Undivided

“Of course not,” Divan says with compassion that must be well practiced. “That’s only for my enemies. I do not see you as an enemy, Argent. You are, however, a commodity.”

Argent loses the battle with gravity, and falls to the soft grass. Divan kneels beside him. “Your name means ‘silver,’ but sadly, as an Unwind, I suspect you’ll be worth little more than brass.”

And then something Divan had said when they first sat down comes back to him. Divan spoke of the six Unwinds that Argent provided. Argent is the sixth. Divan does not do anything by mistake.

Servants arrive to take Argent away. “Please,” he says, his teeth locked and his voice begi

Part Three

A Path to Penance

BELGIUM FIRST COUNTRY TO ALLOW EUTHANASIA FOR CHILDREN

By David Harding / New York Daily News

Saturday, December 14, 2013 2:43 PM

Belgium has voted to extend euthanasia laws to cover children.

The Belgian Senate backed the plan on Friday, which means the controversial law will now cover terminally ill children.

It means Belgium is the first country in the world to remove any age limits on euthanasia. The country first adopted euthanasia in 2002, but restricted it to those over 18. . . .

Any child seeking euthanasia under the law must understand what is meant by euthanasia and the decision must be agreed by their parents.

Their illness must also be terminal.

Belgium recorded over 1,400 cases of euthanasia in 2012. . . .

The full article can be found at: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/belgium-country-euthanasia-children-article-1.1547809#ixzz2qur84gzr

18 • Cam

Meals with Roberta on the veranda. Always so formal. Always so genteel. Always a reminder to Cam that he is forever beneath her thumb. Even when he’s miles away at West Point, he knows he will still feel her manipulations. Her puppeteer’s strings are woven through his mind just as effectively as the “worm” that makes him forget that which is truly important.

During breakfast, a few days before he’s scheduled to leave, he asks her the question point-blank. The question that sits between them at every meal like a glass of poison that neither is willing to touch.

“What was her name?”

He doesn’t expect an answer. He knows Roberta will evade.

“You’re leaving for a grand new life soon. What’s the point?”

“There’s no point—I just want to hear you say it.”

Roberta takes a small bite of her eggs Benedict and puts down the fork. “Even if I tell you, the nanites will break the synapses and rob the memory within seconds.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Roberta sighs, crosses her arms, and to Cam’s amazement, says, “Her name was Risa Ward.”

. . . but the moment the words are spoken, they’re gone from his mind, leaving him to wonder if she had told him at all.

“What was her name?” he asks again.

“Risa Ward.”

“What was her name?”

“Risa Ward.”

“WHAT WAS HER NAME?!”

Roberta shakes her head in a belittling show of pity. “You see, it’s no use. Best to spend your time thinking of your future, Cam, not the past.”

He looks at his plate feeling anything but hungry. From deep within him comes a desperate whisper of a question. He can’t even remember why he’s asking it, but it must have some significance, mustn’t it?

“What . . . was . . . her . . . name?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roberta says. “Now finish up—we have a lot to do before you leave.”

19 • Risa

The girl who Cam can’t remember is ru

It was a bad idea—actually, a whole series of them—that brought her to this circumstance. Only now does Risa comprehend how monumentally bad those ideas were, as she races from armed security guards in a massive research hospital complex. There are windows, but they only look out on other wings of the complex, so there’s no way to get one’s bearings. Risa is convinced they’re ru

•  •  •

There was little choice but to go on this fool’s mission.

If the organ printer arrived as stillborn technology when they made their grand play, then all their efforts will have been for naught. It was crucial that they find a way to test it, for only by demonstrating what it could do, would the world sit up and take notice.

“Making sure it works should have been your job,” Co

Sonia glared at him. “So sue me,” she said, and then added, “Oh, that’s right, you can’t—because for the past two years you’ve had the legal status of a ca

Co

“What changed?” Co

“You showed up.”

Although Co

“OSU Medical Center,” Sonia said, “is one of the only research hospitals in the Midwest that does curative biological research. Everyone else is just trying to figure out better ways of using parts from Unwinds. Plenty of funding for that—but try to fund alternatives, and you get nothing but tumbleweeds.”

“OSU? Co

“You got a problem with that?” Sonia asked. Co

She went on to tell them of one rogue doctor who was still seeking cures for systemic diseases, the kind that can’t be cured by transplantation. “And guess what’s at the heart of that research?” Sonia asked mischievously. The answer, of course, was adult pluripotent stem cells—the very sort of cells needed for the printer.

They had to talk Sonia out of going after the cells herself. A few days before, she had twisted her ankle and bruised her hip in a fall that no one had seen, probably back at her home. She tried to downplay it, but clearly she’d been in pain ever since. She couldn’t go, but someone had to.

They discussed the possibility of sending some of the kids from the basement to retrieve the biomatter, but they didn’t discuss it for long. This batch of AWOLs wasn’t exactly the secret-mission type. Risa hated to judge any AWOLs the way the world judged them, but these poor kids had none of the skill sets needed to pull it off, and a grab bag of personal issues that would do nothing but hinder them. The kids in Sonia’s basement would be liabilities on this mission. All of them, that is, except for Beau. For all his cockiness, he was capable—but was he capable enough to pull this off? Risa didn’t think so.

“I’ll go,” Risa offered. Bad idea number one.

“I’ll go with you,” Co

Sonia raged about it, insisting that they’d be recognized, and that, of all the people who shouldn’t go, Co

“Well, I ain’t going,” Grace was quick to a