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“Making sure it works should have been your job,” Connor pointed out to Sonia as they discussed it in a relatively private corner of her basement. “You’ve been sitting on the thing for thirty years—you could have checked that it worked before you brought us into it.”
Sonia glared at him. “So sue me,” she said, and then added, “Oh, that’s right, you can’t—because for the past two years you’ve had the legal status of a canned ham.”
Connor matched her glare, dagger for dagger, until Sonia backed down. “I never thought I’d get the chance to bring it out again,” she said, “so I never bothered.”
“What changed?” Connor asked.
“You showed up.”
Although Connor couldn’t get why that should matter, Risa did. It’s their notoriety that makes all the difference. They have become the royalty of AWOLs. Attach their names to something, and suddenly people listen, whether they want to or not.
“OSU Medical Center,” Sonia said, “is one of the only research hospitals in the Midwest that does curative biological research. Everyone else is just trying to figure out better ways of using parts from Unwinds. Plenty of funding for that—but try to fund alternatives, and you get nothing but tumbleweeds.”
“OSU? Connor said. “As in Ohio State University? As in, the one in Columbus?”
“You got a problem with that?” Sonia asked. Connor gave her no answer.
She went on to tell them of one rogue doctor who was still seeking cures for systemic diseases, the kind that can’t be cured by transplantation. “And guess what’s at the heart of that research?” Sonia asked mischievously. The answer, of course, was adult pluripotent stem cells—the very sort of cells needed for the printer.
They had to talk Sonia out of going after the cells herself. A few days before, she had twisted her ankle and bruised her hip in a fall that no one had seen, probably back at her home. She tried to downplay it, but clearly she’d been in pain ever since. She couldn’t go, but someone had to.
They discussed the possibility of sending some of the kids from the basement to retrieve the biomatter, but they didn’t discuss it for long. This batch of AWOLs wasn’t exactly the secret-mission type. Risa hated to judge any AWOLs the way the world judged them, but these poor kids had none of the skill sets needed to pull it off, and a grab bag of personal issues that would do nothing but hinder them. The kids in Sonia’s basement would be liabilities on this mission. All of them, that is, except for Beau. For all his cockiness, he was capable—but was he capable enough to pull this off? Risa didn’t think so.
“I’ll go,” Risa offered. Bad idea number one.
“I’ll go with you,” Connor chimed in. Bad idea number two.
Sonia raged about it, insisting that they’d be recognized, and that, of all the people who shouldn’t go, Connor and Risa topped the list. She was, of course, right.
“Well, I ain’t going,” Grace was quick to announce. “I’ve had quite enough excitement over the past few weeks, thank you very much.” To Sonia’s absolute chagrin, Grace had appointed herself as Sonia’s personal caregiver, minding that she didn’t fall again.
“I don’t need a nursemaid!” Sonia kept telling her, which just doubled Grace’s resolve.
Risa knew a team of two was iffy. They needed at least one more as a fail-safe. And so Risa suggested that Beau be added to team. Bad idea number three.
“Are you kidding me? You want to ask Beau to come?” Connor said back in the basement. He raised his eyebrows at Risa. “Beau? Really?” He was amused, and it ticked Risa off.
“We’re going to have to interact out there—we need at least one face that people aren’t currently wearing on T-shirts.” Connor couldn’t argue with that logic.
Beau, of course, was thrilled to be included, although he tried to feign being blasé. “I’ll drive,” he proclaimed.
“You’ll sit in the back,” Connor told him, then handed him an old GPS he had pulled from a bin of marginal technology in Sonia’s shop. “We’ll need you to navigate.”
Risa had to grin at the way Connor put Beau in his place without making him lose face.
It was Sonia’s idea to arm them all with tranq-loaded pistols. Risa couldn’t stand the things, because they reminded her of the Juvies. She hated the idea of using the Juvenile Authority’s weapon of choice.
“Tranqs are quick, effective, and leave no mess, and even a peripheral hit does the job,” Sonia told her. “That’s why the Juvies use them.”
Risa was quick to remove the tranqs from Beau’s gun when he wasn’t looking. The last thing she or Connor wanted was a trigger-happy Beau.
That was this morning. Now as they run through the hospital complex, Beau insists he knows where he’s going even though neither of them has a clue about the mazelike facility. The blueprint they studied in preparation was hopelessly out of date and didn’t include the newer buildings, or renovations in the older ones.
It’s Sunday, and the particular office wing they’ve barged into is full of empty waiting rooms with generic art prints on the walls. Another place that’s not on the map they studied.
“This way!” Beau says, and although Risa’s sure it’s going to take them back where they’ve been, she goes along, because at this point, any direction seems as good as another. She can only hope that Connor, wherever he is, hasn’t been caught.
Connor took a different passageway—one that theoretically leads to the research wing of the massive complex. They hadn’t planned on splitti
