#connor lassiter imagines

[heliads]

REQUESTS OPEN OMG EVERYONE CHEERED. hi i was thinking.. what if… hmm.. what if.. guardian angel y/n x connor lassiter where in unwind instead of lev saving him after the happy jack explosion its y/n. (they kiss at the end PLEase)

ANYWAYS ILY u survived exams i’m so proud !

'angel ex machina ' - connor lassiter

masterlist

They find Connor Lassiter staring at a billboard. He’s slumped against a wall, eyes hollow and vacant, like nothing in this world could possibly be more fascinating than a couple hundred square feet of boastful advertising. The bright colors seem to laugh at him, tantalizingly out of reach from where he crouches now, separated from the rest of the world by the walls of a harvest camp.

We have guardian angels! Low prices, high protection! 

Even if Connor somehow managed to piece together enough cash for their exorbitant prices, it’s obvious that a guardian angel would be wasted on him. Connor is days away from his own unwinding. Not even a real guardian angel could pull him out now, let alone the vapid models in suits they’ve got bedazzling that billboard. Everyone knows you can’t actually hire a guardian angel. They just show up somehow, save your ass however many times you need it, then disappear. There, then gone. Intrinsically a part of your life, and then it’s like you’d never known them at all.

Guardian angels are extraordinarily rare. The closest Connor’s ever come to meeting one is hearing a story his dad used to tell, and even then, Kirk Lassiter had only briefly glimpsed one of his neighbors getting saved from a car accident by one of the angels. Not exactly a core memory for Connor. His mom had never seen one at all.

That’s the way it usually goes. There aren’t that many guardian angels in the world. Rare things, they are. Somehow, they decide that a person is important enough to save, and then they swoop in and do what they do best. That’s usually saving them from disasters– floods, tornadoes, you name it. There’s an iconic photograph of a guardian angel rescuing someone from a burning building that Connor sees annually in his textbooks; something about the wings silhouetted against the flames is irresistible to school publishers. Hayden swears that he heard about somebody who got a guardian angel to do their taxes, but Connor figures that’s another of the boy’s bad jokes. Guardian angels are for real problems, not tax fraud.

Hell, no one even knows what guardian angels look like. There are photographs, sure, but they always turn out strangely blurry, like when the sun’s too bright outside and all you can do is squint. Even the people who’ve seen guardian angels say that their memories faded oddly quickly after the incident. No one can decide if they look like people, if their wings always appear, if they’re even recognizable as guardian angels at all. The only thing the masses can agree on is that guardian angels do exist, and they’ll never be good enough for anyone.

Least of all Connor. He’s harbored a hope that he’d get to meet one at some point, obviously, everyone has. Imagining that you’d be important enough to warrant an angel sent to watch over you is everyone’s secret fantasy.

Connor’s a few hours away from getting unwound, though, so he’s pretty sure that dream will die like the rest of his:  unwanted, unclaimed, unfulfilled. He’ll go to pieces as yet another boy who dreamed of being great, another poor soul ignored by the angels. The only difference is that, unlike most of the teenage population, he’s not even mediocre enough to live past sixteen. He’ll be in parts by tomorrow. Then, who knows? Maybe his elbow will go to a kid worthy of an angel. Connor wasn’t, but maybe his unwound pieces will be.

Connor shakes his head slightly to rid himself of the thoughts. He’s not usually like this. He’s not a quitter. He’ll go under the knife protesting his unwinding. It’s just a little difficult to keep up the fighting spirit when he knows that at last, despite all his running and hiding, he’ll be unwound anyway. There’s no fighting the Juvenile Authority. All his great efforts just delayed the inevitable. It cuts him to say it, but it looks like they were right after all.

In an attempt to get his mind out of obviously dangerous waters, Connor rips his gaze away from the offending billboard and glances around him. Only now does he notice another future unwind drawing close to him. Connor stretches and stands, forcing the corners of his mouth to upturn slightly so Y/N, his closest friend here and only ally among the cops and lambs to slaughter, don’t think he’s totally deranged.

“What are you doing?” Y/N asks, coming to a stop by his side.

Connor shrugs listlessly. “Nothing. Drafting my will.”

With anyone else, he’d probably stay silent, but Connor learned a long time ago that trying to hold his tongue around Y/N L/N is a losing game. They met in the basement of Sonia’s antique shop, Y/N having arrived barely a few minutes after Connor and Risa. Talk about a coincidence. They quickly hit it off, and as proof of their friendship, they’ve even ended up at the same harvest camp after it all went south back at the Graveyard.

If Connor were trapped with anyone, though, he’s glad it’s them. Not even Hayden can make Connor laugh as much as he does with Y/N. They understand him in a way that no one else ever has. If he were feeling particularly stupid, he would call it love, but Connor knows better. They’re both about to get stripped to pieces. If he spills his guts now and they friendzone him, Connor will have ruined the best part of his life for nothing.

So he stays silent, and watches Y/N laugh at his joke. “I want your car after they unwind you,” they inform him. “Maybe even the house.”

Connor pretends to be outraged. “Both? That’s absurd.”

Y/N snorts. “Who else would you give them to? The tithe?” Then, in a quieter voice, they glance towards the billboard Connor was staring at, and add on, “Maybe an angel?”

Connor sighs. “They can’t sell real guardian angels. No amount of flashy billboards can hide that.”

Y/N nods. “You’re still tempted, though?”

Connor lifts a shoulder. “Who wouldn’t be tempted? The idea is great. I’d love for someone to save me right now. Or maybe just care enough to try.”

“I care,” Y/N offers.

Connor gives them a wry smile. “I know you do. But you’re stuck in the same mess as I am, so maybe I’ll hold off on believing in your escape plan until you’re out, too.”

Y/N looks at him for a second, too deep for Connor to understand, then cracks a grin. “You should believe in me, Lassiter. I’m tunneling out from under the dorms with just a spoon. I might make it halfway to Florida by the time we get the unwind order.”

Connor scoffs. “That only works in movies. You’d need a miracle to break through an inch of concrete, let alone all the way past the borders.”

Y/N smiles at him, a little secretively, a little knowingly. “I’m pretty good with miracles.”

“Sure you are,” Connor says, stretching his arms to rid himself of an unpleasant pinch in his muscles. “Any chance you can whip one up to save me from my impending doom?”

He isn’t expecting Y/N to respond, obviously, but when their face drops at the sight of something approaching behind him, Connor knows it’s not just from his lack of belief. “I’d have to make it quick, wouldn’t I?” They mutter under their breath.

Connor turns around to see a squad of Juvey-cops bearing down on him. He swears under his breath. “This is it, right? They’re going to take me away?”

Y/N’s face looks ashen and wrong. “I should have saved you. “

“We should have saved each other,” Connor corrects gently. Usually, he isn’t the sentimental type, but as the guards get closer, he can’t resist the urge to lean closer to Y/N and whisper to them, “Hey, I’m glad for the time we had, alright? It meant– It meant a lot to me. You know. If I was going to talk to anyone on my last day, I would have wanted it to be you anyway.”

Y/N sucks in a breath. “Don’t say that.”

Connor stares at them. “Why not? It’s true.”

Y/N looks like they want to argue– why, Connor isn’t sure, but the guilt in their eyes is like nothing he’s ever seen before– but before they can say a word, the Juvey-cops close in around him, cutting Connor off from Y/N like slamming a door in their face. They give him the usual speech about how it’s time for him to be unwound, but Connor can’t find it within himself to pay attention. It’s so typical of him, honestly, to be zoning out during what may be his last hour whole, but all he can think about is Y/N, who disappears into the distance as the cops drag him away, Y/N, who he’s now left here alone, Y/N, who will join him in this fate not long from now.

Connor doesn’t want to be unwound. Obviously. He doesn’t want this, and the sheer force of his not wanting overwhelms him as they lead him closer and closer to the doors of the Chop Shop. A crowd of other unwinds has gathered by the door; apparently the final moments of the Akron AWOL make for some good entertainment. The band is playing. Connor wants to run, run far and fast like he always does, but for the first time in his life he realizes how pointless it is. If he tried to flee, they would catch him. They would drag him back, and it would be like nothing ever happened. There is no way this day ends with anything but Connor in pieces.

Connor forces his legs to move him mechanically towards the Chop Shop entrance. Just before the darkness of the place swallows him whole, something tells Connor to glance over his shoulder one last time and he sees Y/N staring at him beseechingly. He doesn’t know how he’s able to spot them so easily in the crowd, but he can. Like he would know them anywhere. Like doing anything but looking at them is impossible.

Then the guards shove him into the Chop Shop, and Y/N is gone, replaced by the dark certainty of Connor’s unwinding. The hallway seems to stretch out forever, but before Connor can take even one more step, a few very confusing things happen all at once.

First:  there’s this shift in the air. Connor can’t describe it. It feels strange and wrong, burning on his tongue like electricity. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and Connor knows at once that something is about to go wrong.

Second:  the room erupts in fire and smoke. The bone-rattling boom of the explosion comes later, a little delayed, but Connor sees the white flash of heat and light first. He’s knocked off of his feet, and time seems to slow down. The entire world is gone, replaced only by Connor, floating hazily through the smoky air, and the blossom of fire around him, searing off everything else.

Third, and most confusing of all:  out of nowhere, Y/N is right in front of him. Y/N, yes, but Y/N different somehow. It takes him a moment to realize why. Their eyes glow white, brighter even than the explosion, and their skin is radiating off this cool, pearlescent light. He has no idea how they could have possibly gotten in front of him so fast. He has no idea how they’re seemingly immune to the heat and force of the explosion around them.

Y/N reaches for him, pulling Connor into their arms. Their head presses against his, and they whisper quietly, forcefully, “Be safe, Connor.”

The command reverberates through Connor’s entire body. He doesn’t even remember hitting the ground, and when the explosion clears, he’s– He’s fine, actually. Nothing hurts. When Connor stares at his body, he’s utterly unharmed. Not even a scratch on his skin. He is totally untouched by the explosion that has just decimated the entirety of the Chop Shop.

Connor looks around him and realizes that Y/N is sitting in front of him. They’re both on the grass outside the Chop Shop, although he doesn’t remember getting there. Y/N is unharmed also, although Connor can say for certainty that there is still something wrong about them. It takes him a moment to get his scattered thoughts in order, and then he remembers. Y/N’s eyes wink pearlescent at him from a few paces away, and he knows.

“You’re a guardian angel,” Connor stammers out.

Y/N nods. “I am.”

Easy as that. They say it like it’s nothing. Like Connor hasn’t just had his life saved by a supernatural being currently sitting criss-cross applesauce in front of him on the waving grass. He’s had a lot of time to wonder what it would be like to meet a guardian angel, but it never would have occurred to him that one would have been in his life this entire time without him knowing.

Connor stares unseeingly at them. Try as he might, he can’t force himself to believe that Y/N is anything other than, well, Y/N. His friend. His best friend. The person he’s been crushing on since they stumbled into him by accident in the dark of Sonia’s basement. He remembers the flighty beat of their heartbeat when they were in his arms then, and he remembers what it felt like when they embraced him again in the smothering heat of the Chop Shop inferno. All Y/N. All an angel.

“You were trying to save me,” he begins, then stops. That really sums it up.

“I was,” Y/N agrees. “It was always about you, Connor.”

The idea doesn’t compute to him. “Then why wait until now to save my life? Why not make sure the Juveys never found us out in the first place?”

Y/N tilts their head to the side, considering this. “The job of a guardian angel is to save their primary assignment, sure, but also to minimize suffering wherever they go. I knew the Chop Shop explosion would happen if I didn’t save you. This needed to happen so everyone else here could be rescued. Worse things would have happened if I didn’t interfere now. It may not seem that way, but it is.”

Connor can practically feel gears in his head spinning. “So you knew how this would end the whole time?”

“I knew the great catastrophes of your life,” Y/N corrects. “I knew many paths you could take. This was the big risk, though. I didn’t get to see any more after that. Now I know just as much about your future as you do.”

Connor whistles under his breath. “That’s comforting.” Then, a terrible thought occurs to him. “Wait, that means I was your assignment. Like a job? Were you ever really my friend at all, or was that just something you had to do to complete your assignment?”

Y/N rears back as if hurt. “I have always been your friend. Guardian angels aren’t supposed to ever reveal themselves. I was actually meant to never talk to you until I saved you.”

“What changed?” Connor asks. He can’t stop himself.

Y/N smiles softly. “I saw you. You looked like someone fun.”

“Someone fun,” Connor echoes. He tries to think about his life, if anyone could see that and decide he was someone worthwhile. Someone fun. Someone an angel could watch and want to befriend. A warm feeling blossoms in his chest. Pride, maybe. Or the realization that the one secret he’s been keeping may go both ways after all.

“Yeah,” Y/N says, growing a little embarrassed. “I like you. My bad.”

Connor laughs. “That’s not bad. I like you too, by the way. In case you didn’t see it when you were receiving visions about my life.”

Y/N’s eyes dart up to his. “Really?”

“Really,” Connor says. “What, you didn’t know?”

Y/N shakes their head. “Like I said, I could only see what happened to you up to the Chop Shop exploding. Everything after that is a mystery.”

“Well,” Connor says, drawing closer to them. “I’m glad I get to surprise an angel once in my life.”

Before Y/N can ask him what he means, Connor kisses them, and after a moment of shock, they kiss him back. He’s not sure if he’s the first person in the world to have kissed an angel before, but he wouldn’t mind having that accolade under his belt. Just so long as he gets to be the person to kiss an angel two times, or three. Or forever.

requested by @julysn, i hope you enjoy!

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter x reader #connor lassiter oneshot #unwind #unwind imagines #unwind x reader #unwind oneshot #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology x reader #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind connor #unwind connor x reader #unwind connor oneshot

[dragonsdendoodles]

“Your point?”

“Just that you’re not the only one who thinks the Admiral needs some… restraining.”

#unwind #unwind dystology #connor lassiter #roland taggart #i hate that my brain imagines roland looking like finlay macmillan #roland is far too creepy for that he doesn’t deserve it #yes it is because he reminds me of movie enoch leave me alone #fucking hate roland i’m so glad he dies #dragon’s doodles

[robotstrategy]

Recalled • Part 6 • 46 - Roland and Nero

Previous • Series Masterlist • Part 6 Masterlist • Next

Nero and Carter stand in the main room of the apartment, Carter moves around boxes as Nero sweeps up broken glass. She told Carter that the vase had broken on accident, in reality, Roland was so miserable that morning that he had swiped the thing off the table. Nero doesn’t blame him, she’d be pretty miserable too if her assaulter’s gift to her was sitting in a frequently visited spot.

“They’re such nice flowers, it’s a shame they have to be thrown away,” Carter remarked.

“They were a gift from… someone…” Nero explains, alluding to Trevor.

“Never mind then.” 

Nero dumps the broken vase and the flowers into a garbage bag and ties it up. Carter looks over to Roland’s bedroom door. “Should I put these things in his room?” He refers to the boxes.

“Yeah, I don’t think he’ll mind if you come in. Fair warning though, there was a mishap yesterday and he ain’t looking too good.”

Carter nods. “Alright.” 

Carter knocks on the door before slowly opening it, he jumps as Roland jolts up in bed; covering himself like a woman caught in the nude. His face is red and scabby, and there’s a thick stitch going across his chin. 

“Did he do this to you?” Carter asks him, Roland shakes his head. “I just had a bad fall on concrete, I’ll be fine.”

“Right, umm,” Carter starts moving in the boxes. 

“You can just put them against the closet, I’ll move them later.” Roland directs.

Carter still worries. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Roland shrugs. “Nero talked to me while I had a bath yesterday. I don’t feel unsafe,” Roland takes the covers off his chest. “I mean, look at me, I could’ve pummeled the guy if my meds weren’t on full blast. I’m just angry and upset.”

Carter looks him in the eyes. “If you ever need someone other than Nero to talk to I’m also here for you.” 

Roland nods. “Thanks.”

Carter finishes moving the boxes, he comes out to Nero staring at the front door. 

“Are you expecting someone?”

“Yeah, Roland’s dad.”

“Funny, Roland has never talked about his dad.”

“He only found out he wasn’t dead last week.” 

“Oh.”

Nero hears someone knock at the door, she rushes over to unlock it. “Hello Mr. Del-gah-doe?” Nero awkwardly greets him. 

Danilo looks stunned. “That’s right, who are you?”

“I’m Nero.”

“Oh, I thought you were a boy, and umm, not a Rewind.”

Nero gives him the benefit of the doubt. “Did Roland not tell you I was a Rewind?”

“He did not.” 

Nero turns around shouting into the apartment. “Roland! You didn’t tell him I was a Rewind?”

“Sorry, I didn’t think it mattered.”

“It really doesn’t,” Danilo assures her.

“It does to most people,” Nero hisses, nonetheless she opens the door letting Danilo in. Nero points to Carter. “This is Carter, by the way, a friend of mine, we’re just moving stuff in for Roland.”

“Is he helping you?” Danilo asks about Roland.

“He had a bad fall on concrete yesterday,” Carter says. 

“Oh, has his boyfriend come over to comfort him? I’d like to meet him soon.”

Both Nero and Carter freeze, Nero suspects they’re thinking the same thing. ‘How do we tell this guy what happened without going into too much detail?’

“They, they had a bad break up, when you talk to him today don’t mention his ex, please,” Nero confesses to him.

Danilo’s face saddens. “I see, sorry about that.” 

“At least he’s doing better today, I heard he did really well in the chopper this morning.”

“Ah, that is good. I heard he already knew how to fly a chopper from his time in the graveyard.”

“Yeah, it was quite scary for me, I was originally going to be an aviation bœuf. You can imagine my shock when my arms and legs already knew what they were doing.”

“Wait… you…?”

“Yeah, I’ve got his old legs, parts of his arms, and little grey matter that connects it all together.”

“How much of him was gone?”

Nero hesitates. “Well there’s me, and then believe it or not, Connor Lassiter has most of his right arm, and then his frontal lobe is somewhere, not like I want to find it.”

“I see.” Danilo looks her in the face. “I noticed you only put makeup on half of your face, why?”

Nero laughs. “Firstly, I don’t think he’s deserving of looking pretty, secondly his skin develops slowly, I think he’s only gotten a pimple once.” She talks about Starkey.

“Hmm, well it’s very nice, I was just wondering if you could help with my daughter’s quinceañera. I’ve already had to put aside money for the food, the venue, and the dress.”

“Oh Lilian, I could try to help with her makeup. I wouldn’t want you paying me though, I’m not sure if I could do both sides properly.” 

Danilo shakes his head. “Then you could help my mother with her hair, I wouldn’t want to force a responsibility onto you. You probably have enough stress as it is.”

“I do, and thanks.” 

Danilo looks over to Roland’s room. “May I see him?”

“Yeah, of course, just knock before going in.”

Roland hears someone knock at the door, he sees his father coming in, and his father gasps at the sight of his face. 

“Oh pobre tiburón! Your face is so red!”

Roland becomes teary-eyed, yesterday morning he wanted to look like this, today he doesn’t want to believe this is what he looks like at all. 

“Oh please don’t cry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Danilo sits down beside him. “You’re not taking this well I’m guessing?”

Roland nods. “It hurts, it hurts so bad!” He learns over into his dad’s arms, crying into his shoulder. He then stops, placing his chin on his father’s shoulder. “How’s Lilian doing?”

Roland hears a smile in Danilo’s voice. “That’s what I wanted to tell you about, yesterday I went with her and your mother to pick out a dress for her quinceañera. It’s very pretty, it has a ball gown and ruffled top like a flamenco dress, I think I have a picture of her in it.”

Roland turns around to see the picture, the dress is periwinkle with little silver accents. “She’s very pretty.” He frowns, thinking back to himself.

“Think your face will heal in time, if not I still think we could make you look nice.” 

Roland sniffs. “Thanks, papá.”

Danilo smiles. “You’re very welcome Rolando.”

Roland looks away from his dad, looking out the window.

“Should I leave you alone then?” His father asks.

“Yeah, I’m just done with today.” He confesses.

“Ah, right, I’ll leave you alone then.” As his father leaves Roland goes back to lying down, sighing as his head hits the pillow. He had seen the state of Trevor today, there was staining under his nose from where blood had gushed out, and he was walking funny. Trevor’s roommate had told someone in the group that apparently his testicles had experienced so much blunt-force trauma that they had to cut them off. “Is he getting them replaced?” “Yeah, and he’s going to have to pay for them himself, for some reason he won’t fess up what happened.” Roland looks beside him to Nero, Nero had said something about getting justice. “Good,” Nero says under her breath. Roland gasps, and Nero whips her head at him. “I-I just, wow, I didn’t think you’d…”

“Well, I wanted to teach him a lesson, it’s a shame though that he can get his balls replaced,” She speaks even colder and quieter. “I should’ve kicked him even more.” 

Roland rolls over in his bed, scrolling on his phone, he wonders if Hayden would be up for talking. Nero keeps telling him that everything before his unwinding isn’t his fault, but she wasn’t there to experience it, Hayden was. 

Roland dials up Hayden’s number and waits to see if he’ll answer, it takes a few rings until he hears something. 

“Hey Roland, long time no hear.” 

“Hi…”

“Are you okay?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, you have the stage or rather the radio… Hey, you took my job!” Hayden teases.

Roland laughs, and then his tone drops again. “I, I had a boyfriend, and…”

“A boyfriend! Really? What’s his name?” 

Roland stalls. “It, It doesn’t matter, he, he…  oh god, give me a moment, I can’t do this.” Roland puts his head on the mattress, taking a few sniffs before he tries talking again. “He didn’t respect my boundaries, and he already had a girlfriend our entire relationship.” He cries.

“Oh… jeez… I’m so sorry…”

“It’s just, that night I had a dream with Risa in it, and it made me think how horrible I am. Nero says I have to disassociate myself and that it’s not my fault, but she wasn’t there. I, I just can’t see myself as anything but a monster.”

“Well… Nero is right, you’re Modified, therefore your past actions have become irrelevant. It does seem stupid in a way doesn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” Roland mumbles. “By the way, I listened to your radio that night.”

Hayden sounds embarrassed. “O-oh, what night was that?”

“Saturday night.”

“Oh o-okay, umm I was talking about that new charity right?”

“No, I think it was about your hobbies, I heard that you liked surfing random blogs,” He pauses. “Your voice is really relaxing when you whisper, it put me right to sleep.” He laughs.

Hayden’s voice calms, “Oh, you're a late-night listener?”

“No, I just turned it on to procrastinate sleep.” 

Hayden giggles. “I guess that didn’t work then.”

“Yeah, but I’m happy I didn’t pull an all-nighter.”

There’s a little pause of silence in Roland’s room until Hayden talks again. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but when you said your boyfriend didn’t respect your boundaries and how Risa was in your dreams, did he?…”

Roland cuts him off. “We got the same treatment, except Risa and I weren’t dating, and I didn’t put my hand down Risa’s pants.”

“Oh.” Hayden emits something between a gasp and a shiver.

“It’s alright, it was the first day in the cycle of my meds, so I didn’t feel anything.”

“But that’s still so scary.”

“Yeah, but I’m not scared of him, I’m just angry and upset that our relationship ever even happened. I guess the fact that I had finally figured myself out and a boy actually wanted me just got the best of me.”

“Roland, don't blame yourself for being assaulted!”

“I’m not, I just wish I could’ve seen it coming sooner,” Roland then smirks. “But he got what was coming for him, Nero kicked him hard so many times in the nuts that they had to be amputated.”

“HOLY SHIT! Well, I guess no sex for him, unless he's getting them replaced, is he getting them replaced?”

“I think he is.”

“Dang it!”

Roland laughs. “Yeah Nero says she should’ve kicked him harder,” Roland gets off his bed. “I’ve got some things to put away, I’ll be putting you on speaker.”

“Alright, speaking about that, how’s dorm life been treating you?”

“Oh terrible, I got roomed with an Incel, you know what that guy said to me on the night of my assault?”

“What did he say?” 

“Well, first he asked me if I tried to stick my dick in crazy, and then he told me that’s why he likes body pillows, because they don’t talk nonsense, and they don’t say no!”

“EW! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT GUY?!” 

Roland puts clothes away. “I know! Like that’s the last thing I want to hear right now.”

“I hope you gave him a piece of your mind!”

“I tried to, but I didn’t exactly have it in me to do so after the incident.”

“Fair.”

Roland stores more stuff under his bed. “So anything going on with you lately?”

“Well other than the radio, there’s banquets, parties, political debates,” Hayden sighs. “Just a bunch of rich people shit.”

“Well, some of that stuff sounds like it could be fun every once in a while. We’re having a quinceañera for my sister at the end of spring.”

“Oh, nice! You know, for some reason, I thought your sister was older than fifteen, and, Hey wait! You’re Spanish?” Hayden shouts.

Roland wheezes. “Hey, I didn’t know until like a month ago! And yeah, my sister is turning 18 at the end of spring, we’re having a very late quinceañera, my dad says it’s more like a dieciochoañera.”

“I’m going to assume that’s eighteen-year-something…?”

“Yeah,” Roland puts away the last of his stuff. “Would you like to come?” He suggests.

