So now Connor’s going through the same oh god how can the person I thought was safe be not safe thing Lev did, but because he’s a sucky protagonist he just thinks this instead of doing anything.

And then the guards come to get him.

“No! No! You can’t do this.”
“We can, and we are. It’s our job—and whether you make it hard, or easy, it doesn’t matter. Our job gets done either way.”
Connor looks to the other kids as if they might help him, but they don’t.

Why would you expect them to? You didn’t help anyone either.

Then he tries giving puppy eyes to the guard, because right, puppy eyes are the solution, if only all those other kids had thought of that!

The guard thinks for a moment and says, “I got a buddy looking for brown eyes, on account of his girlfriend don’t like the ones he got. He’s a decent guy—you could do a lot worse.”
“What!”
“We sometimes get dibs on parts and stuff,” he says. “One of the perks of the job. Anyways, all I’m saying is I can give you some peace of mind. You’ll know your eyes won’t go to some lowlife or nothin’.”

This continues to be completely incoherent on the subject of organ prices. Being a guard sucks, but also you’re able to get first choice of pricy parts? And also people are able to buy spare eyes just for the hell of it?

In anything less stupid than this book, I’d assume something like that people can trade in their own organs if those are functional, but not only is this book stupid, people wouldn’t do that because apparently “your” whatever going to the wrong person is a big concern, except that it’s not because unwinding is also super wonderful and kids should stop complaining.

Anyway, since Connor-sue is a sue:

“Hands off me, I’ll walk by myself,” he orders the guards, and they instantly release him, perhaps surprised by the authority in his voice. He rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and strides forward. The first step is the hardest, but from that moment on he decides that he will neither run nor dawdle. He will neither quiver nor fight. He will take this last walk of his life in steady strides—and in a few weeks from now, someone, somewhere, will hold in their mind the memory that this young man, whoever he was, faced his unwinding with dignity and pride.

No, Connor, punch them in the face. There’s nothing noble about going quietly.

And now the next chapter. Time to get really, really judgy.

Who can say what goes through the mind of a clapper in the moments before carrying out that evil deed? No doubt whatever those thoughts are, they are lies.

I mean just seriously what the hell is this shit.

However, like all dangerous deceptions, the lies that clappers tell themselves wear seductive disguises.

“Everyone secretly believes exactly what I believe and just won’t admit it!”

It then runs down the fact there’s apparently multiple completely separate clapper groups:

For clappers who have been led to believe their acts are smiled upon by God, their lie is clothed in holy robes and has outstretched arms promising a reward that will never come.
For clappers who believe their act will somehow bring about change in the world, their lie is disguised as a crowd looking back at them from the future, smiling in appreciation for what they’ve done.
For clappers who seek only to share their personal misery with the world, their lie is an image of themselves freed from their pain by witnessing the pain of others.
And for clappers who are driven by vengeance, their lie is a scale of justice, weighted evenly on both sides, finally in balance

That’s right! Fuck change and fuck vengeance, if the government wants you murdered you shut up and take it.

None of this, of course, is how movements actually work. You can’t have multiple groups all using the same mechanism while the average person doesn’t know even one movement tied to it. Maybe the author just plain forgot that he’d claimed no one knows the motivations of the clappers because they were so mysterious, or maybe he thinks multiple motivations would make it more of a mystery instead of people having two answers rather than zero.

Then it gets even more fucked up:

It is only when a clapper brings his hands together that the lie reveals itself, abandoning the clapper in that final instant so that he exits this world utterly alone, without so much as a lie to accompany him into oblivion.

I don’t know the author’s exact religious beliefs, but they’re definitely from an “everyone secretly knows I’m right” sect, because those always make a big deal of telling didactic stories where at the moment of death the character realizes the good Christians were right all along and they were just lying to themselves.

Although speaking of stuff people secretly know but won’t admit, I do find it telling that the author doesn’t give “chaos is chaos” as a reason. When it comes time to talk about what people are willing to die for, he goes to recognizable standbyes – religion, politics, or revenge.

Anyway, now we’re going to hear why our particular clappers are doing it. Mai’s reason is that the kid she was with back at the warehouse was one of the five who died in the crate.

The world was to blame

See, that actually seems like a surprisingly mature take on it, instead of just blaming the direct cause of his death, the adults shipping them. It really is the world’s fault, after all – their attempt to escape unwinding is the true cause, while the carelessness of the adults hiding them causing his actual death is a sign that even those opposing unwinding don’t care about the kids. Kill them all.

But she actually snaps when she sees the bodies buried.

The Goldens buried Vincent not with respect, but with profanities. They cracked jokes and laughed.

This, though, I don’t believe. These appear to be the first and only deaths, and I can’t imagine five seventeen year olds had much experience with that before unwinding. Yet none of them were even creeped out by this? It’s not like these are soldiers or something, no one tried to beat empathy out of them and the deaths aren’t even their fault so there’s not the same motivation to try to distance themselves. And we know the other kids do care, because the first thing they did when the crates arrived was open them to give everyone fresh air and tell them they were safe, instead of just starting the uncrating – that would have been easier, and it’s not like opening a crate a few minutes early matters much, so it’s exactly what you’d do if you were truly concerned and couldn’t do more.

So anyway, she meets helicopter guy, and he agreed that revenge was in order because helicopter guy’s motivation is whatever the author feels like at the moment. So the three of them work together to get the other kids, but Mai is the one who locks them in the crate.

After that, there was no turning back for Mai.

