UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,73

doctor. Too bad you must put him under the knife.”

Rodín looks at Colton with something bordering on awe or at least admiration. “Very well, then.”

He orders the guards to put Gamon and Kemo in a holding cell and sends Kunal to open Marisol’s room. Sonthi personally escorts Karissa to visit her sister. Colton doesn’t go—he remains in the courtyard with the doctor.

“You and I are of a like mind,” Rodín tells him. “It gives me more incentive to make sure you survive your procedures.”

Then, from Marisol’s cell, Colton hears Karissa’s soul-searing wails of shock and grief, along with Sonthi’s endless laughter.

8 • Kunal

The unexpected hope of freedom is enticing yet terrifying. His life here is awful but tolerable. What would his life be out there, in a world that will see him as a monster? He could live alone, a recluse at the edge of civilization, bothering no one, and no one bothering him. Is that the life he wants?

These are questions he can’t answer—all he knows is that freedom is desirable above all things. He cannot let his fear cloud his judgment. And so, well past midnight, he leaves his room once more, a plan fully formed in his mind. A plan he might be able to pull off.

9 • Colton

Colton paces his room in the dark. He can’t sleep; he can’t even sit for long. They will come for him at dawn to prep him for his operation. Soon, his chest will be expanded, and the heart of the bull will be installed in place of his own. Unless Kunal comes through.

“You wait,” Kunal told him when he locked Colton in his room that night after dinner. “You wait, I come.”

“And the others?”

Kunal didn’t answer him. “You wait.”

The moon moves halfway across the sky before Kunal shows up at his door. His keys do not jingle. The lock turns slowly, quietly. Colton’s heart seem to rise so he can feel it beating in his neck. His heart. Kunal is here, which means he will keep his heart. If the tunnel truly is a tunnel. And if the guards don’t kill him before he reaches it.

He sees Kunal silhouetted as the door opens. “Come, come,” Kunal whispers. “No time.” He gives Colton a handgun—and he doubts it’s loaded with tranqs. Colton has never held a weapon before, but he knows he’ll use it if he has to.

It’s only as he steps out of his room that he sees the others. Kemo, Gamon, Karissa, and Marisol, her silhouette spiderlike in the darkness. Kunal has armed them all.

Colton would make a beeline for the tree, if it weren’t for one thing. Jenson isn’t with them.

“We have to get Jenson,” Colton whispers.

“No,” says Kunal. “You leave now. He stay. Too late for him.”

But Colton knows he’ll never be able to live with himself if he doesn’t try. “Take them to the tunnel,” he tells Kunal, then holds out his hand. “Give me the key.”

Kunal hesitates but only for a moment. He finds the key on the key ring but can’t take it off, so he hands the entire ring to Colton.

“You stupid. Very stupid.” Then he leaves with the others.

Alone, Colton creeps in shadows to the double doors of the recovery room. Even at this time of night it’s not silent in there. There are still moans and the faint, hopeless wails of the damned. He waits for a guard to pass on his rounds, then he goes to the door, unlocks it, and slips in.

The first thing that hits him is the stench. Both medicinal and septic at the same time. It’s hard to keep from gagging. The lights are scarce and dim, and he’s glad for it, for in each alcove is another one of Dr. Rodín’s recovering experiments.

And that’s exactly what they are—experiments more than creations. Colton can almost hear the hypotheses the Doctor was attempting to investigate.

Can a brain be housed somewhere other than a skull?

Can a mythological Janus exist, with two faces on the same cranium, forever facing in opposite directions?

Can a giant be created by stacking spinal columns?

And these were the ones that survived their procedures. Colton couldn’t even imagine the miscreations that didn’t.

And then there’s Jenson.

“Who’s there?” Colton hears him say. “I know you’re there—I can hear you!”

Colton moves closer to the hospital bed on which Jenson lies, ankles and wrists secured to the frame of the bed. An intravenous tube feeding into his arm.

“Don’t pretend you’re not there! I hear you!”

“It’s me, Jenson. It’s