“Oh, no that’s okay, I’ll probably be alienated anyway.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll probably be alienated as well, and it would be nice to see you in person.”

“Hmm, well it’s alright with you I’ll come.”

“Thank you, Hayden!”

#unwind #unwind dystology #unwind fanfic #unwind series #sequel fic #roland taggart #unwind oc #hayden upchurch

[xbooksandclevernessx]

There's no denying that there are some things we don't like to have a light shone upon within society and that the darkest and most grittiest dystopian books show are those that hit closest to home. That's part of what makes Neal Shusterman's hit Unwind such a success, and what makes it keep you up long into the night.

The book uses the point of view from as many people as it needs, and shows the struggle of 3 young teenagers struggling to survive in a society that has given up on them and their generation a long time ago. Shusterman sheds light onto the darkest part of his future society in a way that sheds light onto our own societal faults, and overall causes you to spend hours of your life trying to convince yourself that you are different than the society he painted, and failing time and time again. With interesting characters that you learn to love, realistic world-building, and horrific moments that make you want to look away if you weren't so fascinated, I'd have to rate this book the full five stars.

                                                        ★★★★★

The book covers the lives and struggles of the 3 teenagers Connor, Risa, and Lev attempting to stay alive and live their lives within a society that wants them dead. It is the future, and things within the pro-life/pro-choice movements reached an all-time high. After a war broke out, a solution for peace was created, and life has moved perfectly ever since. The government decided that from the moment of conception, life becomes invaluable, yet between the ages of 13 and 18, the parents can choose to have their child unwound. To unwind a child is not to kill them per se, but to take them apart piece by piece and give each bit of them to someone else who needs it. The child doesn't die, therefore it is not classed as murder, and it is a common part of society.

Connor Lassiter is a 16-year-old trouble child that gets bad grades and makes things hard on his parents. That doesn't mean he doesn't love them and try, so when he finds the unwind order in their room, he feels his heart break and realizes he has no other option than to run.

Risa Ward is a ward of the state, and is no longer valuable enough to be kept alive. Having never been adopted, and her piano skills not being considered good enough, she's shipped off to hopefully attribute to a new future genius.

Lev Calder is the tenth child in his family and is labeled as a tithe. Tithes are religious unwindings, in which a child is raised knowing that when they turn 13, they will be sent off to be unwound and hopefully help make a difference in the world.

Things change in these children's lives when Connor makes a break, stealing Lev along as to serve as cover for him. Risa, noticing the commotion, uses it to mask her own escape. Slowly the 3 of them band together as unlikely allies, discovering the truth about society and simply attempting to survive for just a day longer. Along the way they meet a deadly threat with a shark tattoo, an old lady with a crate full of letters, and an old war veteran with more secrets than truths. Together they run towards the infamous airplane graveyard that's supposed to harbor unwinds and change their own life views on the way.

The plot is exceptional, and the characters you meet along the way stay with you and change you forever. The descriptions given of the same thing by multiple characters, or the moments you delve into things you never would have imagined, change your views on life. When I hear someone discuss excellent writing or a scene that changed their life, I do, and always will think of the moment that you get to witness the unwinding process through the eyes of the subject. I will never forget my emotions the first time I read it, and the descriptions of slowly losing your being until you truly are nothing more than a million pieces and have almost no memory of who you once were. I think that by far changed my view on fiction, writting, and really the world itself.

ALSO, THE AMAZING PEOPLE AT MAINSTAY PRO REMADE THAT ICONIC SCENE WITH A DIFFERENT CHARACTER, AND IT IS BRILLIANT. IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THE BOOK, I'D SUGGEST WATCHING IT.

If you're looking for a book that won't just be a light read, but a book that truly encaptures your mind and your soul, then this is the book for you. It makes you think, drives you into the story, and shows you the aspects of real life people often try to ignore. Shusterman dives deep into the world, creating clippings from the unwind bill and excerpts from pro-unwinding pamphlets, but the real thing he does to bring it to life is list things that have already been published in this world prior to this book, such as the eBay selling of a soul.

Everything that happens in the novel is physically possible in today’s world, and that is only half of the scary part of this novel. The other part has to do with society. There are novels you can get where you look at society and can distance yourself, look at the people and think "I would never act like that." A good example would be the people of the Capital in the Hunger Games. In Unwind, there is no difference between us and the society. For while we may think it disgusting after reading the book, you'll find far too many similarities in the writing. Even the main characters saw nothing wrong with it until it happened to them.

Words can change the world, and this is definitely one of those books I see causing a societal change. I'd recommend everyone read this book at least once in their life, it really is a game changer.

#review #unwind #neal shusterman

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Seventeen: Returning the Favor

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor Lassiter stares at Death. Death stares back at Connor Lassiter.

Dorian Heartland is not an easy man to look at. Connor doesn’t like doing it, but taking his eyes off of this infernal creator for even one moment could offer Heartland a chance to take Connor’s pupils for his own, so he refuses to budge his gaze even one millimeter.

All this does, though, is to give Connor a good look at everything that makes Heartland so horrifically wrong. He can see in the stiffness of Risa’s posture, the flightiness of her breath, that she’s caught on to who this is too, although by this point that would almost be impossible to avoid. Dorian Heartland is like no other man Connor has ever met before, though that might be because Dorian Heartland is no longer made up of any of his original birth parts, nor the secondary parts that replaced him, nor the ones that swapped him out after that. Connor can’t even begin to fathom what iteration of lungs he must have inside someone else’s ribcage– is the fourth generation of blood pumping through his veins, perhaps? The fifth?

Connor wonders what parts Heartland will take from Connor as some sort of grisly hunting trophy. The eyes, maybe. Everyone likes the eyes. Snatching his heart would be a particularly satisfying touch, too. If Connor wasn’t so disgusted by the idea of harvesting someone else’s bits and pieces to keep himself intact, maybe he, too, could see the allure in holding Heartland’s brain in his head, clenching the pink matter between his knuckles and knowing that someone else’s entire life and soul was in his hands.

Well. His and Roland’s. Connor is no better than this grave robber. Even though the switching out of arms was unintentional, Connor still bears the limb and tattoo of another teenager. Does that make him any closer to Heartland? Will it spare him from Heartland’s punishment? No and no, but it does paint a rather more confusing portrait. It would be easier if Connor were totally blameless, of course, but no one in this galaxy ever is. The same chain that breaks our wrists will help us up one day, and then it will kill our best friend and worst enemy in turn. All Connor can do is hope to stay alive, but even now, that seems like one last possibility that’s slipped out of his reach.

Heartland smiles indulgently, taking in the startled looks on their faces. “Now, now. Don’t give yourselves an aneurysm trying to figure out how I tracked you down. I need all of your brain matter to be as functional as possible. You won’t believe the number of potential buyers who have been contacting me in the hopes of getting a piece from the two of you.”

 “I’m trying extra hard now,” Connor says dryly.

Heartland has the nerve to roll his eyes like a petulant teenager. Connor wonders if that motion is uniquely Dorian, or if it’s from an actual AWOL who’s still not past his rebellious teenager phase even if he’s landed in the body of someone like Heartland. Regardless, the sudden movement makes Heartland’s whole face bulge unevenly as different sections of skin resist tension with varying rates of success, old and young parts making themselves known. For a moment, Connor swears he can see every piece of Heartland for what it is, can map every seam and stitch, and then the man’s face returns to neutral again and the effect is undone.

“Don’t be sulky, Connor, it does you no good.” Heartland admonishes him.

Connor folds his arms across his chest. “Oh, so you’re going to lecture me before you rip off my limbs? How charitable of you.”

“I’m not ripping off your limbs, that would be my expert team of surgeons,” Heartland clarifies. “Besides, ripping is entirely too gory of a description. Distribution is a perfectly reasonable procedure. The galaxy has ensured that it’s completely scientific, with as little pain to the distributes as possible. You simply must get your mind out of the gutter. Speak elegantly or don’t speak at all, Connor. I don’t want that tongue to be corrupted more than necessary.”

Beside him, Risa narrows her eyes at the man. “Was that little flower bed over there produced in the name of elegant speech, or did you just want an excuse for other people to talk about unwinding without putting words in your mouth?”

She jerks her chin towards a display somewhere beyond them. Connor thinks he remembers her coming from that direction when she’d run over to tell him that they had been caught. He wishes fleetingly that he had been closer, that he’d never suggested splitting up at all, that they had just put themselves first like every other soul in the galaxy seems wont to do, but the dreams evaporate in time, leaving him only the stark reality of having been caught in the pointless effort of trying to save lives.

Heartland chuckles, evidently remembering what Risa’s talking about. “Oh yes, the flowers. The last band of upstarts had the same reaction. I love it when we’re all on one page.”

Connor frowns, wondering if some other group of runaway unwinds had made it here before them to be the ‘band of upstarts’ Heartland referred to. He hadn’t seen anyone in the airspace above them when he landed, and certainly Connor would have heard if someone sprung Heartland’s trap a few standard hours ago, but then it occurs to him that Heartland isn’t mentioning events earlier that day at all.

No, Heartland is recollecting the last group of kids who tried to act as heroes for the galaxy. Connor hasn’t heard of any in a while, but even without the Collective’s propensity for propaganda whitewashing everything into blank silence, the last batch of would-be saviors would have been around decades ago. Heartland could be referring to infinite rounds of kids who didn’t want to die, all stretching back for centuries.

How many unwinds have stood in this exact spot? How many generations of children have tried to kill off Heartland or his policies but failed? Connor and Risa are far from the first, nor, judging by the fact that they’ve already been caught, will they be the last. This cycle will go on forever, as surely as a thousand suns rise and set across the galaxy, as certainly as the never ending rotation of fresh organs from the body of a child into the frame of an adult. Teenagers will rise out of obscurity, challenge the notion that the young should die for the wastefulness of the old, and then they will be struck down all because one man has cheated them of their last resource:  time.

Of course Dorian Heartland wins every round. He has the luxury of knowing the full story every time. Heartland knows how the rebellions start, so he can crush them in their infancy. He knows how the last stragglers turn into martyrs, so he can lay expert traps and avoid their attempts to save their friends. Starkey’s little attack may have caught him off-guard, and Connor may have been able to run from him once, but now Heartland has had time to consider their strategies and plan accordingly. Dozens of Connors have tried to make a stand, and Heartland has killed them every time. What is Connor now but one more replacement? Heartland is swapping out another one of his parts:  the rebel, the fighter, the loose end in his plans. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.

Connor feels his stomach roll, low and heavy. He wants to scream and scream until the sickness leaves his body and goes into Heartland, until Dorian Heartland of old-Earth and always having enough remembers what it’s like to crave survival more than anything else.

Instead, he rocks back and forth on his heels twice, trying to force himself to stay under control. He’s got to stall so he has time to plan. Connor can hear slight rustling on the paths surrounding them. The other park visitors are conspicuously not looking their way, leading him to believe that they’ve been planted here to alert Heartland to their eventual presence without tipping off Connor and Risa that anything was wrong. That means everyone here will try to stop them if they run, plus more soldiers are likely on the way. There’s a clear opening somewhere behind Heartland, a path out of the park and into the surrounding streets, but they’d have to get past Heartland first.

In order to give himself an opportunity to conjure up an escape plan, though, Connor needs what he has always lacked:  more time. He stares at Heartland, and asks, “How did you find us, then? Did you put a tracker in my blood while you had me in your hospital?”

Heartland scoffs. “And risk damaging the product like that? Certainly not. I will admit, you had me worried when you threw yourself from the window, but as it turns out, I didn’t have to worry. You wanted yourself intact as much as I did.”

Risa scowls protectively. “Don’t act as if you cared about his survival. You just want his pieces.”

Heartland turns to her with an affronted stare. Immediately, Connor wants to say something stupid so the man will focus on him instead. Nothing good comes of Heartland’s gaze, Connor can say that for certain.

“Oh, and you care so much more? Risa Megan Ward, abandoned to a State Home when you were a child. You value the Akron AWOL more than I do? Not just because his survival ensures that you’ll end up alive?”

Risa meets his gaze coolly. “You’re wrong,” she says simply. “I don’t have to prove a damn thing to you. Connor trusts me and I trust him.”

Her expression is completely certain, but Connor swears he still sees her relax microscopically when he adds on, “You can’t turn us against each other, Heartland. Save your tricks for someone who cares.”

Heartland just shrugs. “You’d be surprised how many battle-scarred partners in survival will abandon each other for the opportunity to live. It’s worked before.”

Not for us, Connor thinks decisively. Like every other AWOL before him, he believes at once that the two of them will be the first to actually make it work.

Dorian Heartland ignores this, unaware or perhaps simply not caring that yet another round of teenagers believes that they can save themselves. He’s seen it often enough that it probably doesn’t even register. “No, Connor, I couldn’t track you. I simply had to lay a trap. I was going to ransom your friends from the Graveyard so you’d come to me, but you beat me to it.”

Connor realizes he’s referring to the massacre at the harvest colony. “That wasn’t us,” he blurts out before registering belatedly that he probably shouldn’t give away more than Heartland expressly tells him.

Heartland, however, doesn’t seem surprised by this. “Oh, I know. My men arrived perhaps a few standard hours after you left. They checked the security holos and saw both the attack and your shocked reaction. I must admit, however, that I already guessed it wasn’t you. You two didn’t seem the type for tasteless bloodshed.”

“As opposed to the tasteful bloodshed of unwinding?” Connor fires back. He can see Risa eyeing the exits as well. She’s always been good at planning; so long as he keeps Heartland talking, he gives her more chances to save them. If there’s one thing Connor can do, though, it’s talk. This is fine. It has to be.

Heartland sighs. “You must let go of this unnatural fear of yours, Connor,” he chides. “You don’t run around screaming at cosmic pilots for transcending humanity by exposing people to the horrors of spaceflight, do you? Even though the risks from accidentally entering a wormhole or dying star are far more gruesome than a clinical distribution.”

Connor stares at him, bewildered. “Those aren’t even remotely the same thing. Get better metaphors.”

“If you insist,” Heartland remarks, looking vexingly unbothered by this, “I’ll tell my surgeons to have my next cranial implant come from a writer or a poet. Will that make you feel better?”

Connor wants to tell Heartland in no uncertain terms that something that would make him feel better would involve Connor’s fist going somewhere very nonclinical indeed, but Risa places a gentle hand on his arm, a quiet reminder to cool it, and he manages to swallow back the anger before it consumes him entirely.

“So,” Connor says, fighting the urge to scream, “The trap. It didn’t work.”

Heartland arches a brow dubiously. “Of course it did. You’re here.”

Connor shakes his head, exasperated yet again by the man’s wording. “No, no. The trap with the Graveyard kids. We’re going chronologically. It failed because everyone in the colony was taken.”

“Did it?” Heartland remarks. “Because I still have all of my distributes back with me.”

Too late, Connor realizes that he’s misread the situation again. “Starkey already came back here,” he whispers quietly. “You got them back.”

“Of course I did,” Heartland says mildly. “He fell for the same lie you did. Funny, no matter the technique– blood or bargaining– both of you dropped all of your good sense the moment you heard there were distributes about to die.”

Risa lets out a slow gasp. “You have everybody?”

Strangely enough, Heartland wavers slightly before he answers. “Yes.”

“No,” Connor guesses. “You don’t. Someone escaped. He’s got a big group, someone could have slipped through the cracks.”

At the bright flash of warning in Heartland’s eyes, Connor knows he’s struck it right. Risa grins. “Starkey got away didn’t he? Little starspawn always puts himself first.”

Heartland’s mood has gone sour, and when he starts to move forward, Connor knows that the time for monologuing is over. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t run far. I have you, I have his supporters. All of you will be in pieces by the end of the week. A few hours in between captures makes no difference to me.”

Connor grabs Risa’s hand, throwing himself forward towards the gap he’d seen earlier. Immediately, a few passersby try to block their passage, but they’re both running now, as fast as they can. Connor knocks into somebody as he hurtles back through the park, but he doesn’t check to see who it was. Anyone who isn’t Risa is an enemy now, and anyone in their path will be trampled on their way to freedom.

Something whistles over Connor’s shoulder and buries itself in a nearby synth-hedge. He recognizes the slim dart as he passes, calling out to Risa in between gasps for air, “They’re shooting tranqs at us! Be careful.”

“Always am,” Risa growls under her breath, pulling him around a tight corner. 

The tall gate marking the entrance of the park is within sight, and Connor puts on an extra burst of speed, willing them to get there. They can lose the guards in the streets if they have to, but right now, with everyone so close behind them, there’s no way they could last forever.

As he thinks this, Connor hears a tranq gun fire somewhere behind them, plus the whistle as the dart flies through the air. A quiet thunk sounds, and since Connor can’t feel any pain, he assumes it’s another miss, right up until the point when Risa stumbles and starts to fall.

Immediately, he starts to panic. Connor catches her before she hits the ground. As he helps her up, his hands brush the dart sticking out of her shoulder. “No,” he mutters urgently. Connor needs Risa to be able to run. It’ll be tricky to carry her unconscious body as he sprints through the city, trying to shake the Juvey-cops, but Connor has made the last year or so banking on similar impossibilities. For Risa, he might as well stop distribution altogether while he’s at it.

Clutching Risa to him, Connor stumbles through the gate. They’ll get out, they have to. Risa’s body slides from his arms the second before he’s past the twin iron bar doors, though. Already over the threshold, he spins around to retrieve her, but the doors of the gate slam shut in his face. Belatedly, he realizes that Risa is the one who pulled herself free, and it is Risa now who is locking the gate between the two of them, making sure that no one else can get out. More specifically, she is ensuring that Connor cannot get her back.

Connor tugs desperately at the metal bars of the gate, but they don’t budge. Risa has grabbed a synth-vine from the ground and is knotting it around the handles, taking extra precautions to avoid them opening.

“No!” He screams, voice raw. “Don’t you do this to me, Risa. Don’t you leave me. You promised.”

Connor feels like a child begging for something he can’t have. You promised. But they had promised, both of them, they’d sworn they’d either make it out of this alive or die together. Yet here Risa is now, locking herself and the Juveys on the other side of a wall from him.

Risa tries to answer, but already, her words are slurring, her movements impeded as the tranq works its way through her system. “You– you can’tttt– get both of us outt,” she tells him. “Save yoursellllfff, Connnnnnor. Like you did for meee.”

Connor yells that he won’t do it, he won’t, but the Juveys are upon her already, dragging Risa’s unconscious body back from the doors. It’s too late to save her, and as a gate farther down the length of the park opens up, spilling out cops onto the street about half a block from Connor, he knows that he can’t waste her sacrifice, either.

So, hating himself with every step he takes away from her, Connor turns and runs down the street, pushing himself faster and faster. Connor swears that half of his life has been running at this point. He wonders if he’ll ever stop. He wonders if he will ever forgive himself for not being the one to sacrifice himself for Risa again. He wants to tell her that he wasn’t worth this, not at the cost of her, but she can’t hear him anymore.

Connor skids down a series of alleyways. There are guards everywhere, it feels like, breathing down his back and drawing closer to him with every step he takes. Connor pulls himself up a rickety fire escape so he can use the roofline to skirt over a high gate. After that, it’s easier to drop into a new set of alleys, to cling to the shadows, to shove a hand over his mouth to muffle the wild gasps for breath as the cops go thundering past. Connor’s good at hiding, but hiding won’t save anyone but himself.

Connor sags back against the grimy wall of the back alley as reality comes crashing in again. Risa is gone. The Deadmen who managed to escape their harvest colony when Starkey saved them have been captured once again. Connor is well and truly on his own. What can one boy do to save all of his friends from dying?

Heartland would tell him nothing. Connor’s brain is telling him nothing too, but his heart whispers a different story. He can’t give up hope, not now. Hundreds of AWOLs are counting on him to break them out. Even if it kills him, Connor can at least try.

He pokes his head out of the shadow, risking a glance into the relatively dim light of the alleyway. He doesn’t hear anything, nor see any crowds of Juvey-cops waiting on him, so he creeps out a little farther, taking careful, treacherous steps down the alley and into the sun again.

Connor emerges onto a quiet scene. He can see streets unfurling somewhere in the distance. In between them, an abandoned court for some sports game that was too expensive to make it over to the OH-10 sector. Connor pads onto the smooth ground. He can’t tell what material it is, just firm enough to make him feel like the ground is solid beneath his feet, but giving just enough that he won’t risk injury.

Is this what it means to live at the heart of Centerworld? Forget the synth-gardens and false flowers; they can create entire worlds for themselves, custom-tailor planets and star systems to fit their plans. No wonder Heartland could get away with rewriting his physical body. There is no limit to innovation here, and no limit to how much they’ll strip away from the outer systems to make that happen.

Connor makes it halfway across the court before someone calls his name.

“Connor. Long time, no see.”

The words make the hairs on the back of Connor’s neck stand up. He hasn’t heard that voice in a while, but he’d recognize it anywhere. Even from somewhere behind him in the creeping metal tunnels of the Graveyard. Even glitchy and broken up from a security holo. Even now, on a planet that belongs to neither of them.

Starkey.

Connor turns around slowly, hands raising from his sides to be ready for whatever trouble is about to come his way. “What do you want?”

Starkey chuckles. His hair has gotten brighter since Connor saw him last; lighter, closer to gold than red, like a fire that’s heightened to an inferno. Connor certainly feels as if he’s a bit of pitch and charcoal, crumbling away to ash. How is it fair that Starkey had time to sit around and re-dye the locks while Connor was hurling from star system to star system in an effort to save the people he holds dear? It’s impossible. This confrontation was not supposed to happen yet. Connor needs to direct all of his focus towards saving Risa. There is no room in his plan for tangling with Starkey.

Starkey, like usual, does not seem like he cares much about what Connor wants. “That’s rude, you know. I thought you’d have kinder words for an old friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Connor spits. “Not since you had your little show on that harvest colony.”

Starkey’s grin broadens, clearly delighted. “You saw that? I was wondering if you would. Do you have any constructive criticism? I mean, you’re the king for taking down Juveys, you did do it first, but I think I did mine with a bit more flavor. You were never willing to commit. You can’t save the unwinds without willing to do whatever it takes.”

“And butchery is whatever it takes?” Connor asks dryly. “Funny, I thought that’s what we were trying to stop in the first place.”

Starkey’s incandescent smile flicks out in a second. Connor still feels like the manic grin was creepier than the dead stare, though. At least now, Connor knows what’s coming. They’re not friends and they never have been. The sooner Starkey put away the adoring fan image, the better.

“Don’t tell me you miss the doctors who would have unwound us,” he hisses. “They wanted us in pieces, Connor. They would have taken your organs in a heartbeat, and they sure as sunfire wouldn’t be crying for you like you are for them. Niceness won’t get you anywhere. They don’t have a moral compass, so why should I?”

“It’s not just the distributors you have to win over, it’s the entire galaxy.” Connor tells him. “Can’t you see that? No one will agree to stop distribution if they’re terrified of us. We have to convince people in every single star system that we deserve saving, but so long as you’re bombing out harvest colonies, that’s not going to happen. You have to play the long game.”

Starkey’s eyes flash, and Connor is briefly reminded of the flare of the exploding engines back on the Graveyard right before the whole place went nuclear. “No, Connor, you’re the one who doesn’t get it. They’ll only respond to shows of force. If we stay quiet, we’re easy to ignore. Look, right now I’ll give you the opportunity to take it back. This is your chance for redemption. You’ve been afraid of getting your hands dirty for too long. I’ve never been scared. There are no shades of gray, just black and white. You’re with them or you’re with me. Pick who you want to be, Connor, but either way, you’re not walking out of here as anything but one of my men.”

Connor’s breath feels harsh in his lungs, grating against his ribcage. He can’t join Starkey, he can’t, but what if this is the only way? “One of your men? I wasn’t aware you had an army.”

Starkey’s lip curls. “We’re better than that. They’d follow me everywhere. See, I watched you, Connor. I watched you for a year in the Graveyard. I saw what you did. Those kids loved you, even though you didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t wrap my head around why they’d willingly devote themselves to someone who clearly wasn’t willing to go all the way, but then it hit me. Everyone loves a hero. So I made myself one.”

The dots are connecting in Connor’s head, but the picture they reveal is far more terrible than he’d ever envisioned. “That’s why you sent that message through Hayden’s radio frequency, isn’t it? It wasn’t an accident, you wanted the Juvey-cops to find us. You wanted a showdown.”

“Of course I did,” Starkey sneers. “I’d been planning it for weeks. No accident there. The second the Juveys were sighted, I directed all of my closest followers plus a few extra kids towards one of the shuttles that was still docked in the Graveyard. We got out before shots were even fired. After that, it was easy to track down the harvest colony. Once I swooped in and saved the day, they loved me more than they’ll ever love you. Best decision I ever made.”

Connor wants to kill him. “Sentencing hundreds of kids to distribution, destroying the Graveyard, killing the Admiral– that was the best decision you ever made? People died in the riots. Dozens have already been unwound. All so you could get some hero worship.”

Starkey just shrugs. “Every battle has its casualties. We’re still alive, aren’t we? I knew you would pull through anyway. I hate to say it, but I was counting on it. I always use you to spring the trap. I slipped up this time, I tried to free the kids first, but next time I’ll let you challenge that weirdo before me so I can get it right.”

