UnBound

by Neal Shusterman

  The firehouse was the last to close.

  Anissa isn’t sure when they finally shut it down, sealing that big roll-up door for the last time. But before that happened, some enterprising civil servant had begged, borrowed, or maybe stolen a fully functional heatsuit, like the one her father had died in. The one that might have saved his life if he’d been less stubborn and more self-serving.

  The heatsuit is kept in a little alcove off the main garage. It hangs from a hook on the wall, seeming to hover above the ground. A sign reads USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION in old, faded lettering.

  This is where Anissa goes when she needs to be alone—and now she needs that more than ever.

  It’s become a shrine to her, that big yellow suit with the glazed faceplate and heavy, reinforced boots. The joints are knobby and wide, each equipped with anesthetic feeds and razor-sharp scalpels, ready to sever damaged, noncrucial limbs with frightening efficiency. Anissa doesn’t like to think about that, because it’s not how firefighting is supposed to work. You don’t just lop off body parts; it’s about standing tall and saving lives. Clearly that’s not an ethos that Heath shares. His plan is all about crawling.

  She calms herself by looking up at the suit. She can picture her dad in there, wise and brave and bigger than life, close at hand like a guardian angel. She wishes she could be as brave as he was. Or that she knew what to do, like he always did, no matter what was thrown at him. She could use some of Dad’s wisdom now.

  She sighs, massaging her hand. She’s wrapped a handkerchief around it, but it’s still oozing and angry, tender to the touch.

  “You probably don’t want to talk to me,” Heath says, coming up from behind.

  “Go away, Heath.” She doesn’t turn around. “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “Oh, but we do.” He steps right in front of her. “The plan is moving forward, Anissa. We need to do this.”

  “We need not to.”

  He starts to argue, pleading his case, but seems to sense the futility of it. Instead he softens a bit, tries a different approach. “Do you know why this matters to me?”

  “I don’t care,” she says, but it’s not entirely true. Anissa knows little about him, despite all the time they’ve spent together, their headlong flight from the Juvenile Authority, and their joint decision to make camp here. She’s often wondered about Heath’s history, what drives his campaign to end unwinding (“unliving,” as he calls it), and how far he’ll go in pursuit of the cause. She senses a window opening, a chance to learn what he seldom reveals. “Okay, tell me. Why does it matter?”

  “Because of who I am. What I am.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I’m not an unwind. I’m the opposite of an unwind.”

  She frowns, trying to understand. “Go on.”

  “I was born with a defective liver. The doctors said I was living on borrowed time. When I was fifteen, it failed completely. I wound up in the hospital, not expected to live more than a week, and my parents couldn’t afford a replacement.”

  Anissa tenses, not knowing what’s coming next, but knowing that it’s bad.

  “They couldn’t afford it—but they had an alternative,” Heath continues. “My brother Bryan was a stork, unexpected and unwanted, but raised with the same love they had for me. Or so I thought.” Heath takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself for the next part of the story. “They sold him to black market unwinders, in exchange for a new liver and the operation to implant it. They said it was the only way to save my life. I said if that was the only way, I’d rather not be saved. I begged them not to sacrifice Bryan, but I couldn’t stop them.” He chokes up at this next part. “They refused to tell me whether or not my new liver was actually his. Anyway, as soon as I had healed, I ran away from home. I knew I had to help the AWOLs, but I was never one of them.”

  He stops talking. Anissa hesitates, unsure how to respond. She doesn’t doubt that his story’s authentic, and it explains his consuming obsession with unwinds. But it doesn’t change anything.

  “I understand now,” she says, not without sympathy. “But I’ll never agree to your poisoned-organ plan.”

  “Here’s what I know: The people getting those organs don’t deserve them. They’re parasites, living off the flesh of others. If they get diseased organs, they brought it on themselves.”

  “You think it’s that simple?” she snaps. “A few people die and this all goes away? That’s not how it works. They’ll figure it out, find better ways of testing the organ supply, and they’ll trace the contamination right back here. You’ll change nothing, except to get a lot of people caught—people who trusted you, people they’ll unwind because of you.”

