Текст книги "Unwind"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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"We'll give her a good home," Hannah says. She takes a step closer, and Risa transfers the baby to her.

The moment the baby is out of her arms Risa feels a tremendous sense of relief, but also an indefinable sense of emptiness. It's a feeling not quite intense enough to leave her in tears, but strong enough to leave her with a phantom sort of aching, the type of thing an amputee must feel after losing a limb. That is, before a new one is grafted on.

"You take care, now," says Sonia, giving Risa an awkward hug. "It's a long journey, but I know you can make it."

"Journey to where?"

Sonia doesn't answer.

"Hey," says the driver, "I don't got all night."

Risa says good-bye to Sonia, nods to Hannah, and turns to join Connor, who's waiting lor her at the back of the truck. As Risa leaves, the baby starts to cry, but she doesn't look back.

She's surprised to find about a dozen other kids in the truck, all distrustful and scared. Roland's still the biggest, and he solidifies his position by making another kid move, even though there's plenty of other places to sit.

The delivery truck is a hard, cold, metal box. It once had a refrigeration unit to keep the ice cream cold, but that's gone along with the ice cream. Still, it's freezing in there, and it smells of spoiled dairy. The driver closes and locks the back doors, sealing out the sound of the baby, who Risa can still hear crying. Even after the door is closed, she thinks she can still hear it, although it's probably just her imagination.

The ice cream truck bounces along the uneven streets. The way the truck sways, their backs are constantly smacked against the wall behind them.

Risa closes her eyes. It makes her furious that she actually misses the baby. It was thrust upon her at the worst possible moment in her life—why should she have any regret about being rid of it? She thinks about the days before the Heartland War, when unwanted babies could just be unwanted pregnancies, quickly made to go away. Did the women who made that other choice feel the way she felt now? Relieved and freed from an unwelcome and often unfair responsibility . . . yet vaguely regretful?

In her days at the state home, when she was assigned to take care of the infants, she would often ponder such things. The infant wing had been massive and overflowing with identical cribs, each containing a baby that nobody had wanted, wards of a state that could barely feed them, much less nurture them.

"You can't change laws without first changing human nature," one of the nurses often said as she looked out over the crowd of crying infants. Her name was Greta. Whenever she said something like that, there was always another nurse within earshot who was far more accepting of the system and would counter with, "You can't change human nature without first changing the law." Nurse Greta wouldn't argue; she'd just grunt and walk away.

Which was worse, Risa often wondered—to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or to silently make them go away before they were even born? On different days Risa had different answers.

Nurse Greta was old enough to remember the days before the war, but she rarely spoke of them. All her attention was given to her job, which was a formidable one, since there was only one nurse for every fifty babies. "In a place like this you have to practice triage," she told Risa, referring to how, in an emergency, a nurse had to choose which patients would get medical attention. "Love the ones you can," Nurse Greta told her. "Pray for the rest." Risa took the advice to heart, and selected a handful of favorites to give extra attention. These were the ones Risa named herself, instead of letting the randomizing computer name them. Risa liked to think she had been named by a human being instead of by a computer. After all, her name wasn't all that common. "It's short for sonrisa," a Hispanic kid once told her. "That's Spanish for 'smile.'" Risa didn't know if she had any Hispanic blood in her, but she liked to think she did. It connected her to her name.

"What are you thinking about?" Connor asks, tearing her out of her thoughts and bringing her back to the uneasy reality around them.

"None of your business.''

Connor doesn't look at her—he seems to be focusing on a big rust spot on the wall, thinking. "You okay about the baby?" he asks.

"Of course." Her tone is intentionally indignant, as if the question itself offended her.

"Hannah will give her a good home," Connor says. "Better than us, that's for sure, and better than that beady-eyed cow who got storked." He hesitates for a moment, then says, "Taking that baby was a massive screwup, I know—but it ended okay for us, right? And it definitely ended better for the baby."

"Don't screw up like that again," is all Risa says.

Roland, sitting toward the front, turns to the driver and asks, "Where are we going?"

"You're asking the wrong guy," the driver answers. "They give me an address. I go there, I look the other way, and I get paid."

"This is how it works," says another kid who had already been in the truck when it arrived at Sonia's. "We get shuffled around. One safe house for a few days, then another, and then another. Each one is a little bit closer to where we're going."

"You gonna tell us where that is?" asks Roland.

