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• • •
When he regains consciousness, he’s tied to the poles once more. And once again, he’s alone.
* * *
NEWS UPDATE
In Nevada today, a coordinated attack on a harvest camp has left 23 dead, dozens wounded, and hundreds of Unwinds unaccounted for.
It began at 11:14 local time, when communication lines were cut to and from Cold Springs Harvest Camp, and by the time communication was restored an hour later, it was all over. Staff were tied up and forced to lie facedown while the armed attackers set loose hundreds of violent adolescents designated for unwinding.
Early reports suggest that the camp director was murdered execution style. While the investigation is ongoing, it is believed that Connor Lassiter, also known as the Akron AWOL, is responsible for the attack.
* * *
39 • Starkey
In the claustrophobic confines of the abandoned mine where the storks are holing up, Starkey kicks the dark stone walls. He kicks the rotting beams. He kicks everything in sight, searching for something breakable. After all his effort and all his risk, every last measure of his victory has been stolen from him and attributed to Connor Lassiter!
“You’ll bring down the whole freaking mine if you keep kicking the beams like that,” yells Bam. Everyone else is smart enough to stay deeper in the mine and keep their distance from him, but she always has to shove herself into his business.
“So let it come down!”
“And bury us all—that will really help your cause, won’t it? All those storks you say you want to save, buried alive. Real smart, Starkey.”
Out of spite, he kicks a support beam one more time. It quivers, and flecks of dust rain down on them. It’s enough to make him stop.
“You heard them!” he yells. “It’s all about the Akron AWOL.” It should be Starkey’s face on the news. He should be the one the experts are profiling. They should be camping out at his family’s door, prying into what his private life was like before they cut him loose to be unwound. “I do all the work, and he gets all the credit.”
“You call it credit, but out there it’s called blame. You should be happy they’re looking elsewhere after that bloodbath!”
Starkey turns on her, wanting to grab her and shake some sense into her, but she’s taller than him, bigger than him, and he knows Bam is a girl who fights back. How would it look to the others if she floored him? So instead he smacks her down with words.
“Don’t you dare accept their spin! I know you’re smarter than that. What we did was a liberation! We freed nearly four hundred Unwinds and added more than a hundred storks to our number.”
“And in the process more than twenty kids died—plus, we still don’t have an accurate count of how many were tranq’d and got left behind.”
“It couldn’t be helped!”
He looks farther down the low-roofed tunnel to see, lit by the dim hanging incandescents, a cluster of kids eavesdropping. He wants to yell at them, too, but he’s in control enough now to rein in that urge. He brings his voice down so only Bam can hear.
“We’re at war,” he reminds her. “There are always casualties in war.” He steels his eye contact, trying to make her look away, but she doesn’t. But she also doesn’t argue. He reaches out, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, which she doesn’t shake off.
“The thing to remember, Bam, is that our plan worked.”
Now she finally looks away from him, signaling her acquiescence. “That valley was pretty isolated,” she says. “It was a long road out for those kids who went running through the gate. I don’t know if you heard the latest, but nearly half of them have already been captured.”
He moves his hand from her shoulder to her cheek and smiles. “Which means half of them got away. The glass is half-full, Bam. That’s what we need to remind everyone. You’re my second in command, and I need you to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Do you think you can do that?”
Bam hesitates; then her shoulders slump at his gentle touch, and she gives him a reluctant nod, as he’d known she would.
“Good. That’s what I like about you, Bam. You take me to task, as you should, but in the end, you always see reason.”
She turns to go, but before she leaves, she tosses him one more question. “Where do you see this ending, Starkey?”
He smiles at her even more broadly than before. “I don’t see it ending. That’s the beauty of it!”
40 • Bam
