Текст книги "Unwind"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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"What do you need that for?" Connor asks, pointing at the gun.

"Just cleaning it," says the Admiral. Connor wonders why he would still have a clip in a gun he was cleaning, but decides it's best not to ask. The Admiral puts the gun into a drawer and locks it. Then he sends the two kids off and seals the hatch behind them. This is exactly the kind of situation Connor feared most, and he can feel a rush of adrenaline begin to tingle in his fingers and toes. His awareness becomes heightened.

"You need me to fix something sir?"

"Yes, I do. My coffeemaker."

"Why don't you just take one from the other planes?"

"Because," says the Admiral calmly, "I prefer to have this one repaired."

He leads Connor through the jet, which seems even larger on the inside than out, filled with cabins, conference rooms, and studies.

"You know, your name comes up quite often," the Admiral says.

This is news to him, and not welcome news, either. "Why?"

"First, for the things you repair. Then for the fighting."

Connor senses a reprimand on the way. Yes, he's had fewer fights here than usual, but the Admiral is a man of zero tolerance. "Sorry about the fighting."

"Don't be. Oh, there's no question that you're a loose cannon, but more often than not you're aimed in the right direction."

"I don't know what you mean, sir."

"From what I can see, each fight you've engaged in has resolved one problem or another. Even the fights you lose. So, even then, you're fixing things." He offers Connor that white-toothed smile. Connor shudders. He tries to hide it, but he's sure the Admiral sees it.

They come to a small dining room and galley. "Here we are," says the Admiral. The old coffeemaker sits on a counter. It's a simple device. Connor's about to pull out a screwdriver to open up the back when he notices that it's not plugged in. When he plugs it in, the light comes on, and it starts to gurgle out coffee into the little glass pot.

"Well, how about that," says the Admiral, with another of his terrible grins.

"I'm not here for the coffeemaker, am I?"

"Have a seat," the Admiral says.

"I'd rather not."

"Have one anyway."

That's when Connor sees the picture. There are several photos up on the wall, but the one that captures Connor's attention is of a smiling kid about his age. The smile looks familiar. In fact, it looks exactly like the Admiral's smile. It's just like Roland had said!

Now Connor wants to bolt, but Risa's voice is in his head again, telling him to scan his options. Sure, he can run. Chances are, he can get to the hatch before the Admiral can stop him—but opening the hatch won't be easy. He could hit the Admiral with one of his tools. That might give him enough time to get away. But where would he go? Beyond the Graveyard there's just desert, desert, and more desert. In the end, he realizes his best choice is to do as the Admiral says. He sits down.

"You don't like me, do you?" asks the Admiral.

Connor won't meet his gaze. "You saved my life by bringing me here. . . ."

"You will not avoid answering this question. You don't like me, do you?"

Connor shudders once more, and this time doesn't even try to hide it. "No, sir, I don't."

"I want to know your reasons."

Connor lets out a single rueful chuckle as his answer.

"You think I'm a slave dealer," says the Admiral. "And that I'm using these Unwinds for my own profit?"

"If you know what I'm going to say, why ask me?"

"I want you to look at me."

But Connor doesn't want to see the man's eyes—or, more accurately, doesn't want the Admiral seeing his.

"I said look at me!"

Reluctantly, Connor lifts his eyes and fixes them on the Admiral's. "I'm looking."

"I believe you are a smart kid. Now I want you to think. Think! I am a decorated Admiral of the United States Navy. Do you think I need to be selling children to earn money?"

"I don't know."

"Think! Do I care about money and lavish things? I do not live in a mansion. I do not vacation on a tropical island. I spend my time in the stinking desert living in a rotting plane 365 days a year. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know!"

"I think you do."

Connor stands up now. In spite of the Admiral's tone of voice, he feels less and less intimidated by him. Whether it's wise or whether it's foolhardy, Connor decides to give the Admiral what he's asking for. "You do it because of the power. You do it because it lets you keep hundreds of helpless kids in the palm of your hand. And you do it because you can pick and choose who gets unwound—and which parts you'll get."

The Admiral is caught off guard by this. Suddenly, he's on the defensive. "What did you say?"

"It's obvious! All the scars. And those teeth! They're not the ones you were born with, are they? So, what is it you want from me? Is it my eyes, or my ears? Or maybe it's my hands that can fix things so well. Is that why I'm here? Is it?"

