UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,112

where she is. She is sitting before the Orgão Orgânico. Her head is still a bit hazy, but she remembers what happened.

To the left a single male face has its mouth open, intoning a deep bass aaaaaaaaaah. She sees a single finger depressing the lowest B-flat key and follows that finger to her brother, who sits beside her.

“Stop that,” she says wearily, because the sound resonates in her aching head.

“I’m afraid that would be a mistake,” Divan says, then removes his finger. Immediately Dagmara can feel the plane begin to lose altitude.

Divan puts his finger on the key once more. The voice sings again. The plane stops dropping. “You see? When I installed the organ, I made sure it was wired into the autopilot circuit, on the chance that this day might come. A mere flick of a switch has sent the control here. Now as long as the Orgão Orgânico is being played, the autopilot is engaged.”

“Autopilot . . . ,” mumbles Dagmara, still struggling to get her wits back as the tranq wears off.”

“Yes. I’m afraid I had to kill both the pilot and his copilot. They proved themselves to be traitors. The chef as well. Pity. I doubt I’ll ever find one with such talent.”

Dagmara groans. What a mess things have become. Leave it to her brother to spite everyone, including himself. And then something occurs to her that brings on a wave of nausea.

“Malik . . . Where’s Malik? Where’s my son?”

“No longer on board. Mostly. He was put off in Kamchatka.”

“You left him alone?”

“No, of course not. He’s in the company of your distribution network. You’ll be pleased to know that his parts fetched us more than three hundred thousand dollars.”

Dagmara gapes at him. He’s joking. He must be. He wouldn’t unwind his own nephew. What sort of monster would do such a thing?

“While I would love to continue this chat, Dagmara, I’m afraid we’re out of time,” Divan says. “We’ve just crossed into Chinese airspace at an altitude of about 2,300 meters. We’re no longer headed toward Burma, but west. Of course, at this low an altitude it will be a bumpy ride once you reach the Chinese mountain ranges, but not to worry—the autopilot will steer you clear of the higher peaks.”

Dagmara struggles to grasp the things that Divan is telling her. Chinese mountains. 2,300 meters, Autopilot. And Malik. None of it seems real to her. It’s all a hallucination brought on by the tranqs. Please let it be so. Please let it be so.

“I’ll be leaving you now, dear sister. “Saying ‘sayonara,’ as it were. You see, there are two parachutes on board. One for me and one for my valet.”

“Wait—you’re just going to leave me here?”

“I leave you with my prize possession: the Orgão Orgânico. As long as you keep playing, the plane will fly true. At least until it runs out of gas, but her tanks are massive. You’ve got at least twenty hours left, maybe more.”

Then Divan removes his finger from the key. The face stops wailing, closes its mouth, and the plane begins to drop.

“Better play, Dagmara.”

In a panic Dagmara looks at the keyboard and quickly launches into her go-to piece as she had when she first arrived—Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D-minor.” The chorus of disembodied voices fills the space.

“Very good!” says Divan, as he strides away “Keep playing, Dagmara. Keep playing!”

“Divan!” she calls. “DIVAN!” But he’s gone.

And so she plays for her life, buying herself the seconds and the minutes and the hours until there is nothing but soulless voices and fumes.

10 • Argent

Being ejected out of the Sayonara Hatch is like being launched from a cannon into an ice-cold sky. He tumbles in an uncontrolled plummet. He has no experience or skill at skydiving. He’s just happy he remembers to pull the rip cord to open the chute. At last Argent lands shivering in a patch of snow on a hillside and tumbles to a stop. Divan arrives a few moments later, twenty yards away, perfectly controlled and landing on his feet. He disconnects from his parachute and comes over to help Argent release himself from his.

“Well, that was exhilarating,” Divan says.

“Yeah right,” says Argent, a little too riled to be respectful. “Almost dying is always fun.”

Divan chuckles.

“So what now?” Argent asks.

“I have friends in China, and I’ve already alerted them. They’ll zero in on our beacon. We won’t have to wait here for long.”

Argent suspects Divan has friends everywhere. Except for maybe Southeast Asia. Then Divan pulls something out of his backpack—the only object he salvaged from the plane—and hands it to Argent. It’s a biological stasis cooler about the size of a lunch box.

“What’s . . . inside?” Argent asks.

Divan sighs. “The only part of Malik I didn’t sell. His best part, actually.”

Argent doesn’t dare open it. He knows what it is. “And it’s . . . for me?” Argent asks, scarcely willing to believe it.

“It’s an elegant solution, don’t you think?” Divan says. “It fulfills my promise to you, and allows me to see my nephew’s handsome face once more, without having to suffer the rest of him.”

Argent holds the box closely. He feels awful, he feels grateful, he feels damned, and he feels blessed. How could something generate so many conflicting emotions? He decides to go with the positive ones, because the negative ones will surely drive him mad. “Thank you,” he says.

“I do believe Malik is better off living divided,” Divan says. “It’s certainly better than the life path he was on.”

He tells Argent that he’ll arrange a private procedure to graft his new face once they arrive in Beijing.

“And then you’re free, Argent. I will have you taken to wherever you want to go.”

Argent looks at Divan, holding eye contact—something he never before had the courage to do. “What if I don’t want to go? What if I want to keep working for you?”

“Well then, I’ll pay you a wage worthy of your loyalty.” Divan looks up at Lady Lucrezia’s vapor trail, slowly being torn apart by crosswinds. “When the plane finally does goes down, we’ll all be taken for dead. I intend to take advantage of that. Leave my business. Retire under an assumed name. Of course, I’ll always need a valet.”

They sit down and wait for the arrival of Divan’s “friends,” who will most likely come by helicopter. And as Argent ponders the electrifying prospect of his new future, a question comes to mind.

“Where will we go?” he asks. “Where do you want to retire?”

“Well,” says Divan, “faking one’s death does require a level of continued anonymity.” He feigns to consider the question, but clearly he’s thought about it before. “Did you know that with all that I possess, I’ve never owned a yacht? It has been a long-standing dream of mine to own one, and sail the Mediterranean—sticking only to the smaller, less traveled ports, of course.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Argent, already settling in to the idea.

After all, what are the chances of running into someone they know?

NEAL SHUSTERMAN, New York Times bestselling author, has written more than thirty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including the Unwind Dystology (Unwind, UnWholly, UnSouled, and UnDivided), the Skinjacker Trilogy (Everlost, Everwild, and Everfound), Full Tilt, Bruiser, and The Schwa Was Here, which won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for fiction. Several of his books are now in development as feature films. Neal lives in Southern California when he’s not traveling the globe, and can be found online at storyman.com.