The kid looks around, hoping someone else might answer for him, but no one comes to his aid. So he says, "Well, it's only what I hear, but they say we end up in a place called . . . the graveyard."'

No response from the kids, just the rattling of the truck.

The graveyard. The thought of it makes Risa even colder. Even though she's curled up knees to chest, arms wrapped tight around her like a straitjacket, she's still freezing. Connor must hear the chattering of her teeth, because he puts his arm around her.

"I'm cold too," he says. "Body heat, right?"

And although she has an urge to push him away, she finds herself leaning into him until she can feel his heartbeat in her ears.

Part Three

_Transit

2003: UKRAINIAN MATERNITY HOSPITAL #6

. . .

The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say they gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity staff. In

2003

the authorities agreed to exhume around 30 bodies from a cemetery used by maternity hospital number

6.

One campaigner was allowed into the autopsy to gather video evidence. She has given that footage to the BBC and Council of Europe.

In its report, the Council describes a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth, and a wall of silence from hospital staff upward over their fate. The pictures show organs, including brains, have been stripped

–

and some bodies dismembered. A senior British forensic pathologist says he is very concerned to see bodies in pieces

–

as that is not standard postmortem practice. It could possibly be a result of harvesting stem cells from bone marrow.

Hospital number

6

denies the allegation.

Story by Matthew Hill, BBC Health Correspondent

From BBC NEWS: at BBC.com

http://news.bbt.co.Uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6171083.stm

Published: 2006/12/12 09:34:50 GMT © BBC MMVI

_{21 Lev}

"Ain't no one gonna tell you what's in your heart," he tells Lev. "You gotta find that out for yourself."

Lev and his new travel companion walk along train tracks, surrounded by thick, brushy terrain.

"You got it in your heart to run from unwinding, ain't no one can tell you it's the wrong thing to do, even if it is against the law. The good Lord wouldn't have put it in your heart if it wasn't right. You listenin', Fry? 'Cause this here is wisdom. Wisdom you can take to the grave, then dig it up again when you need some solace. Solace—that means 'comfort.'"

"I know what solace means," says Lev, peeved by the mention of "the good Lord," who hasn't done much for Lev lately, except confuse things.

The kid is fifteen, and his name is Cyrus Finch—although he doesn't go by that name. "No one calls me Cyrus," he had told Lev shortly after they met. "I go by CyFi."

And, since CyFi is partial to nicknames, he calls Lev "Fry"—short for small-fry. Since it has the same number of letters as "Lev," he says it's appropriate. Lev doesn't want to burst his bubble by pointing out that his full name is Levi.

CyFi enjoys hearing himself talk.

"I make my own roads in life," he tells Lev. "That's how come we're traveling the rails instead of some dumb old country road."

CyFi is umber. "They used to call us black—can you imagine? Then there was this artist dude—mixed-race himself, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. He got famous, though, for painting people of African ancestry in the Deep South. The color he used most was umber. People liked that a whole lot better, so it stuck. Bet you didn't know where the word came from, did you, Fry? Following right along, they started calling so-called white people "sienna," after another paint color. Better words. Didn't have no value judgment to them. Of course, it's not like racism is gone completely, but as my dads like to say, the veneer of civilization got itself a second coat. You like that, Fry? "The veneer of civilization?" He slowly sweeps his hand in the air as he says it, like he's feeling the fine finish of a table. "My dads are always saying stuff like that."

CyFi's a runaway, although he claims not to be. "I ain't no runaway—I'm a run-to," he had told Lev when they first met, although he won't tell Lev where he's running to. When Lev asked, CyFi shook his head and said, "Information shall be given on a need-to-know basis."

Well, he can keep his secret, because Lev doesn't care where he's going. The simple fact that he has a destination is enough for Lev. It's more than Lev has. Destination implies a future. If this umber-skinned boy can lend Lev that much, it's worth it to travel with him.

They had met at a mall. Hunger had driven Lev there. He had hidden in dark lonely places for almost two days after he lost Connor and Risa. With no experience being a street rat, he went hungry—but eventually, hunger turns anyone into a master of survival.

The mall was a mecca for a newborn street rat. The food court was full of amazingly wasteful people. The trick, Lev discovered, was to find people who bought more food than they could possibly cat, and then wait until they were done. About half the time, they just left it on the table. Those were the ones Lev went after—because he might have been hungry enough to eat table scraps, but he was still too proud to rifle through the trash. While Lev was finishing off some cheerleader's pizza, he heard a voice in his ear.

