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There are almost thirty kids here when they arrive, many of them are kids Risa and Connor had come across over the past few weeks. This is a holding tank, she realizes, a place where all the kids are warehoused in preparation for some final journey. There are chains on the doors to keep anyone unwanted out, and to keep anyone too rebellious in. There are space heaters that are useless, since all the heat is lost to the high warehouse roof. There's only one bathroom with a broken lock and, unlike many of the safe houses, there's no shower, so personal hygiene is put on hold the moment they arrive. Put all that together with a gang of scared, angry kids, and you've got a powder keg waiting to explode. Perhaps that's why the people who run the show all carry guns.
There are four men and three women in charge, all of them militarized versions of the folks who, like Sonia, run the safe houses. Everyone calls them "the Fatigues"—not just because they have a penchant toward khaki military clothing, but also because they always seem exhausted. Even so, they have a high-tension determination about them that Risa admires.
A handful of new kids arrives almost every day. Risa watches each group of arrivals with interest, and notices that Connor does too. She knows why.
"You're looking for Lev too, aren't you?" She finally says to him.
He shrugs. "Maybe I'm just looking for the Akron AWOL, like everyone else."
That makes Risa chuckle. Even in the safe houses they had heard the inflated rumors of an AWOL from Akron who escaped from a Juvey-cop by turning his own tranq pistol against him. "Maybe he's on his way here!" kids would whisper around the warehouse, like they were talking about a celebrity. Risa has no idea how the rumor started, since it was never in the news. She's also a bit annoyed that she's not included in the rumor. It ought to be a Bonnie-and-CIyde kind of thing. The rumor mill is definitely sexist.
"So are you ever going to tell them you're the Akron AWOL?" she quietly asks Connor.
"I don't want that kind of attention. Besides, they wouldn't believe me anyway. They're all saying the Akron AWOL is this big boeuf superhero. I don't want to disappoint them."
Lev doesn't show up with any of the batches of new kids. The only thing that arrives with them is an increase of tension. Forty-three kids by the end of their first week, and there's still one bathroom, no shower, and no answer as to how long this will last. Restlessness hangs as heavy as body odor in the air.
The Fatigues do their best to keep them all fed and occupied, if only to minimize friction. There are a few crates of games, incomplete decks of cards, and dog-eared books that no library wanted. There are no electronics, no balls—nothing that would create or encourage noise.
"If people out there hear you, then you're all done for," the Fatigues remind them as often as they can. Risa wonders if the Fatigues have lives separate and apart from saving Unwinds, or if this endeavor is their life's work.
"Why are you doing this for us?" Risa asked one of them during their second week.
The Fatigue had been almost rote in her answer—like giving a sound bite to a reporter. "Saving you and others like you is an act of conscience," the woman had said. "Doing it is its own reward."
The Fatigues all talk like that. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts. It's not just in their speech but in their eyes as well. When they look at Risa, she can tell they don't really see her. They seem to see the mob of Unwinds more as a concept rather than a collection of anxious kids, and so they miss all the subtle social tremors that shake things just as powerfully as the jets shake the roof.
By the end of the second week, Risa has a pretty good idea where trouble is brewing. It all revolves around one kid she hoped she'd never see again, but he had turned up shortly after she and Connor arrived.
Roland.
Of all the kids here, he is by far the most potentially dangerous. The troubling thing is that Connor hasn't exactly been the image of emotional stability himself this past week.
He'd been all right in the safe houses. He'd held his temper—he hadn't done anything too impulsive or irrational. Here, however, in the midst of so many kids, he's different. He's irritable and defiant. The slightest thing can set him off. He'd been in half a dozen fights already. She knows this must be why his parents chose to have him unwound—a firestorm temper can drive some parents to desperate measures.
Common sense tells Risa to distance herself from him. Their alliance has been one of necessity, but there's no reason to ally herself with him anymore. Yet, day after day, she keeps finding herself drawn to him . . . and worried about him.
She approaches him shortly after breakfast one day, determined to open his eyes to a clear and present danger. He's sitting by himself, etching a portrait into the concrete floor with a rusty nail. Risa wishes she could say it was good, but Connor's not much of an artist. It disappoints her, because she desperately wants to find something redeeming about him. If he were an artist they could relate on a creative level. She could talk to him about her passion for music, and he would get it. As it is, she doesn't think he even knows, or cares, that she plays piano.
"Who are you drawing?" she asks.
"Just a girl I knew back home," he says. 3
Risa silently suffocates her jealousy in a quick emotional vacuum. "Someone you cared about?"
"Sort of."
Risa takes a better look at the sketch. "Her eyes are too big for her face."
"I guess that's because it's her eyes that I remember most."
"And her forehead's too low. The way you've drawn it, she'd have no room for a brain."
"Yeah, well, she wasn't all that bright."
Risa laughs at that, and it makes Connor smile. When he smiles, it's hard to imagine he's the same guy who got into all those fights. She gauges whether or not he'd be open to hear what she has to tell him.
He looks away from her. "Is there something you want, or are you just an art critic today?"
