Having finished with the Goblin King and Trace, it’s time to finish our roundup of characters with names.

We last saw Miracolina get shot with tranquilizer yet again, and Lev asked a kid to help her, and the kid agreed while internally screaming FUCK THIS EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF because this is not a book where people without names get any sympathy.

Miracolina’s head is spinning as she awakes. That’s how she knows she’s been tranq’d. This is the fourth time she’s been tranq’d—she knows the drill by now.

It is ridiculous, isn’t it?

She finds herself in a police car. To drastically shorten the conversation, they ran her DNA so they know who she is, they believe her when she claims she was there to hide from parts pirates even though she could’ve just walked up to any policeman,

“Any bigwigs brought in?” she asks, knowing that if Lev or his friend, the Akron AWOL, were caught, it would be big news—they’d all know.
“No such thing as a bigwig AWOL, sweetie. They’re all nonentities. Otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are.”
Again she sighs in relief

She doesn’t seem to realize that they didn’t say they didn’t get her friends, they’re saying that, officially, they’ll never admit there was anyone there to get. But hey, it’s been a long day for her.

She’s still on the ball enough to notice they’re being weirdly nice to her: even though she’s a tithe, she’s never known Juvies to be so nice to kids about to be unwound. As they said, they see Unwinds as nonentities. You don’t call nonentities “honey” and “sweetie.”

She asks if she’ll go to her original camp or a local one, and the cop explains her parents didn’t actually sign the order and presumably as she’s still her parents’ property and property isn’t allowed to wreck itself, she could never actually choose to be tithed.

But here’s the other issue – the juvie cops we’ve seen hate children. Why are they sympathetic to her? The fact she’s not someone they’re allowed to murder shouldn’t really matter. The setup here is a familiar one, where people are treated very differently based on what group they’re in, but that requires there to be clear divisions. Everyone knows that some kids get unwound for petty reasons and other kids don’t get unwound despite being assholes, because it’s all down to a parent’s personal choice. If you’re someone who signed up to drag in any kid, you’re someone who must have the view that any kid is better off in pieces.

She then thinks it’s a good thing she didn’t know and was tricked into this awful journey of harassment and boundary-pushing because it means she stayed with him long enough to forgive him, granting him that absolution he so desperately needed and really, who gives a fuck about her when Lev was sad about stuff? Even though she still wants to be unwound, she’s able to put aside how she wants to sacrifice herself in favor of how other people want to use her instead! What a wonderful learning experience this has been.

Now she knows her desire to be tithed was not there to leave her in a divided state—it was there to propel her into the right place at the right time to have a hand in the redemption of the boy who would blow himself up.
Who would have thought that the singular whole of her forgiveness was a more valuable gift than a hundred of her parts?

Who would have thought her entire reason for existing was just to meet up with a boy and deal with his feelings?

She then explains her plan to have a big sixteenth birthday party and dance with Lev to atone for daring to say no that time, because now she knows her real purpose isn’t to be part of many people doing great things, it’s to stand next to somebody else because they want that! Yay!

And that’s it for her.

On to the last of our non-Lev, non-Connorsue characters, Hayden.

There are fourteen others in the ComBom with him, all kids from the various communication shifts, who put more faith in him than in anyone else—which shocks Hayden.

They’re holed up tightly enough that no one can get in, but of course they have no way to get out. They aren’t even properly armed, having just one gun.

“You’re in a hopeless situation,” the Juvies yell through their bullhorn. “You’ll only make matters worse for yourselves.”
“What could be worse than all of us getting unwound?” Lizbeth asks.
Then Tad, who from the very beginning has been hanging close to Hayden as if they’re joined at the hip, says, “They won’t unwind you, Hayden. You’re seventeen.”
“Details, details,” Hayden says. “Don’t bother me with details.”

This is the saddest chapter, in two ways. This is the first – the kids wanting to stay together no matter what. The others knowing he can get out and wanting him to live, him not giving them up to try to survive.

The media shows up eventually, and they debate a little if that matters. Tad there suggests maybe their parents will do something, Lizbeth points out their parents chose to kill them already.

