UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(14)

“Oh, I get it,” says Timothy. “It’s like a scary movie, you know? You can have fun with it because you know it’s not real no matter how scared it makes you.” Then he thinks about it a bit more. “But getting unwound is real. It’s not like we’re going to walk out of the theater and go home. It’s not like I’m going to get off a plane and be in Disneyland.”

“Tell you what,” Miracolina says, before Timothy can drag himself back into his pit of spider-filled despair. “Let’s watch one of those scary movies and get it all out of our systems before we get to harvest camp.”

Timothy nods obediently. “Yeah, sure, okay.”

But as she scrolls through all the preprogrammed movies, none of them are scary. They’re all family films and comedies.

“It’s okay,” says Timothy. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like scary movies anyway.”

In a few minutes, they’re on the interstate making good time. Timothy contents himself with video games to keep his mind from going to dark places, and Miracolina puts in her earphones, listening to her own eclectic mix of music, rather than the van’s vapid pop tunes. There are 2,129 songs in her iChip, and she’s determined to listen to as many as she can before the day she enters the divided state.

About two hours and thirty songs later, the van exits the interstate and turns down a scenic road winding through dense woods. “Just half an hour now,” Chauffeur-Claus tells them. “We made good time!”

Then, as they come around a bend, he slams on the brakes, and the van screeches to a halt.

Miracolina takes off her earphones. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Stay here,” orders Chauffeur-Claus, no longer jolly, and he jumps out of the van.

Timothy already has his nose pressed against the window, looking out. “This can’t be good.”

“No,” agrees Miracolina. “It can’t.”

Just off the road in a ditch is another Wood Hollow Harvest Camp van, but this one is overturned, wheels to the sky. There’s no telling how long it has been there.

“He must have blown a tire or something, and skidded off the road,” says Timothy. But none of the tires look blown.

“We should call for help,” says Miracolina—but no one brings a phone to harvest camp, so neither she nor Timothy has one.

Just then there’s a commotion outside. Half a dozen people dressed in black with faces hidden by ski masks come leaping out of the woods from all directions. The chauffeur is hit with a tranq bullet to the neck and goes down like an overstuffed rag doll.

“Lock the door!” shouts Miracolina, and doesn’t wait. She pushes Timothy out of the way to get to the driver’s unlocked door—but she’s not fast enough. Just as she reaches for the lock, the door is pulled open, and the assailant hits the button that pops all the locks. All the van’s doors are pulled open at once by the masked attackers. Clearly these attackers have done this before and have gotten good at it. Timothy screams as hands reach in, pulling him out. He tries to wriggle free, but it’s useless. If his fear is a web, then the spiders have got him.

Two more figures reach for Miracolina, and she drops to the floor, kicking at them.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

Her fear, which had been so well under control, explodes from her now, because this violation of her journey is a far greater unknown than harvest camp. She kicks, and bites, and claws in terror and outrage, but it’s no use—because in the end, she hears the telltale pffft of a tranq gun firing. She feels the sharp jab of the tranq bullet as it embeds itself in her arm, and the world goes dark as she spirals helplessly into that timeless place where all sedated souls go.





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“You don’t know me, but you know someone like me. I was diagnosed with liver cancer the same week I got my acceptance letter to Harvard. My parents and I didn’t think it was a problem, but when we talked to our doctor, we found out there was an organ shortage, and livers were in short supply. They told me I’d have to be on a waiting list. Now, three months later, my name still hasn’t come up, and that acceptance letter? Well, I guess my education is going to have to wait.

“And now the same people who lowered the age restriction on unwinding want to have a six-month waiting period once parents sign an unwind order, in case they change their minds. Six months? I won’t be here in six months.”

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Waking up after being tranq’d is not a pleasant experience. With consciousness comes a splitting headache, a terrible taste in one’s mouth, and the disturbing feeling that something has been stolen from you.

Miracolina awakes to the sound of someone crying beside her, begging for mercy. She recognizes the voice as Timothy’s. He’s definitely not the kind of boy built to handle something like this. She can’t see him, though, because her eyes are covered by a thick blindfold.

“It’s all right, Timothy,” she calls to him. “Whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay.” Hearing her voice makes his pleas and sobs settle into whimpers.

Miracolina shifts to feel the position of her body. She’s sitting upright, and her neck aches from the position in which it had hung while she slept. Her hands are behind her back, tied together. Her legs are tied to the chair she sits in. Not painfully, but tight enough to ensure she won’t break free.