UnSouled (17 page)

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A week after Connor’s escape, a visitor shows up at Argent’s door just before he’s about to leave for his morning shift.

“Hello,” the man says. His voice is a little bit ragged and his smile suspiciously broad. “Would you happen to be Argent Skinner?”

“Depends on who’s asking.” Argent figures this might be one of the feds, come to tie up loose ends. He wonders if he’s going to be arrested after all. He wonders if he cares.

“May I come in?”

The man steps forward a bit, and now Argent can see something that was hidden by the oblique morning light. There’s something wrong with the right half of the man’s face. It’s peeling and infected.

“What’s the deal with your face?” Argent asks, point-blank.

“I could ask the same of you,” he answers.

“Gardening accident,” Argent volunteers.

“Sunburn,” the man counters—although to Argent it looks more like a radiation burn. A person would have to lie beneath an unforgiving sky for hours to get a burn that bad.

“You oughta take care of that,” Argent says, not even trying to mask his disgust.

“I will when time allows.” The man steps forward again. “May I come in? There’s something I need to discuss with you. Something of mutual interest and benefit.”

Argent is not so stupid as to let a stranger into his house at the crack of dawn—especially one who looks as wrong as this man does. He blocks the threshold and takes a stance that would resist any attempt for the man to barge his way in. “State your business right there,” Argent tells him.

“Very well.” The man smiles again, but his smile seems like a silent curse. Like the smile Argent gives people in the ten-items-or-less line who violate the limit. The smile he gives them while wiping just a little bit of snot on their apples.

“I happened to catch that picture you posted of you and Connor Lassiter.”

Argent sighs. “It was a fake, all right? I already told the police.” Argent steps back to close the door, but the man moves forward, planting his foot in just the right spot to keep the door from budging.

“The authorities may have fallen for your story—mainly because they truly believe that Lassiter is dead—but I know better.”

Argent doesn’t know what to make of this. Half of him wants to run, but the other half wants to know what this guy is all about.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Just like you, I caught him, yet he managed to slither away.
And just like you, I want to make him pay for what he’s done.”

“Yeah?” Now Argent begins to get the slightest glimmer of hope. Maybe his life won’t be all about ringing up groceries in this town.

“Now can I come in?”

Argent steps back and lets him enter. The man closes the door gently and looks around, clearly unimpressed by the lived-in look of the house.

“So did he screw up your face too?” Argent asks.

The man glares at him, but then his gaze softens. “Indirectly. This was the fault of his accomplice. He left me unconscious by the side of the road, and when morning came, I roasted in the Arizona sun. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to.”

“Sunburn,” says Argent. “So you were telling the truth.”

“I’m an honest man,” Nelson says. “And I’ve been wronged, just like you. And just like you, I want to settle the score. That’s why you’re going to help me find Connor and his little friend.”

“And my sister,” Argent adds. “She took off with Connor.”

The idea of going after Connor and Grace had crossed Argent’s mind, but not seriously. It’s not the kind of thing you do alone. But now he wouldn’t be alone. Then it occurs to Argent what this man is.

“Are you some kind of parts pirate?”

That smile again. “The best there is.” He tips an imaginary hat. “Jasper T. Nelson, at your service.”

Parts pirates, Argent knows, are like cowboys of old. Lawless bounty hunters who play by their own rules, bringing in AWOL Unwinds and collecting official rewards—or better yet—selling those Unwinds for more money on the black market. Argent can see himself living life on the edge like that. He lets the idea linger, trying on the label like a new pair of jeans. Argent Skinner, parts pirate.

“The fact is, you’re in a lot of trouble, son. You just don’t
know it yet,” Nelson tells him. “You may think the authorities are done with you, but tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, someone in some lab is going to run a routine forensic analysis of that picture you took, and they’re going to discover that it’s not a fake after all.”

Argent tries to swallow, but his throat is too dry. “Yeah?”