Last book, locking yourself in an aircraft for safety only works until the heat starts rising, and that happens again.

Hayden knows this can’t last. So he comes back to his favorite question, but this time it isn’t rhetorical.
“I want you all to listen to me and think about your answer to this,” he tells them. He waits until he’s sure he has all their attention, then says:
“Would you rather die . . . or would you rather be unwound?”
They all look to one another. Some put their heads in their hands. Some sob dry tears because they’re too dehydrated to cry. Hayden silently counts to twenty, asks the question again, then waits for the answers.
Esme, their best password-cracking hacker, is the first to break through the firewall of silence.
“Die,” she says. “No question.”
And Nasim says, “Die.”
And Lizbeth says, “Die.”
And the answers start to come faster.
“Die.”
“Die.”
“Die.”
Everyone answers, and not a single one of them chooses unwinding.
“Even if there is such a thing as ‘living in a divided state,’ ” Esme says, “if we get unwound, the Juvies win. We can’t let them win.”

Well said.

“With the news vans out there,” suggests Lizbeth, “maybe our deaths will stand for something. People will remember that we chose death over unwinding.”

And we approach the second sad thing of this chapter. The worse one.

It keeps getting hotter. Everyone’s getting loopy. Hayden thinks about his parents fighting over him and agreeing kill him so the other can’t have him.

He looks at the suffering kids around him, wondering where “machine-gun fire” falls on the list of bad ways to die. Certainly a quick death is better than a slow one. He considers his options a moment more, then says, “I’m sorry, guys. I’m sorry I failed you . . . but I can’t do this.”
Then he turns the machine gun toward the cockpit and blasts out the windshield, flooding the ComBom with cool, fresh air.

So yeah. He asks them, and they decide to die, and in the end, he betrays even that.

Who cares, though? You’re here for Connorsue, so we head to him next. He and Lev are at…it doesn’t matter. Look, they’re watching the news. Connorsue’s woken up in time to see the end of the standoff.

The ComBom hatch opens, and Hayden comes out, carrying a limp kid in his arms.

He could’ve killed them. He could’ve stayed there, or he could’ve shot them, and he acknowledges this. He knows they wanted their deaths to mean something. Instead, he disrespects their final wishes and brings them out to be used by their enemies, while he, the one making this choice for them, will get to survive. Such is their reward for trusting anyone not in the exact same boat as them.

But it’s totally fine because he gets to shout.

“We are not just AWOLs! We are not just parts! We are whole human beings—and history will look back on these times in shame!”
They shove him and the other kids into the van, but before they slam the door, Hayden shouts, “To the new Teen Uprising!”
Then the van carries them away.
“Way to go, Hayden,” says Connor. “Way to go!”

See? Who cares what other people wanted? Hayden got to say a thing that Connorsue wanted said.

Lev then shows him that Risa is still faithful to her true owner and said all that other stuff she said was just lies.

“So what do we do now? Lev asks. “I’m kind of AWOL from the Anti-Divisional Resistance. . . .”
“The ADR has become useless. If the best they can do is send AWOLs to a holding pen for the Juvies, then something’s not working.

As it was in the beginning, so it is in the end. We’re never told why they’re suddenly incompetent, and although Connorsue nobly takes most of the blame for his double provoking the raid in the first place, it never occurs to him that maybe the adults shouldn’t be blamed even more for the fact the place was only compromised by letting one of the kids light houses on fire for two weeks while screaming that everyone should blame escaped unwind kids for it.

We then jump to Nelson for a quick update: still alive, still wants revenge on Connor, still boring as fuck. Then back to Connor again.

Connor apparently has kept them traveling by hotwiring cars. I guess they were worried sticking to Nelson’s would get them caught, but it seems unlikely he’d report the thing stolen while every other one they steal is going to be reported immediately. Plus they’ve kept his laptop the whole time and someone using tracking nanites you’d think would be someone smart enough to have their laptop report its location every time it logs in. Or not even a matter of smarts, plenty of things do that automatically so he’d have had to actually disable the feature.

