Shall we give more power to the Juvenile Authority? Yes or no? There’s no question where the night manager’s vote is going.
5 • Lev
He should never have agreed to let Connor go off alone to get them a car. He wasn’t back by the afternoon, or by the evening, or during the night. Now it’s dawn of the following day. Connor’s been gone for twenty-four hours, and Lev’s anxiety grows, as well as his aggravation at both himself and at Connor. A better plan would have been to tail Connor at a distance so that if something did go wrong, at least Lev would see it and would know. Now it’s the uncertainty that’s killing him. He gets out his frustration by kicking the side of a rusty old industrial dryer lying half-buried in the weeds. He has to stop because the thing rings out like a bell with each kick, and he knows people can probably hear it for miles. He sits down in the shade of the dryer, trying to figure out what to do now. He has very few choices. If Connor doesn’t show up soon, he’s going to have to go on alone to Ohio, to find an antique store where he’s never been, to speak to an old woman he doesn’t know about a man who disappeared before Lev was born.
“Sonia could be the key to everything,” Connor had told Lev. Connor explained how the old woman—a key player in the Anti-Divisional Resistance—ran a safe house for AWOL Unwinds, getting them off the street. She had given shelter to Connor and Risa during those early days on the run. What Connor hadn’t known at the time was that her husband was Janson Rheinschild—the scientist whose advances in medical science made unwinding possible . . . and a man who was meticulously and systematically erased from history by the very organization he founded to prevent the misuse of his technology.
“If she knows something worth knowing,” Lev had asked Connor on their long drive from Arizona, “why didn’t Proactive Citizenry make her disappear as well?”
“Maybe they don’t see her as a threat,” Connor had answered. “Or maybe they don’t know she’s alive any more than they know I’m alive.”
Proactive Citizenry isn’t exactly a household name to Lev. He’s heard of them, though. Everyone’s heard of them, but no one pays much attention. They’re just one of many charitable organizations you hear about but have no idea what they actually do. Or how powerful they really are.
No matter how powerful Proactive Citizenry is, though, one thing is certain: They’re afraid of Janson Rheinschild. The question is, why?
“If you want to mess with things,” Connor had said, “that’s where we start.”
But as far as Lev is concerned, he’s messed—and has been messed with—enough. He had turned himself into a bomb but chose not to detonate. He had been the target of a clapper vengeance attack. He had been coddled and sequestered and treated like a god by a mansion full of tithes saved from their unwindings. And he had entered a battle zone to save a kid whom he considered to be his truest, and maybe only, friend.
With all that behind him, what Lev wants more than anything else is normality. His dreams aren’t of greatness or of power, wealth, or fame. He’s had all of those things at one time or another. No, what he wants is to be a kid in high school, with no more worries than what teachers he’ll get stuck with and whether or not he’ll make the baseball team.
Sometimes his fantasies of the simple life include Miracolina, the tithe who was so determined to be unwound, she despised him and everything he stood for. At least at first. His current fantasies put them at the same suburban school—it doesn’t matter which suburb. They do class projects together. Go to the movies. Make out on the couch when her parents aren’t home. She cheers for him at his baseball games, but not so loudly that she’s heard above the crowd, because she’s not that type.
He has no idea where she is now, or if she’s even alive. And now he’s facing the same uncertainty with Connor. Lev has come to realize that he’s strong, but there’s only so much he can take.
Lev resolves to wait one more hour before heading out alone. Unlike Connor, he doesn’t know how to hot-wire a car. Technically, he doesn’t know how to drive either, although he’s done it before with marginal success. His best bet for getting to Ohio would be to stow away, which means going into town and finding a truck, bus, or train headed in the right direction. No matter what, though, it would put him at serious risk. He broke the terms of his parole, so he’s a fugitive. If he’s caught, there’s no telling what will happen to him.
Lev is still hemming and hawing, building up the fortitude it will take to leave Connor behind, when a visitor arrives. Lev does not have the option of hiding—he’s spotted the second the car pulls up and the woman steps out. Rather than running, Lev calmly goes inside the old trailer and looks through the drawers until he finds a knife large enough to do damage but small enough to conceal.
Lev has never stabbed anyone. He had once, in a moment of sheer fury, threatened to beat a man and woman with a baseball bat. They had unwound their son—and a part of their son’s brain had come back in another kid’s body, begging their forgiveness.
This is different though, Lev tells himself. This isn’t about righteous rage; it’s about survival. He resolves he will use the knife only in self-defense.
Lev comes out of the trailer but stands on the lip of the doorway because he knows it makes him look taller. His visitor stands ten feet away, shifting weight from one leg to the other and back again. She’s in her early twenties by the look of it. Tall and just a little pudgy. Her face is reddened from the sun, probably from driving around in the convertible—a T-Bird in a condition too poor for the car to be considered classic. There’s an off-center bruise on her forehead.
“This is private property,” Lev says with as much authority as he can muster.
“Not yours, though,” says his visitor. “It’s Woody Beeman’s—but Woody’s been dead for two years now.”
Lev pulls a fiction out of thin air. “I’m his cousin. We inherited the place. Right now my dad’s in town renting a forklift to get rid of all this junk and clean the place up.”
But then the visitor says: “Connor didn’t tell me it would be you. He just said a friend was here. He shoulda told me it was you.”
All of Lev’s spontaneous lies evaporate. “Connor sent you? Where is he? What’s happened?”
“Connor says he wants you to go on without him. He’s staying with us here in Heartsdale. I won’t tell no one you were here. So you can go.”
The fact that Connor has managed to get Lev a message gives Lev a wave of intense relief. But the message itself makes no sense. Clearly it’s a distress signal. Connor is in trouble.
“Who’s ‘us’?” Lev asks.
The visitor shakes her head and kicks the ground almost like a child might. “Can’t tell you that.” She looks at Lev and squints against the rising sun. “Can you still blow up?” she asks.
“No.”
The woman shrugs. “Right. Anyway, I promised I’d tell you what I told you, and I did. Now I gotta go before my brother finds out I’m gone. Nice to meet you, Lev. It is Lev, right? Lev Calder?”
“Garrity. I changed my name.”