  Then suddenly she’s grabbed from behind. She turns to find two big bruisers, ex-military boeufs, two of the dumbest but most obedient of Heath’s AWOLs. She struggles, but their grip is unbreakable.

  “I brought them along,” Heath says, “in case there was a problem.”

  He nods, and she’s taken away to a utility room in the firehouse, dank and smelling of old boots, where she’s locked away while the plan proceeds. She’s gone from being Heath’s friend to Heath’s prisoner.

  And her hand is getting worse.

  • • •

  Days pass. She’s allowed meals but no visitors. Heath’s keeping her in isolation, probably because he doesn’t want his precious plan revealed until it’s been set in motion and can’t be stopped. That won’t be long now, she reasons, because the level of activity in the firehouse has markedly increased, judging from the background noise and shouted orders and muffled conversations.

  “This can’t work, you know,” she tells Sebastian when he cracks open the door to slide in a plate of not-very-warm macaroni. “He’s going to get you all killed.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Sebastian, though plainly he does.

  “Tell Heath I’m hurt. I need medical supplies. I cut my hand.”

  “My heart’s breaking.”

  The door slams shut. Anissa’s hand really is getting worse, the wound purpling, with reddish veins radiating from the point of incision—a scary, dangerous infection. She’s sure it must have been contaminated with something from the petri dishes in Heath’s laboratory. Like I don’t have enough to worry about, she thinks, painfully flexing her fingers. She has to reach Heath, talk to him before it’s too late.

  But it already is.

  8 • Sebastian

  Sebastian is waiting when the empty bus pulls up outside the firehouse, and he signals a line of AWOLs, all dressed in white, to climb inside. Jobe is at the head of the line.

  “Break a leg,” Sebastian says.

  All the teens boarding the bus are terminal patients, too far along in their particular diseases to be saved by healthy organs. Some have been given incentives to cooperate—money for their families, perhaps, or promises of a more personal nature. Others have volunteered, choosing a meaningful death rather than merely a miserable one. They’ve been inoculated with Heath’s chemical camouflage, and they’re being sent to various harvest camps for unwinding.

  The pretext is that they’re tithes, volunteering themselves for the good of society or whatever, and Sebastian has created a data trail that seems to confirm that: birth records, family histories, personal details. But it’s all a fabrication. The truth is that they’re about to unleash a biological nightmare on anyone who receives their organs.

  “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” Sebastian says, nodding, consulting his checklist. “All present and accounted for.” The door closes, and he thumps it with his palm, wishing them Godspeed.

  “Excuse me . . . ,” asks a timid voice. “Can you help me?”

  He turns to find a pigtailed girl in a ragged dress, wearing a frayed backpack, approaching the firehouse. She looks hungry, dirty, and tired. Sebastian wonders how far she’s traveled to reach them. He also wonders how she managed to get past the perimeter and enter their secret compound without bein
g noticed or confronted. I’ll have to look into that. . . .

  “Please,” she says. “I’m an unwind, or I was supposed to be. I’ve been hiding out, and I heard you help unwinds. Please, can you help me?”

  “Of course we can,” he says, smiling. “You’re welcome here.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  Sebastian waves as the bus pulls out, then turns back to the pigtailed girl. “What’s your name?”

  But he never finds out—because she spreads her hands and powerfully claps them together, changing Centralia’s geography.

  9 • Blast

  The clapper’s blast is far more powerful than even the architects of the explosion expected. It splits the ground and strikes a pool of stagnant methane gas that has quietly accumulated over a period of decades beneath the poisoned town. The resulting detonation hollows out the fire station in a blowtorch-hot column of Old Testament flame.

