But if this was a trap, why had no one come for five days?
There had been a jug of water and a box of crackers at the bottom of the pit on the day he fell in, along with a ceramic pot to relieve himself in. Whoever set the trap didn’t want him to starve, but he did not do well with the rationing. The food and water was gone in three days, and now there’s nothing left but a lousy carton of cigarettes, which he can’t smoke because there aren’t any matches. At one point he tried to eat the tobacco right out of the wrapper, figuring it might have some nutritional value, but it only made him dry-heave.
Now, with day five coming to an end, he’s convinced no one’s coming for him. No one’s going to find him until it’s too late.
Then, just before dark, he hears footsteps crunching the paint chips on the warehouse floor.
“Hey,” he tries to yell, “over here!” His voice is barely a hiss, but it’s enough. A face appears, looking down at him.
“My God, what are you doing down there? Are you okay?”
“Help . . .”
“Hold tight,” says the man. He goes away and comes back a few moments later with an aluminum ladder, which he lowers into the pit. Although the boy has no strength to even stand, some secret reserve of adrenaline fuels his climb and helps him bear the pain of putting weight on his ruined ankle. In half a minute he’s out of the pit, throwing his arms around the stranger who saved him.
The man sits him down. “Here, have something to drink,” he says and hands the boy a water bottle. The boy guzzles it like it’s the only water in the world. “How long have you been down there?”
“Five days.” He gags as he tries to swallow the water, almost throwing it up, but he manages to keep it down.
The man kneels to him, shaking his head. “AWOL Unwinds are always getting themselves into trouble. You gotta be more careful.”
The boy shakes his head. “I’m not an Unwind.”
The man grins and nods knowingly. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
Then the boy feels a sudden prick on his arm.
“Ouch!” He sees a drop of blood on his forearm, which the stranger collects with a small electronic device. “What are you doing?”
The man ignores him, looking at the readout of the device. The boy’s aunt is a diabetic, and she checks her blood sugar with something like it, but the boy suspects this device has a different purpose, although he’s not sure what that purpose is.
“Hmm,” says the man, raising an eyebrow, “it looks like you’re telling the truth. Your DNA doesn’t match any of the kids in the AWOL Unwind database.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re a Juvey-cop!” He’s relieved, because a Juvey-cop is safe. A Juvey-cop will take him home to his parents, who must be worried sick.
“Well . . . I was a Juvey-cop,” the man says, “but I’m no longer in that line of work.” Then he holds out his hand to shake. “The name’s Nelson. And you are?”
“Bennett, Bennett Garvin.” Only now that he’s had some water and some time does he focus enough attention to get a good look at Nelson. He’s unshaven, his nails are dirty, and it appears he hasn’t been taking good care of himself. But the most startling thing about him are his eyes. There’s a strange disconnected intensity about them that doesn’t match the rest of him. In fact, the eyes don’t even match each other. Two different shades of blue. It’s unnerving.
“Could you call my parents?” Bennett asks. “Let them know you’ve found me?”
The faint smile never leaves Nelson’s face. “Oh, I don’t think that will be happening today.”
Bennett doesn’t say anything as he struggles to grasp the situation—but having not eaten, and with the water not yet in his system, everything seems a little fuzzy.
“I can’t let you go now that you’ve seen me.” Then Nelson grabs him roughly, squeezing his arm, poking his side, and putting a dirty hand in Bennett’s mouth to check his teeth like a horse. “Aside from that nasty ankle, you’re a top-notch specimen. A little dehydrated, but nothing a few more water bottles won’t take care of. And the black market harvesters don’t care whether you’re an official Unwind or not—they pay just the same.”
“No!” Bennett tries to pull free, but he doesn’t have the strength. “Please don’t hurt me!”
Nelson laughs. “Hurt you? I wouldn’t think of it. The better your condition, the more you’ll be worth to me.”
“My parents have money. They’ll pay you.”
“I don’t do ransoms,” he tells him, “but I’ll tell you what—I like your eyes, they’re very expressive. And because I like your eyes, I’ll give you a fighting chance.” Nelson points to the entrance. “If you can get to the front door before I tranq you, I’ll let you go. Hell, I’ll even give you a ten-second head start.” He hauls Bennett to his feet. “Ready, set, go!”
Bennett does not need a second invitation. He takes off across the expanse of the warehouse, feeling dizzy, feeling like his feet won’t move. But somehow, he makes them go.
“One!”
His ankle throbs, but he ignores it. His lungs ache, but he doesn’t care. He knows this is life and death. The pain is only temporary.
“Two!”
Paint chips crush beneath his feet like eggshells.
“Three!”
Water sloshes in his belly, making it ache even worse, but he doesn’t let it slow him down.
“Four!”
