Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Part Six

Akron

TERRORISTS PLAN ATTACK ON BRITAIN WITH BOMBS

INSIDE

THEIR BODIES TO FOIL NEW AIRPORT SCANNERS

By Christopher Leake, Mail On Sunday Home Affairs Editor

UPDATED: 17:01 EST, 30 January 2010

Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, underground trains, and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes, or underwear to avoid detection. But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting “surgical bombs” inside people for the first time.

A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.

Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal.

Security sources fear the body bombers could pretend to be diabetics injecting themselves in order to prevent anyone stopping their suicide missions.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said: “Our enemies are constantly evolving their techniques to try to defeat our methods of detection. This is one of the most savage forms that extremists could use, and while we are redeveloping travel security, we have got to take this new development into account.”

Senior government security sources confirmed last night that they were aware of the new threat of body bombs, but were not prepared to make any official comment.

Published by permission of The Mail on Sunday.

See the full article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247338/Terrorists-plan-attack-Britain-bombs-INSIDE-bodies-foil-new-airport-scanners.html

The Rheinschilds

Dr. Janson Rheinschild sits in a chair, in a room, in the dark, alone. His wife has gone to bed, but he cannot. After spending so many hours in bed, for so many weeks, he’s plagued by crushing insomnia, an unyielding headache, and a hollowness in his soul that he cannot describe.

Were he more shallow, he could be a very happy man—after all, he’s got millions in his bank account. He and Sonia could go anywhere they want and live out their lives in extravagant luxury . . . . But what would be the point? And where can they go that they won’t be reminded of the darkness they leave behind?

Unwinding is spreading. China was the first to jump on the bandwagon, then Belgium and the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union. The Russians claimed to have come up with the idea themselves, as if it were something worth claiming, and in third-world nations, where laws change as quickly as governments, the black-market trade in human organs has grown into a major industry.

And what of his attempt to change all that? What of his “life’s work that would end unwinding”? After one final attempt to get some answers out of BioDynix Medical Instruments, he was slapped with a cease-and-desist lawsuit and a restraining order that prevents him from coming within one hundred yards of any BioDynix employee.

Every day, the very existence of their basement reminds him that Austin—whom Janson and Sonia had come to care about like a son—is gone, and as if this cake needed any further icing, both he and Sonia have been virtually unwound themselves. Before Janson had been ousted from Proactive Citizenry for actually wanting to do some good in the world, they were working on digital footprint removal. It was supposed to be a way to protect one’s privacy on the web by removing unwanted and unauthorized references and pictures of oneself.

But like everything else, Proactive Citizenry found a way to weaponize it.

Now any and all references to Janson or Sonia Rheinschild have been eliminated from the digital memory of the world. Not only don’t they exist, but according to public records, they never existed. Those who know them will eventually forget them, and even if they don’t, those people will eventually die. Janson’s and Sonia’s footprints on this earth will be washed as clean as a beach at high tide.

And so Janson Rheinschild sits alone in his chair, turning all of his anger, his disillusionment, and his disappointment inward, until finally he feels his heart seize in his chest, knotting in the lethal cramp of cardiac arrest.

And he’s glad for it. He’s grateful that at last the universe has chosen to show him some mercy.

58 • Connor

The sign on the highway reads WELCOME TO AKRON, THE RUBBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. The dark, threatening skies feel anything but welcoming. Connor finds himself white-knuckling the steering wheel and has to loosen his grip. Calm down. Calm down. It’s only a sign.

“The scene of the crime,” comments Cam from behind Connor, and then softens it by adding, “Of course, that depends on your definition of ‘crime.’ ”

Grace, still beside Cam in the backseat, is content to decipher personalized license plates and analyze them. “SSADAB. Dumbass spelled backward. ‘♥&SEOUL.’ Some Korean guy who got an Unwind’s heart.” Grace seems immune to the heightened level of tension in the car until they approach a highway patrol car parked on the shoulder.

“Go slow! Go slow! Go slow!” she says.

