A retired 787 arrives with only fourteen Whollies packed in empty beer barrels in the hold. Connor wonders if someone in the resistance is just getting bored, or if the barrels were really the most inconspicuous way to ship them.

Really. Kids are getting shipped in everything including coffins and yet you think beer barrels are somehow different and a sign they’re just screwing around.

Connor again is all THEY ONLY SENT A FEW KIDS TO THE PLACE THAT’S NO LONGER SAFE AND WHICH IS HAVING TROUBLE FEEDING THE KIDS ALREADY THERE, THIS WORRIES ME WHAT COULD BE GOING ON.

Then he considers the plane itself, which is a nice big one still in working order. It finally occurs to him that maybe an escape plan for everybody might be good, and he asks his adult buddy who for no reason isn’t the one in charge if the guy can fly it. When the guy says yes, he puts his plan into action: they’ll say they dismantled the plane but actually they won’t. No one would ever realize that! Adult buddy tells Connor that’s such an awesome plan and Connor, in a moment of self-awareness, says no, it’s just he’s got no other options.

Then there’s more of Connor gets special treatment but he doesn’t want it but everyone else says he has to and he’s all MAYBE RISA REGRETS SAYING THAT AND HATES ME NOW and I don’t care about your creepy relationship drama Connor.

Seeing his fearless leader is all pensive, adult buddy tries to cheer him up with a theory about why no one’s shut down the camp.

“See, Connor, the kids here, even though they’ve been legally made nonentities, that doesn’t make them worthless. They’re as valuable as diamonds. Do you know why diamonds are so expensive?”

Because the people running the diamond cartels let random idiots steal huge piles of them to hoard to keep the price stable OH WAIT NO THIS ANALOGY DOESN’T WORK.

Connor considers what Trace had said, and the truth hits him. “We’re the vault! And as long as we pull AWOLs off the street, it keeps the price high. Is that what you’re saying?”

IT SHOULDN’T BE BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING STUPID.

Here’s how you keep prices down:

YOU

JUST

DON’T

FUCKING

SELL

THE

PARTS

There. Done. If they’re worried about black market organs getting too cheap, all the more reason to scoop up places like this before anyone else realizes it’s there.

But this way, Connor can whine about how oh no he is part of the system by doing a good thing he is aiding evil!!! Truly, it’s people doing things that’s the problem and we should all just lie down and die.

Then Connor realizes that this world makes no sense and no one could possibly work anything out on their own.

“How long,” he asks Trace, “have you been working for the Juvies?”
Trace just drives the Jeep, keeping his eyes straight ahead, and doesn’t answer for at least ten seconds. Finally he says, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

Good job using the nonsense of this world against it, Connor. I almost like you just for the accidental genre-savvy moment.

We move to the next chapter, which is about a Delores. She is not a person but one of the bombers used in the Korean War and even though supposedly this is the far future While World War II aircraft enjoy the privilege of permanent museum displays, Korean War fixed-wing aircraft are mostly unloved and forgotten. Since it was the first war to feature extensive use of helicopters, those are the aircraft that get all the attention.

So how is it still around at all?

The Korean war was sixty years ago now. Even assuming that tomorrow the heartland America assholes all simultaneously grab their guns to shoot people over abortions, it’s been quite a while since then. Going by the fact Nelson, who seems like an older guy, was a kid remembering the end of it, I’d estimate at least thirty years have passed. That unwanted bomber is a minimum of ninety years old.

Why? Because the author didn’t spend the two seconds to realize that it’d make more sense for our current events to be their history and just went with our history is their history.

The idea that the Graveyard would someday have to defend itself like the Warsaw Ghetto hung over the Admiral’s head, and now hangs over Connor ’s.

See?

Anyway so it’s stuffed full of weapons and Connor has the only key to it because we all know zero troubled kids ever learn to pick locks, and somehow their intense training regime of not even knowing the guns exist will allow them to defend themselves with them if ever attacked.

