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"You're all here because you were marked for unwinding but managed to escape, and, thanks to the efforts of many people, you've found your way here. This will be your home until you turn seventeen and become a legal adult. That's the good news. The bad news is that they know all about us. They know where we are and what we're doing. They let us stay here because they don't see us as a threat."
And then Connor smiles.
"Well, we're going to change that."
As Connor talks, he makes eye contact with every one of them, making sure he remembers each of their faces. Making sure each of them feels recognized. Unique. Important.
"Some of you have been through enough and just want to survive to seventeen," he tells them. "I don't blame you. But I know that some of you are ready to risk everything to end unwinding once and for all."
"Yeah," screams a kid from the back, and pumping his fist in the air he begins chanting, "Happy Jack! Happy Jack!" A few kids join in, until everyone realizes this is not what Connor wants. The chants quickly die down.
"We will not be blowing up chop shops," he says. "We're not going to feed into their image of us as violent kids who are better off unwound. We will think before we act—and that's going to make it difficult for them. We'll infiltrate harvest camps and unite Unwinds across the country. We'll free kids from buses, before they even arrive. We will have a voice, and we will use it. We will make ourselves heard." Now the crowd can't hold back their cheers, and this time Connor allows it. These kids have been beaten down by life, but there's an energy now in the Graveyard that's beginning to fill each and even' one of them. Connor remembers that feeling. He had it when he first arrived here.
"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."
* * *
Meanwhile, excitement is also building at the Dunfee ranch. The buzz of conversations around the garden grows to a roar as more and more people connect. Emby shares his experiences with a girl who has the left match to his right lung. A woman talks about a movie she never saw, with a man who remembers the friends he never saw it with. And as the Admiral and his wife watch, something amazing happens.
The conversations begin to converge!
Like water vapor crystallizing into the magnificent, unique form of a snowflake, the babble of voices coalesces into a single conversation.
"Look over there! He fell off that wall when he was—"
"—six! Yes—I remember!"
"He had to wear a wrist brace for months."
"The wrist still hurts when it rains."
"He shouldn't have climbed the wall."
"I had to—I was being chased by a bull."
"I was so scared!"
"The flowers in that field—do you smell them?"
"They remind me of that one summer—"
"—when my asthma wasn't so bad—"
"—and I felt like I could do anything."
"Anything!"
"And the world was just waiting for me!"
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.