"You ain't gotta be eatin' other folks' garbage, foo'!"

Lev froze, certain it was a security guard ready to haul him away, but it was only this tall umber kid with a funny grin, wearing attitude like it was a cologne. "Let me show you how it's done." Then he went to a pretty girl who was working at the Wicked Wok Chinese food concession, flirted with her for a few-minutes, then left with nothing. No food, no drink, nothing.

"I think I'll stick to leftovers,'' Lev had told him.

"Patience, my man. See, it's gettin' on toward closing time. All these places, by law gotta get rid of all the food they made today. They can't keep it and reuse it tomorrow. So where do you think that food goes? I'll tell you where it goes. It goes home with the last shift. But the people who work these places ain't gonna eat that stuff on accounta they are sick to death of it. See that girl I was talkin' to? She likes me. I told her I worked at Shirt Bonanza, downstairs, and could get her some overstock maybe."

"Do you work there?"

"No! Are you even listenin' to me? So any-who, right before closing I'm gonna get myself over to the Wicked Wok again. I'll give her a smile, and I'll be all, like, 'Hey, whatcha gonna do with all that leftover food?' And she'll be all, like, 'Whatcha got in mind?' And five minutes later I'm walking away in orange chicken heaven, with enough to feed an army."

And sure enough, it happened exactly like he said it would. Lev was amazed.

"Stick with me," CyFi had said, putting his fist in the air, "and as God is my witness, you will never go hungry again." Then he added, "That's from Gone with the Wind."

"I know," said Lev. Which, in fact, he didn't.

Lev had agreed to go with him because he knew the two tilled a need in each other. CyFi was like a preacher with no flock. He couldn't exist without an audience, and Lev needed someone who could fill his head with ideas, to replace the lifetime of ideas that had been taken from him.

A day later, Lev's shoes are worn and his muscles are sore. The memory of Risa and Connor is still a fresh wound, and it doesn't want to heal. Chances are, they were caught. Chances are, they've been unwound. All because of him. Does that make him an accomplice to murder?

How could it, when Unwinds aren't really dead?

 He doesn't know whose voice is in his head anymore. His father's? Pastor Dan's? It just makes him angry. He'd rather hear CyFi's voice outside of his head than whatever voices were inside.

The terrain around them hasn't changed much since they left town. Eye-high shrubs and a smattering of trees. Some of the growth is evergreen, some of it yellow, turning brown. Weeds grow up between the train tracks, but not too tall.

"Any weed dumb enough to grow tall ain't got no chance. It gets decapitated by the next train that comes through. Decapitated—that means 'head cut off."'

"I know what 'decapitated' means—and you can stop talking that way; all double negatives and stuff."

CyFi stops right there in the middle of the railroad tracks and stares at Lev like he's trying to melt him with his eyes.

"You got a problem with the way I talk? You got a problem with an Old World Umber patois?"

"I do when it's fake."

"Whachoo talkin' about, foo'!"

"It's obvious. I'll bet people never even said things like 'foo,' except on dumb prewar TV shows and stuff. You're speaking wrong on purpose."

"Wrong? What makes it wrong? It's classic, just like those TV shows—and I ain't appreciating you disrespecting my patois. Patois means—"

"I know what it means," Lev says even though he isn't entirely sure. "I ain't stupid!"

CyFi puts up an accusing finger like a lawyer. "A-HA! You said 'ain't.' Now who's talking wrong?"

"That doesn't count! I said it because it's all I hear from you! After a while I can't help but sound like you!"

At that, CyFi grins. "Yeah," he says. "Ain't that the truth. Old World Umber is contagious. It's dominant. And talkin' the talk don't make a person dumb. I'll have you know, I got the highest readin' and writin' score in my school, Fry. But I gotta respect my ancestors an' all they went through so I could be here. Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to. It's like art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he can paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on one side of a face, and noses stickin' outta kneecaps and stuff. See, if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist." He smiles at Lev. "That's a bit of CyFi wisdom right there, Fry. You can take that to the grave, and dig it up when you need it!"

CyFi turns and spits out a piece of gum that hits a train rail and sticks there, then he shoves another piece in his mouth. "Anyway, my dads got no problem with it—and they're lily-sienna like you."

