Last time, Connor 2: The Adopted Mixed Race Version. Also seriously, he’s going to be evil because none may challenge Connorsue and/or because adopted and mixed race, just warning you.

We get an advertisement for “NeuroWeave TM” where they’ve apparently figured out how to cut out the part of your brain that knows algebra and drop it right into someone else’s head. More evidence that state unwinds aren’t getting training for actual jobs but are being raised for slaughter. For some reason it’s just being advertised for kids but you’d think adults would love the idea too.

Back to Connor 2, apparently this is the first time ever that cops have been killed. Connor 2 responds by actually putting some effort into hiding, changing his haircut and hair color.

The red hair is a bit of a disconnect with his olive complexion, but then, being a genetic hodgepodge has served him well all his life. He’s
always been a chameleon who could pass for any ethnicity. The red hair just adds one more level of misdirection.

Do find this dubious – redheads are super rare and non-white ones insanely so, and you’d think that’d only be more so in a world where rebellious teens get cut up so likely fewer kids are dyeing their hair. I think this may be a matter of trying to treat this like it’s our world. In our world, we don’t have massive numbers of criminalized runaway kids, so all that matters is not looking like the particular person being searched for. In their world, you get a fat pile of money if you point one out. Standing out in any way is a terrible idea, because people don’t need to know who he is to call the cops on him.

Word is that the Pacific Northwest is more sympathetic to AWOL Unwinds than Southern California, so that’s where he’s headed.

Mexico continues to not exist, I guess. Or they’re so sick of our shit they finally built their own wall.

Starkey is prepared for life as a fugitive, because he has always lived in a kind of protective paranoia. Don’t trust anyone, not even your own shadow, and look out for your own best interests. His friends appreciated his clear-cut approach to life, because they always knew where they stood. He would fight to the end for his friends . . . as long as it was in his own interest to do so.

Well, better than being manipulative about it.

The thing with his sister suggests he does have positive traits. I can’t see her defending him if he treated her like this, because this is really pretty fucked up, but it’s an understandable coping mechanism if you figure that’s how everyone else views you and you’re just returning the favor.

He goes on to say his math teacher said, “You have the soul of a corporation,” and he was like yes they’re my idols because no one tells them what to do.

She was a glacier-hugging math teacher

I talked a bunch last book about how it sounds like something’s gone really wrong with the climate and this would sound like confirmation – there aren’t old-growth trees left to hug, so the wording’s shifted, and the tree-hugging came in response to their being very few left, so I’m guessing the ice caps are near gone.

Probably way more thought than actually went into it.

He goes on to say she was laid off because the neuroweave thing means no one actually needs math teachers, except everything we know about how unwind stuff works says that you have to teach kids math first before you can jam math brain cells into other kids. It is plausible that she was laid off because she wasn’t willing to go teach the state kids how to be better neuroweaves, though.

Now, however, Starkey’s one with the huggers, because they’re the kind of people who run the Anti-Divisional Resistance, harboring runaway Unwinds.

Given what we know from last book of how the author views “the kind of people” who run it, this would suggest he doesn’t think much of “glacier-hugging” either, which may explain why he used such a weird term and why despite this being the future it has yet to admit global warming is kind of objectively happening.

Unfortunately, since he’s not Connorsue, he doesn’t immediately trip over a safehouse. In fact, we learn there’s all sorts of traps and stuff set by cops to catch kids, including pretending to be part of the saving kids group. It’s like he has to actually try to accomplish things or something. Weird.

He chats with another runaway who gives us exposition about how apparently only now are there rewards for regular people turning kids in, and also illegal black markets.“There never used to be parts pirates,” he says, “but since seventeen-year-olds can’t be unwound no more, there’s a shortage of parts, and AWOLs fetch a huge price on the black market.” Except that was a huge plot point in the novella, which takes place prior to Lev deciding to become a clapper, which led to the events convincing people seventeen year olds should be saved. (Despite the fact it’d have made more sense to raise the age you can send them off, since Lev was on the young age and not the old.) Possibly he’s just mistaken, or they used to be fewer and subtler ones, but that’s a bit convoluted when we get so little exposition as there is.