In the mean time, Connor, as one of the kids who doesn’t know jack shit about firing a gun, decides it’s time to get himself a pistol for protection. As I know he’s in the final chapters, he must not immediately shoot himself in the face. Disappointing AND unrealistic, book.

And then on to the next chapter, which is more Connor. It’s just been three straight chapters of Connor but one got renamed so it’d look like there was switching happening.

We learn that Connor’s adult buddy, who’s Trace because I’m bored of the epithet, sleeps in the plane they send all the discipline cases, because obviously having them all in one place will help transform them into productive workers. Connor and the two biggest kids he could find are now waiting outside the toilet planning to attack him and stick cuffs on him or something, he hasn’t thought it out exactly. He does tell us he is totally ready to use the gun, because:

Never wield a weapon unless you’re willing to use it, the Admiral once told him. If Connor is going to maintain order in this place, he has to go by the Admiral’s playbook.

“So, and this is important, you shouldn’t just wave weapons around, weapons should only be there for when they’re absolutely needed, because if you show a weapon, you’ll probably have to use it, you should not be bringing weapons unless it’s absolutely necessary, Connor, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Always use lethal force at the slightest provocation, sir? Can do!”

They wait in the dark, baffled that Trace isn’t going to the bathroom. It’s the middle of the night. People generally sleep through the night. There’s no reason to assume he’ll definitely wake up and go to the bathroom at some point. If that was your plan, you should’ve gotten one of those giant bottles of soda and drank it with him earlier, or announced today was soup every meal day or something.

But it’s Connor’s plan so Trace does go to the bathroom. Connor prepares for his dramatic entrance and Trace disarms him and beats all the kids up in a couple seconds. How?

With Connor in too much pain to move, Trace brings down the other two kids before they can run, leaving them unconscious in the dust.

With vagueness. When Connor asks if they’re dead he explains that he only knocked them out, because everybody knows that head injuries are just surprise sleepytime! Especially when they don’t wake up or even stir during your long conversation.

Trace bitches about Connor’s plan of attacking someone trying to poop being dishonorable and also how totally not stealthy it was, also by the way he’s ~*~special ops~*~ and Connor’s all JUST GO AWAY OKAY I HATE YOU and he’s all NOPE BAD IDEA and they posture at each other a bit and Connor’s convinced that the guy working as a mole trying to seem trustworthy must be legit because he doesn’t attack Connor again and keeps acting trustworthy.

Trace explains that yes, he’s been telling his superiors stuff, but it’s nothing bad.

“Mostly what they already know. That things are under control here. That a new shipment of AWOLs arrives every few weeks. I assure them that the place is not a threat, and no one’s planning to blow up any more harvest camps.” Then Trace stops walking and turns to Connor.
“What’s more important are the things I don’t tell them.”
“Which are?”
“I don’t tell them about your rescue missions, I don’t tell them about your escape plan . . . and I don’t tell them that you’re still alive.”
“What?”
“As far as they know, this place is being run by Elvis Robert Mullard, a former security guard from Happy Jack—because if anyone knew that you were the one in charge, the Juvey-cops would raid this place in an instant. The Akron AWOL is too much of a threat for them to ignore. So I make this place sound like a nursery, and I make you sound like a nanny. It keeps them happy, and it keeps all these kids alive.”

Oh, so they know that you’re no longer working for them.

Why exactly is a security guard who got his arm blown off by unwind scum and nearly died from an unwind scum revolt working to protect unwinds? A security guard who does not at all resemble his ID? And meanwhile, they never even found the “Akron AWOL”‘s body, just some unknown guy the age of an Elvis Mullard?

So what’s the real game? Who’s pulling the strings?

Going on the idea the powers that be want this place, maybe the powers that be prefer that annoying kid officially listed as dead and using what star power he has to tell kids that rebellion is wrong and to just sit quiet and not rock the boat. Maybe they were even behind Connor’s escape at the end of last book – where he’s not only mistaken for somebody else, but then gets a wink when he points that out.