I really, really want to read this as her POV, but it’s hard to tell. Certainly if Roland is damned for having bad parents, actual murder must be something that renders you irredeemable.

Anyway, Mai is going to go be evil by blowing up the place they murder kids at. Bad Mai! This is wrong because uh um it involves explosives?

She will do this, but not quite yet. Let one of the others go. She refuses to be the first.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but my guess it’s supposed to be that they’re cowardly followers, since in a minute, Blaine will say the same thing.

Speaking of!

He has decided not to use his detonators.
Detonators are for wimps. For a hardcore clapper, a single, powerful clap is enough to bring it on, even without detonators—and Blaine wants to believe he’s hardcore, like his brother was.

This is really interesting and I don’t think it’ll ever be explained. He’s following his brother? Was his brother also slated to be unwound, did they leave together? I find it hard to believe a family that lost one kid would kill another, although perhaps if they decided to kill his brother, maybe they’d also kill him when he was old enough. Parents killing their kids like this is just so far beyond human behavior it’s really hard to speculate on. Or maybe his brother never was meant to be unwound and he was willing to do this because he believed in a cause that wasn’t even directly his problem.

Meanwhile, the littlest clapper has only just finally managed to get them to let him go, just in time to see all the commotion. Everyone’s heading to the murder building of murdery murderness.

Have Blaine and Mai gone off already? He didn’t hear any explosions. No, this is something else.

Actually, it’s the same damn thing as every time anything special happens.

“It’s the Akron AWOL,” he hears one of the kids shout. “He’s being unwound!”

So everyone’s come to watch Connor the awesome.

The band has stopped playing in the middle of a tune. The keyboardist—a girl—wails at the sight of Connor on the red stone path.

Despite it being said repeatedly that the band knows not to look down, and Roland confirming this a little earlier when he tried to get her attention. Connor is just so super special. And then he blows her a kiss because he’s so cool.

The kids just stand there—maybe they can’t stop this, but they can witness it. They can be there as Connor strides out of this life.

Those other kids who died, fuck them.

Then they start applauding, which you’d think would be a fuck-you to the adults because of clappers who appear to always be teens, but apparently people still do regular applause? Anyway, that reminds Lev about the clappers and he rushes off to try to stop Connor. The band switches to the national anthem just like they do at the funerals of great Americans and hey assholes, maybe you could’ve done some of that protesting for all the other kids who died? And Lev is too slow. He just misses Connor going inside and looks up to realize the keyboard player is Risa and also going to get blown up, because I guess the band getting blown up is fine when it was kids he didn’t know.

Anyway, neither of the clappers actually want to clap. A guard sees Blaine.

“I’m warning you,” says Blaine. But the guard knows exactly how to deal with an Unwind loose in the Chop Shop. He aims his tranq gun at Blaine’s left thigh, and fires.
“No!”
But it’s too late. The impact of a tranq bullet is more effective than any detonator. Blaine and the guard are instantly incinerated as the six quarts of liquid explosive coursing through Blaine’s body ignites.

Six quarts?

Six quarts is about how much blood you have total, rounded up. So the author either thinks when talking about liquid explosive it makes sense to give the amount of liquid total it’s mixed into instead of the amount of explosive, or the author thinks people are anime characters with gallons upon gallons of blood, or the author doesn’t realize blood actually does necessary stuff for the body and is picturing that they drained out all the kids’ blood and replaced it with this stuff.

Also yeah, see, cowardice. Blaine’s last words are now telling someone not to detonate him. Why? Because.

Hearing the explosion, Mai decides it’s time to go too.

This is for Vincent. This is for her parents, who signed the Unwind order. This is for the whole world.

Mai: the actual heroic character in this hideous mess of a book.

So Lev sticks his own detonaters on.

he holds his hands up before him, preparing to make the pain go away. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him. He holds his hands up before him.
And he cannot bring them together.
He wants to. He needs to. But he can’t.
Make this go away. Please, somebody make this all go away.
No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much his mind wants to end this here and now, another part of him—a stronger part of him—refuses to let him clap his hands together.

Go charge the guards, dammit! Or the fence!

But no, he literally thinks What have I done? You’ve done nothing! You stupid worthless character!

Anyway, Connor-sue is a sue so he stumbles out, and somehow the explosions took out and eye and an arm and he wasn’t even that near them how does this even work. All the kids promptly decide Connor blew it up, because blowing stuff up is heroic if it doesn’t involve suicide, and riot.

The guards fire, but there are simply too many kids, and not enough tranq bullets. For every kid that goes down, there’s another kid that doesn’t. The guards are quickly overwhelmed, and once they are, the mob starts storming the front gate.

I know that it’s hard getting organized, but for god’s sake, they’re at a death camp! They don’t even have to be scared of getting shot itself since none of the guns have real bullets! They’re even selected from problem kids with aggression problems. None of them tried rioting before now?

Anyway, Lev runs over to Connor.

“My arm hurts,” Connor says lazily. “Did you bite me again?”

Oh right, that stupid thing. God damn it, I’d almost forgotten about the bite wound with absolutely no ramifications.

Lev tries to give him basic first aid and then they shoot him with one of the tranq guns since it’s all they’ve got for painkiller. That’s probably a terrible idea with his injuries, but it makes perfect sense for them to think to do, so I like it.

Right before Connor passes out he sees Lev running into the building, where he’ll probably save Risa. Connor-sue is alive so he needs his wifey there for marrying at the end.