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"Take it easy," Connor says. "Don't make it worse."
The kid pulls out of Connor's grip. "Get off me! I don't need your stinkin' help." The kid storms away. Connor shakes his head. Was he ever that belligerent?
Up ahead, the huge double doors are slid open to reveal another room of the warehouse that the Unwinds have never seen. This one is filled with crates—old airline packing crates, designed, both in shape and durability, to transport goods by air freight. Connor immediately realizes what they're for—and why he and the others have been warehoused so close to an airport. Wherever they're going, they're going as air cargo.
"Girls to the left, boys to the right. Move it! Move it!"
There's grumbling, but no direct defiance. Connor wonders how many kids get what's going on.
"Four to a crate! Boys with boys, girls with girls. Move it! Move it!"
Now everyone begins to scramble around, trying to team up with their preferred travel companions, but the Fatigues have neither patience nor time for it. They randomly create groups of four and push them toward the crates.
That's when Connor notices how dangerously close he is to Roland—and it's no accident. Roland moved close to him on purpose. Connor can just imagine it. Pitch black and close quarters. If he's in a crate with Roland, then he'll be dead before takeoff.
Connor tries to move away, but a Fatigue grabs Roland, Connor, and two of Roland's known collaborators. "You four. That crate over there!"
Connor tries not to let his panic show; he doesn't want Roland to see. He should have prepared his own weapon, like the one Roland certainly has concealed on him now. He should have prepared for the inevitability of a life-or-death confrontation, but he hadn't, and now his options are limited.
No time for thinking this through, so he lets impulse take over and gives in to his fighting instincts. He turns to one of Roland's henchmen and punches him in the face hard enough to draw blood, maybe even break his nose. The force of the punch spins the kid around, but before he can come back for a counterassault, a Fatigue grabs Connor and smashes him back against the concrete wall. The Fatigue doesn't know it, but this is exactly what Connor wanted.
"You picked the wrong day to do that, kid!" says the Fatigue, holding him against the wall with his rifle.
"What are you gonna do, kill me? I thought you were trying to save us."
That gives the Fatigue a moment's pause.
"Hey!" yells another Fatigue. "Forget him! We gotta load them up." Then he grabs another kid to complete the foursome with Roland and his henchmen, sending them toward a crate. They don't even care about the one kid's bleeding nose.
The Fatigue holding Connor against the wall sneers at him. "The sooner you're in a box, the sooner you're somebody else's problem."
"Nice socks," says Connor.
They put Connor in a four-by-eight crate that already has three kids waiting to complete their quartet. The crate is scaled even before he can see who's inside with him, but as long as it's not Roland, it will do.
"We're all gonna die in here," says a nasal voice, followed by a wet sniff that doesn't sound like it clears much of anything. Connor knows this kid by his mucous. He's not sure of his name—everyone just calls him "the Mouth Breather," since his nose is perpetually stuffed. Emby, for short. He's the one always obsessively reading his comic book, but he can't quite do that in here.
"Don't talk like that," says Connor. "If the Fatigues wanted to kill us, they would have done it a long time ago."
The Mouth Breather has foul breath that's filling up the whole crate. "Maybe they got found out. Maybe the Juvey-cops are on their way, and the only way to save themselves is to destroy the evidence!"
Connor has little patience for whiners. It reminds him too much of his younger brother. The one his parents chose to keep. "Shut up, Emby, or I swear I'm going to take off my sock, shove it in your stinky mouth, and you'll finally have to figure out a way to breathe through your nose!"
"Let me know if you need an extra sock," says a voice just across from him. "Hi, Connor. It's Hayden."
"Hey, Hayden." Connor reaches out and finds Hayden's shoe, squeezing it—the closest thing to a greeting in the claustrophobic darkness. "So, who's lucky number four?" No answer. "Sounds like we must be traveling with a mime." Another long pause, then Connor hears a deep, accented voice.
"Diego."
"Diego doesn't talk much," says Hayden.
"I figured."
They wait in silence, punctuated by the Mouth Breather's snorts.
"I gotta go to the bathroom," Emby mumbles.
"You should have thought of that before you left," says Hayden, putting on his best mother voice. "How many times do we have to tell you? Always use the potty before climbing into a shipping crate."