Starkey shakes his head. Making it illegal to unwind seventeen-year-olds was supposed to save a fifth of the kids marked for unwinding, but instead it forced a lot of parents to make their decision earlier. Starkey wonders if his parents would have changed their mind if they had another year to decide.

While this is probably just standard narrative reasoning that stuff should have unintended consequences, what it really amounts to is lie down and die because everything always backfires. You’re not allowed to fight back directly, but changing the law peacefully just made things worse so that was a horrible mistake. Stop trying to fix anything ever.

The other kid follows up with a horror story about a kid with terrible drug addict parents who sold their kid as soon as he hit thirteen, told him so he’d run away, and had someone else set a trap for him so they’d split the black market money afterward.

“The kid was a stork-job anyways, so it was no great loss, right?”

Anti-stork prejudice makes no sense, of course. You can see it being a thing kids would use when bullying others, because kids will use absolutely anything when bullying others, but there’s no explanation for where the rest of this came from. We know the Ward kids are looked down upon and that sort of makes sense when there are lots of them with poor prospects as adults. Storking is incredibly common and all over. The whole storking business only even works if other families keep track of who was storked so they can’t get rid of it at an orphanage, so the idea it’s your kid is getting socially enforced. Neglecting storked kids seems likely, but it’s a law everyone seems fine with as long as it doesn’t personally affect them, so it seems the official adult position is that the kids are the family’s and other families should treat it as such. Where would the kids be getting the idea storked kids were worthless?

Connor 2 responds by acting like he’s fine with it, then sneaking away and leaving a note on a random family’s doorstep about where the other kid is hiding.

That’s pretty horrible, but at the same time, the other kid did express the idea he wasn’t a real person first. We don’t know what the kid would’ve done if Connor 2 had said he was storked himself – could’ve apologized, but could’ve also decided that made Connor 2 fair game to betray.

(Mind you, the line itself just reads like black humor, that obviously this stuff happens because why would the adults care, but we’ll assume Conner 2 is good enough at making out tone.)

ADVERTISEMENT
“When my parents signed the unwind order, I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I thought, ‘Why me? Why am I being punished?’ But once I got to BigSky Harvest Camp, all that changed. I found other kids like me and was finally accepted for who I was. I found out that every single part of me was precious and valuable. Thanks to the people at BigSky Harvest Camp, I’m not afraid of my unwinding anymore.
“The divided state? Wow. What an adventure!”

This is some great creepiness that’s immediately followed by a crappy bit of telling where the narrator explains that runaway unwinds steal and the government is all “see this proves they’re bad” but really they’re doing it because they’re forced into it by the situation. It is at least a decent sentiment, but it’s just plain bad writing. Also, we’re told the bad kids just get worse, and it’s followed by a summary of Connor 2’s previous crimes, which can be summarized even easier as “if anyone looked at him funny he did something to get back at them” and how now he doesn’t even care he’s a murderer.

Better to think of himself as a warrior: a foot soldier in the war against unwinding. Soldiers were given medals for taking out the enemy, weren’t they? So even though that night in the alley still plagues him in moments of insecurity, most of the time his conscience is clear.

And we know the author really hates the idea of kids fighting back and people not Just Knowing the right morality, therefore Connor 2 is terrible.

It’s clear the author is trying to be sympathetic by saying he gets why they’re doing it, but at the same time he doesn’t actually believe in redemption. In a good story, the next line wouldn’t be that omg now he thinks it’s okay to steal people’s wallets…it’s have been him betraying the other kid, having sunk even deeper into the us vs them so that now he’s not fighting against unwinding but starting toward a civil war with his fellow kids on who actually deserves it. A good story would have this as a low point and then he claws his way back up. A story where no good person can ever really be wrong, no matter what the reason and no matter what they’ve been through…

This is not a story where people are allowed to repent. If you fall short, if you actually take an action that’s wrong, you’re worthless. Just look at the groveling Lev had to do despite not harming anyone and risking his life to save them.

