Kiana’s a sixteen-year-old who works the infirmary’s night shift, lives for drama, and always blows everything out of proportion. Having been purged from a family of doctors, she has a chip on her shoulder when it comes to proving what a good junior medic she is, so her exaggerations are usually just to make herself look better when she solves the emergency. The fact that Kiana has come to get Risa and isn’t trying to take all the glory herself means the situation must truly be serious.

“A couple of kids were messing with an engine turbine,” Kiana tells her

Risa actually gets something to do! We’re not just hearing about Connor-sue’s manpain, actual plot is coming!!!

In the corner one kid grimaces and groans with an obviously dislocated shoulder—but he’s getting only minimal attention, because the kid on the table is much worse off. His side has a huge, jagged wound through which Risa can see at least one protruding rib. He quivers and moans. Several kids frantically try to stem the bleeding, applying pressure to key arteries, and one kid with shaking hands tries to fill a syringe.

Look at all this stuff actually happening.

While there’s many reasons I hate this book, the way it fails to capitalize on all the details of what life would be like is a big one. I complained about this a lot with Connor-sue’s chapters, and now, for a brief moment with Risa, we’re actually getting it. Only with the most obvious and sensationalizable thing, but still, it’s so much better than Connor-sue’s vague “stuff is bad, we should do things” bit.

Risa now asks if they called the actual doctor:

There’s a doctor who comes out to the Graveyard when they have something on their hands they can’t handle. He does it free of charge, no questions asked, since he’s sympathetic to the resistance; however, he takes their calls only when he wants to.

This is such a weird way of looking at it. The requirement that they never feel the slightest gratitude toward adults warps the story in so many ways.

Risa makes the call that they send him to a hospital.

With all the injuries at the Graveyard, only twice before have they had to send a kid to a hospital. Both times the injured kid died. Risa is determined that it will not happen again.

Also, there’s a minor plot hole coming. I’m actually thinking it should get a pass because it works well with the story, and god is that rare in this series.

She asks him his name and he’s a fellow Ward kid.

He has a bad cleft lip, and looking at it makes her angry, because like her, he was a ward of the state—and while parents won’t unwind a kid on his looks alone, the state homes have no problem unwinding kids they don’t want to look at.

This seems backward. Separating the people who have to interact with the kids from the people who decide to which one dies should mean you’re way more likely to squeak by into adulthood with a disfigurement so long as you’re still useful in some way.

She tells Kiana to get the ambulance.
“It has a flat,” Kiana tells her.

How does the thing they’ve only used twice have a flat?

You know what could’ve happened? They could only have so many wheels. One of the others had a flat and they had to borrow a wheel, and then no one put it back because it’s not like they ever use the ambulance…

The ADR keeps promising to permanently station a doctor at the Graveyard, but that has yet to happen. She knows the resistance has other priorities, but when a kid is bleeding out, it’s a pretty lame excuse.

No, Risa. “Pretty lame excuse” is a thing that’s either true or not true regardless. Phrases that are conditional include “cold comfort” and “hard to care about why”.

In this case, it seems like it’s far more likely they’re just lying because again, this place is compromised and they seem to be doing their best to pull out.

Back with Connor, it was debatable how moral it was to be keeping them in the dark. On the one hand, don’t they deserve to know? On the other, Connor is a loose cannon and they might think telling the truth would be disastrous.

Now, though, we know the place is compromised far more thoroughly than we knew. And that puts the exchange with Connor in a new light:

Rincon sighs. “It comes down to this, Connor: We believe the Graveyard has been compromised.”
Connor cannot believe what this fool is telling him. “Of course it’s been compromised! I’m the one who told you it was compromised! The Juvies know about us, and since the day I took over, I’ve been saying we need to relocate!”

Maybe he was trying to tell Connor that he meant the place itself had a mole and gave up because the conversation made it clear Connor is an unreliable, over-emotional idiot with delusions of grandeur.

If they know there’s a mole in the place itself, then it makes sense that they would cut the kids out of the loop. By continuing to claim they’ll place a doctor there as soon as they can, they can hide the fact they did find a doctor and placed them at their new safe area.

One kid comes forward. It’s Starkey. Ever since Connor put him in charge of food service, he thinks his nose belongs in everything.

Back to the crap plot we actually have, I’m actually unsure if the idea is that Connor 2 thinks he’s smarter than he is or if it’s Risa’s Just Knowing he’s bad because she’s good.

The ambulance is fixed up and they load the kid on.

Starkey still lingers. He turns to Connor. “You mean you’re not going?” Starkey asks.
“The Admiral never left the Graveyard until he was carried out,” Connor tells him. “I lead by his example.”
Starkey shrugs. “It makes you look like a coward.”
Connor throws a quick glare at him.
“Hey, I’m just saying.”
“I don’t care what it looks like,” Connor says forcefully. “I do what I have to keep this place alive.”
“Sorry, I mean no disrespect, I guess I just have a lot to learn about being in charge.”

He’s so bad at this.

Anyway, Risa somehow does fall for it and decides that despite the fact she’s in a wheelchair and getting her on there will just slow it down further, she’s going because she cares so much. Annoyingly, there was a perfect good reason for her to go: “Even if they catch me, they can’t unwind me,” she reminds him. “I’m seventeen. And besides, the disabled can’t be unwound.”

