Argent feels the blood drain from his sore face. He has to sit down, but doesn’t, because he’s afraid he might not have the strength to get up. So instead he locks his knees and sways a little bit on feet that suddenly feel too far away from the floor.

And all this because of Connor Lassiter.

“I’m sure if they interrogate you, you’ll sing to them everything Lassiter told you. But I would much prefer it if you sang for me instead. And you do have things to sing about, don’t you?”

Argent racks his brain for anything useful Connor might have said, but nothing comes to mind. Still, that won’t be what the parts pirate wants to hear.

“He told me some stuff,” Argent says. Then more forcefully, “Yeah. He told me stuff. Maybe enough to figure out where he’s going.”

Nelson laughs gently. “You’re lying.” He pats the good side of Argent’s face. “That’s all right. I’m sure there are things you know that you don’t even know you know. And besides, I need an associate. Someone to whom catching Connor Lassiter is personal, because that’s the only kind of person I can trust. I would have preferred someone a bit higher on the evolutionary ladder, but one takes what one can get.”

“I’m not stupid,” Argent tells him, intentionally avoiding the word “ain’t” to prove it. “I’m just unlucky.”

“Well, today your luck has changed.”

Perhaps it has, Argent thinks. Maybe this partnership is fated. The right side of Nelson’s face is ruined, as is the left side of Argent’s. They both bear the marks of their struggle with the Akron AWOL. It makes them a team perfectly suited for the mission.

Nelson looks toward the window, as if checking to see if the coast is still clear. “Here’s what you’re going to do, Argent. You’re going to fill a backpack with only the things you need, and you’ll do it in less than five minutes. Then you’ll come with me to take down the Akron AWOL once and for all. What do you say to that?”

Argent offers a feeble smile on the side of his face that still can. “Yo-ho, yo-ho,” Argent says. “A pirate’s life for me.”

Part Three

Sky-Fallers

Documented cases of cellular memory being transferred to heart transplant recipients:

CASE 1) A Spanish-speaking vegetarian receives the heart of an English speaker and begins using English words that were not part of his vocabulary but were words habitually used by the donor. The recipient also begins craving, and eventually eating, meat and greasy foods, which were mainstays of the donor’s diet.

CASE 2) An eight-year-old girl receives the heart of a ten-year-old girl who was murdered. The recipient begins having nightmares about the murder, remembering details that only the victim could know, such as when and how it happened and the identity of the murderer. Her entire testimony turns out to be true, and the murderer is caught.

CASE 3) A three-year-old Arab child receives the heart of a Jewish child, and upon waking, asks for a Jewish candy the child had never heard of before.

CASE 4) A man in his forties receives a heart from a teenaged boy and suddenly develops an intense love of classical music. The donor had been killed in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case as he died.

CASE 5) A five-year-old boy receives the heart of a three-year-old. He talks to him like an imaginary friend, calling him Timmy. After some investigation, the parents discovered the name of the donor was Thomas. But his family called him Timmy.

A total of 150 anecdotal cases have been documented by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, PhD.

http://www.paulpearsall.com/info/press/index.html

The Rheinschilds

She’s worried about him. He’s always been obsessed with their work, but she’s never seen him like this. The hours he spends in his research lab, the dark circles beneath his eyes, all the mumbling in his sleep. He’s losing weight, and no wonder; he seems to never eat anymore.

“He’s like this superbrain with no body,” says Austin, his research assistant, who has grown from an emaciated beanpole to a much more healthy weight since Janson hired him six months ago.

“Will you tell me what he’s working on?” Sonia asks.

“He said you didn’t want any part of it.”

“I don’t. But I have a right to know what he’s doing, don’t I?” It’s so like Janson to take everything she says literally. Shutting her out to spite her, like a child.

“He says he’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

It’s no sense trying to get anything out of the boy—he’s got the loyalty of a German shepherd.

She supposes this obsession of Janson’s is better than the despair he felt before. At least now he has something to focus on, something to take his thoughts away from the cascade of events that the Unwind Accord has brought about. Their new reality includes clinics that have popped up nationwide like mushrooms on an overwatered lawn, each of them advertising young, healthy parts. “Live to 120 and beyond!” the ads say. “Out with the old and in with the new!” No one asks where the parts are coming from, but everyone knows. And now it’s not just ferals that are being unwound—the Juvenile Authority has actually come up with a form that parents can use to send their “incorrigible” teen off for unwinding. At first she doubted anyone would use the form. She was convinced its very existence would finally spark the outcry she’d been waiting for. It didn’t. In fact, within a month, there was a kid in their own neighborhood who had been taken away to be unwound.

“Well, I think they did the right thing,” one of her neighbors confided. “That kid was a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Sonia doesn’t talk to either of those neighbors anymore.

Day to day, Sonia watches her husband waste away, and none of her pleas for him to take care of himself get through. She even threatens to leave him, but they both know it’s an empty threat.

“It’s almost ready,” he tells her one evening as he moves his fork around a plate of pasta, barely putting any into his mouth. “This’ll do it, Sonia—this will change everything.”

But he still won’t share with her exactly what he’s doing. Her only clue comes from his research assistant. Not from anything the boy says, but because he began his employment with three fingers on his left hand. And now he has five.

18 • Lev

He bounds through a dense forest canopy, high up where the leaves touch the sky. It’s night, but the moon is as bright as the sun. There is no earth, only trees. Or maybe it’s that the ground matters so little, it might as well not exist. Stirred by a warm breeze, the forest canopy rolls like ocean waves beneath the clear sky.

There is a creature leaping through the foliage in front of him, turning back to look at Lev every once in a while. It has huge cartoonish eyes in its small furred face. It’s not fleeing from Lev, he realizes; it’s leading him. This way, it seems to say with those soulful eyes that reflect twin images of the moon.

Where are you leading me? Lev wants to ask, but he can’t speak. Even if he could, he knows he won’t get an answer.

Branch to branch Lev leaps with an inborn skill that he did not possess in life. This is how he knows he’s dead. The experience is too clear, too vivid to be anything else. When he was alive, Lev never cared much for climbing trees. As a child, it was discouraged by his parents. Tithes need to protect their precious bodies, he was told, and climbing trees can lead to broken bones.

Broken.

He was broken in a car accident and left with deep damage inside. That damage must have been worse than anyone thought. His last memory is a cloudy recollection of pulling up to the eastern gate of the Arápache Rez. He remembers hearing his own voice telling the guard something, but he can’t remember what it was. His fever was soaring by then. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was unconscious before he learned whether or not the guard would let them in.