UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(120)

Connor had stopped responding in the middle of the battle, and the Juvies had, one by one, taken out the power generators, plunging the ComBom, and every other jet, into darkness.

By midnight it’s over. Through the windows of the Com-Bom, Hayden can see the heavy transports, the battering ram, the riot trucks, and most of the Juvey squad cars pulling out: Mission accomplished.

Hayden thinks that maybe they’ve been forgotten—that they can sit it out for a few more hours, then make a break for freedom. But the Juvenile Authority is smarter than that.

“We know you’re in there,” they shout through a bullhorn. “Come out, and we promise no one will get hurt.”

“What do we do?” the kids around him ask.

“Nothing,” Hayden says. “We do nothing.” Being that the ComBom was the communications center and brain of the Graveyard, it’s one of the few crafts with all its outer doors in place and in working order. It’s also one of the few crafts that can only be opened from the inside. When the battle began, Hayden had sealed the airtight hatch, leaving them as self-contained and cut off as a submarine. Their only defense is their isolation and a submachine gun Connor insisted that Hayden have. He doesn’t even know how to fire the thing.

“You’re in a hopeless situation,” the Juvies yell through their bullhorn. “You’ll only make matters worse for yourselves.”

“What could be worse than all of us getting unwound?” Lizbeth asks.

Then Tad, who from the very beginning has been hanging close to Hayden as if they’re joined at the hip, says, “They won’t unwind you, Hayden. You’re seventeen.”

“Details, details,” Hayden says. “Don’t bother me with details.”

“They’ll storm us!” warns Nasim. “I’ve seen it on TV. They’ll blow off the door and gas us, and a SWAT team will drag us out!”

The others look nervously to Hayden to see what he’ll say. “The riot police have already left,” Hayden points out. “We’re not important enough to storm. We’re just cleanup. I’ll bet they just left the fat, stupid Juvies to wait for us.” And the kids laugh. He’s glad that they can still laugh.

Regardless of IQ and body mass, the Juvies aren’t going away. “All right,” they announce. “We can wait as long as you can.”

And they do.

At dawn they’re still there—just three squad cars and a small gray transport van. The media, which the cops held back through the raid, are now camped out just fifty yards away, their antennas and satellite dishes high.

Hayden and his holdout Whollies have spent the night dozing on and off. Now the sight of the media gives some of them a surreal sort of hope.

“If we go out there,” Tad says, “we’ll be on the news. Our parents will see us. Maybe they’ll do something.”

“Like what?” asks Lizbeth. “Sign a second unwind order? You only need one.”

At seven fifteen, the sun clears the mountains, heralding another scorcher, and the ComBom begins to roast. They manage to scrounge up a few water bottles, but not enough for fifteen kids who are already beginning to sweat out more than there is to take in. By eight o’clock, the temperature hits one hundred, and Hayden knows this can’t last. So he comes back to his favorite question, but this time it isn’t rhetorical.

“I want you all to listen to me and think about your answer to this,” he tells them. He waits until he’s sure he has all their attention, then says:

“Would you rather die . . . or would you rather be unwound?”

They all look to one another. Some put their heads in their hands. Some sob dry tears because they’re too dehydrated to cry. Hayden silently counts to twenty, asks the question again, then waits for the answers.

Esme, their best password-cracking hacker, is the first to break through the firewall of silence. “Die,” she says. “No question.”

And Nasim says, “Die.”

And Lizbeth says, “Die.”

And the answers start to come faster.

“Die.”

“Die.”

“Die.”

Everyone answers, and not a single one of them chooses unwinding.

“Even if there is such a thing as ‘living in a divided state,’ ” Esme says, “if we get unwound, the Juvies win. We can’t let them win.”

And so, as the temperature soars past 110 degrees, Hayden leans back against the bulkhead and does something he hasn’t done since he was little. He says the Lord’s Prayer. Funny how some things you never forget.

“Our father, who art in heaven . . .”

Tad and several others are quick to join in. “Hallowed be thy name . . .”

Nasim begins to recite an Islamic prayer, and Lizbeth covers her eyes, chanting the Shema in Hebrew. Death, as they say, doesn’t just make all the world kin, it makes all religions one.

“Do you think they’ll just let us die?” Tad asks. “Won’t they try to save us?”

Hayden doesn’t want to answer him, because he knows the answer is no. From the Juvies’ point of view, if they die, all they lose are kids no one wanted anyway. All they lose are parts.

“With the news vans out there,” suggests Lizbeth, “maybe our deaths will stand for something. People will remember that we chose death over unwinding.”