"They?" Cy had said "dads" before, but Lev had figured it was just some more Old Umber slang.

"Yeah," says CyFi, with a shrug. "I got two. Ain't no thang."

Lev tries his best to process this. Of course, he's heard of male parenting—or "yin families," as they're currently called—but in the sheltered structure of his life, such things always belonged to an alternate universe.

CyFi, however, doesn't even catch Lev's surprise. He's still on his brag jag.

"Yeah, I got myself an IQ of 155. Did you know that, Fry? A'course not—how would you know?" Then he hesitates. "It went down a few points, though, on account the accident. I was on my hike and got hit by some damfoo' in a Mercedes." He points to a scar on the side of his head. "What a mess. Splattered—y'know? I was nearly roadkill. It turned my right temporal lobe into Jell-O." He shivers as he thinks about it, then shrugs. "But brain damage ain't a problem like it used to be. They just replace the brain tissue and you're good as new. My dads even paid off the surgeon so I'd get an entire temporal lobe from an Unwind—no offense– rather than getting a buncha brain bits, like people are supposed to get."

Lev knows about that. His sister Cara has epilepsy, so they replaced a small part of her brain with a hundred tiny brain bits. It took care of the problem, and she didn't seem any worse for it. It had never occurred to Lev where those tiny pieces of brain tissue might have come from.

"See, brain bits work okay, but they don't work great," CyFi explains. "It's like puttin' spackle over a hole in a wall. No matter how well you do it, that wall ain't never gonna be as good. So my dads made sure I got an entire temporal lobe from a single donor. But that kid wasn't as smart as me. He wasn't no dummy, but he didn't have the I 55. The last brain scan put me at 130. That's in the top 5 percent of the population, and still considered genius. Just not with a capital G. What's your IQ?" he asks Lev. "Are you a dim bulb or high-wattage?"

Lev sighs. "I don't know. My parents don't believe in intelligence scans. It's kind of a religious thing. Everyone's equal in Cod's eyes and all that."

"Oh—you come from one of those families." CyFi takes a good look at him. "So if they all high and mighty, why they unwinding you?"

Although Lev doesn't want to get into it, he figures CyFi is the only friend he's got. Might as well tell him the truth. "I'm a tithe."

CyFi looks at him with eyes all wide, like Lev just told him he was God himself.

"Damn! So you all holy and stuff?"

"Not anymore."

CyFi nods and purses his lips, saying nothing for a while. They walk along the tracks. The railroad ties change from wood to stone, and the gravel on the side of the tracks now seems better maintained.

"We just crossed the state line," CyFi says.

Lev would ask him which state they've crossed into, but he doesn't want to sound stupid.

* * *

Any spot where multiple tracks merge or diverge, there's a little two-story shack standing there like a displaced lighthouse. A railroad switch house. There are plenty of them along this stretch of the line, and these are the places Lev and CyFi find shelter each night.

"Aren't you afraid someone from the railroads'll find us here?" Lev asks as they approach one of the sorry-looking structures.

"Nah—they ain't used anymore," CyFi tells him. "The whole system's automated—been that way for years, but it costs too much to tear all those switch houses down. Guess they figure nature will eventually tear them down for free."

The switch house is padlocked, but a padlock is only as strong as the door it's on—and this door had been routed by-termites. A single kick rips the padlock hasp from the wood, and the door flies inward to a shower of dust and dead spiders.

Upstairs is an eight-by-eight room, windows on all four sides. It's freezing. CyFi has an expensive-looking winter coat that keeps him warm at night. Lev only has a puffy fiberfill jacket that he stole from a chair at the mall the other day.

CyFi had turned his nose up when he saw Lev take that jacket, just before they left the mall. "Stealing's for lowlifes," Cy had said. "If you got class, you don't steal what you need, you get other people to give it to you of their own free will– just like I did back at that Chinese place. It's all about being smart, and being smooth. You'll learn."

Lev's stolen jacket is white, and he hates it. All his life he'd worn white—a pristine absence of color that defined him—but now there was no comfort in wearing it.

They eat well that night—thanks to Lev, who finally had his own survivalist brainstorm. It involved small animals killed by passing trains.

"I ain't eatin' no track-kill!" CyFi insisted when Lev had suggested it. "Those things coulda been rottin' out here for weeks, for all we know."