“Don’t worry, Grace,” Connor tells her. “I’m right at the speed limit.” How stupid if they get caught for speeding and captured at this point.

The woods are now broken by suburban subdevelopments, and as the road rolls by, Connor tries to find the spot where his, Risa’s, and Lev’s lives converged. He doesn’t even know if this is the same freeway. It feels like something not just from another life, but from another world entirely. A world into which he’s just initiated reentry. He feels like Frodo at the gates of Mordor. Who would have guessed that Ohio could hold such dark portent?

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” asks Cam from the backseat. “Akron’s a big town.”

“Not so big,” is Connor’s only response.

Connor knows that Cam’s presence on this journey is a necessary evil, but he wishes Cam were not sitting right behind him where Connor can’t see him, except for suspicious glances in the rearview mirror. Cam’s offerings of information have not won Connor over. There’s something fundamentally underhanded and opaque about the Rewind, or at least about his intentions. Giving him the benefit of the doubt could damn them all.

“I imagine you must know Akron pretty well.”

“Not at all,” Connor tells him. “I’ve been here only once.”

That makes Cam laugh. “And yet they call you the Akron AWOL.”

“Yeah, funny how that works.” Connor is actually from a suburb of Columbus, hours away, but Akron is where he turned the tranq on Nelson. Akron is where he became notorious. He didn’t even know where he was at the time. He only knew it had been Akron once they gave him the irritating “Akron AWOL” label.

“Center-North!” Connor blurts.

“Center-north what?” Grace asks.

“That’s the name of the school. Center-North High. I knew I’d remember it eventually.”

“We’re going to a school?”

“That’s ground zero. We’re looking for an antique shop near the school. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“You sure about that?” asks Cam. “Memory’s a funny thing.”

“Only yours,” says Connor. He punches the name of the school into the GPS and a gentle voice directs them with confident, if somewhat soulless, purpose. In fifteen minutes, they’re on the east side of town. They turn a corner and things look troublingly familiar to Connor.

The school looks exactly the same. Three stories of institutional redbrick that somehow looks as intimidating to him as the Texas School Book Depository had when Connor’s family traveled to Dallas and took a tour of the infamous building where Oswald shot Kennedy. Connor takes a deep, shuddering breath.

It’s midmorning on a Tuesday, so school is in session. It’s just about the same time of day that the fire alarm went off and all hell broke loose. Connor rolls them slowly past. Across the street are homes, but up ahead is a main commercial street.

“Anything specific we should be looking for?” asks Cam. “Any defining characteristics of this antique shop?”

“Yeah,” Connor says, “old stuff,” which makes Grace laugh.

He wonders what Sonia will do when she sees him. Then a horrible thought crosses Connor’s mind: What if she’s dead? Or what if she was caught and arrested for harboring Unwinds? He doesn’t voice his concerns, because if he doesn’t speak them aloud, maybe they won’t be true.

Connor slams the brakes, nearly running a red light. A pedestrian crosses the street glaring at them.

“Not much of a driver, are ya?” says Grace, then turns to Cam. “Did you know he almost killed Lev?”

“My driving’s fine,” Connor insists, “but this place is eating my brain.” He looks around, waiting for the light to change. “I don’t recognize any of this, but I know the shop can’t be more than a block or two away.”

“So drive around the school in a spiral that gets bigger,” suggests Grace. And then she adds, “Although since the streets ain’t round, it’s kinda a square spiral.”

“That’s called an Ulam spiral, by the way,” Cam says. “A way of graphing prime numbers. Not that you would know that.”

Connor gives him a disgusted look in the rearview mirror. “Is everyone in your internal community an ass?” Connor asks. It shuts Cam up.

They widen their search pattern until Connor hits the brakes suddenly again, but not because of a red light.

“There it is. It’s still there.”

The unprepossessing storefront of the corner shop has an understated sign that reads GOODYEAR HEIGHTS ANTIQUES. Being that it’s two blocks off the main thoroughfare, it doesn’t seem to be getting much business. Connor parks across the street, and they sit there in silence for about ten seconds. Then he unbuckles his seat belt.