The Admiral's voice is a predator)' growl. "You've gone too far."

"No, you've gone too far." The fury in the Admiral's eyes should terrify Connor, but his cannon has come loose, and it's beyond locking down. "We come to you in desperation! What you do to us is ... is .. . obscene!"

"So I'm a monster, then!"

"Yes!"

"And my teeth are the proof."

"Yes!"

"Then you can have them!"

Then the Admiral does something beyond imagining. He reaches into his mouth, grabs onto his own jaw, and rips the teeth out of his mouth. His eyes blazing at Connor, he hurls the hard pink clump in his hand down on the table, where it clatters in two horrible pieces.

Connor screams in shock. It's all there. Two rows of white teeth. Two sets of pink gums. But there's no blood. Why is there no blood? There's no blood in the Admiral's mouth, either. His face seems to have collapsed onto itself—his mouth is just a floppy, puckered hole. Connor doesn't know which is worse—the Admiral's face, or the bloodless teeth.

"They're called dentures," the Admiral says. "They used to be common in the days before unwinding. But who wants false teeth when, for half the price, you can get real ones straight from a healthy Unwind? I had to get these made in Thailand– no one does it here anymore."

"I ... I don't understand. . . ." Connor looks at the false teeth, and jerks his head almost involuntarily toward the picture of the smiling boy.

The Admiral follows his gaze. "That," says the Admiral, "was my son. His teeth looked very much like my own at that age, so they designed my dentures using his dental records."

It's a relief to hear an explanation other than the one Roland gave. "I'm sorry."

The Admiral neither accepts nor rejects Connor's apology. "The money I get tor placing Unwinds into service positions is used to feed the ones who remain, and to pay for the safe houses and warehouses that get runaway Unwinds off the street. It pays for the aircraft that get them here, and pays off anyone who needs bribery to look the other way. After that, the money that remains goes into the pockets of each Unwind on the day they turn eighteen and are sent out into this unforgiving world. So you see, I may still be, by your definition of the word, a slave dealer—but I am not quite the monster you think I am."

Connor looks to the dentures that still sit there, glistening, on the table. He thinks to grab them and hand them back to the Admiral as a peace offering, but decides the prospect is simply too disgusting. He lets the Admiral do it himself.

"Do you believe the things I've told you today?" the Admiral asks.

Connor considers it, but finds his compass is out of whack. Truth and rumors, facts and lies are all spinning in his head so wildly he still can't say what is what. "I think so," says Connor.

"Know so," says the Admiral. "Because you will see things today more awful than an old man's false teeth. I need to know that my trust in you is not misplaced."

* * *

Half a mile away, in aisle fourteen, space thirty-two, sits a FedEx jet that has not moved since it was towed here more than a month ago.

The Admiral has Connor drive him to the jet in his golf cart—but not before retrieving the pistol from his cabinet as "a precaution."

Beneath the starboard wing of the FedEx jet are five mounds of dirt marked by crude headstones. These are the five who suffocated in transit. Their presence here makes this truly a graveyard.

The hatch to the hold is open. Once they've stopped, the Admiral says, "Climb inside and find crate number 2933. Then come out again, and we'll talk."

"You're not coming?"

"I've already been." The Admiral hands him a flashlight. "You'll need this."

Connor stands on the roof of the cart, climbs through the cargo hatch, and turns on the flashlight. The moment he does, he has a shiver of memory. It looks exactly the same as it did a month ago. Open crates, and overtones of urine. The afterbirth of their arrival. He works his way deeper into the jet, passing the crate that he, Hayden, Emby, and Diego had occupied. Finally, he finds number 2933. It was one of the first crates to be loaded. Its hatch is open just a crack. Connor pulls it all the way open, and shines his light in.

When he catches sight of what's inside, he screams and reflexively lurches back, banging his head on the crate behind him. The Admiral could have warned him, but he hadn't. Okay: Okay. I know what I saw. There's nothing I can do about it. And nothing in there can hurt me. Still, he takes time to prepare himself before he looks in again.

There are five dead kids in the crate.