“What do you mean, next time?” Connor asks, voice tightening. “Just what are you planning?”

Starkey spreads his arms theatrically. “I’m ending it. No more distribution. It was one thing to take out a harvest colony, but with the amount of explosives I’ve got on my ship, I could take out this whole damn city.”

Connor tenses up. “You’re not just targeting the distributors. You want to kill the civilians, too.”

Starkey chuckles remorselessly. “Of course I do. You think I give a damn about Centerworld? Look around you, Connor. Look how much they have that we don’t. This is what they deserve. It’s what we deserve. We’re going to bomb them to pieces. Maybe then they’ll have a deeper appreciation for what it’s like to be unwound.”

“No,” Connor breaks out. “You can’t. He captured Risa. I have to get her back first.”

Starkey lifts a shoulder. “I don’t care, I’m not stopping for one girl. Now come on. You’re either with me,” he says slowly, drifting closer to Connor again, “or you’re against me. Make your choice.”

Connor shakes his head. “I’m not joining you, Starkey. If you’ve been watching me this long, you know there’s no way I’d do anything to risk Risa. You killed my friends. You’re no better than the rest of them.”

Starkey’s face shuts down. “Actually, I was about to say the same thing about you.”

Connor sees the flash of Starkey’s hand to his belt right before the first shot rings out. Connor only just manages to drop to the ground and catch himself in a tight roll to the side. He hears the bullet whistle over his head and realizes that Starkey isn’t bothering with tranqs. Only one of them will be leaving this place alive, and since Starkey is the one with the gun, it isn’t looking great for Connor.

Another shot goes in the ground just a few inches from Connor’s head. He springs to his feet, racing towards the nearest exit. Already, the sound of gunfire is attracting attention:  a few heads poke out of nearby windows, and Connor can see the distant silhouettes of passersby pointing out the two of them.

“Stop this,” Connor urges. “I’m not your enemy, you idiot. You’re going to get the Juveys on us again.”

“They’ll only find your body,” Starkey challenges, and fires again.

Swearing violently, Connor throws himself around a corner. The bullet hits the wall, sending forth a shower of sparks and loose debris.

“Come out, Connor, come out,” Starkey calls, his tone a mocking sing-song beat.

Obviously Connor is not about to do this, so he drifts further down the side of the wall. Starkey is just on the other side of him, about to fire again and end it for real, and then his eyes widen and his mouth goes slack with shock.

Too late, Connor peers past him and sees that Juvey-cops have broken into the scene. One is lowering a tranq gun. As Starkey slumps over, Connor can see the dart embedded in his back. Quickly, the cops rush over and restrain him, hauling the boy to his feet. Starkey tries to fight back, but the tranq is slowing him down and it’s easy for the Juvey-cops to get him under control.

Starkey locks eyes with Connor as they drag him away. All of a sudden, his jaw unhinges and he starts to scream at the top of his lungs, spittle flying from his mouth with the force of his yells. “Wait, stop! He’s the one you want, not me! Connor Lassiter is right in front of you. You can get the fucking Akron AWOL. Kill him! Kill Connor! He’s your enemy. He’s the one you want.”

Connor’s eyes widen, and he presses himself further into the shadows. Starkey redoubles his efforts to break free, writhing in the arms of the Juvey-cops even as they pull him farther from Connor. “Get Connor!” Starkey screams again. “You don’t even want me. I didn’t do anything to you. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. Fuck the Juveys. Fuck Centerworld. I’m just a kid.”

Nausea threatens to black him out, and Connor has to press a hand against his mouth to bring himself under control. Starkey disappears down the street, but the rest of the Juveys don’t follow him out of the court. Instead, a few exchange glances, then start to head Connor’s way, evidently wanting to see what Starkey was talking about just in case.

Sunfire. Not what he wanted. Connor turns to run for what might be the hundredth time today, but he has no idea where to go. He’s out of the alleys now. All that’s left is the street lined with luxurious houses, and anyone watching from their gilded windows could tell the Juveys where Connor went. He starts moving anyway, a brisk walk turning into a jog, but there’s nowhere to hide out here.

So he thinks, at least, until a hand latches onto his and starts to drag him away. Connor’s first instinct is to fight, but then he realizes that this mysterious stranger is leading him farther from the cops, not towards them, and he slackens his grip. He doesn’t recognize the teenager, nor the one who joins them half a block down, nor the one at the door of a house who ushers them all through the door and into the relative safety of the building.

Connor does, however, recognize the blond tween who’s waiting for him inside. It’s been a long time since they crossed paths, but when Connor gapes at the boy in front of him, the name that rises to his lips is still the correct one:

“Lev?”

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#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #conrisa fanfic #connor lassiter x risa ward #connor x risa

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Ten: Still Here

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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At first, Risa can’t even think because of the screaming. She cries and shouts until her vocal chords are raw; past that, even, because when she looks up in a daze some time later, she wouldn’t be surprised if she’s lost the ability to speak altogether. This doesn’t hurt her as much as it should. Who would she speak to if not Connor?

Connor. Connor is gone. It’s been more than a year since she first met the boy, and she was kind of counting on the fact that she wouldn’t ever have to be without him. Connor is her one constant. When she’s on the run from the Juveys, when she’s hiding in the Graveyard, when any trouble comes her way, Risa has always had Connor. Always, until now. 

Risa gives her grief one last moment to consume her, then forces herself to snap back to reality. Connor is tenacious. He’ll have found a way out. Connor will have tracked down another hidden escape pod or else made one himself out of spare parts. Maybe he’ll even have forced his way onto one of the Juvey-cop warships and masterminded his way into a one-man coup. He’ll come to her in command of a fully armed battalion, and brush it off as just a bit of fun in his free time. 

The thought makes her laugh, and it is this last bit of hope that makes Risa surge forward and take hold of the controls once more. Yes, Connor will have found a way to survive, and he’ll find a way to her again. Until then, Risa must manage to make it out of this tiny escape pod and onto a planet so they can meet up, because they will, and then everything can be okay again.

Risa turns her attention back to the control panel before her. Admittedly, she’s not the best pilot, but escape pods were designed with the knowledge that most people using them had already managed to grievously mess up their original ship, so the layout is exceedingly clear. An infant could manage to make this work, so at this point, it’ll be more embarrassing than anything if Risa can’t figure it out.

In the chaos back on the dying Graveyard, they had set a destination in the navigation interface, but she doubts Connor remembers it. They hadn’t had the time to leisurely peruse their options for the best scenery and general tourism, after all. She’s fairly sure that Connor had just picked the first option that came up on the loading screen. Seeing as Risa still has no clue where they are, and thus has no preference to be sent anywhere else, she decides to stick with that for now.

Risa leans back in her seat, trying to get her bearings. The escape pod has rotated such that she can’t see the Graveyard anymore. Instead, the only sight around her is space, wide and desolate. Connor’s always had a fondness for it, she knows that, but to Risa the vision of that many stars just makes her think of all the places she could hide, all the people she wouldn’t know about. The galaxy is huge. What are the odds that Connor finds her again even if he does manage to make it off of the Graveyard in time?

The fear from earlier threatens to cascade over her again, but Risa puts herself on mental lockdown. She won’t think about it. She can’t. The only option is to assume that Connor survived. She’ll have time to grieve later, but she won’t have to.

A beeping from the nav panel draws her attention back from the precipice, and Risa’s stomach lurches when she realizes it’s flashing red in an alarm signal. Squinting at the fine print, she reads the warning in full, but what she sees only makes her stress heighten, fissuring into her brain like a needle. She had assumed that the rogue chunk of ceiling debris that had put an end to Connor’s escape pod back on the Graveyard had left her pod intact, but it must have clipped the pod after all because the readout indicates that her fuel tank has been steadily leaking this whole time. It’s already half empty now, and she’s definitely not halfway to her target planet, at least according to the live map on the nav readout.

Swearing softly, Risa pokes cautiously at the nav screen until she can find a menu. It’s not too late to change her destination, so she probes around until she finds another option that’s closer to her. It’s quite small, more like a moon than a full-blown planet. More than that, it’s not where Connor sent her, but it’s not like Risa has much of a choice at this point. She’s sure he’d prefer her to land on a different world than to run out of fuel in the middle of empty space and die out in the endless cold.

The pod flies. The fuel continues to drip out somewhere behind her. As both the journey and the power source come increasingly near to the end of the line, Risa grips the armrests of her seat, fingernails digging into the smooth silicate material. There’s absolutely nothing she can do now but sit and wait for either a semi-smooth landing or no landing at all, but the powerlessness does nothing to calm her nerves. 

All this time, Risa has always had an option, something she could do:  run away, choose Connor, flee to the Graveyard, find an escape pod, but now, in the face of yet another danger, Risa’s hands are tied. Either she dies or she doesn’t, but it won’t be by Risa’s actions. Some would call that a relief, but to Risa it just feels like a cop-out. Shouldn’t she always be able to do something? Dying from a power out of her control after everything she’s been through would be obscene.

She nears the small planet. As the pod enters the atmosphere, its surface starts to heat up. The torn edge of the fuel tank doesn’t take kindly to the sudden air compression. Sparks flare along the metal seams of the pod, sparks that lengthen into ribbons of white hot flame. Risa shuts her eyes and begs anything out there– the stars, the suns, even the Collective in all its self-righteous tyranny– that she will survive this. Her last moments cannot be in a tight metal coffin. Not when there’s nobody here beside her.

A click, a shudder, a jolt; Risa’s fingernails dig so hard into her palms that she’s certain they’ll bleed, but instead of tearing into pieces, the escape pod’s landing gear begins to move into place. The pod’s acceleration abruptly staggers when a parachute unfurls from the top. When Risa dares to crack open her eyes, she sees not the assumed inferno of her death but thick clouds gently drifting past her, which give way to long expanses of flat brown and gray land, like the grain of synth-lumber.

Risa was hoping that the tendrils of flame still playing upon the side of the pod would die out as the metal adjusted to the atmosphere, but no such luck. The second the escape pod touches down with far more shaking than Risa would like, she immediately unbuckles her harness and slams the button for the exit hatch until it creaks open. What lies before her is an empty clearing of barren ground, surrounded on all sides by the rocky fingers of a few occasional stone outcroppings. Not exactly hospitable, but better than the pod.

Dizzy from the shaky landing, Risa stumbles over the mouth of the hatch, head spinning. Peeking out the door, Risa’s heart chills when she realizes that the flames are almost at the cracked fuel container. She has to get away in case it explodes, but walking feels impossible. Risa makes it out of the pod, the landscape swimming before her, and immediately trips on the uneven ground. She struggles to pick herself up, but the fabric and ropes of the parachute have tangled on the ground in front of her, and Risa just can’t figure out how to liberate her ankles from the mess of cloth.

Tugging fruitlessly at the material, Risa’s gaze is jerked away when she spots movement at the corner of her eyes, more than just the black dots swimming in front of her vision with each unsteady breath she draws. She pulls harder at the ropes, but the knots around her legs refuse to come undone.

The shadow in her peripheral vision lengthens into the silhouette of a person. Frantic, Risa tries to stand again, but she falls again before she can get higher than her knees. The figure surges forward and Risa flinches away, certain it’s going to kill her. It stops a few feet away, cocking its head in confusion and what Risa swears is indignance. The way it moves is strange, a little too quick and unpredictable to be fully human. It looks like a person, certainly, but there is something about it that most certainly isn’t right, something that Risa’s addled brain can’t quite piece together at the moment.

It crawls forward on its hands and knees, but slow and deliberate, as if keen to prove it’s not a threat. It raises its hands in surrender, and when Risa doesn’t move anymore, it flicks out a knife and starts to saw at the web of ropes from the parachute. Risa holds deathly still, all too aware that one false move could liberate her legs not just from the clutch of the material but the rest of her body, but the humanoid doesn’t hurt her, not in the slightest. Once she’s free, it puts away the blade with an odd flicking motion, and Risa realizes belatedly that the knife wasn’t a knife at all, but somehow a part of its finger.

Risa coughs, trying to clear her dusty, aching throat. “Who– who are–”

She’s interrupted by the shrieking of collapsing metal from the pod, and both she and the figure turn in unison to watch the fuel container finally give in to the relentless surge of the fire. The figure’s eyes widen, and it lunges forward, grabbing Risa in its arms before sprinting away. It moves fast, too fast, and picks her up as if she were no trouble at all. They’re across the clearing in what feels like a matter of seconds, and the creature huddles behind the cover of a rock face, Risa still cradled in its embrace. She draws one shaky, terrified breath, and then an explosion booms across the space they’d just crossed, shaking the rocks with the force of its fury.

Well, Risa thinks wryly, There goes my future as an escape pod pilot. She wants to think more about the implications of losing her only way out, but for some reason thoughts are very difficult to form right now. The edges of her vision are fuzzy and getting fuzzier. The thing in front of her frowns, starts to position its mouth as if it wants to ask her something, but Risa never gets to figure out if it can. Instead, she’s dropping deep into endless blackness, and Risa Ward feels no more.

She is not dead. That would be unfair. After everything, Risa will not die of exhaustion or trauma from a damaged escape pod or even the destruction of an explosion so nearby. It takes her a while to wake up, though. Her body needs the rest, and wants to cling to unconsciousness for as long as it can before forcing itself to face reality once more. Still, it takes some time before her eyes open completely. There is still much to do, many things to learn, and plenty of ground to cross.

When Risa comes to, she is not alone. It takes her a moment to realize that this is abnormal. She has been placed on her back on smooth ground, and is being watched by a person leaning against a rocky overhang. No, not a person; Risa remembers now, and more than that, she’s able to recognize why this being had unsettled her before the explosion. It’s not that the creature before her isn’t human, it is. Just not completely human.

The figure eyeing her with the same placid gaze is a conglomeration of parts. Many are from humans. Different humans, but humans nonetheless. Both of its eyes are different colors, different shapes. The hands folded neatly in its laps are host to fingers of a variety of shapes. They don’t all line up neatly. The hair on its head switches from burnished copper to dark brown to thick curls. The seams of the different pieces are smooth, practically nonexistent, even where– even where the flesh ends and the metal begins. The figure isn’t just made up of different people, it’s also made up of different materials, flesh and bone but also smooth polymers and curving metal plates. It makes this humanoid a–

“Cyborg” Risa says, surprising herself, “You’re a cyborg.” An amalgamation of living pieces and metal. It might even be made of redistributed limbs, parts of unlucky ferals that ended up in creatures like this instead of supposedly extending the greater life of the universe or whatever lie the Collective likes to push.

Most people would be annoyed if she called them out like that. Instead, the figure just inclines its head in one steady, sedate motion. “Yes,” it says, “I am a cyborg. Android. Robot. Gizmo. Gadget. Not all of those at once, of course, but they’re roughly correct. Almost certain. Not quite true. You can call me what you please.”

Risa sits up a little, frowning at the torrent of words that pour from the cyborg’s mouth. “Do you have a name?”

It tilts its head to the side, considering this. A string of small lights on a metal panel near its left temple turns a deep yellow, almost gold. “I have been called Camus Comprix.”

Risa arches her brow. “You have been called that? Were you involved in the decision?”

Something that could objectively be called a smile graces the cyborg’s face. Its lips turn up, but there is no warmth in the expression. “I was made in a laboratory. Not all decisions involving me, involved me.” It pauses, making the lights by its temple flash a pensive orange, then adds on, a little hastily, “Although I have sometimes thought of myself as Cam.”

“Cam,” Risa repeats, “I like it.”

Cam flashes her a grin of perfectly even teeth. “What is your name? Common practice dictates that questions someone asks should be asked back to them. It is as if we only want to know about others what we most want them to know about ourselves.”

“Or they just want something to call you,” Risa comments. 

The lights on Cam’s temple turn green. “Or that.”

He looks at her inquisitively, and Risa remembers to actually answer the question. “My name is Risa. Risa Ward.”

“Ward,” Cam muses. “Patient. Protege. Dependent. Who do you depend on, Risa Ward? You came down in a pod. Do you not depend on anyone anymore?”

His manner of questioning is far more forward than anyone Risa’s met. She has the brief, involuntary thought that if Cam was ever allowed in a room with Hayden, they would be able to draw out anyone’s secrets in mere moments, but the accompanying agony of thinking of any friend she can’t see face to face makes her quickly tuck the idea back away in the darker crevices of her mind.

“I try not to, but that doesn’t always work out for me,” Risa admits. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, actually. We were both on this big star cruiser together but it– I had to leave. I don’t know when he’s coming, but he will be. I need to meet him.”

Cam’s gaze turns from quizzical to piercing. “This was close by, wasn’t it? Local. Nearby. I detected many ships going towards a cruiser just a few standard hours ago.”

Risa leans forward, unable to hide her desperation. “You can sense ships up there?”

Cam nods. “Telescopic lenses. I can see what happened. Spot it. Sight it. That’s how I knew to come find your pod. You were one of the last ones that left, and the only one that came over here. So far, at least.”

Risa’s fingers knit together. “Can you see all of the pods? Did any leave after me?”

As a cyborg, even with all of his organic parts, a being like Camus Comprix will never entirely be able to replicate human emotion. Still, the expression that flickers onto his face reminds Risa a little too much of regret.

“None left after you,” Cam tells her. “If any pods were left, they were not able to escape the inferno that consumed the cruiser.”

He looks as if he’d like to add on several more adjectives about the explosion, but bites his tongue so as to not release the stream of synonyms into the air, clearly out of respect for Risa.

It wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t hold them back, anyway. Risa can hardly hear a word he says afterwards. She’s reeling in shock and deep, grave agony. The Graveyard blew up. She had thought that the Juvey-cops would have left it intact so they could search the place more thoroughly, but the cruiser had been in the process of tearing itself to pieces when her pod launched. It would have been simple for any one of the complex systems to misfire and put the rusting skeleton out of its misery. 

Although it seems foolish, Risa can’t help a brief twinge of loss for the ship. That’s yet another home she’s lost, never to see again. Her med bay, kept carefully organized for so many months, is so much space dust now. Every corridor she learned by heart, every secret room she explored with Connor. Her bunk, her desk. It’s all gone now.

More engulfing than the loss of the Graveyard, though, is the loss of Connor. Connor Lassiter is a lot of things, capable of infinitely many daring tasks and expert close calls, but an explosion like that– the Juveys would be lucky if they got out of the danger zone, and they were on fully stocked warships. Connor just had his skin and bone.

Risa is still vaguely aware of Cam somewhere in front of her, watching her closely, so she slowly folds all of her grief back into her heart, tucking it away until the rocks and stones around her come back into focus again. At some point, Risa will be alone again, and then she can let the grief consume her as she pleases. Until then, she’ll just have to keep going.

Roughly wiping the tears from her face, Risa straightens up. “The cruiser is gone, then. Fine. I need somewhere else to go than just this clearing. Is there a city nearby? I didn’t see one when I landed.”

Despite his smooth exterior, Risa swears Cam freezes in place. “There is,” he says at last, “But– it’s not– There are no humans on this planet, Risa. It was never designed with people in mind.”

At first, the thought doesn’t even register. “It’s all natural? That’s impossible. I thought the Collective wiped out all wildlife generations ago.”

The lights at Cam’s temple burn a low, dark red. Anger, maybe, or even the faintest pinpricks of shame. “They did. This small of a moon, though, it would never take to settlers. Not enough space. This town’s not big enough for the two of us. They built the labs instead. They made us, but we didn’t pay off the way they hoped. No cash cow. Didn’t make a killing. No bread on our table. They packed up and moved on. Now we’re all that’s left.”

Risa’s starting to put the pieces together. “Wait, so there are more of you? More cyborgs? And when the scientists who made you changed their minds about what they wanted, they just abandoned you on this moon?”

“Eureka,” Cam says glumly.

Risa blows out a low breath. “That’s terrible. Are they at least sending supplies?”

The raw skepticism on Cam’s face tells Risa all she needs to know. “So the city–”

“It’s nothing,” Cam supplies. “Rusting buildings. Everything is falling to pieces. I’ve maintained myself the best over the years, so I take care of the rest when I can. It won’t last forever, though. Already, they’re falling apart. It’s certainly no place for a human to stay.”

Risa feels a swarm of guilt press against her throat. “What about you, then? There’s nothing here. You can’t hold out forever.”

Cam’s eyes are unsettlingly empty. She hadn’t realized how hard he was trying to keep up his expressions, to stay human, until he let it go. “I shut down. Lights off. Case closed.”

They drift into uneasy silence for a while, musing on that, and then Cam stands up abruptly, his knees and joints flexing seamlessly like they ran on gears instead of muscles. Which, being unable to guess at his innards, Risa reckons they might.

“I will take you to the city,” he announces. “A few of the labs are still intact. None of us like going in there, so they’re in pretty good condition. You might be able to send a signal there.”

Risa nods, taking the hand he offers so she can stand as well. “You’re willing to do that for a stranger?”

“You are not a stranger anymore, Risa Ward,” Cam informs her. The lights at his temple blink a lovely emerald green. “You are my friend.”

The journey is tedious. At this point, Risa’s starting to think that the scientists who abandoned Cam and the rest of the cyborgs must have designed this planet in a lab, too. The ground is perfectly flat, everything coated with a thin film of dust that clings to her shoes with each step she takes. Occasional rock formations pepper the landscape, but for the most part, it’s all the same. In the distance, Risa can make out the skyline of what must be the city Cam was referring to. It’ll probably take at least an hour of walking to reach it, but the air is cool and she’s got interesting company, so the time won’t drag.

Cam asks about how Risa came to be in the pod, and she ends up telling him everything. At first, she had wondered if that was the best idea, but it’s obvious that he would have no way of getting her in trouble for it. Since Cam is pretty much the only thing keeping her alive at this point, she figures a bit of small talk can’t hurt. 

It is somewhat fascinating to get to spill her life story like this. Risa’s been around the same people for a year now, give or take the slow rotation of kids in the Graveyard as some age out and others are brought in. Her circle of friends already knows who she is, so she’s never had to explain herself.

Cam, however, is a fresh start, a clean slate. He has no idea who she’s supposed to be, only who she is right now. In a way, it’s kind of nice to be able to decide who she is again. Risa is more than just the smart one, the one who makes the plans. And she’ll prove it now, by making such colossally stupid mistakes that no one would ever think about connecting the past Risa with whatever she is right now.

Cam doesn’t know about her inner turmoil, though. He just knows that she’s Risa, and she’s got plenty of new stories to tell that he hasn’t heard yet, so right now she’s, like, the greatest thing ever. He seems particularly delighted by the idea of the Graveyard, and keeps asking about just how many people were there, just what it was like to wake up in the morning and be surrounded by all that noise. When she describes the gentle din of laughter and conversation that used to fill the halls during break hours, Cam actually closes his eyes and inhales deeply, like he could travel there just by breathing in her words, a figurative file transfer.

“But it’s gone now,” Cam mumbles, brow furrowed. “It blew up this morning.”

“Yes,” Risa whispers. Its absence still haunts her like a phantom limb.

“I can see why you were upset.” Cam tells her. “It sounds like an excellent place to be. So many friends. Allies. Compatriots. All with their own stories to tell about escaping distribution.”

Risa nods. “I am sad to leave it, and not just because it was how I stayed alive. But there’s also–”

“Connor,” Cam supplies. The topmost light in the string by his temple burns scarlet before quickly clearing again.

“Connor,” Risa repeats. Even saying his name hurts. She’s fully aware of the fact that she could go to this city of cyborgs to send out a signal only to be picked up by the Juveys, but even the remote possibility that Connor might hear her is enough.

Cam is silent for a while. “You have other friends than Connor, yes? You will try to reach them, too?”

“I will,” Risa concedes. “Hayden’s probably listening, if he made it out. But Connor is the one I want to find the most.”

The corner of Cam’s mouth flickers into a disappointed frown, and he says no more on the subject. They talk about the city, the lab building they’re trying to find, but the reverence with which Cam had spoken of the Graveyard is gone.

As they draw closer to the city, Risa starts to spot more and more evidence of its decay. They pass the first body about ten minutes out from the border, but a few more appear as they draw ever nearer. Just as Cam said, every slumped figure belongs to a cyborg. Some seem as if they’ve fallen just that morning. Others show signs of having given out quite some time ago, the rotting chunks of mismatched flesh completely erased to reveal solid metal and polymer structures beneath their multicolored skin.

Cam looks away when they pass each one. It occurs to Risa that this is probably like stumbling upon the bodies of his friends. “How many cyborgs are here?”

“The records indicate somewhere around a hundred,” Cam recites. “I have no idea if that number is true. Many of us spread out when the scientists left, though most stayed in the city proper. The rest could be anywhere on the planet. I know the ones who let me help, but many would rather no one saw them go to pieces.”

The shadows of the city fall upon Risa’s feet, and she cranes her neck to stare at the crumbling buildings. There are a few skyscrapers in the very center, but the exteriors are in poor condition. The rest of the buildings around the base of the towering structures are far worse for wear, as if every available material has been harvested long ago. Risa can see houses with missing front doors and broken windows like gap teeth. Everything that hasn’t been nailed down was taken away a long time ago to maintain cyborgs that still corrode by the day.