"No," Lev told him. "Here's what we do: We walk a few miles down the tracks, marking each dead critter with a stick. Then, when the next train comes through, we backtrack. Anything we find that's not marked is fresh." Granted, it was a fairly disgusting idea on the surface, but it was really no different from hunting—if your weapon were a diesel engine.

They build a small fire beside the switch house and dine on roast rabbit and armadillo—which doesn't taste as bad as Lev thought it would. In the end, meat is meat, and barbecue does for armadillo exactly what it does for steak.

"Smorgas-bash!!" CyFi decides to call this hunting method as they eat. "That's what I call creative problem solving. Maybe you're a genius after all, Fry."

It feels good to have Cy's approval.

"Hey, is today Thursday?" says Lev, just realizing. "I think it's Thanksgiving!"

"Well, Fry, we're alive. That's plenty to be thankful for."

* * *

That night, up in the small room of the switch house, CyFi asks the big question. "Why'd your parents tithe you, Fry?"

One of the good things about being with CyFi is that he talks about himself a lot. It keeps Lev from having to think about his own life. Except, of course, when Cy asks. Lev answers him with silence, pretending to be asleep—and if there's one thing he knows CyFi can't stand, it's silence, so he fills it himself.

"Were you a storked baby? Is that it? They didn't want you in the first place, and couldn't wait to get rid of you?"

Lev keeps his eyes closed and doesn't move.

"Well, I was storked," Cy says. "My dads got me on the doorstep the first day of summer. No big deal—they were ready to have a family anyway. In fact, they were so pleased, they finally made it official and got themselves mmarried."

Lev opens his eyes, curious enough to admit he's still awake. "But . . . after the Heartland War, didn't they make it illegal for men to get married?"

"They didn't get married, they got mmarried."

"What's the difference?"

CyFi looks at him like he's a moron. "The letter m. Anyway, in case you're wondering, I'm not like my dads—my compass points to girls, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah. Yeah, mine does too." What he doesn't tell CyFi is that the closest he's ever been to a date or even kissing a girl was the slow dancing at his tithing party.

The thought of the party brings a sudden and sharp jolt of anxiety that makes him want to scream, so he squeezes his eyes tight and forces that explosive feeling to go away.

Everything from Lev's old life is like that now—a ticking time bomb in his head. Forget that life, he tells himself. You're not that boy anymore.

"What are your parents like?" CyFi asks.

"I hate them," Lev says, surprised that he's said it. Surprised that he means it. "That's not what I asked."

This time Cy isn't taking silence for an answer, so Lev tells him as best he can. "My parents," he begins, "do everything they're supposed to. They pay their taxes. They go to church. They vote the way their friends expect them to vote, and think what they're supposed to think, and they send us to schools that raise us to think exactly like they do."

"Doesn't sound too terrible to me."

"It wasn't," says Lev, his discomfort building. "But they loved God more than they loved me, and I hate them for it. So I guess that means I'm going to Hell."

"Hmm. Tell you what. When you get there, save a room for me, okay?"

"Why? What makes you think you're going there?''

"I don't, but just in case. Gotta plan your contingencies, right?"

* * *

Two days later they find themselves in the town of Scottsburg, Indiana. Well, at least Lev finally knows what state they're in. He wonders if maybe this is CyFi's destination, but Cy hasn't said anything either way. They've left the railroad tracks, and CyFi tells Lev they have to go south on county roads until they can find tracks heading in that direction.

Cy hasn't been acting right. It began the night before. Something in his voice.

Something in his eyes, too. At first Lev thought it was his imagination, but now in the pale light of the autumn day it's clear that CyFi isn't himself. He's lagging behind Lev instead of leading. His stride is all off—more like a shuffle than a strut. It makes Lev anxious in a way he hasn't been since before he met CyFi.

"Are you ever going to tell me where we're going?" Lev asks, figuring that maybe they're close, and maybe that's why Cy's acting weird.

CyFi hesitates, weighing the wisdom of saying anything. Finally he says, "We're going to Joplin. That's in southwest Missouri, so we've still got a long way to go."

In the back of his mind, Lev registers that CyFi has completely dropped his Old Umber way of talking. Now he sounds like any other kid Lev might have known back home. But there's also something dark and throaty about his voice now, too. Vaguely menacing, like the voice of a werewolf before it turns.

"What's in Joplin?" Lev asks.