Connor 2 eventually hits a wallet that’s rigged to a taser, or stun-wallet because these are a well-known product, and I feel like this just further hammers home that we’re in some horrible right-wing dystopia where property trumps lives. Luckily, he actually got tased by someone trying to help.

“Are you an Unwind, a runaway, or just a lowlife?” he asks.
Starkey’s lips feel like rubber. “Lowlife.”
“Great,” says the un-drunk. “That narrows it down. Unwind or runaway?”
“Runaway,” mumbles Starkey.
“Perfect,” the man says. “Now that we’ve established you’re an Unwind, we know what to do with you.”
Starkey groans, and some woman beyond his limited peripheral vision laughs. “Don’t be so surprised. Unwinds all got this look in their eye that lowlifes and runaways don’t. We knew the truth without you saying a thing.”
Starkey tries to move, but he can barely lift his limbs.
“Don’t,” says a girl he can’t see from somewhere behind him. “Don’t move or I’ll zap you even worse than the wallet did.”
Starkey knows he’s fallen for a parts pirate’s trap. He thought he was smarter, and he silently curses his luck . . . until the man who pretended to be drunk says, “You’ll like this safe house. Good food, even if it does smell a little.”
“Wh-what?”
Laughs from everyone around him. There may be four or five people in the van. But his vision still isn’t clear enough to get an accurate count.
“I love that look on their faces,” the woman says. Now she comes into his field of vision and grins at him. “You know how they tranq escaped lions so they can bring them back to safety before they get themselves in a heap of trouble?” she says. “Well, today you’re the lion.”

It’s a testiment to how bizarrely fucked up everything is that I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be assholes because all groups trying to actually do anything are just as bad or if the author thinks good people could act like this faced with a terrified kid who thinks he’s about to die.

Next is an ad thing for “Junior Watchdogs” who are kid informants.

This one really, really doesn’t fit. It sounds creepy to be exhorting kids to get their fellows sliced up, sure, but neither the initial setup nor the secret real setup works with it.

In the main setup, every neighborhood is crawling with juvie cops already, and they do their best to keep everyone else’s contact with the doomed kids to a minimum. The whole middle of the night thing seems like it’s at least partly about keeping this away from anyone else’s eyes. Currently unwound kids just disappear from school with no explanation. You don’t want kids on the lookout for escapees, because then they might think about it or maybe even talk to them.

In the secret setup, this is all just some sort of pressure valve and they actually don’t want the extra kids, so there’s even less reason to do this. Plus the whole issue is about tensions between the adults and kids, and making kids spy on adults is just going to make that worse.

This sort of all purpose paranoia would only work if there was a point that it’s about turning the kids against seditious adults to help a third group control them both, but this really doesn’t look like it’s organized enough for that – a third controlling body would, among other things, have strung up last book’s self-important admiral as a warning to the rest, because you don’t keep control by letting your people do whatever they please. At best, you might choose to frame the kids for it to enflame tensions. You’ll notice that despite the climate of fear in America ever since the turn of the century, we don’t have a big push toward alertness. There’s some occasional bit about watching out for suspicious people, but it was primarily telling people their only hope was mutely letting other people make the decisions because they were too dumb to be trusted with what was actually going on and it certainly didn’t involve kids. The main emphasis was never on what you could do to protect yourself and community, just a regular reminder that everyone you passed in the street might be planning to murder you, especially if they looked different.

The safe house is a sewer pump station. Automated. No city workers ever show up unless something breaks.

People show up when things break is actually a pretty common setup, book. I don’t know how you got from that the idea that therefore no one would ever show up. Sewers are particularly bad about this, because all sorts of stuff ends up there.