Cam takes her on a looping, backstreets way to the center. “It’s best if we stay out of sight as much as possible,” he tells her. “It’s too dangerous to go by night, but I don’t know how the rest of us would take to the sight of a human. Keep close to me.”

She follows him down narrow alleys, occasionally hovering in the shadows of a building while they wait for a cyborg or two to pass by before skirting around an intersection. They do their best to move quietly, but Risa swears she can still feel eyes watching her as they plunge further into the rotting city. 

Once, they turn a corner to find a cyborg sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall and staring directly at them. Its hair is long and greasy, falling in many-hued sections far past its shoulders. Both of its feet are metal, although the left one is missing several toes, so Risa cannot tell for sure if they were once flesh or merely metal that got lost over the years. She has the absurd mental image of an arguing husband and wife from one of those sitcoms some of the faculty members loved to watch back at the StaHo– Honey, have you seen my toes? I swear I put them right here– and has to bite her lip to avoid hysterical laughter.

The cyborg watches them go, but doesn’t make a move. Even still, they pick up the pace, and don’t let up until several blocks are between them and the metal-footed cyborg. The sun is still relatively high in the sky overhead, albeit sinking more quickly than Risa would like, but the streets still seem gray and uninviting. Everything seems faded and worn, like old holos of neighborhoods that have long since been demolished.

Waiting under a tattered storefront awning for a pair of cyborgs to limp past the street beyond, Risa pivots in a slow half circle to get a better look at her surroundings. There’s a large poster on the wall of a nearby building, and she squints to get a better look. She’s actually seen this before, she thinks, or at least a holo-copy of it in one of her classes in the State Home. It’s an old political design from the early days of the Collective, featuring a man in an old-timey suit holding a test tube and grinning proudly. The text reads, Saving Our Worlds– And Our Neighborhoods!

Risa had to analyze variations of that image plenty of times in history classes, so she’s able to identify the man pictured as Dorian Heartland, the guy who created the Proactive Citizenry. He was a huge supporter of distribution, so obviously he’s not her favorite historical figure, but the guy had a chokehold on the up-and-coming Collective. Without him spreading his pro-distribution propaganda, especially with his massive financial backing, there’s no way distribution would have caught on as fervently as it did.

“Why do you have that sort of stuff out here?” Risa asks in a low whisper, jerking her thumb towards the poster.

Cam follows her line of sight and shrugs, both shoulders rising exactly the same distance in one perfectly orchestrated move. “The Collective payroll made this city. They might just want us to remember their beliefs.”

She wants to ask more about just what that might entail, but he’s already moving on, gesturing for her to stay close, so she brushes it off and keeps going. They’ve got more pressing issues to deal with than the all-encompassing spread of Collective propaganda, namely getting Risa off of this planet before someone or something finds out she’s not supposed to be there.

Risa almost thinks that they might make it to the lab buildings without incident when Cam makes a detour away from the skyscrapers when they’re just a few blocks away.

“What are you doing?” She hisses as they twist farther down sidestreets.

“There’s someone I need to see first,” Cam whispers back. “Trust me, it won’t take long.”

It’s not as if Risa has any other great prospects at the moment, so she fights the urge to scream or run and goes after him. After glancing around to make sure they aren’t being followed, Cam pulls her into a ramshackle building that, according to the long-dead neon sign on the front, was once a beauty parlor.

“Do you want to get your nails done?” She asks Cam, bewildered.

He just chuckles. “I’m seeing a friend. Although I’m sure she’d love to give you a manicure if you asked. She’s very eager to practice her craft.”

Cam shuts the door behind them, reaching somewhere to the side to turn on the lights, which only flicker on with great reluctance. “Audrey?” He calls. “It’s Cam, and I’ve brought a friend.”

There’s a shuffling sound from one of the back rooms, and while the owner of the sound comes over, Risa takes the time to study the building they’re in. This is indeed a beauty parlor, albeit a very dilapidated version. There are old, cracked mirrors in front of high chairs, each one supported by a desk containing broken hair curlers, dusty makeup brushes, and other basic supplies. A cabinet at the close end of the room does indeed hold rows of nail polishes, but judging by the rather volatile smell coming from some of the broken lids, Risa isn’t sure that she trusts her fingers anywhere near the shades.

“Why is there a beauty parlor here?” Risa whispers to Cam. “No offense, but it doesn’t really match the vibe of the rest of the city.”

“Appearances are very important,” Cam mumbles back. “They wanted us to feel like we were real people.”

The last sentence is muttered with undisguised disgust. How infuriating, to be placed in a mock city by your creators like dress-up dolls only to be abandoned the second they were interested in better toys. No amount of hair dye nor dried-up mascara will disguise the fact that this is no real place to live.

The owner of the shop bustles in at last. Her ear-to-ear grin is only highlighted by the lurid pink of her lipstick. Her hair has been carefully teased into a big updo, although it’s starting to deflate unevenly, giving Risa the impression that the cyborg is slowly tilting over. Her entire left arm is replaced with robotic pieces, and even the metal parts change color and texture from shoulder to wrist, matching the patchwork of skin tones on the rest of the cyborg’s body.

“Camus,” the cyborg says reverently, “You’re back! Oh, I knew you couldn’t stay away forever. What can I get for you, sweetheart?”

Cam chuckles as she wraps him in a hug. The cyborg’s metal joints creak alarmingly, but neither of them pay it any attention. “I’m not here for me, Audrey. I wanted to introduce you to a friend.”

Risa’s eyes widen as the sheer force of Audrey’s cheer is directed towards her. “It’s nice to meet you,” she begins smoothly, but she’s interrupted by Audey eagerly beaming towards her.

“Oh, what a dear! Cam, if anyone else in this whole city came up to me with a human girl I’d be absolutely dumbfounded, but this makes complete sense. You’re just quick like that, my boy. Always on top of the trends.”

Risa frowns, not aware that finding a human who crash-landed on your planet was considered a popular trend. Cam looks as if he’s trying not to laugh, and quickly steers Audrey’s attention back to him by speaking up. “Actually, I was hoping you could do us a quick favor. This is Risa. She needs to meet up with some of her friends, but she’s on the run. You wouldn’t be able to help disguise her a little bit, would you?”

Audrey claps her hands together. “A project! I love it. How much can I do?”

“Very little,” Risa rushes to say. “I’m perfectly fine the way I am. I just don’t want to be immediately recognized, that’s all.”

A disappointed frown tugs Audrey’s fuschia lips down into a depressed crescent. “Are you sure? I would love to do a full makeover. It’s been so long since I had a willing customer.”

From the way she’s eyeing Risa, it’s unclear whether that means there haven’t been customers or that there haven’t been victims. Either way, Risa’s not entirely thrilled with it. She sends a pleading look towards Cam, but he just smiles placatingly. “This is a good thing, Risa. If the Juvey-cops are after you like you say, you need a disguise. Camouflage. To go incognito.”

Audrey nods, her head jerking up and down like a puppet on a string. “Very true, Cam. Very true. I’ll go get my things, sweetheart. You’ll be thrilled with the final look, I guarantee it.”

As Audrey disappears into the back of the shop again, Risa turns to Cam. “This is why we’re here? You wanted me to get a disguise?”

“That, and I wanted to say goodbye,” Cam says. His face is quiet, but the lights at his temple are a soft, somber blue. “I’m not coming back to the city when you leave.”

“You’re coming with us,” Risa says, trying not to sound surprised. “No, that makes perfect sense. I couldn’t just abandon you after you helped me like this.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Cam specifies. “I’m just going offworld.”

Risa frowns. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“All of the cyborgs in this city have tags embedded subcutaneously,” Cam says conversationally. “I believe I removed mine, but I can never be sure. I will not risk your endeavor by allowing them to track me while I travel with you. All I ask is for one pod so I can make my way in the worlds. I would like to see the galaxy. I can be a tourist. A traveler. An adventurer.”

Risa nods. “Of course. Anything.”

Cam turns to her with the most hopeful expression when she says this that Risa, for the first time all day, is quite grateful to see Audrey hurrying back into the room, arms laden with supplies. Risa takes the excuse of helping to take some of the products from Audrey to escape the soft, naked longing in Cam’s eyes, and when they’re finished setting everything out, Cam has managed to focus again.

Risa is steered into one of the high styling chairs under the room. Every time she moves, dust is sent showering to the floor beneath her, but Audrey seems not to notice. She bustles around Risa, peering at her face from a position so close that Risa can feel the cyborg’s breath hot on her cheeks. If the proximity weren’t unsettling enough, the fact that each inhale and exhale, no matter when Audrey is moving or speaking, is exactly the same duration, only adds fuel to the fire.

“I think I’ll touch up your hair,” Audrey announces at last. “Lighten it up a little, at least. You’d be surprised what a change of color and texture can do to transform somebody. And then we’ll probably do a pigment injection, too. Just in case.”

Risa freezes. “A what?”

“Pigment injection,” Audrey says crisply, picking up a syringe from the pile of goods she’s assembled and waving it happily at Risa. “It’ll change your eye color. Loads of people have it done.”

Risa wants to ask whether that means actual human beings or cyborgs, because the difference is quite important to her. The syringe looks nasty, with the tip bearing at least a dozen miniscule needles arranged in a circle.

She swallows faintly. “What about if we just do the hair?”

“Nonsense,” Audrey says breezily. “You want to be disguised, don’t you? This’ll work like a charm.”

Risa glances at Cam for backup, but he’s wandered off to the far side of the salon, peering with great interest at a panel of old styling holos. So much for sticking by her no matter what.

Audrey hovers right in front of her, flesh and metal fingers curled so tightly around the handle of a hairbrush that Risa is stunned it hasn’t snapped off yet. “Can I start then, dearie? Can I start?”

Risa nods, but Audrey remains in place, practically vibrating from tension. “Yes,” Risa says, when it becomes clear that Audrey is waiting for approval, “You can start. Go ahead.”

The cyborg sags forward in relief. “Thank you, dearie. Thank you.”

And so begins the strangest makeover of Risa’s life. Technically, it’s the only makeover of Risa’s life, but even without prior experience Risa knows this is uncommon. All of Audrey’s tools bear the marks of age; the brushes are all missing bristles, the combs have teeth knocked out of them like they’ve lost a fight, and even the blow dryer has to be whacked repeatedly against the table before it turns on all the way.

Audrey’s hands shake the whole time, no matter how the cyborg tries to contain herself. At first, Risa is afraid for her hair, but it becomes clear that even with the loss of motor control, Audrey’s makeover skills are nothing to doubt. Even still, receiving the pigment injection takes more than a little bit of trust on Risa’s end.

At the end, though, Audrey wheels Risa’s chair around to face one of the cracked mirrors and Risa is greeted with the sight of a figure that logically has to be Risa but seems like a different girl altogether. The reflection’s hair is lighter, closer to auburn, and falls in highlighted curls past her shoulders. Her eyes are green, but not piercing. The shade oddly reminds Risa of the lights on Cam’s temple when he’s pleased about something, which is a comparison she probably shouldn’t have made, but she can’t help it.

Audrey is poised by Risa’s shoulder, grinning hopefully. “What do you think?”

“It’s lovely,” Risa says honestly. “You’re excellent at this.”

Audrey beams proudly. “Oh, you’re too sweet. I can tell why you and Cam get along.”

Upon hearing his name, Cam wanders back over to rejoin the group. He stares at Risa’s changed countenance, mumbling the expected compliments to Audrey’s labor when asked but refusing to look away. Risa feels her cheeks heat up and breaks the staring contest first by gazing pointedly at the ground until he turns away.

Audrey claps her hands together, sending a low metallic thunk through the quiet salon. “That was so much fun! Cam, dear, you’re next. What’ll it be?”

Cam laughs, the sound clipped and punctual. “I don’t need anything, Audrey. I think we’ll be on our way now, actually.”

Audrey’s face falls. “Really? I can’t convince you to stay any longer? At least tell me you’ll be back soon. I miss your company whenever you’re out.”

The cyborg’s hands sag by her sides, and Risa can’t help but feel a rush of compassion for her. Looking at Audrey in the middle of this desiccating salon, she’s forcefully reminded again of an abandoned dollhouse. Audrey has been placed here with her disintegrating tools and products, a stylist with no clients on a planet with no escape. At some point, the last of her mechanical parts will fail her, and then the salon owner will join the salon in the empty ashes of what had once been a grand experiment.

Cam’s smile is only a smile in name, his eyes bleak and despairing. “Of course, Audrey. I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Audrey assures him, “I’ll just tend to the other clients, then.”

The worst part is that she’s not even sarcastic, but genuinely hopeful that there will soon be others. It hasn’t occurred to her yet that no one else is coming. It hasn’t occurred to her that no one ever will.

Cam takes one last despairing look around him, then ushers Risa out of the salon and into the cold air of the city once more. Even when they’re out of Audrey’s lonely clutches, though, the grief on Cam’s face refuses to lessen. 

“She’s been getting worse as of late, but Audrey has always been a good friend to me,” he whispers. Cam glances back at the shop behind them a few times as they go, like he’s trying to convince himself not to return. 

“And she’ll still be your friend,” Risa says soothingly. “No one would blame you for wanting to leave. If she knew, she would be happy for you.”

Cam’s expression drops. “Would she?”

Risa can’t answer that, so she waits for them to cross the street before changing the subject. “So, how did Audrey come to be in charge of the salon? Are there other stylists in the area? How’s the competition?”

Cam doesn’t laugh, but the lights at his temple shift from desolate gray to a lighter yellow. “No one else, just Audrey. We were all put here with a task in mind. There’s a doctor, a teacher, a baker. They made the streets and shops and made cyborgs for each task. They wanted to make a real town, and that needs a lot of different types of people.”

Risa glances around at the shuttered windows and locked doors. “I can see that. Where’s your place?”

“I don’t have one,” Cam says coldly. “This isn’t my home.”

Risa frowns. “I don’t get it. If you take care of the others like this, and you’ve got friends like Audrey, why wouldn’t you stay in the city all the time?”

Cam’s face twists. “They don’t like me as much,” he admits. “Said I was too different. Too human.” From the way he says it, Risa can tell it’s not a good thing. “They let me visit in short intervals, but they always get uneasy when I stay too long. I think I remind them too much of the scientists.”

What a terrible fate. Not human enough for the scientists to stay. Too human for the other cyborgs to want him around. Constantly bouncing back and forth between the city and the outskirts, allowed to stay only to help but never to linger. No wonder he wants to leave; Risa is surprised he even takes care of the others despite them consistently rejecting him. That shows his humanity more than anything.

“Well,” she says slowly, “It’s a good thing we’re getting out of here, isn’t it?”

Cam’s lips start to prick up again. “It is.”

They make it to the lab buildings at last. Cam shows her how to sneak in through a back entrance. Although most of the other structures in the area have been pillaged for spare parts, the lab complex is almost pristine save for a thick layer of dust covering anything. Cam tells her that the other cyborgs are afraid of what happened within these walls, which keeps out intruders. It’s a good sign for the two of them, although there’s no guarantee that anything in here actually works.

They search the building methodically for some sort of comms center, anything that might be capable of producing a transmission that could travel beyond the reaches of this star system. It takes at least an hour or two, but eventually they track down a room filled with banks of equipment. Risa’s no expert on communication systems, but after all the time she’s spent around Hayden, her knowledge is at least passable, and that’s good enough for her.

Risa pauses before she begins her transmission. “How do I know this won’t just bring the Juvey-cops down on our heads? They’re probably scouring the galaxy for kids from the Graveyard.”

Cam tilts his head to the side, considering this. “You said that your friend Hayden did a lot of work with communications. Did he have a channel he used? A signal, just for him? If you know the code, we can put it in and send transmissions only on its line. Connor could pick it up too if he remembers it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Risa muses. It takes her a little bit to remember Hayden’s signal, but she manages to plug in the necessary codes soon enough. After that, all that’s left to do is record.

Risa raises the receiver to her lips, breathes out slowly, and presses a button to start. “Hey, Connor. This is Risa. If you can hear me– well, you’re alive, and that’s a relief. I made it out, but I’m stuck on a planet somewhere near the Graveyard. My pod was damaged and I can’t leave, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t know your situation, but I need you, Connor.  I’m on–”

She pauses for a moment, turning to Cam, who’s doing his best to seem as if he isn’t hovering on her every word. “Where are we, again?”

“Molokai,” he supplies. “Outer edge of the H-I star sector.”

Risa flashes him a grateful smile, which Cam eagerly reciprocates, then repeats the name into the receiver. “I’m on Molokai. Find me, Connor. Please.”

Risa stalls on the line, trying to think of something, anything else to say, but the words don’t come. She has no use for long, extended sentences. Either Connor is out there somewhere, alive and able to find her, or she’ll never see him again. Regardless, one more paragraph from her isn’t going to affect either of them all that much.

She presses the button to end the transmission with one trembling finger. Wherever he is, she hopes that Connor can hear her. Maybe he’s coming. Maybe, after all of this time, she can still have him. Only time will tell.

a/n sorry again for the delay, hope you enjoy this chapter! aaa i have been waiting to write about cam FOREVER i was looking forward to this since like chapter three lmao

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #unwind fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #conrisa fanfic #connor lassiter x risa ward #connor x risa #space au #outer space au #unwind space au

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Nineteen: Call Up the Cavalry

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor fears that this might be the moment at which he finally goes mad.

He’s undergone enough to make the snap happen, at least. How much bending can a mind take before it breaks? How many separations, how much running, how much death and chaos can one teenage boy undergo before he starts to lose himself? Connor wouldn’t be surprised if this is all a hallucination cooked up by a brain that doesn’t want to separate itself from its familiar skull.

However, just why Connor would hallucinate this tithe of all people, he can’t understand. He stands there, blinking at the blond kid, until the figure of Lev Calder sighs, cracks a grin, and says, “Hey, Connor. Long time, no see.”

This, truly, is how Connor knows this has got to be fake. “Since when have you been friendly?” Connor asks doubtfully.

One of the teenagers next to Connor chokes out a laugh. “Lev, I thought you said you were friends with this guy.”

“I am,” Lev says, flashing the stranger a dour glare so severe that Connor is immediately thrust into more than a year of memories. Yes, that’s Lev alright. No one can cast judgment quite like a boy who’s worn tithing whites all his life.

Lev clears his throat pretentiously and motions for Connor to continue into the house. “Surprised to see me?”

“Surprised would be an understatement,” Connor remarks. “Do I have a concussion or something?”

Lev grins again. “I would make a terrible figment of your imagination, but that’s beside the point. No, Connor, you’re not dreaming. I should hope not, it’s taken ages to track you down. Hasn’t anyone told you to stop moving around all the time?”

“Yeah, the Proactive Citizenry,” Connor says wryly. “The two of you can argue over custody claims for me.”

Lev’s face tightens. “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like to do more than poke a fight with the PC. They’re no friends of ours.”

Connor arches a disbelieving brow. “Really? Because the last time I saw you, you couldn’t get to a harvest colony fast enough. I seem to remember you arguing with Risa and I in an effort to turn the ship around when we saved your ungrateful ass.”

It’s difficult to keep the bite out of his words. Even though it’s been more than a year, Connor still hasn’t forgiven the kid for the stunt he pulled back in the boundary checkpoint leaving the OH-10 sector. When Lev had sounded the alarm, Connor and Risa had been forced to go on the run again, requiring the help of a sympathetic checkpoint worker for them to escape undetected. Even so, they’d barely made it out alive, and no thanks to Lev.

One of Lev’s friends doesn’t seem to take kindly to Connor’s hostility. He starts to move towards Connor, but Lev waves him off with a small gesture of his hand. Connor watches all this with faint curiosity– since when has the short tithe been able to inspire this kind of loyalty– but doesn’t say a word.

Lev picks up on his lingering irritation. “I wouldn’t blame you for being annoyed with me for how things ended in OH-10. None of us do,” he says smoothly, aiming a pointed glare at his vocal friend before carrying on. “I was a different kid back then. I didn’t know the importance of staying alive. I thought distribution was saving the world. Then I learned otherwise.”

Connor sits forward in his seat, unable to disguise his curiosity. “What changed your mind?”

Lev smiles softly. “Actually, I started having second thoughts the moment I turned you guys in. I couldn’t shake the guilt I felt, thinking that I had sent you guys to your deaths. I slipped away in the chaos when the checkpoint cops were trying to find you, and ended up hitching a ride on a mass transit shuttle. It was going to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, which I figured would be a good way to start clearing my head. Along the way, I met up with these guys. They call themselves the Chancefolk.”

Connor glances at the assembled group. None of them seem to be from the same place, all different heights and builds, different complexions, but the same haunted look in their eyes. Whatever they’ve been through, it’s been just as long and winding a road to walk as Connor’s.

“The Chancefolk?” Connor repeats. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

“I would be surprised if you had,” Lev tells him. “The Chancefolk are the native people of the galaxy. The group you see before you is only a small fraction of their true number.”

Connor turns to face him, startled. “I thought the Collective wiped out all of the native species from the worlds they conquered. People, plants, animals, everything.”

“Think again,” says a woman from the back. “The Collective would love you to believe that they’re the supreme authority on everything, but they couldn’t be more wrong. They miscalculated and mishandled the galaxy, but we’ve been maintaining the worlds all along. There are pockets of us in every system if you know where to look. We may keep our heads low, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look around and see where we need to be.”

Connor nods slowly. “I can’t believe none of us ever knew about you.”

“The Collective’s got a pretty good propaganda blanket across the galaxy, but I have a feeling that times are changing,” Lev tells him. “For one thing, you’ve got a friend who’s pushing that boundary.”

Connor breaks into a grin despite himself. “Don’t tell me you’ve been tuning in to Radio Free Hayden? Even in your outer rim hideaway?”

Lev chuckles. For a moment, he looks younger again, more like the boy Connor remembers meeting, and then promptly abducting, all that time ago at the beginning of it all. “Of course we did. That’s how I knew you and Risa were still alive, actually. I turned to his frequency one day and heard the three of you joking around like you’d never had a care in the world.”

The smile lingers on Lev’s face for a moment longer, but then his expression sobers again. “Speaking of Risa, where is she? From the way you two used to talk on that radio show, I thought you were joined at the hip, but you showed up here by yourself. Did something happen?”

A wave of grief washes over Connor again, even stronger from its absence. “Something bad. We were ambushed by the PC. She sacrificed herself so I could get away.”

Lev closes his eyes momentarily in grief. “I’ll pray for her. In the meantime, what do you say we break her out of there? We were planning a raid anyway. I think it’s time to show the PC that they’re not nearly as strong as they think they are.”

Connor nods excitedly. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. In the meantime, there are a few things you guys should know about the PC before we draft a plan.”

The Chancefolk draw closer as Connor tells them about Dorian Heartland. He sees the outrage in their expressions, the pain and agony of knowing that their centuries-old foe is still alive. Judging by the steely resolve in their eyes, though, Heartland’s over-extended life may not continue for that much longer. Not if Connor has anything to say about it.

In the end, they walk away from that meeting with a plan. To take on Heartland and the PC, they’ll need an army. However, between the Chancefolk scattered across the galaxy and a fair number of personal friends that Connor and Risa have made along the way, they’re halfway there, and that’s not a bad start. First, though, they’ll need someone capable of uniting the worlds behind their cause, and he’s imprisoned in a harvest colony waiting to die.

“You’re certain this is going to work?” Connor asks for the tenth time. They’re approaching the exterior of the harvest complex now, nearing a service entrance at the back with weapons drawn, but even though they’ve been through the plan many times, all Connor can imagine are possible avenues of error.

“It’ll be fine,” Lev assures him yet again. “Listen, you saved my life when we first met, even if I didn’t appreciate it then. Let me help you out now. I’ve been owing you that favor for a while.”

“Don’t I know it,” Connor mutters under his breath, but he shuts up and lets himself believe in the idea that this might work.

Una Jacali, one of Lev’s closest friends among the Chancefolk, is leading the expedition. She looks as if she might be ready to assassinate Dorian Heartland herself using nothing more than her bare hands and raw anger should they accidentally cross paths. Connor never thought he’d say this, but he actually feels bad for the guy. Having someone as unbreakable as Una on your tail can’t be good.

Una signals to them, counting down from three with a free hand. When she lowers her hand, the explosives they’ve placed on the far side of the harvest complex go up in a fiery rage, drawing the attention of all nearby cops far away from them. The group sneaks through the service entrance and into the shadowy halls. Una and Connor fire at guards when they need to, but their path to the harvest colony is surprisingly clear, likely thanks to the inferno distraction still sending wailing klaxons through the complex.

“They’ll all be in the dorms thanks to the alarm,” Lev tells them. “We should head there now.”

“Remember, Hayden is our first priority,” Connor urges them. “Get everyone out, of course, but we have to make sure he’s safe.”

“Or at least his voice box,” Una supplies. “He can be shot in the leg and be fine.”

Connor shoots her a dour look. “The whole body needs to be fine, Una. He’s our friend.”