At a public diner they chat about their many criminal friends and plans to challenge the powers that be, because really, no one involved is very bright. These plans amount to fucked if they know what to do, with Connor even thinking that all he wants to do is find Risa. Also, they’ve been mentioning the Rheinschild guy and suddenly, inspired by Lev making a typo, Connor realizes that they should search for typoed versions of the guy’s name.

Hayden figured there’s a code-eating worm on the net that chewed up every reference to Janson Rheinschild, but it’s only looking for his name spelled correctly.

No. He definitely did not say that whoever removed all references only looked for the correct spelling. Christ’s sake, we live in a world where Google is always giving suggestions on what you actually meant, the days of exactness are long gone.

Gah. I mean, this is probably their best bet (…actually their best bet would be searching just Rheinschild, or trying to find hardcopies from the general timeperiod, but aside from that) but the way it’s being described just rankles. They don’t actually know how this was done, it probably wasn’t a “code-eating worm” at all. And it’s not like this doesn’t work if the people did try to deal with misspellings, they could’ve gotten most but not all.

But that’d be a bit more reasonable than the ridiculous contrivance we’re about to get, so clearly not in the cards.

a news article dated more than thirty years ago. The article is from a small local paper somewhere in Montana where Rheinschild once lived. Apparently they kept tabs on one of their favorite sons, but consistently misspelled his name as “Reignchild.”

No, dumbasses. Local papers report national news all the time, and if you’re arguing that these people are going to fuck up his name, make it people who don’t care who he is! They don’t need to get a full biography of the guy anyway, all they need here is people talking about what he was involved with and mentioning him in passing, with the bonus that it’s way more plausible someone scrubbing the internet could miss one of the billion in-passing mentions than an article revolving around the guy.

Anyway, we finally learn who he is:

“This guy pioneered neural bonding and regeneration—the very technology that made unwinding possible!

That’s…not really a shock. We knew he was a guy strongly connected to the beginning of unwinding but then erased. Guy who invents the stuff you need to do it is a pretty predictable option.

Lev is all OKAY SO HE PERSONALLY DID EVERYTHING, because I guess the author figures we’ll forgive the constant jumps in logic so long as sometimes they’re wrong, and Connorsue explains that this started before unwinding and was totally innocent and good.

“We can’t even begin to know the uses of this technology,” Rheinschild says with an excitement much more youthful than he looks. “Imagine a world where loved ones who die young don’t really die —because every part of them can be donated to ease someone else’s suffering.

I mean, I think that still sounds creepy as fuck, but I guess if you’ve grown up on childmurder you have different standards.

It’s one thing to be an organ donor, and another to know that every single part of you will save someone else’s life. That’s a world I want to live in.”

“Okay, so we removed your appendix, but you’re going to die anyway. Your only chance of survival is if we carve you open again and stuff a new one in, which, haha, might just become infected and require this whole song and dance again. But on the brighter side, at least you get to live in a world where, if you choose to be an organ donor and then die like say during one of these surguries all your parts will be vital to someone else’s survival!”

I mean, I guess this does address the question of what they’re doing with all those appendixes. Maybe this is done with nanobots and he sets them to kill anyone who doesn’t have the right number of parts?

The world Rheinschild described is a world Connor would want to live in too . . .

But anyway, I guess the author really loves the whole “your loved ones will literally live on! in pieces! so many, many pieces!” idea.

Yay!

“Of course there are going to be ethical questions,” Rheinschild goes on to say, “which is why I’ve
started an organization to study the ethical issues inherent in this sort of medical advancement.
Proactive Citizenry, as I’m calling it, will be a watchdog to make sure there are no abuses of this
technology. A conscience to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“I mean, I could have worked with the existing ethical bodies who actually know what the fuck they’re doing, but I thought, adding a private thinktank with an agenda to push can only help!”

Lev reaches over and starts the video again—just a few more seconds of Rheinschild joyfully, naively waxing on about the glorious future he envisioned. “This is just the beginning. If we’re able to regenerate nerve tissue, we can regenerate anything—it’s just a matter of time.”

Well I mean, if you’re regenerating that you’re pretty much done.

