“Put that thing away,” Risa orders Beau, “before you accidentally shoot yourself.”

“Best thing that could happen,” says Connor, with a deadpan delivery that could take the bounce out of a basketball. Then he softens. “But I’m glad to hear that Hayden’s okay. That is, if it’s true.”

If Hayden’s really AWOL again, hiding out somewhere and calling for kids to take matters into their own hands, Risa wonders how many will be moved to action. There are stories about the first uprising. “Feral” kids took violently to the streets after the school failures. They wreaked havoc coast to coast, spreading terror and fear enough to make unwinding sound like an answer to all their problems. Anger with no direction.

Once the Heartland War ended, no one really spoke about the days leading up to the Unwind Accord. Risa suspects it’s more than just bad memories. If people don’t think about it, then they can deny their complicity in ongoing institutional murder. Well, thinks Risa, we’ll make people remember . . . and we’ll give them a path to penance.

It’s as they reach the outlying neighborhoods of Columbus that Connor veers out of their lane, nearly slamming into a pickup truck next to them. The guy leans on his horn, gives them the finger, and shouts curses at them that they can’t hear but that are easily read on his lips.

“What was that about?” Risa asks, realizing that Connor was distracted when he veered out of their lane.

“Nothing!” snaps Connor. “Why does it have to be about anything?”

“I told you I should be the one driving,” says Beau.

Risa drops it, sensing something in Connor that’s best left alone—but the moment lingers long after they’re past the road sign above the freeway that Connor was staring at with such intensity it nearly got them killed.

22 • Connor

He steps back and allows Sonia to transfer the biomatter from the stasis container to the printer. He doesn’t want to touch it.

“The stuff of life,” Sonia says as she pours the red, syrupy suspension into the printer reservoir. It’s not exactly the most hygienic of transfers, but then, they’re in the back room of a cluttered antique shop, not a laboratory.

“It looks like the Blob,” Grace comments.

Connor recalls the old movie about a flesh-eating mass of gelatinous space-goo that devours the hapless residents of a town that very well could have been Akron. He watched it with his brother when they were little. Lucas kept hiding his face in Connor’s shoulder so he didn’t have to look. Like all his memories before the unwind order, it comes with a mix of feelings as amorphous as the Blob.

Risa takes Connor’s hand. “I hope it’s worth what we went through to get it.”

It’s just after dark, and it’s the four of them: Connor, Risa, Sonia, and Grace. Beau was quickly dispatched by Sonia to resolve some sort of petty territorial dispute in the basement that arose in his absence. “It all goes to hell without you down there, Beau,” Sonia told him. “I need you to take charge and bring things back to order.” Connor turned away when she said it, because his grin might have given Beau a clue as to how easily he was being manipulated. Beau knew the goal of their mission, but not the purpose of the cells they retrieved.

“Injection for my hip,” Sonia had told him, “so I don’t need a hip replacement from some poor unlucky unwind.”

He had accepted the explanation at face value, partly because it sounded plausible under the circumstances, but mostly because Sonia is an accomplished liar. Probably half of her success as an antiques dealer comes from the lies she tells about her merchandise. Not to mention her success in harboring fugitive kids.

With the magic blob safely in the printer, Sonia turns to them. “So who would like to do the honors?”

Connor, who is closest to the controls, hits the “on” button, hesitates for a breath, then hits the little green button labeled “print.” The device clicks and whirrs to life, making them all jump just the tiniest bit. Could it be as simple as hitting the “print” button? He supposes the most advanced of technology all comes down to a human being hitting a button or throwing a switch.

“What’s it gonna make?” Grace asks—a question that’s on all of their minds.

Sonia shrugs. “Whatever Janson last programmed it to make.”

Her eyes seem to lose some of their light for a moment as she struggles with the memory of her husband. He’s been dead for maybe thirty years, but clearly their devotion ran deeper than time.

They watch as the printer head flies back and forth over a petri dish, laying down microscopic layers of cells. In a few minutes the pale ghost of a shape appears. Oblong, about three inches across.

Risa gets it first. “Is that . . . an ear?”

“I do believe it is,” Sonia says.

There’s something wonderful and terrifying about this. Like watching life emerging from the first primordial pool.

“So it works,” Connor says, finding he doesn’t have patience for the printing process. Sonia says nothing, holding judgment for the fifteen minutes it takes for the printer to complete its cycle. The sudden silence when it’s done is just as jarring as when it first grinded to life.

Before them in the dish is, as Risa predicted, an ear.

“Can it hear us?” Grace asks, leaning forward. “Hello?” she says into it.

Connor gently grabs her shoulder and pulls her back.