A perfectly fine explanation would just be that the person in charge of fixing it is the one who picked the location. A place no one but the city workers will ever visit is a great idea for a safehouse – they don’t even need to worry too much about being noticed bringing supplies in, because going there is their whole job. Or it wouldn’t be super-suspicious if not for the fact this setting has magic unbreakable sewer pumps.

Come to think of it, this does seem to be a setting with way too many people. I think the only regular jobs we’ve seen have all involved the service industry – the pawn shops and the girl mentioned in brief at the mall food court. Everyone else was a cop or, in the one case, a priest. Now we’re learning that sewers apparently employ barely anyone because they don’t break any longer.

Now, shrinking jobs do serve to increase tensions between generations, and if America also kept up its whole stagflation thing, that would mean the older generation would spend their working years fighting with younger people for existing jobs then stay in the job market even longer because they couldn’t afford retirement. The current setup is worrying enough, a massive reduction in actual jobs would be disasterous. Might also be possible to tie it back into the lack of abortion – forcing women to have the babies takes them out of the workforce, forcing them or other women to raise the babies does the same. And it doesn’t hurt the population much because unwanted kids just get hacked apart as teens, prior to entering the workforce.

The only way this could fit better is if there were laws against employing teens. After all, teens being able to earn money reduces the pressure on parents to unwind them and gives them a head start if they have to run off, plus in a situation where you’re murdering people, you want them to have minimal contact with others. The kids at the middle school aren’t current voters. You don’t want every adult at the store upset because little Suzy doesn’t show up one day because someone decided she was worth more in pieces.

The whole place is a petri dish of angst, generated by kids whose parents gave up on them, which is the worst kind of angst there is. There are fights and ridiculous posturing on a daily basis.

One moment where Connor 2’s side of things is weaker is now, because last book we actually did get to see this part so I guess the author doesn’t care now. And the problem was what we actually did see was a lot more complicated than this. Kids being given up on actually seems strangely rare from that, with the only example we know of being the kleptomaniac kid. Connor Prime, after all, seemed to be getting unwound either because his parents didn’t think his grades were good enough or because he was a terrifying monster in human skin, depending on your reading.

Those of you who remember last time may recall that noble Connorsue, praised be his name, was shit at getting along with others and it was evil Roland who socialized and pulled people into his sphere.

Starkey’s always been a natural leader among sketchy outcasts and borderline personalities, and the safe house is no exception.

It’d have really, really helped to see this.

Who did he hang out with? We have a passing reference to him having friends, but most of the time is spent on how he felt totally isolated and mistreated. We know he’s still bottom-rung of the pecking order at school, and you’d think someone who could be a natural leader with any group could manage to not be totally despised by the other ones. Did his parents decide something needed to be done not simply becase he was committing crimes but because he was the ringleader? Had any of the other kids in his group been unwound already – and after finding out he was on the chopping block, what does he think? If he knew his friends had gotten away with more and were still around, that’d be more evidence for him to assume that it’s really all about if you’re related by blood or not.

Anyway, point is everyone knows he murdered some cops and the story keeps growing in the telling, so everyone worships him.

And the best part is that the storked kids—who, even among Unwinds, are treated like second-class citizens—are now the elite, thanks to him!

Now, possibly this is just supposed to be all in Connor 2’s head, but it seems unlikely given the emphasis we’d seen. So instead it’s just a straight plot hole. Last book, the division was Ward vs Any Other Last Name, and that made a degree of sense given the two groups were kept so separate even if it was odd that the state home kids were looked down upon rather than the other way around. We didn’t even see a single kid who said their backstory was they were storked, suggesting people may not even tell their kids about it and that, at least, it’s not a major factor in the decision. (I agree it does make sense for it to be one, but that’s why you think for a few seconds about how your world works on the first damn book!)

Starkey says the storks get served first? They get served first. Starkey says they get the best beds, farthest from the stinking vents? They get the best beds. His word is law. Even those running the place know that Starkey is their greatest asset, and they know to keep him happy, because if he becomes an enemy, then every Unwind there is an enemy too.

