15 - Connor

Trace sleeps in a rusty old DC-3, overseeing the roughest, most troublesome kids. It’s an unofficial detention hall, with Trace as the unofficial guard. Since the old propeller plane has a nonfunctioning lavatory, its occupants have to use a portable that sits at the bottom of the gangway stairs. Its lock is broken. Connor broke it a few hours before.

After curfew he and two of the toughest Whollies he could scrounge up wait in the shadows of a neighboring plane, watching.

“Tell us again why we’re taking out Trace?”

“Shh!” Connor tells them, then whispers, “Because I say we are.”

Connor is the only one with a gun. It’s loaded. The goons are just backup, because he knows he can’t take Trace alone. The plan is to corner him, cuff him, and keep him as a sort of prisoner of war . . . but Connor has resolved that he’ll use the gun if it becomes necessary.

Never wield a weapon unless you’re willing to use it, the Admiral once told him. If Connor is going to maintain order in this place, he has to go by the Admiral’s playbook.

Every twenty minutes or so, someone comes out to use the restroom. Trace isn’t one of them.

“Are we supposed to wait here all night?” complains the tough kid holding the cuffs.

“Yes, if we have to.” Connor begins to wonder if Trace’s military training included superhuman bladder control, until Trace comes down a few minutes after midnight.

They wait until the door of the portable closes, and then they quietly approach with Connor in the lead. He puts the pistol in his right hand—Roland’s hand—feeling the coldness of its handle and firmness of its trigger. He takes the safety off, takes a deep breath, and then swings the door open.

Trace stands there, staring right at him, not caught off guard in the least. In a single move he kicks Connor’s legs out from under him, grabs the gun out of his hand, twists him around, and pushes him cheek-first into the dirt, wrenching Roland’s arm painfully behind his back. Connor can feel the seam of the graft threatening to tear loose.

With Connor in too much pain to move, Trace brings down the other two kids before they can run, leaving them unconscious in the dust. Then he returns his attention to Connor.

“First of all,” says Trace, “ambushing a man taking a dump is beneath you. Secondly, never take a deep breath before attacking someone, because it gives you away.”

Connor, still in pain, spins around to face him, and as he does, he feels the muzzle of the gun pressed to his forehead. Trace holds the gun to Connor’s head for a moment more, his face stern, then takes it away. “Don’t feel too bad,” Trace says. “I’m not just an air force boeuf, I was special ops. I could have killed you nine different ways before you hit the ground.” He ejects the clip—but as he does, Connor grabs Trace’s wrist, tugs him off balance, wrenches the gun from him, and aims it at Trace again as he gets to his feet.

“There’s still a bullet in the chamber,” Connor reminds him.

Trace backs away, hands up. “Well played. I guess I’m rusty.” They stand there frozen for a moment, and Trace says, “If you’re going to kill me, do it now—because I will get the advantage again.” But Connor’s resolve is gone, and they both know it.

“Did you kill the other two?” asks Connor, looking at how the once-tough kids lay twisted and unconscious on the ground.

“Just knocked them out. Not much honor in killing the defenseless.”

Connor lowers the gun. Trace doesn’t rush him.

“I want you gone,” Connor tells him.

“Tossing me out will be a very bad move.”

Hearing that just makes Connor angry. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the enemy. You work for them.”

“I also work for you.”

“You can’t have it both ways!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Trace says. “Playing both sides is a time-honored strategy.”

“I’m not your puppet!”

“No,” says Trace, “you’re my commanding officer. Act like it.”

Another kid comes clambering down the stairs to use the portable. He catches sight of Trace and Connor, and the two kids still rag-dolled on the ground. “What’s the deal?” the kid says as he takes in the situation.

“When it’s your business, I’ll tell you,” Connor says.

Then he sees the gun in Connor’s hand. “Yeah, sure, no problem,” he says, and goes back up the stairs.

Connor realizes the distraction would have given Trace plenty of time to turn the tables again, but he didn’t. It moves them one step closer to trust. Connor gestures to Trace with a wave of the gun. “Walk.” But at this point the gun is just a prop, and they both know it. They move farther from the main aisle and down an aisle of mothballed fighter jets. No Whollies here to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“If you work for them,” Connor asks, “then why did you tell me all the things you told me?”

“Because I’m their eyes and ears, but my brain is my own—and whether you believe it or not, I like what you’re doing here.”

“What have you told them about this place?”

Trace shrugs. “Mostly what they already know. That things are under control here. That a new shipment of AWOLs arrives every few weeks. I assure them that the place is not a threat, and no one’s planning to blow up any more harvest camps.” Then Trace stops walking and turns to Connor. “What’s more important are the things I don’t tell them.”