All seventeen-year-olds. There's Amp, and Jeeves. Beside them are Kevin, Melinda, and Raul, the three kids who gave out jobs his first day there. All five of the Goldens. There are no signs of blood, no wounds. They could all be asleep except for the fact that Amp's eyes are open and staring at nothing. Connor's mind reels. Did the Admiral do this? Is he mad after all? But why would he? No, it has to have been someone else.

When Connor comes out into the light, the Admiral is paying his respects to the five kids already buried beneath the wing. He straightens the markers and evens out the mounds.

"They disappeared last night. I found them sealed in the crate this morning," the Admiral tells him. "They suffocated, just like the first five did. It's the same crate."

"Who would do this?"

"Who, indeed," says the Admiral. Satisfied with the graves, he turns to Connor. "Whoever it is took out the five most powerful kids . . . which means, whoever did this wants to systematically dismantle the power structure here, so that they can rise to the top of it more quickly."

There's only one Unwind Connor knows of who might be capable of this—but even so, he has a hard time believing Roland would do something this horrible.

I was meant to discover them," the Admiral says. "They left my golf cart here this morning so that I would. Make no mistake about it, Connor, this is an act of war. They have made a surgical strike. These five were my eyes and ears among the kids here. Now I have none."

The Admiral takes a moment to look at the dark hole of the hold. "Tonight, you and I will come back here to bury them."

Connor swallows hard at the prospect. He wonders who he pissed off in Heaven to get singled out to be the Admiral's new lieutenant.

"We'll bury them far away," says the Admiral, "and we will tell no one that they're dead. Because if word of it gets out, the culprits will have their first victor)'. If someone does start talking—and they will—we'll track the rumors down to the guilty party."

"And then what?" Connor asks.

"And then justice will be served. Until then, this must be our secret."

As Connor chauffeurs him back to his plane, the Admiral makes his business with Connor clear. "I need a new set of eyes and ears. Someone to keep me abreast of the state of things among the Unwinds. And someone to ferret out the wolf in the herd. I'm asking you to do this for me."

"So you want me to be a spy?"

"Whose side are you on? Are you on my side, or the side of whoever did this?"

Connor now knows why the Admiral brought him here and forced him to see this for himself. It's one thing to be told, and another one entirely to discover the bodies. It makes it brutally clear to Connor where his allegiance must lie.

"Why me?" Connor has to ask.

The Admiral gives him his white-dentured smile. "Because you, my friend, are the least of all evils."

* * *

The next morning, the Admiral makes an announcement that the Goldens were sent off to organize new safe houses. Connor watches Roland for a reaction—perhaps a grin, or a glance at one of his buddies. But there's nothing. Roland gives no telltale sign that he knows what really happened to them. In fact, throughout the morning announcements he seems disinterested and distracted, like he can't wait to get on with his day. There's a good reason for that. Roland's apprenticeship with Cleaver, the helicopter pilot, has been paying off. Over the past weeks Roland has learned to fly the helicopter like a pro, and when Cleaver isn't around he offers free rides to those kids he feels deserve it. He says Cleaver doesn't care, but more likely he just doesn't know.

Connor had assumed that Roland would offer rides to his own inner circle of kids, but that's not the case. Roland rewards work well done—even by kids he doesn't know. He rewards loyalty to one's team. He lets other kids vote on who should get a chance to do a flyby of the yard in the helicopter. In short, Roland acts as if he's the one in charge, and not the Admiral.

When the Admiral is present, he feigns obedience, but when others are gathered around him—and there are always others gathered around Roland—he takes every opportunity to cut the man down. "The Admiral's out of touch," he would say. "He doesn't know what it's like to be one of us. He can't possibly understand who we are and what we need." And in groups of kids he's already won over, he whispers his theories about the Admiral's teeth, and his scars, and his diabolical plans for all of them. He spreads fear and distrust, using it to unite as many kids as he can.

Connor has to bite his lip to keep himself quiet when he hears Roland mouth off—because if he speaks out in defense of the Admiral, then Roland will know which side of the line he's on.

