UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,36
like the hellish fire in the mines beneath their feet.
Only then does Anissa look to a series of shelves beside her. Dozens of petri dishes, growing God knows what. Heath has turned the lab into a seething cauldron of biological weapons.
“We have bacterial infections, cancers, viruses—and we’ve hidden all the biological markers,” he tells her, proud of his accomplishment. “We’re going to release plague after plague on those who would receive unwound parts—and the world will finally see unwinding as the horror it is!”
Her fury explodes. Before she can stop herself, she sweeps her hand over one of the shelves, knocking off the dishes, spilling their tainted specimens. They shatter on the floor—but not before one of them cuts her hand, right between two fingers—a deep, painful slice.
Her blood drips onto Heath’s research notes, smearing the paper like a red Rorschach.
“Anissa, wait!”
He tries to stop her, but she evades his grasp and stalks out of the lab, glass crunching under her heels.
• • •
It was Anissa who chose the firehouse as the center of their operations. All the more horrifying now that she knows what Heath is using it for.
It was once a symbol of survival for the town. Despite the evacuation, a few die-hard residents dug in and refused to leave, staying in their homes, resolute, as the town evaporated around them. Law enforcement ceased; roads went unrepaired. The Postal Service stopped delivering mail and—as a final insult—revoked their zip code.
The firehouse was the last to close.
Anissa isn’t sure when they finally shut it down, sealing that big roll-up door for the last time. But before that happened, some enterprising civil servant had begged, borrowed, or maybe stolen a fully functional heatsuit, like the one her father had died in. The one that might have saved his life if he’d been less stubborn and more self-serving.
The heatsuit is kept in a little alcove off the main garage. It hangs from a hook on the wall, seeming to hover above the ground. A sign reads USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION in old, faded lettering.
This is where Anissa goes when she needs to be alone—and now she needs that more than ever.
It’s become a shrine to her, that big yellow suit with the glazed faceplate and heavy, reinforced boots. The joints are knobby and wide, each equipped with anesthetic feeds and razor-sharp scalpels, ready to sever damaged, noncrucial limbs with frightening efficiency. Anissa doesn’t like to think about that, because it’s not how firefighting is supposed to work. You don’t just lop off body parts; it’s about standing tall and saving lives. Clearly that’s not an ethos that Heath shares. His plan is all about crawling.
She calms herself by looking up at the suit. She can picture her dad in there, wise and brave and bigger than life, close at hand like a guardian angel. She wishes she could be as brave as he was. Or that she knew what to do, like he always did, no matter what was thrown at him. She could use some of Dad’s wisdom now.
She sighs, massaging her hand. She’s wrapped a handkerchief around it, but it’s still oozing and angry, tender to the touch.
“You probably don’t want to talk to me,” Heath says, coming up from behind.
“Go away, Heath.” She doesn’t turn around. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“Oh, but we do.” He steps right in front of her. “The plan is moving forward, Anissa. We need to do this.”
“We need not to.”
He starts to argue, pleading his case, but seems to sense the futility of it. Instead he softens a bit, tries a different approach. “Do you know why this matters to me?”
“I don’t care,” she says, but it’s not entirely true. Anissa knows little about him, despite all the time they’ve spent together, their headlong flight from the Juvenile Authority, and their joint decision to make camp here. She’s often wondered about Heath’s history, what drives his campaign to end unwinding (“unliving,” as he calls it), and how far he’ll go in pursuit of the cause. She senses a window opening, a chance to learn what he seldom reveals. “Okay, tell me. Why does it matter?”
“Because of who I am. What I am.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m not an unwind. I’m the opposite of an unwind.”
She frowns, trying to understand. “Go on.”
“I was born with a defective liver. The doctors said I was living on borrowed time. When I was fifteen, it failed completely. I wound up in the hospital, not expected to live more