“I’m here,” Roland calls from outside the FedEx jet. “What do you want?”
Connor remains hidden inside the hold. He knows he’s only going to get one chance at this, so he’s got to do it right. “Come inside, and we’ll talk about it.”
“No, you come out.”
Nice try, Connor thinks, but this is going to be on my terms.

In fiction, this is the role a villain plays.

Connor threatens to tell everything if Roland doesn’t obey him. So Roland comes inside and Connor jams the admiral’s gun into his back. For those of you wondering why the gun was brought up when Connor first met the guy, maybe this is why. Someone took Checknov’s Gun a bit literally.

Roland’s hands go up, as if he’s been in this position many times before.

Roland is such a more interesting character than Connor.

Connor then frisks him and removes the hidden knife, and book, I feel I should remind you that Connor brought a hidden gun.

Connor then brings him to the crate.

“Get in,” Connor says.
That’s when Roland makes his move.

Another way of putting it might be more like “that’s when Roland makes a desperate bid to escape” but no, I’m sure he was plotting the whole time and his attempt to fight right when Connor reveals his plan to lock him in a crate to suffocate is quite coincidental in timing.

Because Roland is evil. Unlike Connor, who easily shoves Roland in and locks it.

While Roland rages inside

There’s little description in this, but even what little there is is telling. Roland “rages”? He’s not trying to get out because he’s just been attacked, or because he’s now trapped in the same crate other kids were killed in. He’s just a crazy loose cannon.

Even though Connor is the only one who seems to have actual temper issues.

Connor takes aim at the crate and fires the gun once, twice, three times. The blasts echo, blending with the terrified screams from within the crate

I doubt this is meant to make us feel sympathy either. Media does not look fondly upon people who scream, especially in response to threats rather than pain. The book quickly has Connor explain that he was shooting the crate’s corner and Roland was in no danger, therefore Roland is just a coward despite having no way of knowing that.

Connor’s shots had been very precise; they were low, and directed at a corner of the crate.

I have no idea why “low” is considered a positive criteria here given that there’s a solid 100% chance that some part of Roland is at the bottom. I’m going to guess the author is assuming that Roland is standing and figuring all the vital parts are in the middle or top, because getting your foot blown off is no big deal and also there’s no way Roland might have fallen or bent down while trying to get the door open.

There’s also no mention of how Connor manages to be such a good shot – there’s been no sign he actually knows how to use guns.

“I’ve given you something your victims never had,” Connor tells him. “I’ve given you airholes.”

But why?

A lack of airholes won’t kill him for quite some time – the flight lasted maybe an hour and that was more than enough air for four kids. Perhaps it’s for the sake of hearing his answers, but Risa seemed able to hear people moving around outside well enough, and I doubt there’s any ambient noise. Considering that there’s other things you’ll eventually die of when you’re locked in a crate, it makes me wonder if the real threat is not getting a painless death as the air runs out but being trapped in there to die of thirst.

But anyway. That’s all for that chapter! The next is Mob, again.

The mob went out to find Zachary, still referred to as Emby because we’re pretending to care but not pretending too hard, in the desert because that is totally a place kids can safely run around. They find the graves of the second batch of dead kids, the admiral’s helper ones, and instantly figure out it’s them. (Again, apparently no one else has ever died here.)

In a few short minutes, word spreads through the ranks like flames in a steady wind. The Goldens have been found, and apparently they weren’t so golden after all. Someone suggests that the Admiral did it himself. The suggestion becomes a rumor, and the rumor quickly becomes accepted as fact.

The author really loves the idea that kids have instantaneous rumor mills.

I think I’ve figured out why the book doesn’t just use a viewpoint character here. It’s because this sort of condescension wouldn’t work if you have to actually explain the reasoning.

The idea the admiral killed them isn’t an idle suggestion, it’s the only thing that makes any sense. They know that the kids disappeared and they know the admiral claimed it was to go do something elsewhere. If they’re actually hidden in shallow graves, the admiral must have known and been covering it up. Which makes more sense – that he lied to all the kids in some harebrained scheme to uncover the culprit by doing nothing whatsoever, or that he killed them and lied to cover it up? After all, telling them about the murders would have been a great way to get any of the kids that might have seen or heard someone acting suspiciously to come forward and tell the admiral, while hiding it let the killer’s plan progress without a problem.

And it’s not like they just happened to find it. They found the graves of these kids while looking for another kid who’s disappeared!

But they can’t have a justified reason for thinking this, it’s just hysteria and Roland’s lies, even though Roland’s lies were not about killing kids and burying them in the desert. Anyway, this makes them realize Roland is also missing, as is Connor, because Connor is so super great that people just reflexively look for him.

The mob storms toward the Admiral’s jet, picking up more and more kids along the way.

He deserves everything he gets.