“Then you will be arrested. And interrogated. And interrogated some more. You will be charged with obstruction of justice, harboring a known criminal, and maybe even conspiracy to commit terrorism. You’ll end up in prison for a good long time. You might even get unwound if one of those new laws pass allowing the unwinding of criminals.”

Argent feels the blood drain from his sore face. He has to sit down, but doesn’t, because he’s afraid he might not have the strength to get up. So instead he locks his knees and sways a little bit on feet that suddenly feel too far away from the floor.

And all this because of Connor Lassiter.

“I’m sure if they interrogate you, you’ll sing to them everything Lassiter told you. But I would much prefer it if you sang for me instead. And you do have things to sing about, don’t you?”

Argent racks his brain for anything useful Connor might have said, but nothing comes to mind. Still, that won’t be what the parts pirate wants to hear.

“He told me some stuff,” Argent says. Then more forcefully, “Yeah. He told me stuff. Maybe enough to figure out where he’s going.”

Nelson laughs gently. “You’re lying.” He pats the good side of Argent’s face. “That’s all right. I’m sure there are things you know that you don’t even know you know. And besides, I need an associate. Someone to whom catching Connor Lassiter is personal, because that’s the only kind of person I can trust. I would have preferred someone a bit
higher on the evolutionary ladder, but one takes what one can get.”

“I’m not stupid,” Argent tells him, intentionally avoiding the word “ain’t” to prove it. “I’m just unlucky.”

“Well, today your luck has changed.”

Perhaps it has
, Argent thinks.
Maybe this partnership is fated
. The right side of Nelson’s face is ruined, as is the left side of Argent’s. They both bear the marks of their struggle with the Akron AWOL. It makes them a team perfectly suited for the mission.

Nelson looks toward the window, as if checking to see if the coast is still clear. “Here’s what you’re going to do, Argent. You’re going to fill a backpack with only the things you need, and you’ll do it in less than five minutes. Then you’ll come with me to take down the Akron AWOL once and for all. What do you say to that?”

Argent offers a feeble smile on the side of his face that still can. “Yo-ho, yo-ho,” Argent says. “A pirate’s life for me.”

Part Three

Sky-Fallers

Documented cases of cellular memory being transferred to heart transplant recipients:

CASE 1) A Spanish-speaking vegetarian receives the heart of an English speaker and begins using English words that were not part of his vocabulary but were words habitually used by the donor. The recipient also begins craving, and eventually eating, meat and greasy foods, which were mainstays of the donor’s diet.

CASE 2) An eight-year-old girl receives the heart of a ten-year-old girl who was murdered. The recipient begins having nightmares about the murder, remembering details that only the victim could know, such as when and how it happened and the identity of the murderer. Her entire testimony turns out to be true, and the murderer is caught.

CASE 3) A three-year-old Arab child receives the heart of a Jewish child, and upon waking, asks for a Jewish candy the child had never heard of before.

CASE 4) A man in his forties receives a heart from a teenaged boy and suddenly develops an intense love of classical music. The donor had been killed in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case as he died.

CASE 5) A five-year-old boy receives the heart of a three-year-old. He talks to him like an imaginary friend, calling him Timmy. After some investigation, the parents discovered the name of the donor was Thomas. But his family called him Timmy.

A total of 150 anecdotal cases have been documented by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, PhD.

http://www.paulpearsall.com/info/press/index.html

The Rheinschilds

She’s worried about him. He’s always been obsessed with their work, but she’s never seen him like this. The hours he spends in his research lab, the dark circles beneath his eyes, all the mumbling in his sleep. He’s losing weight, and no wonder; he seems to never eat anymore.

“He’s like this superbrain with no body,” says Austin, his research assistant, who has grown from an emaciated beanpole to a much more healthy weight since Janson hired him six months ago.

“Will you tell me what he’s working on?” Sonia asks.

“He said you didn’t want any part of it.”

