Where Lev was between the time he left CyFi and his arrival at the Graveyard is less important than where his thoughts resided. They resided in places colder and darker than the many places he hid.
He had survived the month through a string of unpleasant compromises and crimes of convenience—whatever was necessary to keep himself alive.

So yeah, the idea the novella could explain his behavior is a retcon, as is the very idea he stumbled onto a “chancefolk” reservation.

Then he gets into the safe houses, at which point for some reason he’s got a massive chip on his shoulder and quickly made it known that he was not a guy to be trifled with…told them his parents signed the order to have him unwound after he was arrested for armed robbery. because that’s not going to sound ridiculous at all. Maybe it isn’t. The prolifers won, maybe a thirteen year old can walk into a gun shop and buy one with no questions asked. Background checks mean the terrorists win.

So, while admiral-guy is confessing to Connor he murdered his son because all the cool admirals were doing it, Lev is also doing something secret of his own.

Okay, now, see if you see the problem here:

His first night there he had successfully slipped out to find Connor
…
Each night since then he’s tried to sneak away, but every time, he’s been
caught and sent back.
…
It’s a destination told to him by a girl he had encountered a few weeks before.

So Lev is apparently heading for someplace he heard about from a safehouse kid, despite the fact none of the safehouse kids had any idea where they were going, let alone the finer details of its layout, let alone the ability to set up meetings.

BECAUSE, dammit.

So yeah, he makes it there and gives the name of the girl who sent him. One of the other kids is Mai, because of course the couple people met at the first safehouse are the only secondary characters who matter.

It’s Cleaver, the helicopter pilot.
“So Julie-Ann sent you!” he says.

So, somehow, a kid from here left and ended back in the safehouses. There’s no explanation for how or why.

Pilot guy also explains Roland’s not a part of this group, further begging the question of why he’s showing such favoritism to Roland, and wants to know if Lev is really committed. So he tells them the real story, and pilot guy is thrilled to have a tithe on his side. Pilot guy starts asking how much Lev hates his parents and the rest, and he keeps reciting “Totally and completely.” because Someone has to pay for the unfairness of it all. Everyone has to pay. He’ll make them. except that when last we saw him his RAEG was in defense of others, so making everyone pay doesn’t make much sense. It ws seeing the dead kid that made him lose it, and before that he was concerned for the living kid he traveled with.

“One thing I need to know,” Lev asks, “because Julie-Ann . . . she wasn’t very clear about it. I want to know what you believe.”

You want to join the group you don’t know about. Right.

If you’re asking if we have a cause, we don’t, so get that out of your head.” Cleaver gestures broadly, his hands and arms filling the space around him. “Causes are old news. We believe in randomness. Earthquakes! Tornados! We believe in forces of nature—and we are forces of nature. We are havoc. We’re chaos. We mess with the world.”

oh my god seriously why is this

This is the sort of thing people do when they don’t have real things to care about. “Chaos” and “messing with the world” is stupid shit rich kids do because they’re bored and Mommy and Daddy will bail them out every time people get mad.

Also apparently they apply this to the admiral, because biting the hand that feeds you is always the best move, but they won’t say what they did.

“The point is,” says Cleaver, “it doesn’t matter who or what we mess with, just as long as we mess.

Because as the previous thirty-four chapters have shown, this is a setting lacking in good targets.

It’s invisible, but it’s there, like the deadly charge lurking in a downed power line. Anger, but not just anger: a will to act on it as well.

That’s really not how I’d describe “lol let’s just screw shit up randomly because chaos is cool”.

Okay, let’s see if Risa’s chapter will be any better.

Risa is the first to notice something’s wrong with Connor. Risa is the first to care that something’s wrong with Lev.

Because that’s the role of the girl, the support staff.

In a moment of selfishness, she finds herself aggravated by it

This is interesting.

On the one hand, I like that it’s showing people can feel selfish and inconvenience by this sort of thing, that’s something too many stories gloss over.

On the other hand, what’s wrong with them seems to be their own fuckups, so it’s not quite the same thing as being selfish because someone’s legitimate issues are a drain on you. Connor is being a moron and Lev is being crazy.

She wishes this could remain her sanctuary beyond her eighteenth birthday, because in the outside world she’d never be able to do the things she’s doing now. It would be practicing medicine without a license—fine when you’re in survival mode, but not in the civilized world.

This too is interesting.

It’s great to feel you’re doing something important, but there’s a reason medicine requires a license, and it’s because it’s actually pretty hard. What happens when someone dies because she misdiagnoses them?

(This is also why it’d make so much sense to keep the kids doing jobs like this past their eighteenth birthday.)

She explains going to college to become a doctor is impossible for someone like her, and of course being a nurse is so off the table she doesn’t even mention it.

maybe she could join the military and become an Army medic.

One of the various background insanities is how everyone talks about the military without mentioning what it is the military does. Back in Ch11, there’s a mention of “the war in Australia” which might just mean that there’s a war and that’s where it is, but presumably means one we’re involved with. I don’t really support blowing up kangaroos, but apparently Risa and the rest could not give less of a fuck because it never even comes up when considering joining it to help them blow up those kangaroos.

This is what fills Risa’s mind as she makes her way to one of the study jets. The Admiral has three of his most accessible and well-appointed jets set aside as study spaces, complete with libraries, computers, and the resources to learn anything you want to learn. “This is not a school,” the Admiral told them shortly after they arrived. “There are no teachers, there are no exams.” Oddly, it’s precisely that lack of expectation that keeps the study jets full most of the time.

The continuing adventures of one-size-fits-all childrearing.