* * *

There's a recreation jet at the Graveyard, near the meeting tent. Inside there are TVs and electronics, and under its wings are pool tables, a pinball machine, and reasonably comfortable furniture. Connor proposed setting up a water mister, so that the area beneath the wings will stay at least a little bit cooler during the heat of the day. But even more importantly, Connor figures the project will allow him to be a fly on the wall, hearing conversations, cataloguing cliques, and performing general espionage. The problem is, Connor is never a fly on the wall. Instead, his work becomes the center of attention. Kids offer to help him like he's Tom Sawyer painting a fence. They all keep seeing him as a leader when all he wants is to be ignored. He's glad that he never told anyone he's the so-called "Akron AWOL." According to the current rumors, the Akron AWOL took on an entire legion of Juvey-cops, outsmarted the national guard, and liberated half a dozen harvest camps. He has enough attention from other kids without having to contend with that kind of reputation.

While Connor works to install the mister line, Roland keeps an eye on him from the pool table. He finally puts down the cue and comes over.

"You're just a busy little worker bee, ain't ya," Roland says, loud enough for all the kids around to hear. Connor's up on a stepladder, attaching mist piping to the underside of the wing. It allows him the satisfaction of carrying on this conversation while looking down on Roland. "I'm just trying to make life a little easier," Connor says. "We need a mister down here– wouldn't want anyone to suffocate in this heat."

Roland keeps a cool poker face. "It looks like you're the Admiral's new golden boy, now that the others have left." He looks around to make sure he has everyone's attention. "I've seen you go up to his jet."

"He needs things fixed, so I fix them," says Connor. "That's all."

Then, before Roland can push his interrogation, Hayden speaks up from the pool table.

"Connor's not the only one going up there," Hayden says. "There's kids going in and out all the time. Kids with food. Kids cleaning—and I hear he's taken an interest in a certain mouth breather we all know and love."

All eyes turn toward Emby, who has become a fixture at the pinball machine since he arrived. "What?"

"You've been up to the Admiral's, haven't you," Hayden says. "Don't deny it!"

"So?

"So, what does he want? I'm sure we'd all like to know."

Emby squirms, uncomfortable at the center of anyone's attention. "He just wanted to know about my family and stuff."

This is news to Connor. Perhaps the Admiral's looking for someone else to help him ferret out the killer. True, Emby's much less visible than Connor, but a fly on the wall shouldn't actually be a fly on the wall.

"I know what it is," says Roland. "He wants your hair."

"Does not!"

"Yeah—his own hair is thinning, right? You got yourself a nice mop up there. The old man wants to scalp you, and send the rest of you to be unwound!"

"Shut up!"

Most of the kids laugh. Sure, it's a joke, but Connor wonders how many think Roland might be right. Emby must suspect it himself, because he looks kind of sick. It makes Connor furious.

"That's right, pick on Emby," says Connor. "Show everyone just how low you are." He climbs down off the ladder, facing Roland eye to eye. "Hey—did you notice Amp left his megaphone? Why don't you take his place? You're such a loudmouth, you'd be perfect for it."

Roland's response comes without the slightest smile. "I wasn't asked."

* * *

That night Connor and the Admiral have a secret meeting in his quarters, drinking coffee made by a machine rumored to be broken. They speak of Roland and Connor's suspicions about him, but the Admiral is not satisfied.

"I don't want suspicion, I want proof. I don't want your feelings, I want evidence." The Admiral adds some whiskey from a flask to his own coffee.

When Connor is done with his report, he gets up to leave, but the Admiral won't let him. He pours Connor a second cup of coffee, which will surely keep him up all night—but then, he doubts he'll be sleeping well tonight anyway.

"Very few people know what I'm about to tell you," says the Admiral.

"So why tell me?"

"Because it serves my purposes for you to know."

It's an honest answer, but one that still keeps his motives hidden. Connor imagines he must have been very good in a war.

"When I was much younger," begins the Admiral, "I fought in the Heartland War. The scars you so impertinently assumed were transplant scars came from a grenade."

"Which side were you on?"

The Admiral gives Connor that scrutinizing look he's so good at. "How much do you know about the Heartland War?"

Connor shrugs. "It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it."

The Admiral waves his hand in disgust. "Textbooks sugar-coat it anyway. No one wants to remember how it really was. You asked which side I was on. The truth is, there were three sides in the war, not two. There was the Life Army, the Choice Brigade, and the remains of the American military, whose job it was to keep the other two sides from killing each other. That's the side I was on. Unfortunately, we weren't very successful. You see, a conflict always begins with an issue—a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other."