Una doesn’t acknowledge this with anything more than a raised eyebrow, which makes Lev clap a hand to his mouth in an attempt to silence his bout of laughter. “We hear you, Connor,” the former tithe says when he manages to get himself under control. “Hayden Upchurch won’t be harmed.”

Connor would appreciate a little more confidence on that front than just the word of Lev, but then again, the boy’s done this well in getting them thus far, he might as well have a little more faith. If anything, the religious upbringing in the younger boy would appreciate some good honest hope.

The group of rescuers breaks into the central portion of the harvest complex when the service corridor ends. Immediately, shots break out as several guards notice them. Evidently not every soldier had been sent to check out the disturbance.

“Go on,” Una urges Connor and Lev. “We’ll hold them off.”

Connor shouts his thanks, then takes off towards the dorms, Lev just behind them. Surprisingly, Lev manages to keep up, even despite his shorter stature. “Since when did you learn to run this quickly?” Connor asks, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Lev chuckles. “A lot happened in the Outer Rim. I’ll have to tell you sometime, but the stories would take a while.”

There’s a dark glint in Lev’s eyes, one Connor doesn’t quite recognize from the short window of time they’d spent together a lifetime ago on the stolen shuttle of a Juvey-cop. Connor makes a mental note to sit Lev down once they get out of here and ask him just what in sunfire happened in the year since they last saw each other.

That is, of course, assuming they do get out of here. It is not lost on Connor that Heartland brought all the AWOLs from the Graveyard here to trap Connor once and for all. Although Connor and Risa already sprung that trap in the synth-park, there’s no telling if Heartland had a backup scheme that could be playing out right now. All Connor can do is keep running, and hope to all the heavenly bodies that this, at last, is something the immortal murderer didn’t see coming.

The two of them reach the door to the dorms. A quick blast from Connor’s gun sears through the lock, and he kicks it open. The door surges forward on its hinges, and hasn’t even opened all the way before Connor sprints through it. Kids are everywhere inside– sitting in the corner, talking in quiet voices, poking their heads out of doors, all of them staring at Connor with these wide eyes. It occurs to him that they might be afraid of him. When did he become something worth their terror?

Then a girl near him stands up with a start. “Connor?”

He recognizes her vaguely from the Graveyard, and although they never personally met, Connor seizes this opportunity to get back control of the situation. “Yes,” he says as loudly as he can, “It’s me, Connor Lassiter. From the Graveyard. I’m here to get you guys to safety. There are some men and women outside, they’ll help you to our shuttle.”

Too afraid to believe their good luck, no one moves at first. Connor takes a few more steps inside. “Come on, hurry. Unless you guys want to wait around and get distributed?”

That does it. The girl who’d spoken to Connor earlier hastens to the door, pokes her head out, then quickly waves to the rest of the distributes to get going. “He’s right, none of the guards can get us. Hurry, everybody.”

The teenagers follow the girl, pouring out of the dorms in a shouting, cheering wave of kids. Connor can’t help a smile as he watches the life spark back into their eyes. They’ve got a shot again, and he helped to give it to them. Maybe, just maybe, he can finally make up for what he’s done. He can reverse the tides. Little by little, Connor Lassiter can get back into the good graces of the universe.

Connor pushes further into the crowd, checking each face as he passes for Hayden or, with pitifully shrinking hope, Risa. He doesn’t really think Risa will be here, if he was in the mood for being honest with himself. She’s too important a prisoner for Heartland to just toss her in here with the rest. Still, it would make his rescue attempt very efficient if he could get both Risa and Hayden out of here in only one shot. He’ll have to suggest to Heartland that he re-organize his method of exterminating teenagers so Connor is best served by it.

The ridiculousness of that thought makes Connor smirk to himself as he wades further inside. It’s a little difficult to get through as everyone inside does their damndest to get out as fast as they can. Painfully, it reminds Connor of the mass stampede inside the doomed Graveyard when they had been found out.

Just like back then, too, Connor looks up across the crowd to find someone lingering on the outskirts, someone blond and tall who makes eye contact with Connor and breaks into this wild, bright grin that Connor hasn’t seen except in his nightmares in a very long time.

Immediately, Connor throws himself against the crowd until he’s in front of the boy. For a moment, he just stares, and then he wraps his arms around his friend, squeezing him until he almost thinks he’s forced the air from the other boy’s lungs.

“Hayden,” he says emphatically.

Hayden Upchurch, because of course it is he, hugs Connor back so hard that he picks Connor off of the ground entirely before letting him back down again. “Connor! Suns, I heard a few of the religious kids talking about how they got guardian angels when they died, but I didn’t think I’d get such a heroic one. I’ve got a poster of you up on my wall, do you want to see it?”

Connor chokes out a laugh, eliciting a proud grin from Hayden when they finally break apart. “Yeah, I totally believe that the PC let you have an Akron AWOL poster in their harvest colony. That’s such a bad joke, man.”

Hayden snorts. “They only allowed me to put it up because I promised I’d get them a signed copy. Do you carry a pen with you, or should I get one of my own? You know I have to honor my promises.”

Connor just grins. “How about you keep your promise to shoot those starspawn in the legs if you ever saw them again?”

“That sounds good to me, too,” Hayden assures him. “Now come on, I want to get out of here. I don't fancy the idea of spending any more time, even in these fine living conditions.”

Connor casts one last glance over Hayden’s shoulder, but the throngs of AWOLs have already started to disperse, and he doesn’t see a particular brunette girl anywhere. “Hayden– you haven’t seen–” 

He can’t quite get the words out, but Hayden, careful as ever, figures out what he’s trying to say. He puts a sympathetic hand on Connor’s shoulder, gently but firmly steering him out of the dorms. “No, Connor. Risa isn’t here. I’ve been looking out for both of you in case either of you turned up, you know that, but she never showed. I’m sorry, man.”

“No problem,” Connor says with a heavy heart. “I didn’t really think she’d end up here, anyway.”

“The two of you split?” Hayden asks, surprised. “I thought you were together forever.”

Connor shoots him a questionable frown. “What in the stars are you talking about?”

Hayden chuckles, even as stray gunfire from the cops rakes towards them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The two of you were practically joined at the hip. It used to drive me crazy in the Graveyard, actually. Jeevan and I had a bet going on how long it would take the two of you to finally spill your lovesick little guts. Speaking of which, how long did it take?”

Hayden spares one quick glance at Connor’s face as the two of them run towards the exit and winces. “Don’t tell me you never said a thing. Connor, you’ve been leading that poor girl on for months.”

“It’s not that,” Connor protests. “And come on, seriously? A bet? I didn’t even realize I liked her until just recently.”

At the entrance to the service hallway, Lev joins them just early enough to hear the end of the conversation. “You’re talking about Risa, right? How they act like they’re supposed to be together forever?”

“Yes,” Hayden says emphatically. “Thank you.”

Connor sputters. “That’s absurd. Lev, Risa and I were arguing like crazy when you were there. Don’t join Hayden’s side, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You should absolutely join Hayden’s side,” Hayden says. “Hayden is always right.”

“He’s right about this,” Lev says as they race down the corridor. Then, to Hayden, “It’s the way they look at each other, right? They can’t stop staring. At first, I thought he had an eye problem or something.”

“Hey,” Connor complains, but Hayden just throws up his arms in victory.

“Exactly! The staring thing! Suns, they were hopeless. You’d think they got married years ago.”

“Can we please focus on getting out of here without dying?” Connor begs.

Were they anywhere but here, he’s certain he would have been ignored, but the rapid gunfire of Juvey-cops can derail any conversation. “Fine, but we’re definitely talking about this later,” Hayden warns.

“I’ll do my best to miss it,” Connor grumbles under his breath. Maybe he should have insisted that Lev stay back at the house, or told him that he wouldn’t ever get along with Hayden so he shouldn’t bother trying. Anything to avoid whatever surreal hell this is.

It takes a while to get all of the Graveyard AWOLs back to the house Lev’s friends are using as their hideout. The journey isn’t totally smooth, either:  two Chancefolk and three distributes get shot as they’re running. Although the wounds aren’t life-threatening, every person with an injury is out of the final rescue, and Connor needs every single soul he can get so they’re not totally outnumbered.

Once back inside, Connor and Lev sit Hayden down to explain their plan. At the end, Hayden stares at both of them, obviously baffled. “I’m sorry, you want me to do another radio show? And that’s going to save the galaxy?”

Lev nods. “You would be surprised how many people can be saved just by hearing one voice. Or how many already have. You’re well known in the groups of people protecting AWOLs. What you need is to reach everybody else. Sound the alarm so they know it’s time to come out of hiding.”

Hayden shakes his head in disbelief. “This plan makes no sense. If the galaxy can hear me, so can the Proactive Citizenry. They’ll know we’re coming, and they way outnumber us, especially if we tell them when and where we’re attacking.”

“They already know we’re going to attack,” Connor assures him. “They knew that the second they took Risa. The only thing they’re not expecting is how many people are going to show up. If they hear your broadcast, fine. Heartland is assuming that everyone is going to brush it off again like they have all this time.”

“And we’re sure that they won’t just brush it off again?” Hayden asks, clearly dubious.

“I’m sure,” Lev answers. “I’ve been traveling all over the world since Connor convinced me to abandon my tithing. I’ve seen a lot of people in a lot of places, but everywhere, they’re starting to wonder if distribution is really the right way to go. We’ve got a serious chance now of changing their minds.”

Connor nods in agreement. “That’s the problem with Heartland, he’s gotten overconfident. He assumes that things will be the same way they’ve always been, but that’s not the case anymore. Times are changing, even if he hasn’t realized it yet. The time of distribution is over. We get to live again.”

Hayden whistles under his breath. “Damn, nice speech. Are we sure you’re not the one who should be making this broadcast?”

Connor chuckles. “Trust me, man, you’re the one with the star power. It’s your show, we’re all just along for the ride.”

Hayden’s bright spark of a grin shines again. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better thing. Out of curiosity, how in sunfire is my broadcast reaching the entire galaxy? I mean, my old signal barely made it a few star systems over. There’s no way I can reach everybody on my old tech, plus it was all blown up when the Graveyard went nuclear. Unless the two of you went scavenger hunting around that wreck, we need more comms equipment.”

“Consider that settled,” Lev says. “I’ve got some stuff from an anonymous donor, really nice gear. They’ll be able to hear you from Centerworld all the way to the outer reaches.”

Hayden rubs his hands together excitedly. “In that case, I think it’s time for a show.”

Lev takes the two of them to the room where they’ve been storing the comms gear. He informs them that the Chancefolk have been using this place as a home base for technology and missions operations, hence why so much equipment has been stored up. Hayden’s eyes light up when he sees the new gear, and can’t contain his excitement as he rattles off all the specs of this top-notch equipment. Several times, he has to be reminded that he’s not just here to sightsee, but actually record something.

At last, after some quick tune-ups and test runs, Hayden finds his old frequency and starts to talk. He planned out a loose script with them beforehand, mainly just a few talking points, but they’re more than happy to let Hayden run wild with whatever he comes up with. So long as it gets to the main conclusion in the end, of course.

“I’m not dead,” Hayden announces dramatically to the microphone, “That may come as a surprise to some of you, given the recent lapse in broadcasts, but Radio Free Hayden is still alive, and so am I. So are runaway distributes across the galaxy, or so I hear. Personally, I have Connor Lassiter to thank for my survival. We’re still alive. AWOLs, if you’re listening, I hope you’re still out there, still whole. I’m glad to be back, but I need something from you.”

Hayden takes a deep breath before continuing. “The Collective wants your pieces. All we did was live, and yet total strangers are perfectly willing to tear us apart just because our parents and State Homes gave the say-so. I know this is wrong, and so do you, listeners. However, for once we’ve got a chance to fight back. I need you all to come to Dandrich-IV. Yes, in Centerworld. We’re making a stand against the Collective, and that means we have to go to their home base. I’ll relay the coordinates in time, but I need everyone to show up and be willing to fight. I’m sure all of you remember Risa Ward, a good friend of mine and Connor’s. We need to save her life, listeners, just as she saved your lives by proving that AWOLs could exist out there in the open sky. She’s our friend, and she’s your friend. Let’s get her back.”

Hayden sends a nervous glance Connor’s way, but Connor just responds with a single thumbs up. Hayden’s doing great, now he has to send it home. “We were never meant to survive for long, you know. The Graveyard proved otherwise. Connor and Risa and I, we did our best to show you that we’re real kids, worthy of living even if someone decided otherwise. I know that we deserve to live. We all know it. The Collective is trying to make you think that the fate of the galaxy depends on all of us dying for the cause, but that’s not true.”

“There is nothing any of us can do. We are children. We are kids. As a species, it takes us years to be able to tie our own shoelaces. We’re not even able to drive a hovercar until almost a fifth of our life has gone by. Why, then, is it that the burden of fixing an entire society falls to us? Maybe it’s because we’re the only ones left to care. We’re going to die anyway, listeners. We might as well die doing something worthwhile. Follow me to Dandrich-IV. We’re going to make a stand. We will be heard. And if we lose our lives out there, at least it’s more living than we would have done if we’d been distributed at the start.”

Connor’s heart is pounding in his chest. Surrounded by his equipment, Hayden’s lip curls. “Besides, our enemy won’t understand what it’s like to fear for his life. Did you know that the head of the Proactive Citizenry hasn’t been honoring his promise to only give distributed parts back to the galaxy? The CEO of the PC is a man named Dorian Heartland. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been around since old-Earth days. He’s been cheating death by swapping out his own rotting parts with fresh ones from kids. To all the adult listeners out there, do you think your children deserve to die so some rich guy out there can have eternal life? To the new generation, do you want your life to go to some man who’s already had more than his fair share of lifetimes?”

“We’re taking back our lives, listeners. We’re winning the war. I want to see you at the gates of the PC. I want you to make a change that generations after us will remember. I’m sending you the coordinates now. If you believe in life, I’ll meet you there. One last time, I’m signing off with everyone’s favorite tune. And remember– the truth will keep you whole.”

With that, Hayden decisively presses the button to end his recording. The grainy beats of some old-Earth song fills the room. Hayden closes his eyes, basking in the sound, his chest rising and falling dramatically. Connor, too, feels as if he’s undergone some great physical exertion, and all he was doing was listening.

When the last bars of the song fade from Connor’s ears, he breathes out unsteadily, not sure what to do in the face of this sudden stillness. “That was incredible,” he says.

Hayden cracks a tired grin. “Thanks. Good to know I haven’t lost my touch.”

Lev shakes his head in awe. “Not a chance. Man, if you hadn’t been slated for distribution– if you could have lived a normal life– you would have made a killing as an actor or something. You’ve got a knack for speeches.”

Hayden’s face twists. “A lot would have happened if we’d had normal lives. You’d still be with your families. I’d be with mine. They had a lot of rich actor friends. Maybe they would have sent me into that life. Who knows.”

Connor’s heart sinks at the grief plainly written on Hayden’s face. “A lot would have changed if we were never supposed to be distributed. We probably never would have met. I’d be a completely different person.”

“So would I,” Lev echoes hollowly.

“So would I,” Hayden repeats, his voice distant and toneless. All of a sudden, his head snaps up, and he makes eye contact with both of them in a row, quick and fierce. “I’m glad we met. I didn’t want to die, obviously, but I’m glad to have you guys. And Risa, and Jeevan, and everybody else. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything, but I do want to end the circumstances that brought us together. It doesn’t mean I like you guys any less, just that–”

His voice breaks off unevenly, but Connor can fill in the gaps. “Just that no one else should have to die even though we lived.”

“Exactly,” Hayden says.

Lev nods slowly. “We’ve got a chance to turn things around. All we have to do is wait and see how many people heard your signal.”

Although he hates to break the tentative peace that’s settled over them, Connor still has to ask:  “What if nobody comes?”

Lev looks at him with grim determination. “Then we go in alone, and save Risa or die trying. We won’t hide in the shadows anymore. And if we die in there, then our blood is on the hands of everyone who didn’t participate. Maybe that’ll move them even more than Hayden’s speech.”

The back of Connor’s throat is raw like acid, but he makes a sound of agreement. Lev is right. Whatever happens from here on out, Connor will still go into Dorian Heartland’s center, and he will find Risa. Maybe he’ll have an army at his back, maybe he’ll only have a couple of friends. But Risa will be found, and for once, Heartland won’t have the last laugh. That, at least, he can guarantee.

They allow themselves a couple of standard hours for everyone to show up. As it turns out, they don’t have to wait that long. Within half an hour, ships are already starting to tune up. Voices are popping up on Hayden’s frequency, different people chartering trips together or announcing that they’ll be meeting Hayden on Dandrich-IV. It occurs to Connor, listening to all of these strangers he’s never met saying that they’ll follow him to death or salvation, that he may have started a revolution, or at least helped build a spark into a blaze.

If this inferno consumes them all, at least Connor’s last hours will have been something bright, something beautiful. He’s had an awful lot of time to run and hide. At some point, he has to turn that restless energy into a fight. Now is the time.

He’s interrupted from his reverie by Lev running into the room. The younger boy can hardly manage a word, too excited by something outside. He gestures for Connor to follow, and Connor doesn’t need any extra encouragement, breaking into a run as the two boys hurry from the room.

Lev leads Connor to the door of the house, then pushes it open. Connor stands for a moment on the threshold, blinking in the light, staring in abject astonishment at all of the faces looking expectantly at him. Some are strangers. There are adults and children, bodies young and old. Some bear the wounds of previous fights. Others wear clothes so nice Connor is certain that they must have come from Centerworld itself. All in all, there are dozens of people scattered around the road leading to their hideout, maybe even hundreds, and more arrive by the minute.

“So many people,” he chokes out in a daze.

Hayden emerges from the house by his side, holding up a hand to wave to the gathered crowds with a dazzling grin. “Turns out a lot more people believe in the cause than you think. Still having trouble believing that we’ll win?”

“Not anymore,” Connor manages. “I mean, I didn’t even know that many strangers knew who I was.”

“They’re not just strangers,” Lev corrects.

And, looking out at the throngs of people, Connor realizes that he’s right. Shading his eyes from the sun, he recognizes Bam, Mai, Diego, and the rest of the group that had saved him when Heartland first tried to get to Connor. He leaves his friends at the doorstep, weaving through the crowds until he’s in front of them.

“You guys came,” he says in a daze.

Bam nods impatiently, although she can’t seem to hide a proud grin. “You kept your promise.”

“Plus, someone wanted to meet her hero,” Mai adds. Bam elbows her in the ribs, but the embarrassment on the girl’s face shows some truth to the statement.

“Go talk to him,” Connor encourages. “Hayden always likes meeting new people.”

He doesn’t stick around to see if Bam goes or not, distracted by another face in the crowds.

At first, he can’t quite place the old woman in the security uniform, but then she sighs deeply at the confusion on his face and the name instantly comes back to him. “Sonia?” Connor asks in astonishment. It’s the woman who rescued him and Risa at the OH-10 boundary checkpoint.

“Don’t look so surprised, boy,” Sonia says irritably. “I saved you once before, I assumed I’d have to do it again. Didn’t expect this sort of support, though.”

For once, the perpetual glower on her face lightens into a half smile. “I’m proud, Connor Lassiter. This change is a long time coming.”

“It is,” Connor agrees. Another figure emerging from the crowd calls his attention yet again, and he heads past Sonia to come to a stop in front of one particular cyborg that Connor never thought he’d see again.

At first, all of Connor’s systems go on high alert. Then, before Connor can even ask what in sunfire he’s doing here, Cam holds up a mechanical hand and answers the unspoken question, “I’m here for Risa, not for you. Trust me. She saved my life by getting me off the planet. I need to return the favor, and for real this time. In all honesty. To be completely genuine.”

Connor chuckles. “I think we’re in agreement there.”

He spins in a slow circle, still surprised by all of these faces smiling at him, ready to go to war so that he and every other teenager there can live. When he stops moving, another person has replaced Cam.

Connor’s heart lurches in his throat. “Grace,” he says. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

Grace Skinner taps her fingers together, her expression as practical as ever. “I didn’t know either,” she answers honestly. “I think it’s good, though. That man has to pay for what he did to Argie. He killed my brother. I want to be part of the group that kills him. It’s only fair.”

“That sounds good to me,” Connor admits. “And Grace– I’m sorry. Even still.”

“I know,” she tells him. “Let’s get our revenge, then.”

A careful smile rises to Connor’s lips. This emotion coasting over him in waves isn’t happiness, not exactly, but it feels pretty damn good, too. Looking around at all of these people, the Chancefolk talking to Lev, the crowds of old friends from the Graveyard, the AWOLs and adults who have united under this one banner, Connor realizes that he’s finally got his army. The only thing left, then, is to get his girl.

Dorian Heartland has no idea what’s about to hit him.

unwind tag list: @locke-writes, @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #connor x risa #connor lassiter x risa ward

[heliads]

love is stored in the sonata

Connor Lassiter thought he'd stop hearing the Graveyard's piano once Risa Ward left. Y/N L/N may prove him wrong. It does not hurt him as much as he thought it would. Far from it, actually.

masterlist

Connor Lassiter almost thinks he’s hallucinating when he first hears the piano.

It’s not that he’s so far removed from any semblance of humanity that the possibility of culture and art is obscene; despite what Proactive Citizenry would like to argue, AWOLs aren’t gremlins nor creatures of destruction only. Connor can stand to hear a melody. He just isn’t used to it. Not here.

Certainly not since Risa was abducted. The piano did not desiccate into ash and dust when she left, and the fact that she’s being held hostage somewhere unknown to Connor does not glue all the keys in place nor stop them from being played. Every Unwind here has the capability to bang out a tune if they so desire. They just don’t, either out of respect to Risa’s memory or perhaps a lingering fear that someone will see a prodigy in their fingers and try to carve the skill out of their digits themselves.

Connor stands motionless in the shadow of a grounded jet, listening to the chords echo off of the rusting metal. It kind of feels like he’s being haunted by the Ghost of AWOL Girlfriends Past, even though he and Risa never agreed on anything of the sort. However, referring to the lingering feeling of wrongness nestled between his lungs and ribs as just, like, the Ghost of Crushes He Thought He Had but Maybe That’s Just What Happens When The Only People You See On A Daily Basis Are A Tithe, Roland, And One Token Girl, is way too many words.

So, Girlfriends Past works. Kind of. Not really. What does work properly around here, though? The Graveyard lives up to its name. Kids come here carrying with them only the memories of when they understood what was going on around them. You can find a job to do, and you can like it enough to make the days pass by until you survive to seventeen, but it’ll never fit you like anything did before you came here. Functionality is best. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to keep you alive.

Connor thinks this mysterious piano player might have to agree. He can hear occasional slip ups in the music, nothing too jarring but still there if you care to listen. He is, of course, hanging onto every note like it’ll save him from all of the Juvey-cops combined, so he listens. 

This, if nothing more, is how he knows it isn’t Risa. Risa always stopped when she made a mistake, every single time. Even if it was something as simple as a skipped rest or one forgotten flat. It was like she was looking for excuses to point out her imperfections, subconsciously proving that StaHo Ohio 23 was right to kick her out.

By contrast, this latest would-be maestro just doesn’t care. They could actually be flawless, or they could just be human. Either way, the melody keeps going. Connor decides that he likes it better that way, which is pointless, because the music doesn’t need his approval. It’s also kind of mean to Risa’s legacy, but Connor’s mind is still Connor’s with or without Risa there, and he likes the melody with accidental sharps instead of flats regardless.

Impulsively, Connor slips out from his hiding place underneath the jet, searching around for the distant sound of chords until they get louder. It reminds him of being at a public pool when he was younger, playing a game with his brother. Marco. His footsteps seem to crash through the relative quiet of the Graveyard; everyone else has ceased work for the evening, but he’s here anyway. Polo. The piano sounds out a path for him to follow.

He takes one last turn and then it’s there right in front of him. The piano has gotten a little dustier since it first appeared out of nowhere in the airplane junkyard, but they’ve all attempted to clean it off every now and then. A figure is seated at the bench, and after a moment of squinting, Connor recognizes them. Y/N, Y/N L/N. They’d arrived recently, all things considered. They never knew Risa but they know him. Isn’t that better?

They lay off playing abruptly when Connor steals too close. “Sorry,” they murmur, eyes wide, “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Connor shakes his head quickly. “No, no. Keep going.” He realizes belatedly that sounds a little harsh. “If you want to, of course.”

They crack a cautious smile. “You sure? I can pick up another time if it’s disturbing people’s work or sleep.”

Connor glances back at the slumbering hulks of metal and flight machinery behind him. “No, I think they’ll be glad for it. It’s been a while since we’ve heard someone play.”

Y/N’s expression turns bleak. “Yeah, I heard about that. Risa Ward used to play this piano, right?”

They start to draw their hands back from the keys. Connor reaches out an arm, as if to physically drag them to the ivories once more. “She used to, but you do now, right? Don’t let her stop you.”

Y/N blinks up at him, and Connor is starting to wonder if he can perhaps call a parts pirate to just take him away now forever when they smile again, cautious and sweet, and put their fingers back on the keys. Good.

