Unwind (Unwind Dystology, #1)

by Neal Shusterman

“My uncle got the heart of a tithe and now people say he can perform miracles.” “I know this woman who got a tithe’s ear. She heard a baby crying a block away, and rescued it from a fire!” “We are Holy Communion.” “We are manna from Heaven.” “We are the piece of God in everyone.”

Lev knows there’s another reason for the high triglyceride level. It’s not actually triglyceride in his bloodstream at all, but a similar compound. One that’s a little less stable.

It was an expression of all the things they felt inside. It was the spirit, and the nature, and the manifestation of all they had become. They weren’t just messengers, they were the message. This is what they filled Lev’s mind with, and it was no different than the deadly stuff they filled his blood with. It was twisted. It was wrong. And yet it suited Lev just fine.

Connor knows they would take this further if they could—but not here, not in a place like this. It will never happen for them, but somehow he’s content in knowing that in some other place and time it would have.

In a few minutes he hears her playing, the strains of her music pouring forth, filling Happy Jack with the upbeat, pulse-pounding soundtrack of the damned.

No one knows how it happens. No one knows how it’s done. The harvesting of Unwinds is a secret medical ritual that stays within the walls of each harvesting clinic in the nation. In this way it is not unlike death itself, for no one knows what mysteries lie beyond those secret doors, either. What does it take to unwind the unwanted? It takes twelve surgeons, in teams of two, rotating in and out as their medical specialty is needed. It takes nine surgical assistants and four nurses. It takes three hours.

Already Roland feels his limbs starting to go numb. He swallows hard. “I hate this. I hate you. I hate all of you.” “I understand.”

Surgeons leave, new ones arrive. The new ones take an intense interest in his abdomen. He looks toward his toes but can’t see them. Instead he sees a surgical assistant cleaning the lower half of the table.

“I’m scared,” he says. “I know,” says the nurse. “I want you all to go to Hell.” “That’s natural.” One team leaves; another comes in. They take an intense interest in his chest.

And now the band has begun to play again. They’re playing the national anthem, just like they do at the funerals of great Americans. The guards and the staff can’t stop this. They try but they can’t—and they’re so busy trying to control the crowd, they let Lev slip right past onto the red carpet.

Every terrible is now a terror. The guards fire, but there are simply too many kids, and not enough tranq bullets. For every kid that goes down, there’s another kid that doesn’t. The guards are quickly overwhelmed, and once they are, the mob starts storming the front gate.

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us… Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

The sling shifts, exposing more of his new arm—enough to reveal the tattoo. He tries to hide it, but it’s too late. She sees it. She knows it. And when she meets Connor’s eye, he looks away in shame. “Connor…?” “I promise,” he says. “I promise I will never touch you with this hand.”

Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No—the soul of a man.

“I don’t know what happens to our consciousness when we’re unwound,” says Connor. “I don’t even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this.” He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. “We have a right to our lives!” The kids go wild. “We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!” The cheers reach fever pitch. “We deserve a world where both those things are possible—and it’s our job to help make that world.”

The Admiral grips his wife’s arm. Neither can hold back their tears—not tears of sorrow but of awe. If the rest of his heart were to stop now, in this moment, the Admiral would die more content than any man on Earth. He looks at the crowd and says weakly, “H-Harlan?” Every eye in the garden turns toward him. A man raises his hand to his throat, touching it gently, and says in a voice that is most definitely Harlan Dunfee’s, just a bit older, “Dad?” The Admiral is so overwhelmed by emotion he cannot speak, and so his wife looks at the man before her, at the people beside her, at the crowd all around her, and she says: “Welcome home.”