—Paid for by the Coalition of Parents for a Safer Tomorrow

* * *

Connor immediately takes the secret artifact to the back room. He’s always had an uncanny skill with mechanics, but this time, he doesn’t even dare to open the casing for fear of doing something irreparable.

“We have to get this device into the right hands,” says Connor. “Someone who knows what to do with it.”

“And,” points out Risa, “someone who isn’t so tied to the current system that they’d rather destroy it than put it to use.”

“Some trick that’ll be,” says Grace.

Sonia hobbles into the back room and catches the three of them still staring at the printer. “It’s not a religious relic,” she announces. “Get over it.”

“Well, it is sacred in its own way,” says Risa.

Sonia waves her hand dismissively. “Tools are neither demonic nor divine. It’s all about who wields them.” Then she points her cane to the old trunk, indicating it’s time to descend into the shadows of her basement.

Grace pushes the trunk aside. She grunts as she does it. “What’s in this thing anyway? Lead?”

Risa looks to Connor, and Connor looks away. They both know what’s in there. He doubts even Risa knows how heavily it weighs on his heart. Much more heavily than the weight of the letters in the trunk. He wonders how many letters from how many kids are in there to make it weigh so much.

When the trunk is out of the way, Sonia rolls away the rug beneath it, revealing the trapdoor. Connor reaches down and lifts it up.

“I’m opening my store now,” Sonia tells them. “Like it or not, I gotta make a living, so down you go. You know the drill. Mind the noise, and don’t for once think you’re too smart to be caught.” Then she points to the printer. “And take that with you. I don’t want some nosy-Nellie poking around back here and seeing it on display.”

• • •

Connor has not been in Sonia’s basement for almost two years. He came here on his second day AWOL. He had taken a tithe hostage, tranq’d a Juvey-cop with his own gun, and gotten caught up with an orphan girl who’d escaped from a bus headed to a harvest camp. What a mismatched band of fools they had been! Connor still feels the fool from time to time, but so much has changed, he can barely even remember the troubled kid he used to be. Now Lev—once an innocent kid brainwashed to want his own unwinding—was an old soul in a body that had stopped growing. Risa, who at first just scrambled to survive, had taken on Proactive Citizenry on national TV—but not before having her spine shattered, and then replaced against her will. And as for Connor—he had taken charge of the world’s largest secret sanctuary for AWOL Unwinds . . . only to discover that it wasn’t so secret after all. The memory of the Graveyard takedown is still a fresh wound in his soul. He had fought tooth and nail—valiantly, some might say—but in the end, the Juvenile authority won and sent hundreds of kids to harvest camp.

Kids just like the ones who now occupy Sonia’s basement.

Connor knows it’s crazy, but he feels he somehow let these kids down too, that day in the Graveyard. As he descends behind Risa, he feels apprehension and a vague kind of shame that just makes him angry. He’s got nothing to be ashamed of. What happened at the Graveyard was beyond his control. And then there was Starkey, who double-crossed him and flew off with his storks in the only means of escape. No, Connor has nothing to be ashamed of . . . so why, as kids begin coming out of the basement shadows, can’t he look any of them in the eye?

“Déjà vu?” asks Risa, when she hears him take a deep, shuddering breath.

“Something like that.”

Risa, who has already spent a few weeks helping Sonia, knows all the players down here. She tries to smooth the way for Connor. The kids are either starstruck or threatened by his presence. The resident alpha—a tall meatless kid named Beau—is quick to urinate on his territory by saying, “So you’re the Akron AWOL? I thought you’d look . . . healthier.”

Connor’s not quite sure what that means, and the kid probably isn’t either. While Connor could make an enjoyable pastime of challenging Beau’s bogus sense of testosterone supremacy, he decides it’s not worth the effort.

“What’s that you’re holding?” asks an innocent-looking thirteen-year-old who reminds Connor a little bit of Lev, back in the days before Lev grew his hair long and got jaded.

“Just an old printer,” says Connor. Grace chuckles at that, but doesn’t speak of what she knows. Instead she goes around introducing herself and shaking hands, even with kids who would prefer not to shake hands with anyone.

“An old printer?” says Beau. “Like we need more junk down here.”

“Yeah, well, it has sentimental value.”

Beau hmmphs dismissively and saunters off. Connor suppresses the urge to stick out his foot and trip him.

Connor sets the printer down on a shelf, knowing if he treats it with too much care and attention, the smarter kids will figure something out. Right now, the fewer people who know about it, the better. At least until they can figure out a way to let everyone know about it.

“They’re good kids,” Risa tells Connor. “Of course, they’ve got issues, or they wouldn’t be here.”

Regardless of how much he loves Risa, he can’t help but bristle a little. “I know how to deal with AWOLs. I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”