Connor leans against the curve of the piano, and he lets the music vibrate through the instrument and into him. If he tries, he thinks he can feel it pressing against his bones, his blood, his organs, invisible surgeon’s hands not trying to dissect him, just to remind him that he is still alive. This is almost the opposite of unwinding. It feels as if he is being put back together.

A few minutes, or perhaps centuries of unadulterated time, later, Connor registers that the music has ceased. He’s not sure how long ago Y/N stopped playing, nor when his eyes closed, but perhaps everything has always just been in his head, anyway.

He looks over at Y/N, who is looking at him, and he is struck by the magnitude of all the things he wants to say. He should compliment them on their skill, or at least appreciate their courage for playing when people like him could hear, but instead of anything good or at least neutral, he coughs once, and asks, “Am I being weird?”

Y/N laughs, easy and clear. “No, you’re not. Really, you’re not,” they add, upon Connor’s face twisting doubtfully. “I’m glad to know someone likes it. It would be more weird if everyone thought I was terrible but they were all too afraid to say something about it.”

Connor chuckles. “Well, there’s no chance of that, trust me. If they try to complain, I’ll fight them off.”

Y/N grins. “Well, if you’re going to be my guard, you might as well stay. You can sit, if you want,” and they gesture to the empty space next to them on the piano bench.

Connor stares uncomprehendingly at the open spot, and then moves cautiously to sit down by their side. They almost touch, and the ghost of that would-be contact makes him feel far more alive than if their shoulders were pressed all the more firmly together.

“Another song?” They ask him.

“Please,” he answers, and the fingers are placed upon the keys once more.

Connor tilts his head back, staring up at the sky. He imagines what it would feel like to leave this body, this world, behind, and soar all the way up to the sky. He could leave these fears and dangers behind, these rumors of parts pirates and Juvey-cops and parents who did not want him enough to keep him. Listening to Y/N’s music, he thinks he is halfway there already.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes

#unwind #unwind dystology #unwind imagines #unwind x reader #unwind oneshot #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology x reader #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter x reader #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter fanfic #unwind connor #unwind connor imagines #unwind connor x reader #unwind connor oneshot #unwind connor fanfic

[heliads]

Your fics are amazing!! I especially love the Unwind ones! :) Can I request an angsty what-if fic where Connor doesn't go deliver his letter and is there when Nelson finds the antique shop? I don't know how specific you want me to be in my request, but a fight scene between Connor and Nelson would be cool (Nelson deserves to be punched). Thank you!

yes...YESSSSS

'guess that's growing up' - connor lassiter

masterlist

warnings: blood, violence, death

Five years ago, if you had asked Connor Lassiter where he thought he’d end up in life, he wouldn’t have said the basement of an antique shop. He certainly wouldn’t have expected to be in that same basement twice in the span of a few years. Life has a way of throwing you a few curveballs. It isn’t Connor’s fault if he can’t help but follow their winding paths until he ends up exactly where he started.

It isn’t like he’s back to square one. It can’t be, after all the friends he’s made and lost. Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that he keeps getting dragged back home. As a kid, he’d always dreamed of running away and making it big, and then he’d actually had to run away when he found out he was going to be unwound. Now he’s back in Ohio, and although Connor finally has a hope for the end of unwinding thanks to the Rheinschild organ printer, he knows as surely as anyone that if this doesn’t work, the last of his luck might finally have run out. He was born here almost eighteen years ago, and he might just die here too.

Connor tries to keep his emotions light, but it’s hard, especially after being stuck in Sonia’s basement for far too many days. It took forever for them to leave the first time, and now he’s wondering how long they’ll spend trapped inside the lightless cellar now. Maybe someone will come down here decades in the future and find his old, brittle bones propped up in a corner someplace, the Akron AWOL reduced to a skeleton with a white, wiry beard like in the cartoons he used to watch as a kid.

So no, he’s not exactly doing a great job of staying optimistic, but it’s hard to get up the energy to converse with the other scared unwinds down here when he knows how this is going to end. It’s not his first rodeo. Nothing gets better before it gets worse again. Why take the time to memorize everyone’s name and favorite color if they’re just going to get ripped apart again in a matter of months? Connor might as well spare himself the heartache. If they do get unwound after all, some future client would probably appreciate it if Connor’s heartstrings were tugged as little as possible.

It’s not a funny thing to think about, but Connor’s sense of humor has gotten increasingly jagged and sarcastic as of late, if it wasn’t already bitter in the first place. When he tries to be funny, he just ends up cutting to the bone. He’s not Hayden. He’s never been good at making the jokes land when he needs them the most.

Hell, maybe that’s what’s unsettling him the most about being back here. If it weren’t enough to see the same familiar shadowy walls and low ceiling (look, there’s the place he gouged his initials in the corner two years ago), Connor has to do all of it not only with new faces but with the ghosts of the former ones. 

Thinking about who had been here with him before makes his stomach roil with guilt and regret. Roland is unwound now; Connor has his arm and is starting to understand his surly temperament, his gut reaction to snap at everything around him instead of smiling. Mai became a clapper and blew up Happy Jack; Lev was there with her, chemicals in his veins, but saved himself when she didn’t. Hayden is still alive, hopefully, although Connor hasn’t seen him in ages; he misses Hayden’s sense of humor most of all.

The only repeated characters in the basement are Risa and himself, but even they are so fundamentally transformed from who they’d been at the start that they could be different people entirely. Connor isn’t sure that he’s at all recognizable as Connor Lassiter anymore. He has the same skin, or most of it, but that’s the end of the similarities. Connor is left wondering how everything changed so drastically over two years, which leaves him in a state of hazy dread.

And then, of course– well, there’s the letter, and that blows everything else out of the water.

Sonia still has his letter, the one she’d had him write to his parents when he first showed up at her antique store. All of the notes from past unwinds she’s harbored are still here. The thought unsettles him more than Connor would care to admit. Even if the kids who wrote them are long since stripped of their parts, dead and gone or maybe somehow still alive, their writing is still here. He wonders if his handwriting has changed since he wrote it last. If Connor saw a few sentences of his letter, could he recognize it as his own, or is even that last hallmark of the boy he’d been gone from him forever?

Connor can’t help but obsess over every detail. It’s hard not to when Sonia keeps bringing it up. He’s not sure if she thinks he’s dramatically different from the boy he’d been, but she must want him to return to that former version of himself somehow, because she’s offered for him to hand deliver the letter to his parents. In fact, she seems rather put off by the fact that he hasn’t leapt at the chance.

It’s not the first time in his life that Connor doesn’t have the right answer, and just like every other impossible choice, Connor isn’t even sure that there is a right way to go about this. He can take his letter to his parents, the people who had him unwound in the first place. He can be the bigger person and forgive them for wanting him clinically dismembered. Maybe, after time, they’ll even be able to move on from it and grow back together again.

Or, far more tempting still, Connor can let his resentment stand as firm and impenetrable as a fortress. This is the choice that calls to him the most. Why should he forgive them? It’s up to his parents to reach out to them first, even if they have no idea if he’s still alive nor how to contact them. Connor is not the one who wanted his own flesh and blood unwound. There’s no reason for the responsibility of breaching the immovable gap between himself and his family to fall on his shoulders.

Still, the Objective Right Thing to do is to give them the letter. Connor knows this, in a shifting, sinking feeling in his stomach, like when you tell your first big lie as a kid even though you know it’s wrong. Connor should meet his parents again. Probably.

Problem is, he doesn’t want to. The anger may not be as white-hot as it had been when Connor first found out he was going to be unwound, but it’s still there, simmering beneath his skin like a stovetop that wasn’t turned off properly. He isn’t going to burn down the house, not yet, but the possibility is there.

Risa would support him in this, Connor knows that. She immediately advocated against it, citing the immense risk posed by leaving their hiding place in Sonia’s basement. She doesn’t know the conflict in Connor’s heart quite as well as the terror of getting caught by the Juvenile Authority, though. She never had a family to love and loathe like this, and although Connor hates to say it, this will be the one time her advice won’t be as picture perfect as usual.

Sonia can sense this hesitation, and she’s been even pushier than usual in an attempt to convince him to visit his parents. At one point earlier today, Connor was helping her bring down some groceries when she asked him again when he was planning on leaving.

“I’m not going,” Connor had complained angrily, and immediately felt like a kid throwing a temper tantrum because his favorite shirt was in the wash or something stupid like that. So many unwinds here would kill for a chance to see their parents again, and here he is practically frothing at the mouth at the thought of it.

Sonia had raised her eyebrows at that, but said nothing, for once. Connor had lugged the last of the bags down and sat in silence, fuming, until he finally cooled off again. He feels bad for snapping at Sonia like that, especially when she’s risking her life for him by harboring unwinds right underneath her shop, but not bad enough to deliver the letter.

Sonia doesn’t usually check up on them during the day, electing to preserve her ruse by manning the counter of the antique shop, so Connor assumes he’ll have all day to practice an apology before she checks up on them after closing time. Maybe he’ll write her a letter. He could both thank her for shoving him in her basement for so many weeks and also say he’s sorry for being an ass. He probably owes a lot of people similar letters. He’s been an ass many times.

Connor is idly monitoring the sounds upstairs, waiting to tell when Sonia will come down again so he can have his statement ready, when he first hears the loud thump. Noise isn’t uncommon up above; customers buying large objects can be heard huffing and puffing as they drag their purchases to the door. However, this sounds wrong. The voices Connor makes out through the dusty floorboards don’t sound like people ogling antiques. One of them sounds cruel, and the other, Sonia, sounds distorted somehow, unlike herself. They’re too quiet for him to hear, but none of it can be good. Then Sonia lets out a cry of pain, and Connor knows for certain that something is wrong.

All of the other runaways in the basement perk up. Fight or flight senses are always amplified among AWOLs. Connor silently gestures for them to back away from the cellar entrance, holding a finger to his lips. This could be a Juvey-cop, so they can’t risk exposing Sonia through too many sounds. Risa picks up a wrench, testing its weight experimentally, and Connor and the others follow suit. Whatever’s going on up there, it can’t hurt to have a weapon.

They wait in tense, painful silence, and then there’s a softer thump from above as the rug is flipped off of the trapdoor and Sonia shouts down for Lev of all people to come up and help her with something. Lev isn’t here, he hasn’t been near Sonia’s shop at all. Sonia knows this, and she’s well aware that the kids know this, too.

Connor’s eyes widen as he puts it together. This is a trap, obviously. Risa, sensing the same thing, grabs a small, blond kid (Jack, maybe? Connor tried not to learn their names. Unfamiliarity makes it easier to lose them) and starts to push him up the stairs, promising that she’ll be right behind him. Connor moves to join her but Risa stops him with a single harsh look.

“Don’t you dare even poke your head out,” she urges in a terse whisper. “Whoever’s here is probably only looking for you. Don’t make a sound.”

Connor would like to argue with this, but he knows she’s right. Odds are somebody saw him through a storefront window or something after closing. It’s not right to let Risa fight his battles for him, but maybe the intruder will leave if they don’t see the Akron AWOL. It’s not lost on him that Risa and the blond boy might get taken away anyway all for the sake of covering for him, but Risa’s not taking no for an answer, and she’s gone within a moment.

Connor paces back and forth, unsuccessfully trying not to let his panic show. Beau, one of the latest wannabe top dog types, starts prying at a window in the back, which is good. Odds are, they’ll need a second way out of here than just the trapdoor. Connor is about to pitch in and help when he hears a gunshot up above, followed by an agonized cry by Risa, and then all bets are off. Risa’s plea for him to stay hidden is gone from his head. If his worst fears are true– if she was shot, if she was dead– nothing matters anymore.

Connor bounds up the stairs two at a time, emerging into utter chaos. The blond kid is crumpled on the ground, a mess of blood and gore coating his chest. A grungy man is standing over his body holding a real gun, not just a tranq. Risa is beating him with a wrench, but he throws her off of him the second Connor appears. The man’s face cracks into a leering grin, and Connor realizes that he knows this man. It’s Nelson, the cop he shot so long ago.

Worse than that, it’s not just Nelson. Half of his face has been replaced with unwound flesh. Connor discovers with a sickening lurch of his stomach that he knows the donor, too. That’s the good side of Argent Skinner’s face isn’t it? Come to think of it, Connor hasn’t seen Grace in a little while, too. He silently hopes she’s alright, then shuts off every part of his brain that isn’t wired to defend himself. Nelson looks crazy. He has to be ready for anything.

Nelson lets out a slow, cackling laugh. “Connor Lassiter. In the flesh.”

“Nelson. In somebody else’s flesh.” Connor mimics. “What did you do to Argent Skinner?”

Nelson rolls his eyes elaborately. “He got in the way. I think his fate is obvious, isn’t it? I needed new skin. He needed to learn his lesson. No one crosses me and gets away with it. You’ve been on the run for a long time, but I’ve caught up to you at last. I always catch my prey.”

To the side, Risa is slowly getting to her feet, but there’s a gash opening up on her temple. Behind her, Sonia is chained to a chair, obviously in pain. Only Connor can save them. Only Connor can save himself.

Nelson starts to glance over at Risa, following Connor’s line of sight, so Connor quickly speaks up again to distract him. “So what, are we going to fight again? Boring, but let’s get on with it. Do you want to get out your tranq gun for old time’s sake? Maybe I’ll shoot you again. They might give me a new nickname for that.”

Nelson actually growls in anger. “I’m not interested in tranq guns, Connor. A permanent solution is better for you.”

He’s still holding the gun he just used to kill the blond boy, and Connor realizes with a sinking lurch that Nelson is planning on utilizing it for a second kill. This time, Nelson isn’t leaving until the job is done. Sure, it would be good to collect the payout of grabbing the Akron AWOL, but this is personal. Nelson can make up any excuse he wants about why Connor forced his hand. In the end, this is about Connor repeatedly humiliating the guy, costing him his job, his life, his flesh and bone, everything. One of them is walking away from this, not both. Perhaps neither of them. Looking up at Nelson, Connor finally knows:  this is where it all ends.

“That’s fine with me.” Connor tells him. “I’d like to get rid of you, too.”

He briefly considers going for the ‘nice socks’ distraction, but, afraid of having used it one too many times, Connor decides to ignore the pleasantries and just get going. There’s a table of antiques next to him; Connor grabs the closest heavy object, a brass candlestick, and lobs it at Nelson’s head. The former Juvey-cop manages to duck, but not entirely, and the metal clips him on the temple.

Nelson grunts in pain and angrily points the gun towards Connor, who frantically hurls himself to the floor. The shot misses, shattering a glass cabinet and sending the contents showering to the floor. Connor picks himself up and sprints away, hoping Nelson’s more interested in him than staying to finish off Risa and Sonia.

Luckily, the guy’s got blinders on for anything that isn’t his least favorite AWOL, and Nelson gives chase immediately. Unluckily, this means that more bullets are directed Connor’s way. He skids through a series of small displays, using the advantage of a few tight corners to remove himself from Nelson’s immediate line of vision, then ducks into a hiding space below a desk. There, he waits, one hand clamped over his mouth so Nelson can’t hear him breathing.

Nelson stalks slowly from room to room, Connor can hear the thud of his boots against the ground. “Come out, Connor,” Nelson calls, “Let’s settle this like men. You can’t hide forever.”

Maybe not, but he can certainly push off more fighting as long as he can. Nelson was a cop once, he’s got way more combat training than Connor. Connor’s only hope is to stay one step ahead and confuse him into letting down his guard. There’s no way he’s winning a direct fistfight, so Connor has to be as difficult as possible. 

Something dense thuds on the ground, then the glug of liquid pouring out follows the sound. Connor has no idea what that could be, but there’s no mistaking the subsequent click of a lighter. “If you won’t come out on your own, I have no problem smoking you out. I hear that’s best when taking care of rats. You have to burn down their nest to kill the young.”

Connor does not know much about rats, nor the proper method of extermination, but at this moment he doesn’t like any of it. Nelson is just as stuck in here as Connor if the antiques shop goes up in flames, but Connor realizes with a sinking feeling that Nelson doesn’t care about getting out if Connor doesn’t either. As long as Connor dies first, Nelson is happy. 

Connor, however, needs his friends to stay alive. He rolls out from under the desk to find Nelson crossing over the threshold of the room. The former Juvey-cop bares his teeth in a grin. “See, there you are. I knew you’d let your feelings get in the way of your own self preservation.”

He holds up the lighter triumphantly over a slick of what might be rubbing alcohol or gasoline. Connor tries to stay cool, but his hands twitch at his sides. “Easy, man. You don’t want to blow yourself up, too.”

“How considerate of you to think about me,” Nelson muses. “I won’t return the favor.”

With that, he drops the lighter. The liquid immediately erupts into flames, streaking out of the room and into the next with lightning speed. Connor shouts in despair, but it’s too late. He can only hope that Risa was able to get Sonia out, that the unwinds in the basement could get the window open. Hope is all he has left. That, and the undeniable anger coursing through his veins. Nelson wants to play with fire, does he? Connor is more than willing to follow suit.

He’s not stupid enough to start a fight in a burning house, so he runs for the back door, which opens up into a barren grassy patch hemmed in by a fence. Good; Connor doesn’t want Nelson running. If Connor is the only one that survives the fire, he will make sure Nelson pays for it.

Connor makes it out the door first, so he has enough time to pick up a rock and hurl it at Nelson’s head as the Juvey-cop chases him out. This time, Nelson doesn’t duck, and the man cries out in pain as the rock connects directly with his left eye. Whatever Unwind’s eyeball ended up in Nelson’s face, he hopes that they’re not aware of the injury. He wants only Nelson to feel the agony of the blood welling up in the ruined socket.

Nelson clutches the bloody wound, swearing at Connor. “Do you know how costly those things can get on the black market? I’ll have to replace it with yours to even things out.”

“Try it. See what happens,” Connor dares him, and lunges for the man.

Nelson’s sense of balance is still impacted by the blow to the head, so Connor manages to tackle him around the middle before Nelson is even aware that he’s attacking. They roll around on the ground for a little bit, exchanging punches back and forth, before Connor is able to force him onto his back. From there, it’s easy to keep him pinned and rain blows upon his face. 

He used to get in fights a lot before the unwind order, it’s all coming back to him now. Nelson tries to shove the barrel of the gun towards Connor, but Connor knocks it out of his hand in an instant. The man’s face is almost unrecognizable by now, but Connor isn’t done yet. This man is responsible for so many teenagers being unwound, doesn’t he deserve this punishment? He, too, should be in pieces. Connor can arrange that.

Nelson tries to shout something, but the words come out garble and broken around his swollen tongue. It’s going to attract attention, if the inferno behind them hasn’t brought scrutiny already. To shut him up, Connor wraps his hands around Nelson’s throat and starts to squeeze. It’s easy at first, just a matter of applying pressure. One of his hands– the right one, Connor thinks, but he’s not entirely aware of the difference nor why it should matter– tries to back out, but Connor redoubles his efforts. Nelson is not getting away. Not this time. Not ever.

It takes Connor a long time to realize that the man is no longer moving. Longer still to realize why. Connor has never killed someone before. He didn’t think he could, but. Sometimes we learn things about ourselves later than we expect.

Connor falls to his knees, leaning back slightly as he stares at his handiwork. His heart beats an urgent, irregular beat, telling him what he has known for a while now but is certain of today:  he is a terrible, terrible person. Lev wouldn’t blow up Happy Jack, even Roland couldn’t kill, but Connor could. There are no lines he would not cross, no boundaries he cannot push. He is, at last, well and truly feral. No wonder the world wants him in pieces.

People are starting to emerge from their houses, attracted by the glow of the fire and the jumbled shouts of the fight. Connor is sheltered by the fence and hedges for now, but soon they’ll come for him and find the bloodied corpse of the former Juvey-cop. There are very few people who would mourn for Jasper T. Nelson, if there are indeed any at all, but any witnesses will see a dead man and a living killer and know who is worse off at the moment. The dead rest. The living do not.

Risa finds him first. She skids over the ground to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders. Dimly, Connor is reminded of tackling Nelson to the ground, one rough arm against his throat, but this is Risa, this is different, this has to be different. Not everything in this world brings death. Still, it’s hard to remember now.

“It’s over,” Risa breathes against his ear, “It’s over. Let’s go home.”

Connor isn’t looking at her, though, he’s watching the flecks of burning paper float down around him like snow. In his head, he’s a kid again, bundled up in a parka and too-big snow boots. He’ll grow into them; so will his brother, in a few years. Now Lucas gets new clothes and Connor gets nothing at all. Lucas has had two winters now of being the first one to run out into the yard in the fresh snow, of sinking the first boot prints into the endless expanse of white, and Connor hopes to God he’s loved it.

Connor stretches out a shaking, blood-spattered hand and picks up one of the pieces. It’s an envelope, the contents either ripped away in the wind or already burnt to bits. Right now, the delivery address is damn near indistinguishable from the coarse ash rubbed against it, but Connor can pick out the words by heart:

Claire & Kirk Lassiter

3048 Rosenstock Road

Columbus, Ohio 43017

As he watches, the smoke from one corner of the envelope picks up into a spark, which turns into a flame that gnaws away the words one by one. Like unwinding, his mind whispers. Each letter ripped away to some new fate. Risa has to pluck the quickly burning paper out from between his fingers so Connor doesn’t scorch himself. He doesn’t even notice the flames are at his flesh until a dull, throbbing ache some time later.

Connor is still in Ohio. He’s within driving distance of his house, but there is something Connor has known from the moment he came back here, from the moment Sonia put that letter in his hands again, from the moment he throttled Nelson until the light left his eyes:  he can never go back. That house is for the whole, and although Connor still has possession of all of his limbs, he cannot ever be described as such again. He is not his father’s son. He is not his mother’s boy. If there was ever a Connor who could return to the Lassiter family, he is not the one who just strangled a man to death. There is no place in Ohio that Connor can ever return to again.

“No,” Connor chokes out, half-gagging on the wet slurry of ash and blood in his mouth, “No. I have no home.”

Risa’s saying something soothing about how that’s not true, he’ll always have her, and they’ll find a way, they always have, but he’s not listening anymore. Instead, Connor’s face is tilted back, letting the sun wash over the gouges on his cheeks, his split lip, the bruises already flowering under his skin. He stares once into that blinding light, then snaps his eyes shut. 

The elder Lassiter boy is dead. Only Connor remains.

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[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eighteen: So Die the Kids Worth Saving

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Risa is no stranger to captivity. Sixteen of her years around the standard sun were spent in a jail for children, forced there by parents who couldn’t spare the expense of committing to the dominoes they’d already pushed over. Even the Graveyard had been a bit of a prison, even if it had been the best damn prison of her life. This latest one, then, should be fine. It isn’t.

Maybe it’s the throbbing headache threatening to split her skull that truly makes the difference. This is Risa’s first experience being on the receiving end of a tranq dart, and she’s already decided that she would quite like it to be her last. For the first hour or so, it took everything in Risa to lie very still on her back with her eyes squeezed shut and not throw up. The nausea has worn off a little by now, but every part of Risa hurts, and her brain only seems to want to work at half speed.

Slowly, painfully, she puts the memories together to remember how she ended up here. She had been with Connor in that synth-park, and they’d been found by Dorian Heartland. They’d tried to run, and Risa had sacrificed herself to lock the gates so Connor could get away after she was shot. 

She can only hope that her little stunt had worked. Maybe he’s lightyears away by now, free and alive. If he were smart, Connor would use this last bit of freedom to get as far from Dorian Heartland as he could. He’s got a bit of a head start; if he went fully off the grid, there’s a good chance that he might never be found again. The galaxy is a big place. There’s plenty of room for a boy and his ghosts.

Knowing Connor, though, he’s probably lurking nearby until he can get a chance to break her out. Secretly, Risa’s both mad and glad of it. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t want to get distributed. She wants Connor to live, but she wants to live, too. She wants them to be alive together, if possible, and she most certainly does not want the guilt on her shoulders if he dies trying to get her out of here. Risa knew what she was getting herself into when she locked the park gate between them. 

Still, the idea that someone might eventually come for her is appealing, even as a metaphorical safety blanket to clutch in her mind while she waits for her captors to come back for her. Once her head clears enough for Risa to slowly raise herself onto her elbows, she takes a good look at her surroundings. She’s been placed in a room that, by some miracle, has managed to beat out her old quarters in the OH-10 StaHo in terms of raw minimalism. There is no furniture here, not even a chair on which she can sit. The walls are bare, the ground smooth and uncovered by rugs. The only object in the room other than Risa herself is the narrow cot she’s been placed on to recover.

Clearly a cell, then. This place obviously isn’t meant to hold anyone for a long time, which means that she’s going to be moved pretty soon. They were probably waiting for Risa to wake up before they could do something with her, but what? If she was headed straight for her distribution, she’d just wake up in the Chop Shop of the nearest harvest complex. Suns, they probably wouldn’t even bother to wake her up, just put her in the embrace of a dozen scalpels. Her last memory would be of Connor screaming her name back in the park, reaching out to her before the darkness of the tranquilizer pulled her under. 

Honestly, not the worst moment to be her last. Risa’s done a lot of living. It’s been depressing and boring at times, gritty and terrifying at worst. The brightest spark has been Connor by far. If she had to die now, having not quite made it to the upper age limit of distribution, maybe it would be alright if her last recorded thoughts were of him. At least then she could end on a good note. The last taste on her tongue would be sweet instead of copper-bitter like blood.