“Well,” he says, “let’s go antiquing.”

59 • Sonia

She’s not surprised that the Lassiter boy has come here, but she is surprised by the company he’s keeping. That blasted Rewind is the last travel companion she’d expect to see him with. She doesn’t show her surprise though—and she doesn’t show how happy she is to see Connor either. As far as Sonia is concerned, authentic emotions are a liability. They always come back to bite you. Her poker face has served her well over the years, and on many occasions it has saved her life.

“So you’re back,” she says to Connor, putting down a lamp she had just repaired. “And with friends, no less.”

She makes no move to embrace him or even to shake his hand. Neither does Connor. He holds his distance—he too having learned the fine art of defensive dispassion. Still, he’s not as good at it as Sonia. She can tell how relieved he is to be here and how happy he is to see her. Even if he doesn’t wear it on his face, she can sense it in his general aura.

“Hello, Sonia,” he says, then smirks. “Or should I say Dr. Rheinschild?”

This is a surprise. She hasn’t heard the name spoken aloud in years. Her heart misses a beat, but she still doesn’t let the emotion show on her face, and she chooses not to respond to his accusation—for an accusation is exactly what it is—although she knows a nonresponse is as good as an admission.

“Are you going to introduce me to your little posse?” she asks. “Or have you still not learned any manners?”

He starts with the chunky, vague-looking woman who seems out of place in this trio—although to be honest, none of them really seem to fit together.

“This is Grace Skinner. She saved my life a few weeks ago.”

“Hiya,” Grace says. She’s the only one who steps forward to force a handshake on Sonia. “I hear you saved his life too, so I guess we’re in the same club.”

Then Connor reluctantly introduces the Rewind. Sonia, however, stops him before he speaks the name.

“I know who he is.” She steps closer to Cam, peering through glasses as antique as anything else in her shop—the wage of refusing new eyes. “Hmph,” she says. “No scars at all—just seams. My compliments to your construction crew.”

He appears uncomfortable at her scrutiny, although she imagines he’s used to it. “They were surgeons, not construction workers,” he says a bit bristly.

“And they say you speak nine languages.”

“Plus I’ve been studying a few more.”

“Hmph,” she says again, irritated by the arrogant lilt in his voice. “I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that your existence is disgusting to me.”

“Understood,” he says with a resigned sigh. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”

“I won’t be the last, I’m sure—but as long as we understand each other, we’ll be fine.”

Outside a young couple walks by, engaged in conversation. Sonia watches them until she’s sure they’re not coming into the shop. They pass by and she’s relieved. It makes her realize she’s spent too much time in clear view with her visitors.

“Come in the back room,” she tells them. “Unless you want to man the register.”

“I have a lot of questions,” Connor says as he leads the others through the curtain to the back room.

“Then you’ll be disappointed, because I have no answers.”

“You’re lying,” he says, point-blank. “Why are you lying?”

That makes Sonia grin. “A little wiser than when you left, I see. Or maybe just a little more jaded.”

“Both, I guess.”

“And a little taller too. Or is it just that I’ve shrunk?”

He gives her a wiseass smirk. “Both, I guess.”

Then she catches sight of the shark on his arm. It makes her shiver, and she tries to look away, but it commands her attention. “I definitely don’t want to know about that,” she says, although she knows all about it already, from a different source.

“How are things in your basement?” Connor asks. “Still up to your old tricks?”

“I’m a creature of habit,” she tells them. “And just because the ADR fell apart doesn’t mean I have to.” Then she glances to Cam, who seems to be taking mental snapshots of everything he sees, like a spy. “Can he be trusted?” she asks Connor.

Cam answers the question himself. “Similar objectives,” he says. “Under any other circumstance, I would say no, you couldn’t trust me—but I want to take down Proactive Citizenry as much as my AWOL friend does. So for all intents and purposes, Ich bin ein AWOL.”

