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“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that,” says UNIS. “Please rate your current level of comfort on a scale of one to ten, ten being least uncomfortable.”
“Argent, I’ll do anything! I’ll give you anything!” But Nelson knows what Argent wants. He wants the right half of his face back. Now.
“All right,” says UNIS, “I’ll assume you’re sufficiently comfortable. I see that my controls are set for an express unwinding without the use of anesthetic plasma. That means we can begin right away!”
“What? What was that?” Adrenaline panic makes his whole body begin to quiver. “Wait. Stop! Halt!”
“I regret, Jackass Dirtbag, that without anesthesia, you shall be experiencing extreme discomfort, beginning with your wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees, then quickly moving inward. This is perfectly normal for the machine’s current setting.”
As the process begins, Nelson locks on Argent’s impassive eye, and suddenly realizes that not only is Argent going to unwind him, but he’s going to watch every last minute of it. And he’s going to enjoy it.
“To take your mind off of your discomfort,” says UNIS, “I can project a variety of scenic vistas for you. Please choose from the following: mountain flyby, ocean tranquility, vibrant cityscape, or landmarks of the world.”
But all that comes from Nelson is a shrill, bloodcurdling wail.
“I’m sorry,” says UNIS, “that’s not a valid response.”
65 • Broadcast
“This is Radio Free Hayden broadcasting live once more, until we get chased away from the station. Today I have something special to share with my listeners. This comes from an article in a major national newspaper. Other articles just like it popped up in print and online everywhere this morning. Of course, some papers buried the story on page twelve beside mattress sale ads, but kudos to those who ran it front page, with a nice headline, like this one:
ARÁPACHE TO GIVE ASYLUM TO UNWINDS
By a unanimous vote of the Arápache Tribal Council yesterday, the nation’s wealthiest and most influential Chancefolk tribe has officially announced it will give protective sanctuary to all Unwinds seeking to remain whole. A spokesperson for the Juvenile Authority has stated that they do not recognize the tribe’s right to grant sanctuary to AWOLs, and vows to retrieve any fugitive Unwinds from Arápache territory. Chal Tashi’ne, an attorney for the tribe, responded by saying, “Any incursion by the Juvenile Authority on sovereign tribal land shall be seen as an act of war against the Arápache people, and will be met with deadly force.
“Regardless of what side you’re on, you’ve got to admit it took a lot of guts for a Chancefolk tribe to spin the wheel and go all in. If the Juvenile Authority thinks a tribe of once-great warriors is going to blink, they’re in for a surprise.
“And so, this week’s song—you know the one—goes out to our Arápache friends. Hopefully, we’ll see one or two of you at our rally in November. But until then—
“I’ve got you . . . under my skin. . . .”
66 • Cam
Pretty purple monkshood accents the ornamental gardens of Proactive Citizenry’s Molokai complex. The gardeners wear gloves, not only to protect themselves from the thorns of the rosebushes, but because of the monkshood, which they know is chock-full of aconite, a deadly poison that shuts down the respiratory system. It’s the roots of the plant that are the most dangerous, especially when boiled and distilled down into a concentrated toxin.
Once more, Camus Comprix defeats the security system of the Molokai complex by tapping the security computer on the wrong shoulder and making it look the other way. It’s night now. Not too late, just about ten o’clock, but late enough that activity in the medical research building is at a minimum. They never figured out how he compromised the video surveillance system that first time, so he does it again—now toward a different end. He’s delayed the signal by fifteen minutes. That’s how long he has to do the job before anyone sees what’s going on.
He slips into the ward of preconscious rewinds unobserved, carrying in his hands a bag with syringes and vials of his special aconite elixir. When it’s injected directly into the port of their intravenous PICC lines, they’ll die within a minute. Once he gets into a rhythm, he est
imates it will take him twelve minutes to euthanize all fifty.
Cam thinks he has it all under control. He’s sure his plan can’t go wrong. But then he makes a crucial mistake. Rather than beginning at the far end of the chamber, where the freshest rewinds lie, still heavily bandaged and nowhere near consciousness, he begins closest to the door, where the bandages have been removed and the rewinds are further along. Much further along.
As he fills the first syringe with the deadly liquid, he happens to glance down at the rewind.
And the rewind is looking back.
He studies Cam with a kind of vigilant terror, like a rabbit a moment before it bolts. Cam is hypnotized by two entirely mismatched eyes. One green, the other so dark brown it’s almost black. The lines of scars across his face are like the roads of an old city—random, and senseless. His hands—one sienna, one umber—test the bonds that tie him to the bed.
“The fly?” he says, pleading. “The fly? In the web? The fly?”
It would make no sense to most, but Cam knows the way a rewind thinks. He understands the strange connections its patchwork brain must make in order to communicate, leaping over the concrete, grasping only upon impressions. Metaphors. Of the many languages Cam knows, this one came first. The inner language of the rewound mind.
Cam knows the reference. An old movie. The head of a man on the body of a fly. It said, “Help me,” as it struggled in the spider’s web. “Help me, help me,” and then it was devoured.
“Yes,” Cam tells him. “I’m here to help you. In a manner of speaking.” He presses air out of the syringe, the muddy poison fluid squirting just a bit from the needle tip. He finds the injection port and readies himself to end this poor rewind’s life.
“Hike in the woods,” the rewind says. “I told you to wear long pants. Pink lotion everywhere.”