But this does patch the one plothole of how they can’t fix one break in your spine but totally hack both ends of a spine loose, stuff it in your back, and that works fine. They’re choosing to do it this way because money! I mean, it’s kinda ridiculous but not more ridiculous than the spine thing taken straight.

Connor is thinking lots of nonsense about how clearly this guy was removed so he couldn’t speak out, but really, their behavior toward him seems punitive, not like they’re really scared of people finding out. Lev points out that yeah, this doesn’t seem like it actually matters.

He scrolls down to the end of the article, where there’s a picture of Rheinschild and his wife in a laboratory—apparently they worked as a team.

The sort of team where Rheinschild is a genius visionary and the other person is “his wife”. But anyway, contrivance continues with the fact she’s named Sonia, which is the name of the woman running the pawnshop safehouse, and he looks at the photo and yes, he’s totally sure that the person in this small photo thirty years ago is definitely the woman he met for a little bit ages ago, and this is definitely relevant as fuck because sure, she’s been with the organization helping unwinds for god knows how long, but she’s female and can’t do anything by herself while Connor walking over and saying he just found out who her husband is will change everything forever.

The promise of that trainwreck is almost enough to make me want to read the next book.

But not actually enough.

Anyway, finally someone’s here to check out the suspicious kids talking suspiciously, but speaking of female characters, the waitress zips over to chat casually with her “nephews” before the police can ask them anything. She goes on to say that she saw a suspicious boy and girl about an hour ago, but they ran off. The police head off to find that pair of carthief probably unwind kids.

Then she reaches into her pocket and, to his amazement, puts a set of car keys in front of Connor, rabbit’s foot key chain and all. “Why don’t you do me a favor and drive my car ‘home’ for me today. It’s out back.”

This is so incongruous. I really like it – a moment of kindness and decency – but it stands out so much because this isn’t how anyone else has acted this book. She claims that a lot of people don’t support unwinding these days. We then get a callback to the one decent person last book, the trucker who hid Connor:

Why, just last week a trucker came in and was bragging all about how last year he picked up that Akron AWOL kid at a rest stop and gave him a ride. Poor guy got arrested for it too, but still he was bragging, because he knew it was the right thing to do.”

Which serves only to remind us that apparently no one else is halfway decent, while raising questions like, do they actually punish people for opposing the system? Because “arrested” isn’t the same thing as “convicted”, and if he was, he sure got out fast.

But still – the woman is a good person. And although she tells them it’s fine, her car isn’t even great, why they should total it because the insurance money is better, the car they actually find is decent, and it’s still got all her stuff in it because she obviously can’t go out to take her stuff first. It’s a subtle reminder that although it sounds like the sort of thing anyone should do, it’s rare anyone’s in a situation where they can help someone without making any sacrifice at all. She’s not going to come out of this ahead – and there’s only so many times a person can help like this before they reach a point they have nothing much left themselves.

The kids don’t think much about this. They’re busy heading to Ohio, where Sonia is waiting to be told by Connor that something about her husband is important.

Then they pull onto Route 66, heading east into a world that’s ripe for saving

Not that they’ve done anything about that. Or plan to do anything about that – the adults she’s saying support them are somehow different from all those adults who maintained safehouses and sent them food and supplies, because as we’ve been told over and over, those guys were incompetent pieces of shit, which in turn means being a good person on the right side can only be true if you’re not part of any organization or making any coordinated effort to fix things. Change isn’t something you can try to accomplish. You just tread water while hoping that everything suddenly becomes different.

The only improvement that can be linked to an individual was because of what Lev did, and we’re told how horrible it is he did it and how it didn’t actually fix anything and maybe made it worse. The reason Connor and Risa are even alive, the reason many other kids got a chance to escape, was all because other kids did clap, and we’re told they were cowards who in their last moments knew they had made a mistake.

According to the blurb, the next book is about finding Sonia while Cam, because he’s not a real person, goes crazy from lack of Risa. Not sure if that’s the opening or if we’ll actually spend the entire book on them wandering around looking the macguffin, either seems totally plausible. It is not the final book because there’s another one, but at least the most recent thing to come out is a boxed set suggesting that the fourth is going to have an ending, or at least something close enough to one that this nightmare doesn’t keep going.