the sleeping guard to wake him up.

•   •   •

It’s that afternoon when Bam’s world, already dangerously off-kilter, turns upside down entirely. It’s because of the Prissies. That’s always been her special word for the kind of girls she hates most. Dainty little things who have lived a carefree life of privilege, whose troubles are limited to choice of nail color and boyfriend woes and whose names sound normal but are weirdly spelled. Even among the Stork Brigade there are girls who qualify as Prissies, ever aloof and pretentious even as their clothes tatter into rags. Somehow, in spite of all the hardships they’ve endured, they manage to be pretty and petty and as shallow as an oil slick.

There are three in particular who have formed their own little click over the past few weeks. Two are sie

She finds them in the area of the mine designated as “girls only.” It’s where they go to avoid unwanted advances from the hormonal male population when they’ve tired of flirting. Bam hasn’t noticed them flirting lately. She doesn’t think anything of it at first.

“Starkey needs munitions moved deeper into the mine,” she tells them. “I’ve elected you three to do it. Try not to blow yourselves up.”

“Why are you telling us?” Kate-Ly