Really, the only question is how they knew he’d play along. But then, maybe they weren’t relying on him somehow insisting attacking harvest camps and saving people is evil. Maybe either one works – here he’s keeping the status quo chugging along, while if he did attack people, they’d let him do it just long enough for a panic then sweep in.

And that explains how they’ve been getting away with the rescues and attacks. Either the people in charge want to wait until people are really scared of unwind kids working in groups or they’re hoping he’ll do something really dramatic soon as long as they keep the pressure off and let him keep fumbling about thinking he’s getting away with everything.

Meanwhile, Connor’s ordered Trace to come with him to somewhere out of the way so people don’t walk in on their fun gun conversation (other kids are still “sleeping” on the ground) and then realizes that oh hey, no witnesses so Trace could totally kill him safely.

Does that mean that Connor actually trusts Trace in spite of his obvious betrayal? He isn’t sure of anything anymore, not even his own motivations.

This is what someone writes when they realize they have no justification for why anything is happening.

Anyway, he whines about Trace working for the cops and he’s all lol I work for their bosses’ bosses and the juvey-cops dance on their invisible strings!!! Admittedly, this setting is so convoluted that massive invisible conspiracies actually make things more straightforward. Anyway, they’re so conspiracy that not even he was told who he worked for.

“The point is, I don’t report to anyone in the air force; I report to civilians in suits, and that ticks me off.

Also fuck you Trace, the military reports to civilians in suits.

The head puppetmasters, or the ones he’s aware of anyway, are the “Proactive Citizenry” company. And for some reason his military-worship makes him upset that he’s working for black ops, because that’s totally not a thing the military does. Therefore, he’s loyal to Connor because Connor isn’t hiding stuff like this.

Trace reaches out his hand to shake, and Connor considers what shaking that hand means. It could be the creation of their own secret society to battle Proactive Citizenry, whatever that is . . . or it could mean Connor has been entirely duped. In the end, he shakes Trace’s hand, wishing that just once, there could be a clear course of action.
“Before today you were just a pawn doing what they wanted you to do,” Trace tells him. “Deep down you knew it—you sensed it. I hope the truth has set you free.”

“This thing I’m telling you confirms what you already suspected and justifies what you already wanted, while not matching up with any actual evidence.”

“Seems legit.”

Edit: Risa chapter, it’s ridiculously short.

Risa wakes up, chats with people, tells us that she has more friends here that at the state home (she didn’t seem to really know anybody there though) but that she feels apart because she’s the legendary Risa Ward, the Akron AWOL’s partner in crime ie, the girlfriend.

She used to spend time at the Rec Jet in the evening, after her shift, but the Stork Club put an end to that. She has half a mind to demand equal time for the state wards, but knows that fueling a division of the Graveyard into factions won’t do anything but cause trouble.

Therefore she does nothing at all.

The state ward thing would actually solve this problem. Simply pointing out this is a bad idea that’s unfair could upset the kids who originally got it. Her asking for the same thing they got would let them see how annoying it is to be on the other end of things. Have a few more kids set up their own special hours and now everybody’s mad they can’t just use the place when they have free time, Connor comes in all LO I SHALL FIX THIS PROBLEM and undoes all the clubs in one go.

Starkey’s plan is so damn stupid.

Then there’s Connor and she’s looking at him but then he looks at her and she looks away because she feels like she was spying but he comes over to talk I DON’T CARE I DON’T CARE I DON’T CARE

Finally he says, “The ADR says they’ll send those medical supplies you asked for in the next few days.”
“Should I believe it?”
“Probably not.”

And the reason they have for lying is…? Especially when every communication risks discovery.

She says there’s something else, he says yeah it’s a big thing he’ll say he can’t tell her. Then the news announces Cam the frankenkid.

“Why would they do such a thing?” she asks.
“Because they can,” Connor says bitterly.

Except…this doesn’t fit well with the narrative of limited parts, does it? If you’re trying to tell people kids are dangerous and their parts desperately needed, taking those parts to build a kid isn’t going to make anybody happy.