So, given someone needs to be in the back keeping the kid alive long enough to reach the hospital, and the person currently there is only sixteen, it actually makes sense she should go.

“What if they recognize you?”
“Oh, please,” Risa says. “It’s our names that people know, much more than our faces. I’ll be fine.”

And if they recognize the face of the kid who didn’t do anything much and then was let go after her back broke because no one gave a damn…? No one’s looking for Risa! Her role was always just to be the girlfriend. Yes, she should’ve had a role like Connor and Lev, but she didn’t, so here we are.

She closes the van’s back door without saying good-bye, because they share a secret superstition, never saying good-bye to each other. Risa will soon regret that she didn’t.

This is a random bit of tell that would’ve been interesting if it was expanded and generally better implimented.

Also, so yeah, now you know things will go badly, but really, of course they would, SOMETHING needs to happen and apparently only Risa is willing to actually do anything so that something has room to occur.

Risa recounts the previous two kids: an idiot who cracked his skull open fooling around for a dare and a kid with a burst appendix. They haven’t run into any trouble getting the kids there and having the drivers return safely, and Risa thinks nothing suspicious of the fact that a burst appendix shouldn’t be fatal.

Now Risa must display her acting skills. She thinks about her friends in the band who had been playing in the Chop Shop when it blew—the ones who died—and the memory brings necessary tears to her eyes.

But you were just rummaging around in his guts and you spent the drive stewing over dead kids. You’ve said repeatedly it’s really hard to keep focused and not freak out at what you’re facing. All you should have to do is stop trying to stay calm and you’ll be a properly sobbing mess.

So they take him away, then the nurse comes back to say he’s probably going to die.

And then Kiana says, “It’s just like the other times.”
That makes Risa look up, and something occurs to her. She wonders how similar it is.
“Kiana . . . you do know we’re supposed to go to a different hospital each time, right?”
By the look on Kiana’s face, Risa can tell she never learned that particular protocol. “Shouldn’t it be the closest hospital in an emergency?” Kiana asks.

…Kiana wasn’t driving. Sounds more like there was no “supposed to”, Risa thought it was obvious so she never said anything and the other kids didn’t think of it.

Instead of realizing they’re in trouble and telling the others to run for it, Risa just goes for the kid. She finds him unconscious in a hospital bed. The nurse tells her to leave.

“At least give me the courtesy of knowing if the other two are still alive.”
The nurse looks at her hatefully, then says, “They’re alive. But probably in a divided state by now.”
Risa wishes she could get out of her wheelchair and slam this woman into the wall. Burning gazes fry the air between them like microwaves.
“You think I don’t know what goes on down there at the Graveyard? I know; my brother ’s a Juveycop. It’s a wonder they don’t round you all up and send you off where you belong!” And she points off, as if knowing the exact direction of the nearest harvest camp. “People out there are dying for lack of parts, but you and your selfish friends in the resistance would rather let good people die.”
So here it is, thinks Risa. The rift between two completely different versions of right and wrong. This woman sees Risa as a filthy outlaw, and nothing will ever change that.
“Are you really doing this to help society,” Risa snaps, “or is it for the reward money?”
The woman breaks her gaze, and Risa knows the truth. The woman’s moral high ground has split beneath her, and she’s fallen into the chasm.

So there was that brief moment of this book not being terrible but it’s gone again.

Ignoring that, this suggests that people actually are dying – it’s not a bunch of alarmist talk to make people think things are bad, it’s not just prices being jacked up and waiting times extended a little to control people, they’re actually keeping organs away enough to kill people.

And exploring this instead of being SHE’S JUST A GREEDY BITCH (particularly after we just got a character explaining there isn’t much money in this)would really mean a lot for the setting.

Nelson, thinking to his childhood, called them “ferals”. And we see that even now the economy seems to be terrible and people are plodding along in low-paying jobs with no hope of advancement. The attitude toward kids in general should be guilty until proven innocent – that these useless parasites are hoarding the only thing they have of value, the organs that real, hardworking people need. They’re not even going to be killed, anyway – they’re still alive in the divided state, they’re just finally helping out.

“Leave now, and I’ll let you and your friend in the waiting room go. Maybe you can’t be unwound, but you most certainly can be locked up.”

We really have no idea what they do to adults, unfortunately. In the very start of the first book it seemed like giving any aid to unwinds was enough to get you dragged off as well, but we’ve seen no sign of any adult being punished since then.

Risa, somehow, thinks this means she can make a deal.

She smiles, finally having the upper hand. “Are you kidding me? A notorious member of the Anti-Divisional Resistance who knows exactly what happened at Happy Jack that day?”

A member so notorious that they just let her go once she wasn’t unwindable. There’s some stupid negotiation including Risa claiming to have a subcutaneous cyanide pill in my palm she’ll activate by clapping, and somehow killing the notorious hated ADR member with the information they want to keep secret would be such a black mark on his record he’d be exactly like Nelson so he agrees.

The nurse is not happy with any of this. She crosses her arms. “What about my reward money?” she asks.
Then her brother turns to her like an older brother should and says, “Shut it, Eva, all right? Just shut it.”

That sure is a thing. And somehow, Risa is convinced that this means the kid will still get care and treatment (despite the only treatment being more organs and they’re out of those, and despite how he presumably has no actual billable insurance) and eventually let go long after she’s left and has no way of knowing what happens to him.