“Hmph.” Sonia only half believes him, but she accepts Connor’s judgment for the other half. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows, as they say.”

“The Tempest,” Cam responds as if chiming in on a game show. “Shakespeare. It’s actually misery that makes strange bedfellows, but necessity works too.”

“Fine.” Sonia grabs her cane, which leans against her desk, and taps it on the old steamer trunk in the center of the cluttered back room. “Make yourself useful and push this aside.”

Cam does so. Sonia notices Connor focused a bit deerlike on the trunk. He’s the only one who knows its significance. What it contains and what it conceals.

Once the trunk is pushed aside, Connor takes it upon himself to roll away the dusty Persian rug beneath to reveal the trapdoor. Sonia, who is far less feeble than she lets on, reaches down, pulls on the iron ring, and lifts open the door. Somewhere downstairs whispers quickly give way to silence.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. “And don’t touch anything.” She wags a finger at Grace, who’s been touching just about everything.

As Sonia stomps heavily but slowly down the steep wooden steps, she conceals a devious smile. She knows this is going to be complicated. She dreads it, but she also looks forward to it. An old woman needs some excitement in her life.

“It’s only me,” she says as she reaches the bottom step, and all her AWOLs come out of hiding. Or at least the ones who care.

“Lunch?” one of them asks.

“You just had breakfast. Don’t be a pig.”

She makes her way to a little alcove in the far corner of the cluttered maze of a basement, where a girl with stunning green eyes and gentle brown curls with amber highlights organizes a cache of first-aid supplies.

“You have visitors,” Sonia tells her.

The look on the girl’s face is too guarded to be hopeful. “What sort of visitors?”

Sonia smiles wickedly. “The angel and the devil on your shoulders, Risa. I hope you’re wise enough to know which is which.”

60 • Risa

It wasn’t coincidence that brought Risa and Connor’s lives converging once more on Akron. It was an absolute absence of other options.

In all of Risa’s desperate wanderings since being loaded on the bus to be unwound, Sonia’s basement was the only place that had any hope of being safe. The Graveyard had been purged, Audrey’s shop was a nice respite, but had her on edge every day, and as for the safe houses she’d been shuttled to in the dark, Sonia’s was the only one of which she knew the actual location.

She could backtrack and stay under the odd protection of CyFi’s commune—but she knew she wasn’t really welcomed by most of the Tyler-folk. For obvious reasons she could never feel part of that community. That left only a life on the streets, or a life in hiding alone. She’d had enough of looking over her shoulder, sleeping in Dumpsters like a fresh AWOL, just waiting to be recognized in spite of her makeover. It would only be a matter of time until someone reported her to the authorities, collected the reward, and handed her over to Proactive Citizenry, who would no doubt have many plans for her.

That left only one viable option. Sonia.

When Risa arrived a few weeks ago, there were customers in the antique shop, haggling with Sonia over an unremarkable end table. Risa strategically meandered down another aisle, marveling at how so many items could be precariously perched on one another and yet not fall—empirical evidence that Ohio is not prone to earthquakes.

Finally the couple had left, struggling with their table, for which Sonia offered no help beyond, “Mind the step; it’s crooked.” Once the rusty hinges on the door squeaked closed, Risa stepped forward, presenting herself to be noticed.

Sonia pursed her lips when she saw here there, perhaps affronted that she had snuck in unobserved. “Something I can help you find?” Sonia asked.

Risa had been a bit tickled that Sonia didn’t recognize her right away. And when she finally did, the old woman let out a howl of uncharacteristic joy and dropped her cane so she could wrap her arms around Risa.

And in that moment Risa realized it was the closest she might ever come to knowing what it felt like to be home.

Now, two weeks later, Risa finds herself playing Wendy to the Lost Boys, for lately, it seems the only AWOLs who are getting as far as Sonia’s are boys, attesting to the sad fact that more female AWOLs are falling prey to parts pirates and other bottom-feeders.