  Sebastian is barbecued in the first instant of the explosion. The bus flies off the roadbed like a toy tossed by a child, its frame buckling, tires and windows exploding from the heat. Buildings crumple; abandoned houses are blown off their foundations. Blazing shrapnel flies in all directions, casting a debris field the size of a stadium. Droplets of molten glass fall like rain. A road sign reading WELCOME TO CENTRALIA is flung skyward, falling to earth four miles from the post it was nailed to. The green growth overwhelming the streets is burned back, like the scene of a battle.

  Those who can, flee for their lives as the inferno blossoms and rages, engulfing the town.

  10 • Jobe

  Jobe is sitting near the back of the bus when the clapper detonates. The bus heaves and lurches, flipping on its side, with everyone screaming and the glass windows melting (is he really seeing that?) and the whole world turned red as paint, just for a moment, like a modern version of Dante’s Inferno.

  He’s thrown headlong into the rear emergency door, which snaps open under his weight. Jobe is catapulted onto the pavement, landing too hard, feeling bones break. The street burns to the touch, like a griddle, but he can’t get up and run because he’s broken his leg, maybe both legs. Maybe his spine. He can only crawl, trying to reach the grass, though that’s burning too; he’s trapped in a waking nightmare.

  But even in the middle of this disaster, a part of him marvels that surprise is still possible, even for the dying, because his path to oblivion has taken a startling turn.

  Heath said that Jobe would be helping more people than he could imagine. Instead, he’s helping no one. He feels the bitterness of disappointment, almost worse than his injuries. His death will not count. He’s become the failure his father always said he was.

  Until he hears a faint voice yelling, “Help!”

  11 • Anissa

  Anissa is sitting in her makeshift cell when the wall splits open, like the shell of a melon. Miraculously, she’s shielded from the blast wave by a bank of lockers, which crumples like tinfoil but saves her life. She staggers into the burning garage and is nearly crushed when the heatsuit topples on her. Then, before she can squirm out from under it, a beam comes down, pinning her beneath it.

  I’m trapped here, she realizes, by a machine designed to protect people from fire. It seems the cruelest of ironies. Worse, the building is heating up around her, as the garage is consumed by flame.

  She yells, “Help!” again and again, not really expecting an answer, because if Dad’s death taught her anything, it’s that prayers rarely get answered, miracles seldom happen, and no one’s coming to save her. She can only be brave like he was and wait for the end, probably a bad one. It’s already searingly hot in here and getting harder to breathe.

  Then something moves.

  Someone’s coming toward her through the collapsed wall of the garage, crawling with painful slowness. She squints and recognizes him: Jobe, the multiple-cancer victim, the very last person she’d expect to be mounting a rescue mission. “Hang on,” he says, and Anissa wonders if he’s taking to her or himself.

  “You’re hurt,” she says.

  “You’re trapped,” he says back.

  He manages to reach her and tries to dislodge the beam, without the use of his legs, but he can’t—it’s too heavy. Anissa rocks back and forth, and Jobe pushes, working together to free her. “Why are you helping me?” she asks, then looks into his face and doesn’t need an answer; she already knows. It’s too late for Jobe to save himself . . . but not too late to save someone else.

  Finally the beam slides off the heatsuit, clattering to the floor, and Anissa wriggles out from under the suit.

  Jobe, now lying on the ground, lets out a shuddering breath. He looks up at her, his eyes glazing, life draining from him. Yet he smiles.

  “Did it,” he says. “Made it count . . .” Then he releases a final rattle and is gone.

  Anissa touches his face in a moment of silent communion, closing his eyes. It’s too late to thank him, too late to say good-bye—but even if she could, there isn’t time, because she has to move, to seize the chance he’s given her.

  With flames licking closer, she wriggles into the heatsuit, sealing it like her father showed her, just as the ground beneath her gives way, and Anissa falls into an ocean of fire.

  It’s a long fall—much longer than Anissa expected. Finally she strikes the ground hard, sprawling forward. Within the suit her infected hand erupts in pain. She’s lying prone on a rough, uneven surface, rock walls looming close, loose mortar tumbling through the hole she’s dropped through.

  Awkwardly she climbs to her feet.