"Nothing for you to worry about."

But Lev is beginning to worry—because when CyFi gets where he's going, Lev will be alone again. This journey was easier when he didn't know the destination.

As they walk, Lev can tell Cy's mind is somewhere else. Maybe it's in Joplin. What could be there? Maybe a girlfriend moved there? Maybe he had tracked down his birth mother. Lev has worked up a dozen reasons for CyFi to be on this trip, and there's probably a dozen more he hasn't even thought of.

There's a main street in Scottsburg trying to be quaint but just looking tired. It's late morning as they move through town. Restaurants are gearing up for the lunch crowd.

"So, are you gonna use your charms to get us a free meal, or is it my turn to try?" Lev asks. He turns to Cy, but he's not there. A quick scan of the shops behind him and Lev sees a door swinging closed. It's a Christmas store, its windows all done up in green and red decorations, plastic reindeer, and cotton snow. Lev can't imagine Cy has gone in there, but when he peers in the window, there he is, looking around like a customer. With the weird way CyFi has been acting, Lev has no choice but to go in as well.

It's warm in the store, and it smells of artificial pine. It's the kind of scent they put on cardboard air fresheners. There are fully trimmed aluminum Christmas trees all around, displaying all sorts of holiday decorations, each tree with a different theme. In another time and place, Lev would have loved wandering through a store like this.

A saleswoman eyes them suspiciously from behind the counter. Lev grabs Cy's shoulder. "C'mon, let's get out of here." But Cy shakes him off and goes over to a tree that's decorated all in glittering gold. He seems mesmerized by all the bulbs and tinsel. There's the slightest twitch right beneath his left eye.

"Cy," whispers Lev. "C'mon—we have to get to Joplin. Remember? Joplin."

But Cy's not moving. The saleswoman comes over. She wears a holiday sweater and a holiday smile. "Can I help you find something?"

"No," says Lev. "We were just leaving."

"A nutcracker," says Cy. "I'm looking for a nutcracker for my mom."

"Oh, they're on the back wall." The woman turns to look across the store, and the moment she does, Cy picks a dangling gold bauble from the glittering tree and slips it into his coat pocket.

Lev just stands there, stunned.

Cy doesn't even spare Lev a glance as he follows the woman to the back wall, where they discuss nutcrackers.

There's a panic brewing deep down in Lev now, slowly fighting its way to the surface. Cy and the woman chat for a few moments more, then Cy thanks her and comes back to the front of the store. "I've gotta get more money from home," he says in his Cy/not-Cy voice. "I think my mom will like the blue one."

You don't have a mom, Lev wants to say, but he doesn't because all that matters now is getting out of the shop.

"All right then," says the saleswoman. "You have a nice day!"

Cy leaves, and Lev makes sure he's right behind him, just in case Cy suddenly has a phantom urge to go back into the store and take something else.

Then, the moment the door closes behind them, CyFi takes off. He doesn't just run, he ejects, like he's trying to burst out of his own skin. He bolts down the block, then into the street. Then back again. Cars honk, a truck nearly mows him down. He darts in random directions like a balloon losing air, and then he disappears into an alley far down the street.

This is not about a gold Christmas bulb. It can't be. It's a meltdown. It's a seizure, the nature of which Lev can't even begin to guess. I should just let him go, Lev thinks. Let him go, then run in the opposite direction, and not look back. Lev could survive on his own now. He's gotten street-smart enough. He could do it without CyFi.

But there was that look about Cy before he ran. Desperation. It was just like the look in Connor's face the moment he pulled Lev out of his father's comfortable sedan. Lev had turned on Connor. He will not turn on CyFi.

With a pace and stride far steadier than CyFi's, Lev crosses the street and makes his way down the alley.

"CyFi," he calls, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to draw attention. "Cy!" He glances in Dumpsters and doorways. "Cyrus, where are you?" He comes to the end of the alley and looks left and right. No sign of him. Then, as he's about to lose hope, he hears, "Fry?"

He turns his head and listens again.

"Fry. Over here."

This time he can tell where it's coming from: a playground to his right. Green plastic and steel poles painted blue. There are no children playing—the only sign of life is the tip of CyFi's shoe poking out from behind the slide. Lev crosses through a hedge, steps down into the sand that surrounds the playground, and circles the apparatus until CyFi comes into view.

Lev almost wants to back away from what he sees.