The no teachers bit is particularly bad. Teachers help. Drafting some of the older kids to help out other struggling would be a really good idea, but no, the reason kids don’t learn is because they’re not dumped in a library and told to do it all themselves.

Risa prefers to study very early, because she’s studying medical books and it creeps kids out to realize she doesn’t know this stuff, as well it should. What I don’t understand is why those books aren’t kept in the medical area in the first place, for easy consulting and for studying during downtime.

But enough about Risa, let’s get to Sue Prime. Connor’s there! Yay? Apparently he didn’t get any sleep at all last night.

He’s got two books, one on engineering and the other on criminology.

She can tell something’s wrong. Connor says it’s okay. Then he warns her that the admiral is looking for replacements to his former squad and that she should turn it down if she’s asked because of things he can’t tell her.

“I want to help you,” she says. “I’m worried about you. Please let me help you.”
He darts his eyes back and forth, trying to find an escape from her gaze, but he can’t. Suddenly, he bridges the small distance between them and kisses her.

Hey kids! So, someone saying they’re concerned about you is not actually synonymous with saying they want to bang you. Please think before kissing people, because maybe they aren’t into you that way.

Luckily, Risa is Connor’s perfect aryan girlfriend and just kisses him again.

Then on to Lev.

He comes to infirmary call that morning with a bad sunburn. Since he’s a fast runner, he’s been assigned messenger duty. Mostly, it involves running back and forth between the jets carrying notes. It’s one of the Admiral’s rules that all messengers wear sunscreen, but it seems Lev is no longer bound by anyone’s rules.

I really wouldn’t concern yourself with this. It’s okay to not follow little rules if you don’t see the point of them, and Lev will now see the point of this one and, assuming basic pattern recognition, be more likely to assume other rules have a point from here on out.

Also, he’s got a welt on his back. That’s from helicopter guy patting him on the back super hard, presumably. I have no idea why this is a plot point, it just is. Risa wants to know what’s up, Lev says it’s just some guy, she keeps pushing, he keeps pushing back.

what are you, my mother?”
“No,” says Risa. “If I were your mother, I’d be rushing you off to the nearest harvest camp.”
She means it as a joke, but Lev doesn’t find it funny

Because it’s not, Risa.

There’s a deadness to his voice that’s haunting.

I am pretty sick of super messed up Lev, though. So he saw some guy get possessed by a dead kid, build yourself a bridge and get the fuck over it. Maybe the novella is because everyone complained about how stupid this was and how it didn’t make sense.

She then complains about missing the “old Lev”, and Lev rightly points out that guy was a treacherous idiot, but she insists she liked him better, probably because he was more of a doormat.

Next up is another work call.

Risa hates them, because she knows there isn’t going to be anything for her

I don’t understand this at all. If she just really likes her job and knows there’s no way a work call would offer similar letting untrained kids handle medical care fun, that just means she isn’t interested, but hate is pretty strong and suggests a lot of resentment. I’d expect her to just find them kind of boring.

Because the kid who did work call was one of the murdered kids, helicopter guy is currently doing it.

Risa doesn’t like him. He’s got an unpleasant, slimy look about him.

First off, it’d be nice for this to have come up earlier, and second, I’m sick of people knowing who’s evil on sight.

There are only a few calls for work today. Someone wants a plumber’s assistant in some godforsaken town named Beaver’s Breath; there’s some farm work out in California

…uh.

Okay, plumber is actually a pretty skilled job, they’ve got a guild and everything, so hiring an illegal kid for an assistant is weird. Meanwhile, the farmwork bit confirms that yes, underage kids are the new Mexicans.

“Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,” Cleaver says. “You’ll be working on an oil pipeline until you’re eighteen. From what I hear, it’s one of the coldest, most brutal places on Earth. But, hey, it’s a way out, right?

But how long does it take to make an oil pipeline? What happens if it finishes early and someone’s not eighteen yet? So far, we’ve heard nothing about kids being able to come back.

And the way out bit doesn’t make sense either, since they get out by staying there. It’d make more sense for the carrot to be more like that they’ll get added as actual workers with actual salaries upon reaching eighteen or something.

It’s apparently all some plot though because the three kids who volunteer are Lev and the kids he met, but why would the cover story be so full of holes?

So the instant Risa gets back to the infirmary, she calls for a messenger, and another and another, sending them each off with redundant notes reminding kids to take their medications. Finally, after her fourth call, the messenger they send is Lev.

This is the best example of how no one but the main three are actual people.

Anyway, they get into an argument where Risa orders him to explain what the hell and he won’t talk.

Risa crosses her arms in defiance of his defiance. “You don’t go anywhere if I don’t give you a clean bill of health. I could tell the Admiral you’ve got . . . you’ve got. . . infectious hepatitis.”

What the hell, Risa. And it wouldn’t even work, since none of the other medic kids would agree it’s true and you’d be found out.

“There are things I have to do,” Lev says. “I don’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry I’m not who you want me to be, but I’ve changed. I’m not that same stupid, naive kid you guys kidnapped two months ago. Nothing you can do will keep me from leaving here and doing what I’ve got to do.”

That’s an okay rant. Also I’m not sure the time adds up. I mean, it started in late fall and it was Christmas when they arrived at the graveyard a month ago. We know Lev ate Thanksgiving dinner with annoying possessed kid, and it’s a month between then and Christmas, so at minimum, it’s got to be more than two months.

Risa says nothing, because she knows he’s right.

Thank you!

She can stall him at best, but she can’t stop him.

Oh. So by “knows he’s right” she means “about not being able to stop him” not “about how she shouldn’t be doing this”.

So he goes.

Once again, Risa thinks she’ll never see Lev again. Once again, she’ll be wrong.

Eh, book. Eh.