Finally the two of them crumble, feeling the appropriate weight of shame. The father, who had started out so defiant, suddenly bursts into tears. It’s the mother who holds it together enough to offer Connor one last excuse.

“We tried to be good parents . . . but there’s a point at which you give up trying.”

“No, there’s not,” Connor tells her. Then he turns to go, leaving them with the worst punishment of all: having to live with themselves.

Connor and his team drive off in an intentionally nondescript minivan with a false license plate. Noah Falkowski is understandably grim as he looks out the window, watching his neighborhood go by for the last time. He doesn’t seem to know who they are. He doesn’t seem to care. Connor’s glad Noah doesn’t recognize him. While the Akron AWOL has a legendary reputation in some circles, his face was in the news much less than Lev’s. Plus, with everyone thinking he’s dead, it’s easier to go incognito.

“Relax,” Connor tells him, “you’re among friends.”

“I got no friends,” says Noah. And for now, Connor lets him feel sorry for himself.

•   •   •

The Graveyard is true to its name this late at night. Airplane tail fins stand as monumental and as quiet as tombstones. Kids are on watch patrol with tranq-loaded rifles, but other than that, there’s no sign that the place is home to more than seven hundred AWOL Unwinds.

“So why are we here?” Noah asks as the rescue party pulls down the main aisle—the busiest “street” of the Graveyard, flanked by a series of large aircraft that make up the core of their living space, each one named by Unwinds who have long since left. Names like Crash Mamma, for one of the main girls’ dorms; the ComBom, a veteran World War II bomber that’s become their computer and communications center; and of course IHOP, the International House of Purgatory, where new arrivals like Noah stay until they’re given a job and integrated into the Graveyard.

“The Graveyard’s where you’ll live until you turn seventeen,” Connor tells Noah.

“Like hell I will,” the kid says. Typical. Connor just ignores him.

“Hayden, get him a bedroll and escort him to IHOP. We’ll see what kind of work he’s suited for in the morning.”

“So what am I, a stinking AWOL now?” asks Noah.

“AWOLs is what they call us,” says Hayden. “We call ourselves Whollies. As to whether or not you stink, I think we all can agree that you need to visit our bathing facilities at your earliest possible convenience.”

The kid grunts like a mildly irritated bull, and Connor grins. It was Hayden who actually came up with the term “Whollies,” because “Unwind” and “AWOL” were negative labels put on them by the world. “You should be a spin doctor,” Connor told Hayden, to which he facetiously replied, “Spinning makes me nauseous; I’d puke on my patients.”

Hayden, Connor, and Risa were the only three Whollies remaining who had been harbored in Sonia’s safe house way back when. That experience bonded them as if they were lifelong friends.

Noah toddles off with Hayden to the International House of Purgatory, and Connor takes a few moments to enjoy some rare peace and quiet. He looks to AcMac, the jet where Risa sleeps. The lights are out, just like the others, but he suspects she has already peered out at the sound of their approach, to make sure that Connor has arrived home safe and sound.

“I’m not sure if these missions of yours are noble or stupid,” Risa once told him.

“Why can’t they be both?” he responded. The fact is, saving individual kids is somehow far more satisfying for him than the daily ins and outs of running the Graveyard. These side trips keep him sane.

When he was left in charge, it was only supposed to be temporary. The Anti-Divisional Resistance was supposed to find a suitable replacement for the Admiral—someone who could present an image that the public could believe would be running an airplane salvage operation. But then they realized that they didn’t need that. They had people in the Graveyard’s front office—a trailer near the entrance—and those employees ran the business end of things. As long as Connor kept the kids working, fed, and quiet, the ADR found no reason to hire someone else.

“Surveying your domain?”

Connor turns to see Trace coming up to him.

“It’s not mine, I only work here,” Connor tells him. “The new kid settled in?”

“Yeah—a real complainer. He says the blanket’s too rough.”

“He’ll get over it. We all do.”

Trace Neuhauser is an air force boeuf who gave it up to join the resistance when his sister was unwound. He’s AWOL from his unit for six months now, but still a boeuf in every sense of the word. He’s all steroid bulk, with a tunnel-vision education in the martial sciences.

Connor never liked boeufs. Maybe because they know their purpose in the world, and generally serve it well. Seeing them always made Connor feel useless. That a boeuf has become such a close friend proves that people change. Trace is twenty-three but seems to have no problem taking orders from a seventeen-year-old.

“Chain of command knows no age restrictions,” he once told Connor. “You could be six, but if you were my superior, I’d still do as I was told.”

Maybe that’s why Connor likes him; because if a guy like that can respect Connor’s lead, maybe he’s not such a lousy leader after all.

•   •   •

The next day begins as every day begins in the Graveyard. With things to be done. “The Firefighters’ Treadmill,” the Admiral called it: an endless trot to stomp out nuisances. “Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing,” the Admiral once said. “Unless you’re on the battlefront. Then it’s about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.”

On the main aisle, kids are already lounging beneath the recreation jet, watching TV, or playing video games. Still more have begun their shifts, dismantling or rebuilding aircraft parts, as per the orders coming in from the front office. Sometimes it’s easier for Connor to think that it’s all going on in spite of him, rather than because of him.

As soon as Connor is spotted on the main aisle, the barrage begins.

“Hey, Connor,” says a kid running up to him, “not to complain, but, like, can we get some better food here? I mean, I know beggars can’t be choosers and all, but if I gotta eat beef-flavored stew with no actual beef in it one more time, I think I’m gonna hurl.”

“Yeah, you and everyone else,” Connor tells him.

“Mr. Akron,” says a girl, fourteen or so—he can’t get over the fact that so many of the kids, particularly the younger ones, are not only ridiculously respectful, but think that Akron is somehow part of his name—“I don’t know if you know this, but the fans in Crash Mama ain’t working no more, and it’s way too hot at night.”

“I’ll send someone to fix them,” Connor tells her. Then a third kid comes up complaining that there’s too much trash, and can’t he do something about it.

“I swear, half the time I feel like a janitor,” he tells Trace. “I need a dozen more hands just to keep this place afloat.”

“You do have a dozen hands,” Trace reminds him. “But you’ve got to be willing to use them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Connor, having heard it before. He shouldn’t be mad at Trace for pointing these things out—after all, that’s why he keeps Trace so close: to advise him on how to be in charge. Connor has already accepted the odd reality that he’s some sort of leader, but, as the Admiral pointed out, it’s a pretty thankless job.

After the Admiral left him in charge, Connor had set up a power structure: an inner circle, an outer circle, and everyone else. Those in his inner circle are supposed to make sure things like food supplies and sanitation are being taken care of, because Connor has much more pressing things to deal with. Things like keeping them all in one piece.

“I’ll call a meeting after I meet with the rep from the resistance,” Connor tells Trace. “And I’ll make sure tasks are being delegated.”