UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,59

the morning.

And she tells no one of the strange hope she cradles in her heart, that somehow she will hear Wil’s music again, loud and pure, calling forth her soul.

Unnatural Selection

Co-authored with Brendan Shusterman

1 • Colton

The deep, resonant clang of a Buddhist ghanta snaps Colton to attention, the heavy sound of the bell echoing through the marketplace. Before this he was just drifting, lonely, like a jellyfish at sea, through the vendors and crowds. Every so often a soldier passes him, but more often than not, he sees only tourists and locals. It doesn’t matter that three days ago there had been a coup here in Thailand. It doesn’t matter that Myanmar, formerly Burma, formerly Myanmar, formerly Burma, is (big surprise) Burma again, and the current regime has been threatening to drop bombs on Bangkok for harboring enemies of the state. It is, as Colton has already surmised, business as usual.

Like the Burmese, Colton isn’t quite sure who he is anymore. He’s halfway between one thing and another. Neither here nor there, fish nor fowl. Who he was and who he will be are connected only by the fine, nearly invisible thread of who he is now. He can’t yet decide whether to be terrified or energized by the spectrum of personal possibilities before him.

The sweet smell of lychees brings Colton to a vendor who smiles wide and sells him four for what would have been pocket change back home. Colton puts his hands together before his face as if in prayer—a common thank-you in this part of the world—and the vendor returns the gesture.

There is a reason Colton is in Thailand and why he’s decided he isn’t leaving. Thailand has outlawed unwinding. In fact, they were one of the first countries to speak out against it and sign the Florence Agreement—a plea that was ignored completely by the United States, as if it were written by her enemies. Colton knows the name of every country that retracted their statements and turned to unwinding—which was most of them—but Thailand held firm. Now Thailand is somewhat of a haven for AWOLs from China and Russia. But just next door is Burma. The heart of darkness.

Colton heard stories about the Burmese Dah Zey, or “Flesh Market.” Everyone had. How they would keep you alive during a week-long unwinding process, taking part after part while you suffered in a cell, slowly losing more and more of yourself to buyers across Asia. The Dah Zey became the stuff of horror stories around AWOL campfires, but the scariest part was that no one knew truth from fiction. Colton does know that they are so powerful they now run Burma from the shadows, pulling the strings while they pull their parts. But that’s not why he’s here, and he has to keep reminding himself of that. As much as he’d like to stop the Dah Zey, he has no means to do so. It’s not David versus Goliath, he tells himself. It’s David versus a hostile universe that was constructed in the wake of the Heartland War.

Colton shifts his backpack and tries to make it sit right. It won’t, though it only holds his clothes—nothing sharp or bulky. He packed light when he ran away.

As far as he’s concerned, his parents are monsters as bad as the Dah Zey. How they could have signed his little brother’s unwind order is a question he asks himself over and over each day as he sits at cafés and restaurants, in tuk-tuks and temples. He looks for an answer. He never finds it.

His brother never saw it coming, and Colton never really found out how it went down. Colton came home from school one day, and Ryan was gone. His parents told him he’d been sent to his aunt’s—to get him away from the bad influences at school—although other parents would say that Ryan was the bad influence. Colton kept calling his aunt, wanting to talk to his brother, but she never answered or returned his call. That’s when Colton began to worry.

He denied the possibility. Yes, Ryan was more defiant than Colton had ever been—but is that enough reason for a divisional solution? He finally got through to his aunt. At first she tried to sound normal, making excuses as to why Ryan couldn’t come to the phone. Then she finally broke down and told him the truth.

A week later Colton pawned everything he could find of value in the house, got himself a false passport, and left