Risa gathers her strength, then forces herself into a seated position, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot so she can stand. Immediately, her head protests, and Risa sways so badly that she almost falls over before catching herself in the nick of time. Once she blinks the last of the swirling black spots from her eyes, Risa stands straight again and walks over to the door. Trying the handle once, she discovers it’s locked, although this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.

The only thing left to do, then, is to wait. Risa’s thoughts, although desolate at times, are certainly a better threat to face than whatever calls her name outside that locked door. She lies back down for a while, then stands up again when the nerves get to be too much, pacing back and forth in an effort to drive off the stress. Time passes, might be hours or just minutes. It’s hard to tell in this windowless box.

She’s just starting to think that they might have forgotten about her when the lock clicks open. Risa springs back, regarding the door warily as it swings wide to reveal Dorian Heartland, hands clasped comfortably in front of him. The man files in, followed by two soldiers, who stand on either side of Heartland.

“Risa Ward,” he says by way of greeting. “Good to see you up.”

“What, afraid that you damaged the product too badly with your tranquilizers?” Risa asks daringly.

Unfortunately, Heartland doesn’t even bat an eye. Risa wonders why she bothers with emotional appeals; this man has no soul on which such claims would grate. “Precisely. I’m glad that you’re able to see things from an efficient perspective. Connor was awfully emotional.”

“Was?” Risa asks, struck by horror. “You don’t mean–”

But Dorian Heartland just waves a hand absentmindedly, clearing her worries from the air like smoke from a snuffed flame. “No, no. I misspoke. I simply mean that, the last time I had an AWOL captive, it was Connor and he repeatedly jumped to conclusions. Connor Lassiter is not dead. Not yet, at least,” he muses, “But he will be. No one can hide from me forever.”

“We did,” Risa hisses. “You had to go to the trouble of laying a trap, remember? You couldn’t find us on your own.”

“Yes,” Heartland admits, “But then I captured you. So the point remains.”

Risa greets this with harsh silence, staring at Heartland as if she could tear the flesh from his borrowed bones with only the force of her eyes upon him. Heartland sits contentedly in the hostile atmosphere, then jerks his chin towards the two men bracketing him.

“I hope you don’t mind the guards,” Heartland says abruptly. “They won’t be casting judgment on anything we say here, trust me. They’re just a necessary precaution, I think.”

Risa arches a brow. “What, in case I go crazy and try to rip the distributed parts out of your body with my bare hands?”

Heartland’s expression doesn’t even flicker at the threat, which is a shame. Risa would like him to be disgusted or afraid. Anything to upset this power imbalance. “Something like that, yes. Were you considering it?”

“I do whenever I look at you,” Risa tells him matter-of-factly. Her old administrators at the State Home would be horrified. So much for only treating adults with respect. Then again, she’s already failed them once, right? Might as well commit until the end. If she’s a wreck, she’ll be one through and through.

Dorian Heartland just chuckles. “Such spirit. It’ll go to good use in a better host, of that I am certain.”

“If you’re so keen to distribute me, why are we still talking? Save your breath and ship me off to the Chop Shop.” Risa says.

Heartland shakes his head. “There’s something I need from you first. I’m certain you won’t mind the delay between yourself and the knife.”

Risa’s forced smile turns a sickening shade. “Hundreds of years alive, and you still need something from teenagers other than their body parts?”

He doesn’t respond to the insult. “Yes, actually. If there’s one fault of the older generation, it’s that we often aren’t the best at connecting to the younger ones. You’re going to do that job for me by speaking to the distributes across the world.”

“How would they possibly all hear me?” Risa asks. It’s somewhat of a pointless question, more a matter of buying time before the inevitable than anything else. Risa has already seen firsthand the impact of one AWOL against the world, and it was called Radio Free Hayden.

“A broadcast,” Heartland answers her. “Pre-recorded, obviously. I don’t trust you enough to do anything live. I have a feeling that you’d try to act out. As for your script, I should think it would be obvious. Scores of teenagers around the worlds have felt inspired by you and Connor. They think anyone could avoid distribution by just running away or even fighting the Juvenile Authority officers. It’s inconvenient to my policies, I’m sure you can understand. You’re going to convince them that distribution is a good thing.”

Risa actually laughs. It feels good to clear her lungs. “That’s absurd. I’m not going to say that, obviously. Who in sunfire do you think I am?”

Heartland sighs, although his polite smile hasn’t shifted for an instant. “You know, I have to say I’m disappointed, Miss Ward. I was really hoping that you’d be willing to think a little more rationally. Then again, I suppose I learned my lesson with Connor when I asked him the same thing. No one likes to feel as if they’re betraying their friends.”

“So you knew better,” Risa summarizes. “Fine, nothing changed. Kill me already.”

He scoffs lightly. “Oh, no, no. You misunderstand me. Just because you are not willing does not mean that you won’t film it. If there’s one thing I have learned over my centuries, Miss Ward, it is the importance of control. If you cannot inspire it naturally in others, then you must have a way of manufacturing it synthetically.”

Risa’s throat dries up. “What are you talking about?”

Heartland’s sinister smile broadens. “I have a way of making people do what I want. Trust me, you won’t feel a thing.”

Risa’s head rears up. “No. Whatever you’re talking about, I won’t do it.”

Heartland takes a step forward, leering down at her with his unsettlingly asymmetric eyes. “That’s the thing, my child. You will.”

He beckons his guards with one finger and they lunge forward, seizing Risa and dragging her from the room. She fights the whole time, but these soldiers have the benefit of a steady diet and workout regimen, plus several more years of experience under their belt, and they hoist her down the corridor like an errant child.

She’s deposited in a larger room. There’s a machine in the corner that she doesn’t recognize, sized to hold either a small engine or a large person. Most of it is underneath a polished, curving shell, but there’s a window on the side near the top. A conveyor belt feeds in and out of the coffinlike center piece, and a bland logo on the side labels the machine as UNIS.

Risa doesn’t recognize it, although she is more familiar with the several cameras pointed towards a chair in the center of the room. She’s steered into the seat and held there by the guards, while someone in a doctor’s scrubs appears in the door after Heartland, preparing a syringe loaded with a substance even Risa can’t recognize.

“What are you doing to me?” She asks. Risa tries to sound brave, but her voice cracks along the way, and she’s exposed for what she really is– terrified, absolutely terrified. Risa wants to be courageous, but in this moment, hope seems like a far and fleeting thing.

Heartland sits down on a chair opposite her, giving Risa the vague impression of a particularly fascinating holo about to be studied. “I’m taking over your self control. It’s a simple procedure, merely a matter of adjusting your brain to be more open to receiving instruction. I’ve had plenty of time to develop it, so don’t worry about that. It’ll fade once I’m done, so I can still have your cerebral matter harvested without issue.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought this out perfectly,” Risa growls, watching the doctor loom ever closer, syringe in hand.

“I have,” Heartland says pleasantly. “All things according to plan.”

Risa wonders about this plan, if he’s been working on it since his first natural lifetime, if it’s ever shaped or changed. She wonders if her life factored into it at all, if her death will affect it. If there’s any conceivable way she could throw it off kilter.

Then the needle is in her vein, and the only thing Risa can wonder about is just what is being pumped into her, and how to fight it. Already, she feels that something is shifting in her mind. Her head is a little fuzzy, more so than just the lingering aftereffects of the tranq. Something is wrong, very wrong. She tries to struggle against the guards holding her in place, but halfway through flailing around, Risa can’t entirely remember why she wants to do this. It would be much more convenient to just sit there and wait for instruction. There’s a man opposite her. She hates him, she thinks, or did at one point. Why? He wants her dead– yes, that’s it, but the deep cut of that is blurred a little, no longer relevant. It is simply a fact, and Risa is not affected by facts.

“Risa Ward,” the man says. “Do you know who I am?”

Risa ponders this. The hands are gone from her shoulders, but she has no need to run. “No.”

“Think harder,” the man urges. “You will remember.”

Now that he’s suggested it, Risa recalls it easily. “Dorian Heartland,” she answers, the name rising readily to her lips as if she were answering a question in school.

“Yes,” he nods. “That’s right. Do you know what I need you to do?”

“Film a holo. About distribution. I’ll say it’s the right thing to do,” Risa says obediently. Something churns in her stomach when she relays these words, but she can’t fathom why. This is what is expected of her. Why would it be wrong?

Heartland claps his hands together once. “Technology. You have to love it.”

This makes no sense to Risa, but she watches motionlessly as Heartland abandons his chair to stand behind a recording device in front of her. His empty chair is removed by an assistant, who returns moments later holding a holo in her hand. It projects only a few large words into the air, just out of sight of the recording device.

“You’re going to say exactly what we show you on the holo display,” Heartland informs her. “No deviations, no improvisation. Our story is sufficient.”

“Okay,” Risa affirms.

They click a few buttons on the recording device and a green button flashes on the side, indicating that the camera is live. Risa’s attention is forcefully dragged over to the holo with her script. It feels as if an invisible hand is pressing against her skull, forcing her to look at the words, tugging her jaw open and shut to speak the words.

“My name is Risa Ward, and I am an AWOL,” she begins. “I ran away from my State Home when I heard I was going to be distributed, even though they only wanted to help me. I didn’t understand that this choice was for the best, and by becoming an AWOL, I was ridding the galaxy of the resources it desperately needed.”

She pauses for a moment, frowning. Her heart is beating erratically in her chest, and she wants to suggest to Heartland or the doctor holding the empty syringe that she should perhaps be checked out, but then she remembers that she was not to say anything but what was projected by the holo, so she stays silent before carrying on as normal.

“Distribution is a necessary task for the survival of the human species. It’s a good thing, and I realize that now. All distributes who have run away should turn themselves in to the nearest harvest colony. We all know what is right, and we have a moral duty to fulfill our responsibility to the galaxy that raised us.”

Bile is rising in her throat. A voice flashes across Risa’s mind, screaming no, no over and over again. A heartbeat later, she realizes that it is her own. Risa doesn’t want this.

Heartland snaps his fingers, dragging her back to reality. Risa realizes that she must have gone silent; although she was urged to say only what was on the cues, Risa was never given guidance as to how slowly she could say it, or if she could pause for an exceptionally long time, or even stop speaking. Somehow, her body is rebelling, even if her mind can’t recall why this is important.

Now that she’s been reminded of the task at hand, Risa straightens up. “I say again, stop running from distribution. It’s for a good cause. I stand by it.”

Heartland joins her, standing in front of the recording device with a pleasant smile. “You heard it there, from one of the galaxy’s most notorious AWOLs. To prove it, Risa Ward will conduct a distribution right now.”

Risa’s eyes widen. Her blood runs cold in her veins. This isn’t a direct order, and since the assistant has put away the holo with Risa’s script, she realizes that she can’t say anything at all. Her lips feel stretched thin in a forced smile, so dry that they crack and begin to bleed. She can’t move to fix it. She can’t do a thing at all, not unless Heartland tells her.

The door to the room flies open. In struggle three guards. At their center is a shifting figure, thrashing about wildly in an attempt to escape. Risa stares at him unblinkingly, watching as the guards force the boy to the machine in the back of the room. Once they’ve got him pinned, standing in place in front of the machine, she realizes she knows him. This is Starkey, from the Graveyard. And, according to Heartland, she is about to distribute him.

Heartland’s hand comes down on her shoulder. It’s supposed to be comforting, she thinks, or maybe just a reminder that she must obey him. That wasn’t a problem before. It isn’t supposed to be a problem. Maybe it is.

“What do you think of this boy facing his necessary distribution, Risa?” Heartland asks her.

Risa feels as if she’s being torn apart. “No,” she grits out through bloodied lips. “No.”

It’s just two words, but Risa feels as if she’s fought a battle. Unperturbed, Heartland just sighs. “We’ll have to cut that out of the final holo,” he directs his assistant, then turns to Risa again. “One more time. How do you feel about Mason Michael Starkey’s distribution?”

“It’s good for the galaxy,” Risa’s mouth says.

Across the room, Starkey’s face contorts. “Risa! Don’t let them do this to me.”

It is Heartland, however, who interrupts. “She’s not just going to let them do it,” he remarks, “She’s going to oversee it herself.” Turning towards the recording device, Heartland continues, “This is our new UNIS system, capable of distributing a patient without needing a doctor. The latest technological advance around. All Risa has to do is press a button on the side to begin the process. She’d love to do that, wouldn’t she, Risa?”

Risa bites down on her tongue so hard she tastes a spill of copper in her mouth. Her voice box is begging to say one thing, just one thing, that will stop all of this pain. The yes gets muffled somewhere in a desperate cough Risa lets out, a cough that turns into a choking, hacking spill of blood into her lap.

Heartland sighs again. “Risa.”

“Yes,” she mutters bitterly. “His distribution will be good.”

Starkey screams at her again. Risa’s head is a mess of right and wrong, complacency and rebellion. Briefly, she wonders if this is how Dorian Heartland feels with all of his hundreds of different brain donors– a broken, raucous symphony of overlapping voices, all shouting over each other until he goes mad. She thinks she’ll crack first. She’s got less experience with insanity.

Heartland grips her by the arm, leading her over to the distribution machine. “On the illegal AWOL sanctuary known as the Graveyard, Risa Ward as a medical officer in charge of healing runaway distributes. Now, she’ll put that knowledge to good use by overseeing this AWOL’s distribution.”

Risa’s head shakes back and forth, a violent denial. “No,” she grits out once more.

Heartland’s gaze feels like a brand burned into her skin. She can practically hear the hiss of searing flesh. “Try again.”

Risa straightens up like a puppet on a string. “This is the perfect process.” She gestures to Starkey, who’s staring at her in abject horror. “This boy was selected to help us all. Now he will. Distribution is required to save our universe. A person is not a person. A person is nothing more than the sum of their parts. Sometimes, the galaxy wants those parts back. We are giving them back now.”

The guards force Starkey onto one end of the conveyor belt. He tries to fight, but he’s been strapped in with thick metal bands that resist even the smallest of motions. “Risa,” he begs, tears starting to slip out even despite his attempt at a stony demeanor. Risa is embarrassed for him. “Risa, please. I know I messed up. I know I did. Please, don’t do this to me. I won’t bother you again, I swear. Not you, not Connor. Please don’t do this.”

Risa stays silent, unable to do anything but stare at him. He’s sobbing openly now; so much for the brave boy, so much for the bold one who stalked Connor deep in the bones of the Graveyard, who swore he could do the whole savior thing so much better than any of them. “Please, please, please. I’m just a kid.”

Risa leans closer. She can’t explain why. Starkey seizes hold of her hand, clutching to it so desperately she almost thinks he’s trying to break her bones to stop the process. Quietly, in a voice scraped raw from pleading, so fine of a whisper that Risa barely hears him at all, Starkey begs, “Just kill me now, Risa. I’m scared of this. I’m scared.”

Risa is crying. She wasn’t told to do this, so she automatically stops once she realizes it’s happening, but the tear tracks refuse to leave her face. They burn treacherously against her skin. She’s doing something wrong. This is wrong.

“I can’t,” she tries to say. Only some of the syllables make it out.

“Yes, you can,” Heartland soothes. “Just press the button, Risa. I am asking you to do this.”

Her body lurches forward, towards a panel on the side of the machine. Starkey is pleading with her again, saying anything to get her to slow down even a little. He’s choking on the tears and saliva in his mouth, blood running out of fresh wounds on his face. He’s telling her to take one of the guards’ guns and shoot him now. He wants it fast, and unwinding won’t be fast. Please, Risa. Please.

“Just one button,” Heartland repeats. “Do you not have hands capable of completing the task? A mind with which to listen and receive commands? I ask this of you, Miss Ward. I demand it. Heed not the boy. He would say anything to avoid this fate.”

“To avoid agony?” Risa asks. Her teeth gnash down around the syllables, and she has to force her jaws apart to keep speaking. “How horrible, that he would want to live.”

“Yes,” Heartland says. “Horrible. End it.”

Risa’s arm flies up on its own command. She half expects to see Heartland gripping the wrist, compelling her to this awful task, but this is Risa, all Risa. The instrument panel is smooth. Risa’s mind knows how to start it. She can do it right now. It is what has been asked of her.

No.

The button awaits.

No, please.

So easy to activate.

Risa, please. I never wanted to hurt you.

She can’t tell if it’s Starkey speaking or her.

Risa. Risa!

She presses the button.

Starkey screams once, never-endingly, a high, drawn-out sound that makes Risa clap her hands to her ears in a failed attempt to block it out. The conveyor belt jerks him forward into the machine. A hatch shuts him inside, and the scream is abruptly cut off, like a slashed throat. Through the small window in the side, Risa can see Starkey thrashing about. Something metallic flashes near the bulging veins in his throat, a needle maybe, and his muscles slacken completely. They’ve paralyzed him to conduct the procedure. Starkey’s eyes drift slowly in his skull, and then they roll up to meet Risa’s gaze. She sees it in his expression when they start to cut. He may not feel it, but the brain knows anyway when it starts to disappear.

Risa spins away from the window, and, unable to suppress her gag reflex any longer, throws up in the corner of the room. This is wrong. This is wrong. Starkey is being distributed, and she can’t stop it. She started it. It was all her fault. No, not her fault. Heartland’s. Heartland’s fault, because he was the one who injected her with that solution, the one that took over her neurons and made her comply. Risa doesn’t want to comply anymore.

When she straightens up from the fetal position, Risa realizes that the machine has gone silent. The rest of the guards have shifted around in the room, as has Heartland, leading her to believe that significant time has passed while she was trying to undo the mental lock on her self control. A hatch at the opposite side of the machine clicks open, and a series of small containers roll out, each individually labeled with pre printed signs. Heart. Hands. Liver.

It’s Starkey, in pieces. Unwound. Acid surges forth in Risa’s throat again, but she manages to fight it back. Across the room, Heartland rises from his chair, clapping his hands together matter-of-factly.

“Well, that’s over, then. Not so hard, was it? A job well done.”

He moves to inspect the vials and flasks, but Risa stands in between them, blocking him off. “You don’t come near him,” she hisses.

Heartland frowns. “Why not? It’s not a him anymore. Just pieces.”

“Still Starkey,” Risa glares. She couldn’t protect the boy from this awful fate, maybe, but she can watch out for him now.

Heartland sighs. “Come on, now. You have to obey me. Step away from UNIS.”

Risa doesn’t. The tug is gone from her brain, the metal hook slipped out from the cerebral matter. It can pull her no longer. “Not a chance.”

Heartland’s brow furrows. “Let’s try that one more time. You have to step away.”

“No,” she spits. “You can’t mess with my head anymore. Get the fuck away from me.”

Heartland glances back at the doctor, who’s still idling in a corner, scrubs creasing from his awkward posture. “You gave her the full dose, right?”

“Yeah,” the doctor confirms. “No way it should have worn off this quickly.”

Heartland swings around to look at her again, peering at Risa like she’s a lab rat on a dissection table. “Fascinating. What could have caused that breakthrough?”

Risa just grins, sickening and slow. “Me. We’re better than you think. Stronger than you know.” She turns back towards the recording device, which is still blinking a methodical green in the background. They must have forgotten to turn it off during the process, or maybe they were hoping for a triumphant speech after Starkey’s unwinding was over.

“It’s wrong,” she shouts, “All of it is wrong. Unwinding will never be worth it. Get your parts and pieces somewhere else. The children don’t have to bear your burden. Unwinds deserve to live.”

Instead of being genuinely alarmed, Heartland just looks disappointed. “That accomplishes nothing. We’ll just cut that clip out. And seriously, Risa, language. I thought I’d only have to lecture Connor about that.”

Risa feels maniacal. “We’re more alike than you think. It’s him and me, always will be.”

Heartland tsks under his breath. “I can see that now. I had hoped that at least one of you would be able to listen to reason, but I suppose the same fate will befall you anyway. No matter,” he says crisply, directing his guards towards the unwinding machine, “Take the samples away. We can finish their packaging and send them off later this evening. Who knows, maybe I’ll even keep some skin. I could use a new graft or two.”

The thought of any bit of Starkey ending up in this monstrosity makes Risa’s stomach sour. Not entirely aware of what she’s doing, Risa reaches behind her, grabbing a container. Lungs. Trying desperately to ignore the fact that she’s holding the still moving samples of someone she knew, Risa holds it high.

Heartland’s face pales. “What are you doing? Put that down.”

“No,” she mutters. “Starkey wasn’t yours when he was whole. He won’t be yours in pieces, either.”

She holds the glass container in her hand for a second longer, then throws it down onto the ground, where it shatters and breaks. Pink liquid spills onto the floor, depositing a pair of intact lungs onto the ground. Risa watches as they desperately beat, fluttering in the air from the sudden lack of nutrients, and then go still.

“What are you doing?” Heartland shouts.

“I’m killing him,” Risa announces. “He’s not your toy anymore. None of him.”

No more will Starkey suffer. They say you’re still conscious even after distribution, that each and every one of your pieces remembers what it was like to be whole and responds appropriately. If any semblance of Starkey is still alive and thinking in these vials, Risa will put him out of his misery. She launches another container to the ground– kidneys– then grabs the brain samples as the guards attempt to draw near. These are the ones she needs to destroy most of all, the parts of Starkey that can still form thought. She couldn’t save him from unwinding, but she can save him from the awful, permanent afterlife of being a foreign part in someone else’s body. Maybe he’d want it. Or maybe this is just the only thing she can do to destroy Heartland’s carefully laid plans.

Risa’s hand and legs are stained with pink and red from where the vials shatter. Her limbs are covered in gore, but still she keeps going, until each and every sample is gone. It’s a mercy, she thinks. No one should continue like this. She eyes the pieces visible in Heartland’s own face, how the seams ripple with the contortion of his face. If she launches herself at him now, is there a chance she could claw those parts out, too?

She’s taken down before she gets the chance. Once they no longer have to fear the threat of destroying any more of Starkey’s samples and incurring the wrath of their boss, the guards tackle her in moments. Risa is sent plummeting to the ground. Her hair becomes matted with blood, Starkey’s blood, but she still fights and punches and kicks and claws until they drag her to her feet. The last thing Risa hears before she’s forced back into the hall again is Heartland shouting to the guards to prepare her for her own distribution, and then the door shuts on him and the only sound is her scuffling against the iron lock of the guards’ hold.

A nurse is sent in to take Risa’s vitals. Risa is tied down firmly to a chair; they had to hold her still and send more guards to bring in the seat, plus tie her down. She bit at least one of them. When the nurse comes inside, she almost drops her supplies in shock at Risa’s condition. She must be an absolute mess; blood and cell media has dried on her clothes, her skin, her hair.

“What did you do?” The nurse asks, horrified.

Risa grins slowly, deliberately. Madly. “I killed him. I killed Starkey.”

She’s happy about it, the killing. If there was ever a girl named Risa Ward, a girl who thought that she could be good enough to beat the rising distribution rates at the OH-10 State Home, who believed that she could maintain her morals and decency even as an AWOL, she died on that bloodstained floor with the bits and pieces of Mason Michael Starkey. So die the damned. So die the innocent.

This is how Risa loses herself. Blood splashes and bone splinters. In a few short hours, she’ll be nothing more than that. So much for victory.

a/n: are we having fun guys

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Sixteen: Heavy is the Head

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor isn’t doing well.

He’s trying to hide it, of course. Sometimes Risa swears that half of Connor’s ill-stolen life is spent running or hiding or trying to pretend he’s something that he isn’t. She loves him, she does, but she hates this too. Connor will drive himself into the ground trying to take responsibility for crimes he didn’t commit. He’s got a good heart, a heart that Risa has carved out a place to hide inside, but it’s getting awfully cramped in there with every other hopeless crusade he pioneers.

Seeing Starkey burn down the harvest colony was the nail in the coffin. Risa has told him that wasn’t his fault about a dozen times, and is running out of new ways to put it, but the repetition doesn’t matter. Connor thinks he’s seen enough. He believes Starkey was trying to send him a message or something by killing that one guard like he did, but even if the tether hadn’t been used, Connor would have felt the blow to his conscience anyway.

After all, it is Connor’s significantly more brutal alias, the king of unwinds, the Akron AWOL, that got Starkey hooked on this idea of violently liberating distributes like this. A very long time ago, so far away in space and time it could have been a wholly separate boy in a wholly separate galaxy, Connor Lassiter tried to run away from home and ended up tranquilizing a Juvey-cop with his own gun before stealing the officer’s ship. The story was warped across an entire universe, and then it reached a boy named Mason Michael Starkey whose only goal was to find a way to make the whole galaxy remember his name.

Starkey succeeded. Connor will always remember that it was his fault first for wanting to survive and having the terrible luck of being celebrated for it. Connor has gone sickly silent ever since they arrived at that harvest colony, and now Risa doesn’t know how to get the Connor she knew back.

Truth be told, she doesn’t think he’s going to come back unless they can find a way out of this whole mess. Storming the harvest camp and liberating their allies from the Graveyard was supposed to be the final chapter in this affair. It would be difficult to survive on their own, of course, several hundred Deadmen do not a secure future make, but they would find a way. They wouldn’t be alone anymore, and then they would grow up and age out of distribution. Risa was supposed to have her future with him. Now she’s not even sure he wants their past.