The general sense I’m left with here is that the author has only the faintest grasp of how social groups function. Connor 2 may have some hero worship to help him out here, but once he turns this to an us vs them thing, there’ll be backlash. I find it believable he could get this to happen if we go by last book’s oblivious no-fuck-given adults, but the idea the people in charge looked at this and thought anything other than that the little shit is making more work for them is hard to believe.

I actually think this would be more believable if there was a more subtle thing going on. If Connor 2 was the only one who viewed the storked kids as mistreated, then it’d be easier to elevate them in the eyes of the other kids than if they grew up thinking storked kids were fit to spit on the way it seems it actually works.

Like say, consider our world. Adopted kids getting bullied for it by other kids makes sense because bullying is all about attacking people for whatever trait they have that you don’t, but I don’t think kids have a complex set of prejudices against them the way adults often have – that an abandoned kid has bad blood, that they’ll grow up to repeat their parent’s mistakes. They’d probably just go for the usual “haha your parents didn’t love you!” and not “because your mom probably had you as a teen, you’ll be a crack addict who gets pregnant as a teen, therefore why even bother trying to raise you like you’ll become a functional adult and also whatever happens I’m sure you were asking for it”.

You wouldn’t have much trouble with a superpopular orphan convincing other kids that actually they should be looked up to under that setup, while you’d still have a believable level of prejudice and generally getting the short end of the stick from the adults to leave him bitter about.

Connor 2 is then shocked to realize that the safehouse wasn’t forever, because somehow in all this he failed to find out that everyone had only been there for a little while and some had come in from further out safehouses, but it’s fine because actually he can now set up his cult at each new safehouse so by the time of the plane trip he’s pretty much a cult leader.

Incidentally, Connor 2 identifies that part of why they’re splitting the kids up is to keep any alliances from becoming permanent. Kind of like unwinding the mob rather than the individuals to keep them in line. which actually doesn’t seem like it’d be a big concern but also directly contradicts the idea they viewed him bossing everyone around as an asset. Possibly that section was just criminally bad writing and what the author meant to say was only that the adults put up with it because they had no other choice.

Each time Starkey learns a new social skill, something to serve him, something to make him even more effective at gathering and galvanizing these scared, angry kids. There could be no better leadership program than the safe houses of the Anti-Divisional Resistance.

Another clue he’s evil. Remember, galvanizing people to take action against anything is wrong, and double wrong if you do it while having opinions.

This time they’re being transported by coffin, because obviously collecting tons upon tons of coffins and loading them into a plane doesn’t look weird at all to the government, all that matters is that coffins are creepy. Connor 2 evilly reassures the kids that this is probably not some evil plan to murder them because why go through the trouble.

As it turns out, he’s more persuasive than the guys with the guns.

I don’t think this was ever the author’s intent, but overall it seems like everyone involved in this affair has no kids and barely interacts with them. The one person we know the family situation of nobly took Risa’s adopted baby on the basis of not having a kid and wanting one.

Now, it does sort of make sense that adults with kids might be afraid to risk them getting put into the same meatgrinder – especially when there’s kids around with the stories of being betrayed by relatives. But it doesn’t make sense that they’d have no experience at all with kids either, and they should’ve picked up some skills just by running these places. Connor 2 is able to manage that and he’s only been doing this a short time.

Of course, if you start thinking about it you realize that anyone who was concerned with this could make more of an impact adopting children out of the state homes (unless that’s illegal) or putting up a “storks wanted” sign. Or if the government bans basically any way of directly interferring with their system, it’s still not that hard to just walk around in the morning and pick up the babies left on doorsteps.

This is like an organization of people fighting kill shelters who all don’t have a single animal in their home.