The door to the warehouse is open wide. The twilight spilling through the door is as glorious as the bright light of a midday sun.
“Five!”
A few yards to go—he’s almost there!
“Six-seven-eight-nine-ten!”
Even before he realizes he’s been cheated, the tranq dart hits him right in the back of his neck, delivering a full dose directly into his brain stem. His legs buckle beneath him, and suddenly that door that seemed so close might as well be a million miles away. His eyes cross, his vision blurs, and he smells musty toxicity as the side of his head hits the ground. He fights to keep conscious, while above him looms the shadow of Nelson, a dark ghost in a fading field of vision. . . . And the moment before he loses consciousness, he hears Nelson say:
“I really do like your eyes. I like them much more than the ones I have now.”
12 - Nelson
J. T. Nelson knows he’ll never get rich selling careless kids to black market harvesters. Even back when his catches were legitimate, there was no real money in it—but then it didn’t matter. When he was a Juvey-cop, he was willing to accept a steady salary, health benefits, and the promise of a pension. He had been more than satisfied with his place in life, maintaining order and bringing AWOLs to justice. But all that changed on the day the Akron AWOL took him out with his own tranq gun. Nearly a year later, he still can’t get the image of Connor Lassiter out of his mind: that smug, arrogant look on his face as he shot the tranq bullet into Nelson’s leg.
For Nelson, that was a shot heard round the world.
From that moment on, his life was a living hell. He was the butt of jokes—not just in his department, but around the nation. He was held up to ridicule, as the cop responsible for letting the infamous Unwind go. So Connor Lassiter became legend and Nelson lost his job, and his self-respect. Even his wife left him.
But he only wallowed for a little while. He was full of anger but knew how to take anger and mold it into something useful. If the Juvenile Authority no longer wanted him, he might as well be in business for himself. Black marketeers don’t laugh at him for having let Connor Lassiter get away, and they ask no questions.
At first it was just AWOLs. They were quick to fall for his various traps like the stupid kids they are. Then he caught his first runaway, a kid whose DNA didn’t show up on the AWOL Unwind database. He thought the black marketeers would turn him away, but they didn’t care. As long as the subject was healthy, he got his price. There were even kids like the one he caught today, who were just unlucky. He’s happy to take them, too. His conscience doesn’t bother him.
What bothers him are their eyes.
That’s what he has the most trouble with. The way they look at him. Those fearful, pleading expressions, always hopeful down to the last second, as if he might have a change of heart. Those eyes plague him in his dreams. They’re windows of the soul, aren’t they? But in those early days as a parts pirate, when he looked at his own eyes in the mirror, he didn’t see what he saw in theirs. His “windows” showed no such expression of soulfulness, and the more he looked at his own empty eyes, the more jealous he became. He wanted some of that innocence, that desperate hope for himself. So one day he went to his black market contact and claimed the eyes of his latest catch as part of his payment. He was only able to negotiate himself a single eye, but at least that was better than nothing. After that first operation, when he looked at himself in the mirror, he would see in that eye a shred of humanity, and for a little while, he’d be high on hope. It would remind him of the idealistic young man he had once been many years before. One problem, however: Now he had one blue eye and one brown. That wouldn’t do.
So he claimed another, but that eye didn’t quite match the first. So he claimed another, and another, and with each operation he felt a sliver of innocence return to him. He knows that someday soon he’ll find the eyes that will make him perfect, and then he can finally rest . . . because by seeing the world through other’s eyes, Nelson is bit by bit becoming whole.
- - -
The black marketeer wears an expensive European suit and drives a Porsche. He looks more like a legitimate businessman than a shady figure who deals in flesh. He doesn’t hide the fact that his business has made him rich. Instead he flaunts his wealth with the entitled disregard of royalty. Nelson envies him his style.
He goes by the name Divan, like some sort of fashion designer, and doesn’t refer to himself as a black marketer, but as an “independent supplier.” His offshore harvest camp is hidden and mysterious. Not even Nelson knows where it is, and he suspects its operation has none of the strict regulations of American harvest camps.
He meets Nelson in Sarnia, a Canadian town just across the bridge from Port Huron, Michigan. Divan cannot step on American soil. There are numerous warrants out for his arrest. But the Canadians, bless them, have been far more tolerant.
Divan takes possession of the boy with the damaged ankle in the back of a car dealership that he uses as his front. As he looks the boy over, he frowns at the swollen ankle and wags a finger at Nelson—all part of his standard ploy to barter Nelson down. The boy, conscious now but still groggy from a heavy dose of tranqs, mumbles incoherently, and although Nelson ignores him, Divan pats him gently on the cheek.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” he tells the boy. “We are not barbarians.” It’s one of the lines he always uses. It conveys no real information to the boy but somehow comforts him. It’s calculated, like everything else about Divan.