When Sonia tells Risa she has “visitors,” Risa starts up the stairs apprehensively, but she picks up her pace as that apprehension turns to excitement. There are very few people Sonia would send Risa upstairs for.

She doesn’t dare hope which of those few people it might be, because she doesn’t want disappointment to show on her face if it were someone like Hayden or Emby, both of whom she’d be happy to see, were she not hoping for something more.

She flies through the open trapdoor, almost banging her head on the edge of the floor panel, and she sees him right away. She says nothing because for an instant she’s sure it’s her imagination. That her mind has pasted Connor’s face on top of someone else’s, because she so much wants it to be him. But it’s not her imagination. It is him, and his eyes reflect her own surprise.

“Risa?”

The voice isn’t coming from Connor, and her eyes dart slightly to the right. It’s Cam. His own astonishment has already turned into a broad grin.

Risa finds her head beginning to quiver. “Cuh . . . cuh . . .” She doesn’t know which of their names to say first. The sight of the two of them in the same visual image hits her like a concussive shock and she takes a step backward, hitting the edge of the trapdoor. It slams shut an instant after Sonia cleared it. Had the woman not been faster up the stairs than she had been down, it would have crushed her skull.

Risa can’t reconcile what she’s seeing: These two separate parts of her life juxtaposed upon each other. It feels as if the universe itself has betrayed her. Exposed her, leaving her raw and vulnerable to all attacks. She didn’t leave either Connor or Cam on the best of terms. Suddenly defensive, her surprise at seeing them decays into suspicion.

“Wh-what’s going on here?”

Cam, still dazed by the sight of her, takes a step forward, only to be fully eclipsed by Connor stepping in front of him, not even aware that he had done it. “Aren’t you even gonna say hello?” Connor asks cautiously.

“Hi,” she says, with such weak impotence she’s angry at herself. She clears her throat, and only now notices there’s someone else here as well. A girl she doesn’t know, who, for the moment, is content to observe.

With the prospects of this grand reunion fizzling like wet fireworks, Sonia raps her cane on the ground in frustration to get their attention. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she says. “Give us a love scene worthy of the ages, or at least a viral meme.”

“Happy to oblige,” says Cam, so arrogantly Risa wants to slap him.

“She wasn’t talking to you,” Connor says with such dismissive disdain, Risa wouldn’t mind slapping him, too.

This isn’t how this moment was supposed to be! Over these many months, she had pictured her reunion with Connor a dozen times in a dozen different ways. None of them were so rife with ice-cracking unease. As for Cam, she had thought she’d never see him again, so never entertained the idea of a reunion. Oddly, she finds herself more pleased to see him than she ever expected she would. It steals Connor’s thunder, and a part of her resents both of them for it. They shouldn’t be allowed to muddy each other’s moments. The clouding of her emotions should not be permitted by a sane, compassionate universe. But then, when has life deigned to show her any compassion?

Cam has come out from behind Connor’s eclipsing presence now. They stand there side by side as if waiting for Risa to choose. Suddenly Risa realizes that she has no idea how this is going to play out. She finds that as terrifying as being caught in a parts pirate’s trap.

It’s the girl—that unknown quantity in the room—who comes to her rescue.

“Hiya, I’m Grace,” she says, pushing between Connor and Cam, grabbing Risa’s hand and vigorously shaking it. “You can call me Grace or Gracie—I don’t mind either way—or even Eleanor, ’cause that’s my middle name. It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Ward. Can I call you Risa? I know all about you from my brother, who kind of worshipped you—well, he worshipped Connor more, but you were there too, although you looked different then, but I guess that’s on purpose. Smart to change your eye color. People think it’s the hair, but it’s the eyes that make a person look different.”

“Yes—that’s what the stylist who did it said,” says Risa, a little flustered by Grace’s barrage of enthusiasm.

“So is there stuff for us to eat in that basement down there, ’cause I’m starved?”

It’s only later that Risa realizes how effectively Grace’s rude intrusion completely defused an explosive situation. Almost as if she had planned it that way.