The Admiral pours a little more whiskey into his mug before he continues. "There were dark days leading up to the war. Everything that we think defines right and wrong was being turned upside down. On one side, people were murdering abortion doctors to protect the right to life, while on the other side people were getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue. And everyone was selecting their leaders not by their ability to lead, but by where they stood on this single issue. It was beyond madness! Then the military fractured, both sides got hold of weapons of war, and two opinions became two armies determined to destroy each other. And then came the Bill of Life."

The mention of it sends ice water down Connor's spine. It never used to bother him, but things change once you become an Unwind.

"I was right there in the room when they came up with the idea that a pregnancy could be terminated retroactively once a child reaches the age of reason," says the Admiral. "At first it was a joke—no one intended it to be taken seriously. But that same year the Nobel Prize went to a scientist who perfectedneurografting—the technique that allows every part of a donor to be used in transplant."

The Admiral takes a deep gulp of his coffee. Connor hasn't had a bit of his second cup. The thought of swallowing anything right now is out of the question. It’s all he can do to keep the first cup down.

"With the war getting worse," says the Admiral, "we brokered a peace by bringing both sides to the table. Then we proposed the idea of unwinding, which would terminate unwanteds without actually ending their lives. We thought it would shock both sides into seeing reason—that they would stare at each other across the table and someone would blink. But nobody blinked. The choice to terminate without ending life—it satisfied the needs of both sides. The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences."

The Admiral's thoughts go far away for a moment, then he waves his hand. "I'm sure you know the rest."

Connor might not know all the particulars, but he knows the gist. "People wanted parts."

"Demanded is more like it. A cancerous colon could be replaced with a healthy new one. An accident victim who would have died from internal injuries could get fresh organs. A wrinkled arthritic hand could be replaced by one fifty years younger. And all those new parts had to come from somewhere." The Admiral paused for a moment to consider it. "Of course, if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened . . . but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead. It didn't take long for ethics to be crushed by greed. Unwinding became big business, and people let it happen."

The Admiral glances over at the picture of his son. Even without the Admiral telling him, Connor realizes why—but he allows the Admiral the dignity of his confession.

"My son, Harlan, was a great kid. Smart. But he was troubled—you know the type."

"I am the type," says Connor, offering a slight grin.

The Admiral nods. "It was just about ten years ago. He got in with the wrong group of friends, got caught stealing. Hell, I was the same at his age—that's why my parents first sent me to military school, to straighten me out. Only, for Harlan there was a different option. A more . . . efficient option."

"You had him unwound."

"As one of the fathers of the Unwind Accord, I was expected to set an example." He presses his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, stemming off tears before they can flow. "We signed the order, then changed our minds. But it was already too late. They had taken Harlan right out of school to the harvest camp, and rushed him through. It had already been done."

It had never occurred to Connor to consider the toll unwinding had on the ones who signed the order. He never thought he could have sympathy for a parent who could do that—or sympathy for one of the men who had made unwinding possible.

"I'm sorry," Connor says, and means it.

The Admiral stiffens up—sobers up—almost instantly. "You shouldn't be. It's only because of his unwinding that you're all here. Afterward, my wife left me and formed a foundation in Harlan's memory. I left the military, spent several years more drunk than I am now, and then, three years ago, I had The Big Idea. This place, these kids, arc the result of it. To date I've saved more than a thousand kids from unwinding."

Connor now understands why the Admiral was telling him these things. It was more than just a confession. It was a way of securing Connor's loyalty—and it worked. The Admiral was a darkly obsessed man, but his obsession saved lives. Hayden once said that Connor had integrity. That same integrity locks him firmly on the Admiral's side, and so Connor holds up his mug. "To Harlan!" he says.

"To Harlan!" echoes the Admiral, and together they drink to his name. "Bit by bit I am making things right, Connor," the Admiral says. "Bit by bit, and in more ways than one."

_{35 Lev}

Where Lev was between the time he left CyFi and his arrival at the Graveyard is less important than where his thoughts resided. They resided in places colder and darker than the many places he hid.

He had survived the month through a string of unpleasant compromises and crimes of convenience—whatever was necessary to keep himself alive. Lev quickly became street-smart, and survival-wise. They say it takes complete immersion in a culture to learn its language and its ways. It didn't take him very long to learn the language of the lost.

