“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.

“It’s just a pinna,” says Sonia. “The outside part of an ear. It has none of the functional parts of the organ.”

“It doesn’t look too healthy,” Risa points out. She’s right. It looks pale and slightly gray.

“Hmm . . .” Sonia pulls out her reading glasses, slips them on, and leans closer to observe the thing. “It has no blood supply. And we didn’t prepare the cells to properly differentiate into skin and cartilage—but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it does exactly what it was designed to do.”

Then she reaches out, picks the ear up between her thumb and forefinger, and drops it into the stasis container, where it sinks into the thick green oxygenated gel. Connor closes the box, it seals, and the light indicating hibernation goes green. Now it will be preserved for however long it needs to be.

“We’re going to have to get this to a place that can mass-produce it, right?” Connor says. “Some big medical manufacturer.”

“Nope,” says Grace. “Big is bad, big is bad.” She furrows her brow and rings her hands as she looks at the stasis box. “Can’t go too small, either. Kinda like Goldilocks, it’s gotta be just right.”

Sonia, who is rarely impressed by anything, is impressed by Grace’s assessment. “A very good point. It needs to be a company that’s hungry, but not so hungry that it carries no clout.”

“And,” adds Risa, “it has to be a company with no ties to Proactive Citizenry.”

“Does such a thing even exist?” asks Connor.

“Don’t know,” says Sonia. “Wherever we go, it will be a gamble. The best we can do is better the odds.”

The thought gives Connor an unexpected shiver that must be strong enough for Risa to feel because she looks to him. So much of his life these past few years has been a gamble. Somehow in spite of the odds, he’s managed to come through it all in once piece. What felt like bad luck at the time ultimately became good fortune, as evidenced by his continued survival. Which means he’s overdue for something truly unfortunate. He can’t help but feel that no matter what he does, he’s still just circling the drain. He silently curses his parents for pulling the plug on that drain to begin with. And with that anger comes a sorrow that he wishes he were strong enough to ignore.

“Something wrong?” Risa asks.

Connor withdraws his hand from hers. “Why do you always think something’s wrong with me?”

“Because something always is,” she says, a little miffed. “You’re a streaming meme of things that are wrong.”

“And you’re not?”

Risa sighs. “I am too. Which is why it’s so easy for me to know when something’s bothering you.”

“Well, this time, you’re wrong.” Connor gets up and goes to the trapdoor. The trunk is already pushed to the side, and the rug is rolled away, making an escape from Risa’s inquisition easy. He reaches down to pull open the trap door, and Connor feels something being pulled from his back pocket.

He turns to see Risa holding his letter. THE letter. From the moment Sonia gave it to him, he’s been keeping it in that pocket. He’s taken it out several times, each time determined to tear it up, or burn it up, or otherwise dismiss it from his life, but each time it winds up back in his pocket, and each time he feels a little angrier, and a little weaker for it.

“What’s this?” Risa asks.

Connor grabs it back from her. “If it were your business, I’d tell you about it, but it’s not.” He slips it back in his pocket, but she already saw who it was addressed to. She knows exactly what it is.

“You think I don’t know what’s been going on in your head? Why you almost crashed us when we were leaving Columbus?”

“That has nothing to do with anything!”

“It was your old neighborhood, wasn’t it? And you’re thinking of going back.”

Connor finds he can’t deny it. “What I’m thinking and what I’m doing are two different things, okay?”