Undivided

And Lev is happy . . . because he knows he’s finally grabbed the moon, and has pulled it from the sky.

60 • Mail

2162 letters were in Sonia’s trunk. 751 of them were lost in the fire, but 1411 were stamped and mailed by Grace Ski

•  •  •

A woman in Astoria, Oregon, opens the letter with no return address, not recognizing the handwriting because it’s been almost three years since her daughter found the unwind order and went AWOL.

She begins to read, and from the very first line, the woman knows who wrote it. As much as she wants to run from the room, she is glued to her kitchen chair, unable to stop reading. When she’s done, she sits there in silence, not sure what to do next, but knowing she must do something.

•  •  •

A man in Montpelier, Vermont, arrives home before his wife today. He scans through the various bills and solicitations, until coming across a curious envelope, and he recognizes his son’s handwriting—a son who was sent off for unwinding almost five years ago. Although the Juvenile Authority wouldn’t officially admit it, the man and his wife found out that he escaped before arriving at his assigned harvest camp.

The man stands the envelope up against a vase in the dining room, and sits there staring at it a full ten minutes before summoning the nerve to open it.

When he first begins to read, he thinks the letter was written recently—but no, there’s a date written on the first page. His son wrote this more than three years ago. He’s still out there somewhere. Maybe. Afraid to come home? Refusing to come home? Or did they catch him after all? For a time, the man and his family had considered moving for fear that he’d return and exact retribution on them. How ashamed he now feels for even thinking that.

His wife will be home from work any minute now. Should he show her the letter? Should he show his daughter when she’s home from swim practice? He doesn’t even know if she remembers her brother.

Although there’s no one in the room but the dog, he covers his eyes as he cries, shedding grief he’s denied since the day they came to take his son away.

•  •  •

A couple in Iowa City sits by the fireplace, and the two share the task of opening mail that accumulated while they were traveling. The man comes across a seemingly i

“What is it?” asks his wife, having seen the way he’s suddenly gone pale.

“Nothing,” he says. “Junk mail.”

But she reads the truth in his face as clearly as if she had opened the letter herself. She knows there’s only one thing to be done. “Throw it into the fire,” she says.

And so he does, ending the matter once and for all.

•  •  •

In Indianapolis, the letter arrives on the very day a woman’s divorce is final. She reads it, her hands unable to keep from shaking. She signed the unwind order after her son’s awful fight with her husband—his stepfather. It took nearly two years for her to realize she had taken the wrong side of that fight. But this letter gives her hope. It means her son might still be whole, and out there somewhere. If he is, she’d welcome him back in a heartbeat, shark tattoo and all.

•  •  •

Of the various people touched by the 1411 letters, some remain coldhearted, or just in adamant denial—but more than a thousand find reading the words of their lost son or daughter to be a life-changing event. In a population of hundreds of millions, such a small number of people is a mere drop in the bucket . . . but enough drops can make any bucket overflow.

61 • Nelson

More than a dozen small private jets wait on the taxiway of a remote airfield outside of Calgary, Canada. This far north, the leaves have fully turned and are begi

Out of place among the sleek jets is a Porsche, whose driver watches as Divan’s behemoth craft drops through the low-hanging clouds and toward the runway, looking massive even from far away.

Jasper Nelson anxiously awaits a fresh pair of eyes in the car that Divan gave him as a reward for capturing the Akron AWOL. Let the rest of Co

The plane lands with the gargantuan roar of airborne armageddon, and the moment it rolls to a halt, Divan’s ground crew gets to work refueling, The side passenger hatch opens, and stairs fold out for Divan. This is only the second time Nelson has come to Divan’s North American airfield. Either business is so brisk Divan must stay on top of it, or he has reasons not to stay in one place for too long. Divan makes his appearance a moment later, along with his harvest medic, who carries a small medical stasis cooler. They come directly to Nelson.

“Use them in good health, my friend,” Divan tells him as the nose cone of the jet begins to grind open for the transfer of the remaining cargo. Even before it’s fully raised, it becomes clear that something is very wrong.

A flood of kids bursts from the cargo hold, sprinting, ru

Suddenly Divan has more important things to do than bother with Nelson. He points to his bodyguard. “Stop them! Now!” The beefy man fumbles with his tranq gun, ru

“I’ve got this,” Nelson tells Divan. He pulls out his own tranq pistol and takes aim. “I love a shooting gallery.” Sure enough, every one of Nelson’s shots hits its mark, and in ten seconds he’s taken down ten kids—but there are simply too many for even Nelson to stop.

“Who is responsible for this?” Divan demands, and he runs to get more help from his staff. It’s Nelson who sees the answer to that question. She’s easy to spot, because of all the escaping kids, she’s the only one who’s not in a gray bodysuit. Risa Ward is up to her old tricks. But not for much longer.

Nelson ignores the others, taking aim at the prize.

Then just as he pulls the trigger, he’s grabbed from behind. The shot flies wild as his attacker puts him in a skillful choke hold so tight that it cuts off blood to Nelson’s brain. Darkness squirms in from his periphery, his legs buckle beneath him, and before he loses consciousness, he gets a brief glimpse of the face of his assailant.

And to his own personal horror, he sees it’s barely a face at all.

62 • Argent

The medic still has no idea that Argent took his spare key to the harvester.

Divan has no idea that Argent knows the code to access the UNIS control panel, which he copied from a small notebook on Divan’s nightstand.