When last we left off, stupidity had led to the kids at the gate firing at Lev.

Miracolina is already down. Not just down, but crumpled. She lies lifelessly in the dirt by the side of the road.

But Miracolina will be denied the sweet release of death as that’d mean Lev doesn’t have a girlfriend. What happened is that right as the gate kids fired, Nelson, who’s been right there the whole time stalking them in the flat desert without them knowing, shot Miracolina. And isn’t shooting Lev but is now just taunting him.

Meanwhile the gate kids apparently don’t know what their job is and are shouting that whoever is out there should just go away. Nelson then shoots one of them. Then he finally decides to shoot Lev, but that [deflects] off a rivet in his jeans, and lands in the gravel beside him. in what is a totally plausible chain of events no really, so then Lev picks it up, shoves it into his jeans, and pretends to be unconscious without Nelson noticing anything weird, which is also a totally plausible chain of events.

We then get Nelson telling us that he didn’t go to the caverns at all, as was obvious, and also he’s using tracking nanites in Lev and Miracolina’s blood because stuff you can put in people’s blood is basically magic.

He explains he doesn’t care about either of them and is only knocking them out because killing them would be too hard, even though a few lines later he says he’s got multiple guns and one does contain bullets. Mostly he’s got tranquilizers, though:

which are far more effective than bullets. A bullet can graze a target, hit a limb—even inflict a body shot, and still the target can return fire. With a tranq, no matter where it hits, it takes a target out of the equation instantly.

Unless it bounces off a rivet or gets caught in clothing or only grazes the target but doesn’t manage to inject.

He is right about the bullshit “what is dosage and circulation” issue, though.

He also figures the remaining kid at the gate is harmless because they don’t know how to use real ammunition which is why the previous shot missed, and jesus fucking christ Trace you’re military trained how come this idiot knows you can’t just swap between the two without training in both and you don’t?

We then go to a kid whose parents apparently prophetically named him Gate Guard because the author will never let you forget that just because this is a story about dehumanizing a subset of your population for personal gain doesn’t mean he gives a fuck about anyone who isn’t a main character.

Their job usually consists of giving directions to people who are lost, because no one comes to the Graveyard intentionally at night.

Their job is having guns at the entrance to a secret compound of illegal children for the defense of those children.

Yes, their job “usually” doesn’t involve that, but they exist BECAUSE one day someone might come to the place intentionally at night to kill everyone.

They might be lax, and they’re certainly inexperienced, but they’ve always known this could happen.

(You’ll also notice that Connor has still failed to tell everyone what’s happening. Still.)

Anyway, his friend fell down and in a world where bullets are taboo and tranq darts are the thing, after being told that the main users of tranq darts are coming soon, he is naturally assuming his friend was hit with real bullets and may be dead now. He goes to check his friend to find out that yes, his friend who fell over silently as if knocked out by a dart is still alive.

Then all the cars ever materialize out of nowhere to drive through the gate, running his equally unnamed friend over in the process but somehow not noticing he exists.

He dives out of the way just in time, and when he looks back, he sees his unconscious friend turned to roadkill by the wheels of the battering ram.

And I think this is one of the reasons I generally hate everyone. There’s no emotion here – despite the conceit of everything being from someone’s POV, the closest it gets is when it says, “Hey look at this dumbass thinking this!” now and then. There aren’t the flourishes you get with third person omniscient, but there’s not the emotion and focus you get in limited. How does the kid feel about this? The book doesn’t give a shit, just like it doesn’t give a shit the other kid is dead. People only have emotions when the book wants them to do something, not because they’re human beings.

After the cops drive by, Nelson drives in, then Lev runs through, because no one understands the concept of looking behind them. Lev demands keys to the jeep that the guard apparently has there. He then tells the guard that Miracolina is out there and to go get her and run for it together.

“Promise me you’ll do that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise.”
…
Once he’s gone, the guard takes a moment to look at the remains of his fallen comrade, then bolts.
Somewhere in the bushes just outside the gate is a tranq’d girl. He doesn’t care. Every man for himself in a Juvey crackdown. Every girl, too. So rather than even looking for her, he takes off running as fast as he can, and leaves the girl to the Juvies, or the coyotes—whichever come first.

Like I said. I just hate everyone in this. And you’re supposed to – there’s no way this is really the thoughts of the kid, it’s the narrator. A scared kid running for his life is not going to be thinking about how he doesn’t give a shit if the girl is unwound or torn apart after he promised to help. But this isn’t a scared kid making a bad choice, it’s a sociopath who just can’t manage to give a fuck.

He doesn’t care.

No one actually cares. All these horrible things are happening but for some reason they’re set in a world where people don’t give a shit about them.

Why? Why would you make a setting where the issue is how horrible it is adults kill kids and then have the kids be a bunch of murderous backstabbing robots?