He chooses to share his little box with a wisp of a girl who is giddy at having been chosen by him. Not that he particularly likes her, but she is so slight that she’ll barely take up any room. Once they’re wedged in together in a tight spoon position, they’re handed an oxygen tank and then closed into the darkness of the coffin together.
“I’ve always liked you, Mason,” says the girl, whose name he can’t recall. He’s surprised that she knows his first name, since he never uses it anymore. “Of all the boys in the safe houses, you’re the only one who makes me feel safe.”
He doesn’t respond; he just kisses her on the back of her head, to maintain his image as the safest port in her storm. It’s a powerful feeling to know you make others feel safe.

So this is set up as negatively as possible, but look at him not taking advantage of any of this. Look at him liking the idea of people trusting and feeling safe more than the idea of fucking them. Look at him saying nothing that would in any way suggest he’d tell someone else to go ahead and rape her, unlike Connorsue.

Because this book hates everyone, it then has the girl offering to fuck him and he explains that the adults claimed having sex would use up all their air, which is not only bullshit but how would you think that’d actually stop them. They really should’ve just separated them by gender if they were trying to reduce this to a halfway managable level.

Besides, even if someone were stupid enough to tempt fate, there’s not enough space to move, much less generate any sort of friction, so the point is moot. He wonders if it’s some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.

While I guess I can understand the author not wanting to spend too much time on the logistics of underage sex, I really cannot see this stopping kids. Also, he’s the one who brought up the subject in the first place.

Honestly, you could just have it be a boy saying he’s reassured because Connor 2 is magic. If somehow the sex offer is vitally plot important, the boy’s just as capable of the offer, and maybe the only thing the last book did right was how gay people managed to be mentioned and not be the biggest of deals so you don’t even need to work in something about how Connor 2 was so horrified and grossed out. Sure, since he’s evil it’d end up having bad implications, but hey, you already made the adopted mixed race kid evil so that clearly isn’t a concern.

“I wouldn’t mind suffocating if it was with you,” the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.

But having a boy or not bringing up sex at all would prevent us from spending all this time on how dumb the slutty dumb girl is.

“There’ll be a better time,” he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come—at least not for her—but hope is a powerful motivator.

Remember, girls, if you want to have sex, you are terrible and no one will ever have sex with you. Instead, say no a whole bunch and Mr. Right is the one who just knows you’re lying and forces you. If you’re really lucky, maybe he’ll even be the one you actually wanted to have sex with!

After a while, there’s a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own.

I think that’s the nicest thing we’ve ever seen from a protagonist. He likes making other people feel better.

I guess he’s evil because you’re supposed to just do things at random and if it makes you happy then you didn’t have the right motives because Puritan guilt complex or something.

The idea of the oxygen tank is that the coffins aren’t airtight so they need a constant addition of oxygen or they’ll die. Also, the tanks weren’t turned on and he has to open the valve himself, and he starts to feel lightheaded immediately upon the plane ascending so if anyone had a bit of trouble with the valve, they died.

“Hello, I’m Hayden, and I’ll be your personal savior today,” he says brightly

If I didn’t come out of the last book hating just about everybody, and in fairness I doubt the author would expect any current reader to feel that way, this would be pretty good. You don’t even need this to be set up on the assumption people really liked Hayden and will love to see him again, he’s the hanger-on so he’s a good way of just saying that look, the new characters have reached the current cast, and everything’s looking up!

(Those familiar with books will then realize that this is still the first chapter, and so there must be something bad coming.)

Connor 2 seens teens in military camouflage, carrying weapons. They’re not unlike the adults back at the last safe house, just younger.

Now, we know the safehouse adults are loathed, but this place is now running under Connorsue, so not sure what the comparison is trying to say. Maybe it’s just part of Connor 2 being evil. Certainly, we’re about to find out his perspective on another important thing is totally wrong and terrible:

A Jeep drives up. Clearly this is the approach of someone important, someone who will tell them why they’re here.
The Jeep comes to a halt, and out steps an unremarkable-looking teenager in blue camouflage.