  The suit adjusts automatically to Anissa’s height and body size, as if it was custom fitted. The headlamp snaps on, but she can’t see much—just a fiery wall of burning gas. This isn’t the basement, she realizes. She’s fallen into the blazing depths of the Centralia mine, the longest-running fire in history. Before her the burning mine snakes off into the distance. But despite the blistering heat, the suit’s interior is almost comfortable, thanks to its built-in climate controls.

  She tries to walk, takes her first tottering baby steps. Her infected hand feels like a knife has gone through it.

  The heatsuit’s faceplate display winks on, and Anissa squints, trying to focus. The display provides an interactive readout, showing everything she needs to survive: the outside temperature, her current location, the oxygen reserves, and remaining battery power—still over 80 percent, after years of disuse. With luck, it’s enough to get her to safety.

  But it won’t be easy.

  The temperature in the mine is a searing 647 degrees Fahrenheit—enough to flash-boil her sweat away if it escaped the heatsuit’s recycling system. The temperature in a mine fire can reach one thousand degrees, so she counts herself lucky. She still can’t see anything, just flames curling and dancing, filling the cavern. She can only follow the moving map projected on her faceplate.

  Just like Dad used to, she thinks, though it’s not comforting, because he was doing that when he died.

  She stumbles, jamming her hand against a spur of rock, and cries out in pain. She can’t see her fingers under the bright yellow glove, but they feel swollen and tender. She wonders if the suit’s biomedical scanners will detect it.

  They do. On the faceplate readout, a picture of her hand appears. SEPSIS DETECTED, it says. RECOMMEND AMPUTATION. Standard procedure, she knows, is to anesthetize the injured limb and then sever it—something the suit can do automatically. But for Anissa, that’s not an option.

  “Amputation refused,” she says.

  She keeps walking, trying to figure out what happened aboveground. The Centralia camp has been attacked, maybe destroyed, by forces unknown—someone who knew where they were hiding out and decided to squash them. She wonders if they knew, somehow, about Heath’s poison-unwind program, if Sebastian and his scouts were too conspicuous in hunting down candidates and attracted the wrong attention from someone who decided to destroy them. Or perhaps there was a mole, someone Heath trusted but shouldn’t have
. All she knows is there was a massive explosion, like a clapper’s detonation, although she can’t imagine why clappers would be involved. Blowing up a secret AWOL camp doesn’t seem like the high-profile kind of terror they go in for.

  Not that it matters. My friends are gone, she thinks despairingly. Heath’s gone. I warned him, but they found us too soon.

  There’s a lump in her throat, an aching sadness for everyone consumed by the inferno. The ones who survived will probably be captured and taken to the nearest harvest camp. But she can’t worry about that now—her priority is survival.

  She checks the readout. The temperature’s rising, and she’s headed down, not up. The map display says SURFACE ACCESS 6.3 MILES. Worse, the suit’s cooling system is starting to stutter, overloaded by the unrelenting heat. But that’s not her worst problem.

  She’s being followed.

  It’s there on the map: The red blip of a second heatsuit behind her, drawing steadily closer. Anissa tries to pick up the pace, the sweat beading on her brow, her hand throbbing incessantly. She keeps glancing backward as if to spot her pursuer, but of course he’s not visible—the rippling flames conceal him from view. Only the instruments on her heatsuit can detect him.

  Until he speaks.

  “Come back, Anissa,” says a voice in her earpiece. She remembers Dad telling her the suits could communicate over short distances using subsonic transceivers. But the real surprise is who’s talking.

  “I can protect you,” says Heath Calderon.

  “Leave me alone,” Anissa says through the heatsuit’s subsonics.

  “I can’t let you kill yourself. This is suicide; it solves nothing. Come back with me. They won’t hurt you.”

  “They just blew up half the town, moron! Why wouldn’t they hurt me?”

  “Because I cut a deal. They take me, you go free.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Not just like that. I gave them everything—my notes, records, whatever survived the explosion. Enough so they’ll never be fooled again. Whatever threat I posed has been neutralized.”