“I don’t. But I have a right to know what he’s doing, don’t I?” It’s so like Janson to take everything she says literally. Shutting her out to spite her, like a child.

“He says he’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

It’s no sense trying to get anything out of the boy—he’s got the loyalty of a German shepherd.

She supposes this obsession of Janson’s is better than the despair he felt before. At least now he has something to focus on, something to take his thoughts away from the cascade of events that the Unwind Accord has brought about. Their new reality includes clinics that have popped up nationwide like mushrooms on an overwatered lawn, each of them advertising young, healthy parts. “Live to 120 and beyond!” the ads say. “Out with the old and in with the new!” No one asks where the parts are coming from, but everyone knows. And now it’s not just ferals that are being unwound—the Juvenile Authority has actually come up with a form that parents can use to send their “incorrigible” teen off for unwinding. At first she doubted anyone would use the form. She was convinced its very existence would finally spark the outcry she’d been waiting for. It didn’t. In fact, within a month, there was a kid in their own neighborhood who had been taken away to be unwound.

“Well, I think they did the right thing,” one of her neighbors confided. “That kid was a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Sonia doesn’t talk to either of those neighbors anymore.

Day to day, Sonia watches her husband waste away, and none of her pleas for him to take care of himself get through. She even threatens to leave him, but they both know it’s an empty threat.

“It’s almost ready,” he tells her one evening as he moves his fork around a plate of pasta, barely putting any into his mouth. “This’ll do it, Sonia—this will change everything.”

But he still won’t share with her exactly what he’s doing. Her only clue comes from his research assistant. Not from anything the boy says, but because he began his employment with three fingers on his left hand. And now he has five.

18 • Lev

He bounds through a dense forest canopy, high up where the leaves touch the sky. It’s night, but the moon is as bright as the sun. There is no earth, only trees. Or maybe it’s that the ground matters so little, it might as well not exist. Stirred by a warm breeze, the forest canopy rolls like ocean waves beneath the clear sky.

There is a creature leaping through the foliage in front of him, turning back to look at Lev every once in a while. It has huge cartoonish eyes in its small furred face. It’s not fleeing
from Lev, he realizes; it’s leading him.
This way
, it seems to say with those soulful eyes that reflect twin images of the moon.

Where are you leading me
? Lev wants to ask, but he can’t speak. Even if he could, he knows he won’t get an answer.

Branch to branch Lev leaps with an inborn skill that he did not possess in life. This is how he knows he’s dead. The experience is too clear, too vivid to be anything else. When he was alive, Lev never cared much for climbing trees. As a child, it was discouraged by his parents. Tithes need to protect their precious bodies, he was told, and climbing trees can lead to broken bones.

Broken.

He was broken in a car accident and left with deep damage inside. That damage must have been worse than anyone thought. His last memory is a cloudy recollection of pulling up to the eastern gate of the Arápache Rez. He remembers hearing his own voice telling the guard something, but he can’t remember what it was. His fever was soaring by then. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was unconscious before he learned whether or not the guard would let them in.

But none of that matters now. Death has a way of making the concerns of the living feel insignificant. Like the ground below, if indeed there is ground.

He leaps again, his pace getting faster. There is a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat. The branches seem to appear right where he needs them to be.

Finally he reaches the very edge of the forest at the very edge of the world. Star-filled darkness above and below. He looks for the creature that was leading him, but it is nowhere to be seen. Then he realizes with a dark sort of wonder that there never was a creature.
He
is the creature, projecting his anima before him as he launches through the treetops.

Up above, the full moon is so clear, so large, that Lev feels he could reach out and grab it. Then he realizes that is exactly what he is meant to do. Bring down the moon.

It will be a devastating thing if he plucks the moon from the sky. Tides will change, and oceans will churn in consternation. Lands will flood, while bays will turn to deserts. Earthquakes will re-form the mountains, and people everywhere will have to adapt to a new reality. If he tears down the moon, everything will change.