Once he landed in the safe-house network, he quickly made it known that he was not a guy to be trifled with. He didn't tell people he was a tithe. Instead, he told them his parents signed the order to have him unwound after he was arrested for armed robbery. It was funny to him, because he had never even touched a gun. It amazed him that the other kids couldn't read the lie in his face—he had always been such a bad liar. But then, when he looked in the mirror, what he saw in his own eyes scared him.

By the time he reached the Graveyard, most kids knew enough to stay away from him. Which is exactly what he wanted.

The same night that the Admiral and Connor have their secret conference, Lev heads out into the oil-slick dark of the moonless night, keeping his flashlight off. His first night there he had successfully slipped out to find Connor, in order to set him straight about a few things. Since then, the bruise from Connor's punch has faded, and they haven't spoken of it again. He hasn't spoken much to Connor at all, because Lev has other things on his mind.

Each night since then he's tried to sneak away, but every time, he's been caught and sent back. Now that the Admiral's five watchdogs have left, though, the kids on sentry duty are getting lax. As Lev sneaks between the jets, he finds that a few of them are even asleep on the job. Stupid of the Admiral to send those other kids away without having anyone to replace them.

Once he's far enough away he turns on his flashlight and tries to find his destination. It's a destination told to him by a girl he had encountered a few weeks before. She was very much like him. He suspects he'll meet others tonight who are very much like him as well.

Aisle thirty, space twelve. It's about as far from the Admiral as you can get and still be in the Graveyard. The space is occupied by an ancient DC-10, crumbling to pieces in its final resting place. When Lev swings open the hatch and climbs in, he finds two kids inside, both of whom bolt upright at the sight of him and take defensive postures.

"My name's Lev," he says. "I was told to come here."

He doesn't know these kids, but that's no surprise—he hasn't been in the Graveyard long enough to know that many kids here. One is an Asian girl with pink hair. The other kid has a shaved head and is covered in tattoos.

"And who told you to come here?" asks the flesh-head.

"This girl I met in Colorado. Her name's Julie-Ann."

Then a third figure comes out from the shadows. It's not a kid hut an adult—midtwenties, maybe. He's smiling. The guy has greasy red hair, a straggly goatee to match, and a boney face with sunken cheeks. It's Cleaver, the helicopter pilot.

"So Julie-Ann sent you!" he says. "Cool! How is she?"

Lev takes a moment to think about his answer. "She did her job," Lev tells him.

Cleaver nods. "Well, it is what it is."

The other two kids introduce themselves. The flesh-head is Blaine, the girl is Mai.

"What about that boeuf who flies the helicopter with you?" Lev asks Cleaver. "Is he part of this too?"

Mai gives a disgusted laugh. "Roland? Not on your life!"

"Roland isn't exactly . . . the material for our little group," Cleaver says. "So, did you come here to give us the good news about Julie-Ann, or are you here for another reason?"

"I'm here because I want to be here."

"You say it," says Cleaver, "but we still don't know you're for real."

"Tell us about yourself," says Mai.

Lev prepares to give them the armed-robbery version, but before he opens his mouth, he changes his mind. The moment calls for honesty. This must begin with the truth. So he tells them everything, from the moment he was kidnapped by Connor to his time with CyFi and the weeks after that. When he's done, Cleaver seems very, very pleased.

"So, you're a tithe! That's great. You don't even know how great that is!"

"What now?" asks Lev. "Am I in, or not?"

The others become quiet. Serious. He feels some sort of ritual is about to begin.

"Tell me, Lev," says Cleaver. "How much do you hate the people who were going to unwind you?"

"A lot."

"Sorry, that's not good enough."

Lev closes his eyes, digs down, and thinks about his parents. He thinks about what they planned to do to him, and how they made him actually want it.

"How much do you hate them?" Cleaver asks again.

"Totally and completely," answers Lev.

"And how much do you hate the people who would take parts of you and make them parts of themselves?"

"Totally and completely."

"And how much do you want to make them, and everyone else in the world, pay?"

"Totally and completely."  Someone has to pay for the unfairness of it all. Everyone has to pay. He'll make them.

"Good," says Cleaver.

Lev is amazed by the depth of his own fury—but he's becoming less and less frightened of it. He tells himself that's a good thing.