Then on to Risa. She’s up in the jet because apparently they send a medic when someone requests aspirin. (Why doesn’t he just have his own aspirin anyway? He’s an old guy with worn joints, he probably takes two with his morning coffee.) He chats with her telling her that the experience she’s getting here is better than what anyone her age gets in the outside world which yeah, but that’s at the cost of everyone else getting subpar treatment. Learning through error isn’t good for anyone else. This is then illustrated by He complains of shoulder pain, and asks her for the aspirin. She gives it to him, but just to be on the safe side, she checks his blood pressure

Are heart attacks not the first thing people think of? Because I’ve known about them since I was a little kid. I watched the Hatchet movie and I may not have had any clue what was going on, and even thought that when he gets into the plane to see the dead pilot that it was a zombie, but my parents did explain that the pilot had a heart attack and that men talking about their left arm hurting ALWAYS means heart attack

Also, she can hear commotion which she decides is business as usual, because apparently all that stuff about how the kids stay in individual groups with set tasks and don’t even venture outside the underside of the wings for fear of satellites seeing them was a lie.

Whatever it is, Risa suspects it will end with bandages and ice packs for someone. Her work is never done.

A proper girlfriend is also the motherly healer.

Then back to Mob. They try to get in. Risa punches one out and sprays bactine in the face of the next, then locks the hatch. Yes! Defend General Asshole! The kids swarm the plane and try to tear it apart with their bare hands.

It’s amazing how much of a plane can be shredded by bare-handed fury.

More amazing would be the kids remembering this is a scrapyard and they presumably have actual tools for this exact job.

“How did this happen? How did I let this happen?”

Well, you run this place as an absentee dictator and don’t seem to have anything resembling an existing chain of command beyond five kids you had in charge. Any kid that turns eighteen you kick out, screwing up your power base and making you forever reliant on new kids. Although you know full well that none of these kids even know what dentures are, even hearing from one of them that your teeth made him think you’d murdered a kid for them doesn’t prompt you to explain this to people. Your way of handling five murders is to cover it up in the hopes the murderer would talk rather than telling people and getting them on your side. Knowing that one of the kids is evil and actively working to undermine you makes you push harder to get “proof” he committed a major crime rather than just ordering him off on a work detail or at least switching him out of the most coveted job which he uses to secure his power base. And yet you have no problem grabbing some other kid and disappearing him without explanation. And not only did you have no plan for explaining the kid’s disappearance, but when word got out he was gone and everyone started getting upset as should have been obvious from the start, you were not only blindsided by this (wait, you mean kids notice when someone disappears????) but then decided that fuck it, you didn’t need to explain anything.

Also your whole “I know better than you and don’t give a fuck about your input” bit likely endeared you to no one. If you’d treated the kids as semi-equals, they wouldn’t expect the worst of you, and also they’d have brought up any rumors and grievances to your face, allowing you to nip them in the bud. Except for the Zachary thing, but because you’re being evil is not really a good reason.

Instead you told a sixteen year old to solve all your problems because he was good at fixing electronics.

I mean, I guess you could have also been sleeping with all the female unwinds and that would have been even dumber, but otherwise you did just about everything you could to cause this and my only confusion is why it took so long.

Then someone tears out the power line connecting the jet to its generator. The lights go out, the air-conditioning shuts down, and the entire jet quickly begins to bake in the broiling sun.

…then why the fuck was the hatch open in the first place! YOU CLOSE THE DOORS if you’re running AC!

Back to Connor again, He’s accusing Roland of murdering the second batch of kids.

“I said I’d make you a deal,” says Connor, “and I will. If you confess, I’ll make sure the Admiral spares your life.”
In response, Roland suggests Connor perform a physical impossibility.

Can I just say I’m so, so sick of that euphemism? It’s the most boring attempt to be clever. Maybe Roland could suggest Connor could do a physical impossibility with a jet engine.

Also, he’s totally right in saying this as Connor has illustrated that he can’t be trusted. Even if he’d outright promised Roland would live I wouldn’t believe it, and he’s made sure to weaselword it so technically, shooting him now would be ensuring admiral-guy never harms him.

Connor says Roland won’t leave unless he gets a confession. Roland says he didn’t do it. Connor is fine waiting. Chapter ends.

Then it’s Mob, AGAIN. It’s not that I can’t see what the book is trying to do – quick cuts to build tension as everything comes to a head. It’s just not done very well.

The jet has heated up to over a hundred, and while Risa is fine, admiral-guy isn’t. There are still some kids around the jet, but mostly they’re burning everything else.

The study jets, the dormitory jets, even the recreation jet

And it’s a bad thing these little psychos were getting unwound? I mean, sure, unwinding people is wrong, but this book is starting to convince me that it’s taking place in a universe where teenagers are just some sort of talking, bad-tempered cattle. Only unlike cows, they’re not even cute.

From halfway across the Graveyard, Cleaver sees the smoke rising in the distance, beckoning him. Cleaver is drawn to mayhem. He must be a witness to it! He gets into his helicopter and flies toward the angry mob.
He sets down as close to the chaos as he dares to get. Have his deeds in any way led to this? He hopes so. He turns off the engine, letting the blades slow, so he can hear the wonderful sounds of havoc. . . . Then the angry Unwinds turn toward him.
“It’s Cleaver! He works for the Admiral.”
Suddenly, Cleaver is the center of attention. He can’t help but feel this is a good thing.

So like I said a while back, anarchism is an actual movement with understandable and even noble goals, not LOL CHAOS REIGNS CHEESE MONKEY PIPEBOMB.