That’s right, he just called Connorsue unremarkable. They they identify him as “the Akron AWOL” (And yes, he’s still got the shark tattoo and that’s the major distinguishing feature mentioned so lol irony.)

Starkey scoffs, “Don’t be ridiculous, the Akron AWOL is dead.”
“No, he ain’t! He’s right there!”
The very idea sends a surge of adrenaline through Starkey’s body, finally bringing circulation back to his limbs. But no—as he looks at this teen trying to rein in the chaos, he realizes this couldn’t be Connor Lassiter. This kid does not look the part at all. His hair is tousled, not coolly slicked back, the way Starkey always imagined it would be. This kid looks too open and honest—not quite innocent, but he has nowhere near the level of jaded anger that the Akron AWOL would have. The only thing about him that could even slightly resemble Starkey’s image of Connor Lassiter would be the slight smirk that always seems to be on his face. No, this kid before them, trying to command their respect, is nobody special. Nobody at all.

Ultimately, you see, good and evil is a matter of looks. Connor is open and honest looking and “sienna”, traits which probably have more to do with each other than the author would ever admit. Therefore, good. Our mixed race kid thinks slicked back hair is cool, and so he is evil.

Connorsue identifies himself as Connorsue and starts talking.

The more he speaks, the more Starkey’s heart sinks, and he comes to realize the truth of it. This is the Akron AWOL—and he’s not larger than life at all. In fact, he barely lives up to reality.

Do you see now, everyone? Do you see how stupid stupid dumb you were for saying Connor 2 was any good as a character when it’s so obvious Connorsue is the best and he doesn’t even realize it?

You don’t? Well maybe Connorsue should get his back broken and then Connor 2 will take over but it’ll be terrible and then Connorsue’s back will be magically fixed (in a way has no applicability to his female friend who’s wheelchairbound from a similar back injury) so he can come back for a triumpant fight where he beats down Connor 2. I’m sure that’ll work.

Anyway, Connorsue keeps recapping last book’s plot.

Starkey marvels at the unfairness of it all. How could this be? How is it possible that the great champion of runaway Unwinds is just some ordinary kid?
“Some of you just want to survive to seventeen, and I don’t blame you,” Connor says. “But I know that many of you would risk everything to end unwinding forever.”
“Yeah!” Starkey shouts out, making sure it’s loud enough to draw everyone’s attention away from Connor, and he starts pumping his fist in the air.
“Happy Jack! Happy Jack! Happy Jack!” He gets a whole chant going in the crowd. “We’ll blow up every last harvest camp!” Starkey shouts.

Or we could just establish he’s evil by saying he wants to fight back in any way. We’ve all agreed that’s evil, yes?

Yet even though he’s riled them up, one look from Connor throws a wet blanket over the whole crowd, silencing them.
“There’s one in every crowd,” says Hayden, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we will not be blowing up Chop Shops,” Connor says, looking right at Starkey. “They already see us as violent, and the Juvies use public fear to justify unwinding. We can’t feed into that. We’re not clappers. We will not commit random acts of violence. We will think before we act. . . .”

Now, we know Connorsue will be featuring up to the end, and we also know that this book has no interest in noble sacrifice so there’s no point in hoping maybe that final chapter involves him dying. And that’s a shame because look at that shit he just said.

Anyway, Connor 2 is seething evilly at how Connorsue said to shut up and seething more at how everyone else is listening because it’s not like there’s any valid reasons to be disgusted by anything Connorsue, praise be upon him, said here.

Now, as he stands there, waiting for the so-called Akron AWOL to shut up, a seed starts to take root in Starkey’s mind. He has killed two Juveycops. His legend is already set, and unlike Connor, he didn’t have to pretend to die to become legendary. Starkey has to smile. This airplane salvage yard is filled with hundreds of Unwinds, but in the end, it’s no different from the safe houses—and like those safe houses, here is just one more beta male waiting for an alpha like Starkey to put him in his place.

He’s now officially evil and doing it only for himself.

Connorsue manages to still be worse.