“Which are?”

“I don’t tell them about your rescue missions, I don’t tell them about your escape plan . . . and I don’t tell them that you’re still alive.”

“What?”

“As far as they know, this place is being run by Elvis Robert Mullard, a former security guard from Happy Jack—because if anyone knew that you were the one in charge, the Juvey-cops would raid this place in an instant. The Akron AWOL is too much of a threat for them to ignore. So I make this place sound like a nursery, and I make you sound like a nanny. It keeps them happy, and it keeps all these kids alive.”

Connor looks around them. They’re far from the main aisle now. If Trace wanted to, he could probably break Connor’s neck and bury him, and no one would ever know. Does that mean that Connor actually trusts Trace in spite of his obvious betrayal? He isn’t sure of anything anymore, not even his own motivations.

“None of this changes the fact that you’re working for the Juvey-cops.”

“Wrong again. I don’t work for the Juvies, I work for the people who own them.”

“No one owns the Juvenile Authority.”

“All right, then, maybe not own, but control. You want to talk about puppets? Every single Juvey-cop is on a string they don’t even know about. Of course I don’t know who’s pulling the strings. All I know is that I got taken away from a promising future in the air force and got sent here.”

Connor grins in spite of himself. “Sorry to mess with your career track.”

“The point is, I don’t report to anyone in the air force; I report to civilians in suits, and that ticks me off. So I did a little research and found out that I work for a company called Proactive Citizenry.”

“Never heard of it.”

Then Trace drops his voice to a whisper. “I’m not surprised—they keep a low profile, and that provides a cover that gives the military plausible deniability. Think about it; if the brass don’t know who they’re actually working for, then if something goes wrong, the military can always claim ignorance, court-martial me, and come away clean.”

Now things are becoming a little clearer to Connor, or at least clearer as to why Trace decided to play both sides. They turn and begin walking back toward the main aisle.

“I’m disillusioned, Connor. The way I see it, you’ve been more fair and more trustworthy than whoever it is I work for. Character counts for a lot in this world, and when it comes to Proactive Citizenry, shady doesn’t even begin to describe them. So I’ll do my job for them, but I put my trust in you.”

“How do I know you’re not lying to me now?”

“You don’t. But so far you’ve survived because of your instincts. What do your instincts tell you right now?”

Connor thinks about it and realizes the answer is easy. “My instincts tell me that I’m screwed no matter what I do. But that’s normal for me.”

Trace accepts his answer. “We have more to talk about, but I think that’s enough for one day. You should probably put some ice on that shoulder. I wrenched it pretty hard.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Connor lies.

Trace reaches out his hand to shake, and Connor considers what shaking that hand means. It could be the creation of their own secret society to battle Proactive Citizenry, whatever that is . . . or it could mean Connor has been entirely duped. In the end, he shakes Trace’s hand, wishing that just once, there could be a clear course of action.

“Before today you were just a pawn doing what they wanted you to do,” Trace tells him. “Deep down you knew it—you sensed it. I hope the truth has set you free.”

16 - Risa

Before her shift begins each morning, Risa spends time beneath the wing of the Rec Jet, chatting with other kids who’ve become her friends. She has more friends here than she did back at the state home, but at the same time she feels more like an older sister than a friend. They revere her like some angel of mercy—not just because she’s the medical authority, but because she’s the legendary Risa Ward, the Akron AWOL’s partner in crime. She suspects they think, deep down, she can heal things that are broken inside.

She used to spend time at the Rec Jet in the evening, after her shift, but the Stork Club put an end to that. She has half a mind to demand equal time for the state wards, but knows that fueling a division of the Graveyard into factions won’t do anything but cause trouble. Thanks to Starkey, there’s enough of that going on without her help.

Farther away, she can see Connor step down from his jet. He walks along the main aisle, head down, hands in his pockets, deep in whatever dark cloud is troubling him today. Immediately he’s set upon by kids who need his attention for one reason or another. She wonders if he ever manages to find a spare second for himself anymore. He certainly doesn’t have it for her.

He looks up and catches Risa’s gaze. She turns away, feeling guilty, as if she’s been spying on him, and chides herself for feeling that way. When she looks up again, he’s heading toward her. Behind her kids have begun to gather in front of the TV. Something on the news has caught their attention. She wonders whether Connor is coming to see what the commotion is about or coming to see her. She’s pleased when it turns out to be the latter, although she tries not to show it.

“Busy day ahead?” she asks him, offering him a slight smile, which he returns.

“Nah, just lying around watching TV and eating chips. I gotta get a life.”