It’s exhausting, to put it simply. Every day, they’re constantly pulled from one corner of the galaxy to the next. They escape the exploding Graveyard only to be split up. They find each other only to pivot to save their friends. They attempt to break into a harvest colony and discover that an even more twisted villain has the Deadmen. Heartland is still out there somewhere, and Starkey is holding their friends in the belly of his stolen ship, and it feels like so long as Risa and Connor are alive they will never be able to rest. This was supposed to be the end. This was supposed to be the end. 

And, Risa is starting to realize, it never will be. There will always be one more mountain to cross, one more impossible feat to pull off. They’re kids. Just kids. Kids who were meant to die. Kids who have no choice but to survive. Survival has never been anything but a bloody, brutal thing, but for once Risa wishes it were easy. Hasn’t she done enough? Haven’t both of them done enough? At one point do they get to rest?

Never, maybe. Never at all.

A shadow in the door; Risa looks up to find Connor looking at her uncertainly from the threshold. Wordlessly, she holds out a hand to him, and he crosses over at last to join her. They sit together on a bench along the wall. Connor presses a soft kiss to her temple, then whispers against the still air, “Do you think they’re safe with him?”

His voice is doubtful. It cuts her a little inside, wondering how long it will take him to sound secure again. She doesn’t know what he said to Grace Skinner to explain how her brother died, but the gloom in his eyes when he came back to her could have spawned any ghost.

“He’s not going to hurt any AWOLs,” Risa tells him. “He’s not stupid. The whole point of his little crusade is that he’s protecting the distributes. None of them are going to die.”

Connor shakes his head. “That’s not the only way he can hurt them. I mean, do we think he’s cut out for leadership? How can Starkey possibly keep all of them safe?”

Risa blows out a quiet breath. “If some of the older kids from the Graveyard are there, they’ll be able to watch out for the younger ones even if Starkey doesn’t manage it. Hayden could.”

“Hayden could,” Connor agrees. “Plus some of the nav kids for sure. Yeah, you’re right. They can do it.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Risa urges. “They’ll be fine. To be honest, you should worry about us. Heartland’s been quiet ever since you escaped. I don’t like that. One man has the power of the entire Collective on his side and he just lets us go? No way.”

Connor frowns, his lips pressed together as he considers this. “He didn’t have a tracker on me, I checked before I stole a ship. Odds are he’s just waiting for us to slip up. To be honest, he doesn’t need to capture us to further his message. If Starkey pulls something like this again, Heartland will have all the anti-AWOL propaganda he needs. All he needs to do is frame us like insane killers and the whole galaxy will be up in arms against us.”

Risa shudders, realizing he’s right. “We need to shut down Starkey, then.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Connor insists. “We need to find him first, though. He’ll have to go somewhere to refuel. We need to check nearby spaceports and see if any ships big enough to transport a couple hundred kids have passed through. In fact, they might even get caught at a boundary checkpoint. Let’s check some records and see what we come up with.”

This seems like trying to find a needle in a synth-haystack, but Connor’s got some light back in his eyes, and Risa isn’t willing to shoot down this idea if it means he’ll slump back into nothingness again. So, she heads to the ship holodeck, and the two of them start to painstakingly sift through reports on the comings and goings of large shuttles within several units of their current star sector.

Suns, it’s slow going. Risa swears half their time on this new, ill-gotten starship has been spent combing the galaxy in search of distributes who will never end up found. Risa pores over news holos and headlines for several standard hours. At last, though, it’s Connor who leaps to his feet excitedly when he comes across a report of another mass distribution on a nearby planet.

“Look at this,” he tells her. “It’s got to be more Deadmen. I mean, the Graveyard was massive, right? It would make sense that they had to split everyone into two groups, there’s no way everyone could fit on just one colony.”

Risa’s heart leaps at the same time Connor’s does, but she coaxes her hope back down from that high place with great reluctance. Something about this feels off. It was too easy, and if there’s one thing she’s learned from continually charting new courses across the universe, it’s that nothing is ever easy.

“It’s on a planet, though, not a colony,” Risa points out. “Isn’t that strange?”

Connor waves this concern away, starting to pace back and forth across the floor. “After Starkey’s horror show at that one harvest colony, I wouldn’t be surprised that the Collective tried to distribute the rest someplace with a little more security. It’ll be tougher getting in, of course, but we’ve got to give it a shot.”

Risa swivels over to where Connor had been standing, and hesitantly scrolls through the article he had found. “This seems unusual.”

“Unwinding is unusual,” Connor argues. “Come on, Risa. Our friends are there. We have to save them.”

“I’m not saying we won’t save them,” Risa snaps back, feeling oddly defensive, “but we have to give this more thought. What if this is how they catch us? They know we’re trying to find our friends. Suns, even Starkey could have done this if he threatened someone in communications. We have no proof that this is real.”

Connor bounds over to her again, seizing her hands to his and holding them to his lips as if in prayer. “We are together on a massive starship that is totally empty. We are capable of making one hyperspace jump that will put us in that very star system. We have friends who need us, Risa, and we have the opportunity to keep them whole. Why shouldn’t we leap at the chance?”

“What if it’s a trap?” Risa asks desperately. Connor wants this more than anything, she knows it like she’s reading his mind, but she needs him to understand that this might not be the total victory he hopes it is.

“Then we spring it,” Connor says, suddenly giddy. “We spring it and we get away anyway, maybe even with a few new AWOLs in tow. We show the galaxy that Starkey’s mass murder isn’t how all unwinds think. We win, Risa. We win. Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted?”

What we’ve wanted is to stay alive, Risa wants to tell him. What we’ve wanted is to avoid obvious traps and take life one day at a time. That’s survival. That’s what we’ve always wanted.

Instead, she forces an unsteady smile, and says, “I’d follow you anywhere. You know that.”

“I do,” he says, and kisses her. Risa tries to forget her worries with the gentle pressure of his hand against her cheek. It almost, almost works.

Connor charts a new course. Risa watches and worries from the door to the cockpit. She tells herself that it’s fine and it isn’t, but what more can she do? Since her issues have been avoided in the face of wild, desperate hope, the only thing to do is pivot and try to save them from themselves anyway. She pulls up maps of the planet they’ll be attacking, figuring out exactly where they need to land and what buildings will serve as the harvest location. Anything and everything to avoid the seemingly inevitable.

The site of the latest mass distribution is on a planet called Dandrich-IV. It’s nice, actually, pretty far into Centerworld, the core of the grand sprawl of the galaxy. This means that Collective presence is going to be off the charts, another fact that makes Risa uneasy. Still, Connor just takes this as a sign that this endeavor will be real. After all, the Deadmen are now highly prized property. They wouldn’t be shunted off to another backwater colony.

All too quickly, the Unwind converges on Dandrich-IV. They land a short distance from the supposed location, using the cover of some tall synth-oaks to hide their ship. According to Risa’s research, the Chop Shop and other distribution buildings are in a complex about a ten minute walk from their current location. To get there, they’ll have to navigate a bustling city full of wealthy Centerworld families. Worse still, they’ll have to look normal while they do it.

Risa and Connor stroll down the sidewalk, doing their best to blend in. Their clothes aren’t exactly typical of the luxury common around here, bearing too many signs of having survived a couple of long interstellar voyages, but there’s not a lot they can do about that. Connor uses his fake grounds license to buy them jackets that they can sling on over their clothes, plus caps they pull low over their eyes to hide their faces. Hopefully that’ll do something.

It’s as good of a disguise as they can hope to get around here. Even after a successful purchase, they still attract several dirty looks from shop owners. Seems like solo teenagers are suspicious customers no matter where in the galaxy you end up. The familiar routine should comfort Risa, but instead she’s just reminded of the terrible stakes awaiting them should they mess up.

Risa guides them across the street to the entrance of a nice park. No gates bar their entrance, no tall fences keep out ruffians; here, apparently, polite behavior is expected to the point of trusting anyone. 

“Nice place,” Connor mumbles, staring at the topiary.

Risa nods incredulously. The whole point of this park is somewhat pointless– everyone here knows everything from the individual blades of grass to the vibrant flower bushes are fake, produced somewhere in a lab and shipped over here– but the effect is marvelous. Risa doesn’t think she’s seen this much green in her whole life. The synth-wildlife budget for the OH-10 State Home grounds wasn’t exactly extensive.

They walk further inside, following a curving path that carries them past lines of meticulous synth-trees and even a few stone fountains spitting tall columns of water into the air. Around them, wealthy families preen and pose, showing off the glories of their laboratory flora to whoever’s in sight. It’s like nothing Risa has ever seen before. Secretly, she has to admit she’s glad that she and Connor got to Dandrich-IV before Starkey; he’d probably burn the whole place to the ground out of spite.

“Let’s amble a little more,” she whispers to Connor. “I don’t want to attract attention.”

“Good idea,” Connor returns. “What if we split up so they stop staring? I’ll go pretend to look at some of the statues and pretend I’m working on a school project or something.”

Risa agrees with this and watches him wander off, trying not to act as if the thought of not being side by side with him freaks her out completely. Splitting up is always a bad idea, but they stick out like a sore thumb in the midst of all this faux greenery. One individual teenager attracts less attention than two. All Risa has to do is smile and walk and act as if none of this is new to her.

Risa meanders down a side path, taking in the displays. One flowerbed in particular attracts her attention, and Risa comes to a stop in front of it. It’s a strange design, but since when have the aesthetic tastes of the rich and famous ever made sense to her? There used to be this one girl at the StaHo who had an obsession with these mansion mags that were occasionally downloaded to the State Home holodeck. Risa remembers that girl spending hours flipping through holos depicting the interior of some of the nicer Centerworld estates, remarking on anything from the patterned wallpaper to expensive footstools.

The girl had loved those houses, but Risa couldn’t believe the elites would spend their money on such terrible designs. She’d come up with her own dream place to stay someday, of course, somewhere with big windows and absolutely no other orphans. Funnily enough, it hadn’t involved a spaceship in the middle of the cosmos holding only her and one other boy, but if Risa had to pick a dream future now, she can’t imagine anything but that. Time changes all of us. Sometimes for the worse, yes, but sometimes for the better, too. Risa isn’t alone anymore. That one fact is worth more than a thousand fortunes.

Risa tilts her head to the side, considering the flowerbed. According to the placard below it, the design was just approved in the last few days and submitted by some anonymous wealthy donor. It must make for a very interesting garden if bits and pieces here and there are constantly swapped out. Since everything is lab-grown, the visitors wouldn’t have to wait for the right seasons or temperatures. They could have a new display every day so long as the designers installed the right part in time.

Risa likes this design, though. As she’s looking at it, someone walks up to her, smiling gently. At first, she panics, thinking she’s been recognized, but then she notices they’re wearing a uniform with a logo on the breast pocket labeled with the name of the garden, and she relaxes a little.

“Do you like the flowers?” The gardener asks. “Put them in myself just a short while ago. Lovely things, I think.”

“Yes,” Risa mumbles, “Very lovely. Nice colors.” 

It sounds basic to her ears, but she has no idea what else to say to this stranger. The State Home didn’t exactly train her on how to talk about gardens. 

However, when the man immediately breaks into a wide grin, she can guess that it was taken the right way. “I quite think so too. The designer specifically chose a few plants they had in mind that would just make those colors pop. A certain D.H., I believe. Didn’t leave us anything but his initials. It’s a right shame if you ask me, I hope he will submit more ideas in the future.”

Alarm bells are going off in Risa’s head, but for a moment, she can’t imagine why. “Did the designer say anything else about the flowers?” She asks politely.

The gardener shakes his head. “Oh, no, nothing much. Only that he hoped these flowers would help everyone unwind a little. Great message, if you ask me.”

Risa flinches involuntarily. Technically, she knows the word ‘unwind’ has two meanings, but she’s only ever heard the bloodier definition in so long that she almost forgot it could mean something else. It must be simply a mistake on her end to assume something gruesome, but as Risa looks back at the bright, lurid flowers, she can’t help but feel fear creep back up on her. Under this new context, the colors seem grotesque somehow; the red of blood, the white of bone.

“To unwind?” She asks faintly. The gardener nods and says something else, Risa thinks, but she’s so far beyond thinking of mere flowers that she can’t pay attention.

Suns. Wait. Only one person would put together a display like this, just asking to be noticed. Only one person would require a filthy word like that in the middle of this beautiful place. Only one person would play games like this and make a mockery of their own lives. Only one person, and she and Connor have just walked into his embrace.

Risa turns around abruptly, racing back to Connor, who’s still ambling slowly through the garden walkways. He looks up when he sees her, though, startled out of some reverie.

Connor opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Risa doesn’t give him the chance. “We have to go. Now. They’re here, they’re–”

Halfway through her panicked words, Risa realizes that Connor is staring at her with wide eyes. No, not at her. At something just over her shoulder. Risa turns slowly to see a man who could only ever be Dorian Heartland strolling out from behind the cover of a particularly tall row of synth-trees. His unsettling, mismatched eyes pass over her fleetingly to settle on Connor with an expression of great satisfaction. “Hello, son.”

“I’m not your son,” Connor says reflexively.

Heartland tuts reproachfully. “Technically, you are. You belong to all of us. You’re parts of my universe, Connor, and that means I can refer to you however I please.”

Risa stares at him uncomprehendingly. Connor had repeated descriptions of his encounter with the villainous man many times, but even those heated explanations could not come close to fully encapsulating the horror that is Dorian Heartland. Even without hearing that the man was fully made from separate pieces, Risa can tell that something is deeply wrong with him. His voice seems to be woven together from many different inflections, forced through lips that don’t belong to the tongue nor the voice box that forms each syllable. 

He has the air of a man who knows everything about them, who could predict their escape opportunities and has already shut down each and every avenue they could hope to run to. This man has seen many other teenagers who thought they could be the ones to save the galaxy, and he has killed all of them. Dorian Heartland has centuries of experience in shutting down rebellious young upstarts. 

Risa and Connor thought they could outsmart him– why? You cannot outthink time. You cannot outrun someone who has already chased off Fate. All they could hope to do was keep to the outskirts of Heartland’s time and patience such that he would get bored of him, yet they’ve already messed that up and been found out. All their planning has come to this, a showdown in a glimmering false garden that, just like the rest of their stretched-thin galaxy, was brought to fruition by a collection of parts that calls itself Dorian Heartland.

This, Risa decides, is the end. For her, at least. Maybe she can buy time for Connor to get away, but somehow she doubts that’s possible. After all, she recalls gloomily, they’ve both sworn that they would be together forever. Even in death. Even in distribution. Even in this.

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #conrisa fanfic #connor lassiter/risa ward

[heliads]

Can I request an unwind fic where Connor is the one who gets taken from the Graveyard by Roberta (for propaganda reasons not because Cam likes him) and Rise goes and saves him? I feel like we need more powerful Risa fics! She is badass!

'made it back to you' - connor lassiter x risa ward

masterlist

They had thought it would be smart to take Connor.

That’s what he’s been able to gather, at least. The Proactive Citizenry was willing to incur the risk of abducting one (1) unwind for Propaganda Purposes, and they figured they might as well shoot for the moon and chose Connor Lassiter, Akron AWOL, resident voicebox of a surprisingly large percentage of the unwind community. On paper, it was a brilliant idea.

Connor, however, is not quite the boy people think he is. He doesn’t really like cooperating, especially not with people who’ve kidnapped him from the only home that was willing to accept him as an enemy of the unwinding state. Really, the PC should have figured that out from day one.

Instead, they’re continually learning that lesson with each hour that passes. They gave him a nice room with lovely locked doors and impeccably sealed windows. He’s kept in relative comfort, albeit far beyond the reach of anyone and everyone who could possibly help him. And, to make matters worse, they’re insisting that Connor will film propaganda videos insisting that unwinding is done for the right reasons.

Bullshit. Obviously, he’s not going to do this. The first time Roberta Griswold appeared in Connor’s lux jail cell and asked him to recite a few lines for media purposes, he laughed in her face and told her there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d actually do it. Roberta had the nerve to act surprised, like she genuinely couldn’t fathom why Connor wouldn’t be in favor of stripping teenagers for parts.

She’d tried to reason with him a little, but sorry, no amount of carefully prepared logical fallacies will make up for the fact that unwinding is a terrible thing to do. Connor’s not falling for it. He’s already had plenty of time to debate everything under the sun about unwinding with Hayden and Lev at various times in his life, so Connor is actually quite well prepared for Roberta’s line of reasoning. Who knew that kidnapping a tithe would come in handy?

Roberta was persistent, though. Day after day, she kept coming in, waving that stupid little form he’s supposed to sign to agree to the PC’s demands. Connor had tried to be civil, knowing that any slip up would of course be televised to show how crazy and violent unwinds can be, but after a week he got sick of it and launched a pillow at her head.

He’d been on lockdown after that. No visits, not even doctors, not even Roberta. Clearly, they’re trying to shame him for the loss of control, but honestly, it had felt really good to watch the mass of fabric and feathers collide dully with Roberta’s bleached-blonde skull. When Connor dreams of paradise, it involves soft projectiles thrown at hard-headed sadists.

Connor hadn’t anticipated the Punishment, though. He’d expected consequences ranging anywhere from nameless threats to medieval-type shit like iron maidens (not the band) or thumb screws. Connor doesn’t even know what the hell a thumb screw is. It sounds painful, though, and involves body parts, so honestly it seems pretty well up the Proactive Citizenry’s alley.

Instead of getting beaten around, however, they did him one worse:  they sent in the freak. Camus Comprix. Christ. Connor’s seen the guy around, he lurks in hallways like he’s not ever sure of where to go or what to go. His posture vaguely reminds Connor of kids getting their portraits taken during school picture days. Like Cam has been forced into a starched-stiff shirt and told to straighten up a little, put his shoulders back– no, a little more, a little more, now tilt your head to the side slightly– and he’s spending all of his waking hours waiting around for the camera to click. 

It’s weird as hell, is what it is, and now Connor has to deal with it. Honestly, he’s not sure if Cam’s sudden presence in Connor’s quarters is meant to be difficult for Connor or Cam, or maybe both. Killing two birds in one stone, you get to shame both your lab-grown boy and the unpleasant one you kidnapped in one go. If Connor ever gets out of here and takes up a position with the FBI, he’d suggest this as a certified interrogation method. Simply take your uncooperative prisoner and lock them in a room with a rewind who thinks he’s witty. You’ll have your answers in no time.

They both hate each other’s guts, that much is certain. Apparently, Cam had been angling to get Risa in here instead, suggesting that she’d be far easier to work with than Connor. He’s got to assume that the PC is wishing they’d followed Cam’s guidance instead. As it turns out, Connor also wants Risa. That’s one thing they’ve got in common, at least.

It’ll be the only thing. Cam visits Connor in scheduled one-hour visits, such as right now. The lock on Connor’s door clicks open, revealing the sullen myriad of expressions on Camus Comprix’s many segments of face.

“Why, Cam,” Connor says flatly. “It’s such an honor to be in your presence. I didn’t expect the pleasure of your company today.”

Cam fixes him with a stormy glare. “Ridiculous. Hogwash. Balderdash.”

Connor can’t help a pleased smirk. “What, you don’t think that your company is a pleasure? You should really work on positive self talk, Comprix. Surely one of the voices in your head has an ego.”

Cam looks like he wants to spit on Connor’s shoes. “I am the only one in my head, and I think that you’re insufferable. Also, that you knew I was coming. I arrive here every day. It’s a routine. Typical. Humdrum.”

“Sarcasm, my friend,” Connor smiles. “They can’t plug that into you in a lab, I guess.”

Cam’s face sours even more than usual. “You can try to convince yourself that you’re nothing like me, but it won’t work. We are the same.”

Connor should know better, but he falls for the taunt anyway. “We’re nothing alike. You’re a lab rat, I’m a real boy.”

Cam arches a brow. “Completely? I can't help but notice that one of your arms doesn’t match the other.”

Instinctively, Connor thrusts his right arm behind his back and out of view. He doesn’t have to look to remember the shark tattoo swimming ominously across the forearm that doesn’t belong to him. Connor didn’t ask for an unwind’s arm after his own was lost in the explosion of the Happy Jack Chop Shop, and he especially didn’t ask for the replacement to come from Roland, one of his all-time rivals. However, he fears that Cam might have plenty of good responses to Connor declaring that he didn’t ask for unwind parts.

Instead, he just glares at the rewind. “That’s only one part of me that I hate. You’re full of pieces that aren’t yours.”

Cam just shrugs, taking a seat on one of Connor’s chairs. Connor feels as if the tide of the argument has switched over from Connor’s side to Cam’s, but he doesn’t know how to get it back. “Say what you want to make yourself feel better,” Cam tells him, “We all know the truth. Who knows, maybe the doctors put a bit more realism in me than you.”

“Shut up,” Connor hisses. “Or I’ll hit you like I did Roberta.”

Cam perks up even despite the threat. “You hit Roberta?”

“With a pillow,” Connor amends. “Maybe I’ll hit you with a brick.”

So much for fighting the ‘violent AWOL’ accusations. Connor’s already reverting back to old-school threats and intimidation tactics. However, seeing as he’s essentially a prisoner, even in a far nicer cell than a juvenile detention facility, Connor feels that it’s his hard-earned right to mouth off a little.

Cam just rolls his eyes. “Then they might actually kill you off. Goodness knows they want to.”

Connor grins, proud of himself. “Excellent to know that I haven’t lost my natural sense of charm yet. It’s not a hostage situation unless my captors get sick of me within a few weeks.”

Cam frowns. “I’m not sure that’s something you should enjoy.”

“And what,” Connor drawls, “This is? Collaborating with the enemy? No thanks.”

Cam looks as if he’d quite like to debate the intricacies of just what ‘the enemy’ could be, but they’re interrupted by the door of Connor’s cell being flung open. In walks Roberta, looking slightly more frazzled than Connor is used to seeing her. Strands of her blonde hair are starting to escape from their usual tight knot, and she’s not even bothering to hide her derisive stare with a pleasant grin, which indicates to Connor that he’s probably outstayed his welcome. Not, of course, that he was ever really welcome at all, but this isn’t a good sign.

Connor refuses to handle this appropriately, opting instead to goad Roberta even further. “But, Doc, I’m supposed to have at least half an hour more with my best buddy over here. You can’t split us up, I can hardly bear the separation.”

This earns him matching glares from both Cam and Roberta. Connor can’t help but wonder if the doctors in charge of rewinding programmed that particular expression into Cam, too, having so much experience receiving it from Roberta.

“Enough,” Roberta says, her voice clipped. “This is a waste. We had hoped you would cooperate on your own, but if you won’t, we’ll turn to other measures. Just remember that we didn’t want to do this. You forced our hand.”

Connor leans back a little. “Wait, what are you talking about?” Maybe he wasn’t wrong to include medieval torture among the housewarming gifts offered up by the PC.

Roberta says nothing, just steps away from the door. Three guards come in, all in military fatigues, and drag Connor to his feet. He’s forced out of the room and down the surrounding corridors. Just before he clears the threshold of his room, he can hear Cam’s voice raised slightly, asking Roberta what’s going on. Roberta, in turn, seems much kinder when speaking to Cam, her voice lilting and gentle like she’s lecturing a pet rabbit or dog. Must be nice to be someone’s pet project. The forced responsibility of someone having to take care of you is more than Connor’s had in a while.

Connor is rudely accompanied to a room down a few halls. He recognizes this place, more so the dozen or so cameras and lights that have been set up facing a chair in the center of the room. Connor is shoved down into this seat, with one guard on each side and behind him, keeping him in place.

Roberta shows up moments later, closing the door with an audible shove. “No more games,” she says directly. “We know where the Graveyard is. We have planes with advanced military capabilities. We will bomb that place to a ruin unless you film the interviews we want.”

Connor rears back. “What the hell?”

Roberta, seemingly anticipating this response, holds up a laptop screen in front of him. On it, Connor watches, horrified, as surveillance footage plays of the Graveyard. It’s shot from a shaky, hazy camera, maybe a drone or something. Connor’s first, desperate hope is that it’s old footage, or staged, but then he sees Risa’s wheelchair roll underneath the shade of a parked plane to talk to someone. Hayden, maybe. Or any number of their friends. Her hair is slightly longer than the last time he’s seen her. Yes, this is recent. Recent enough for this threat to have value.

“You can’t do this,” Connor says stupidly. Of course she can. They’re the fucking PC, and they can do anything from tearing teenagers to ribbons to bombing supposedly abandoned airplane hangars. This is all within her control.

“We didn’t want to,” Roberta says snippily. “It will be a waste of resources and a PR nightmare. However, we need your testimony more. Cooperate and they live. It’s as simple as that.”

This, of course, is a lie. Nothing about this is simple. If Connor does what she asks, he’ll be selling out all his friends. They have no idea that they’re being watched, nor that their lives are on the line. All they’ll know is that the supposedly great Akron AWOL turned them all in for a good night’s sleep and some new clothes. They’ll hate him forever, and they’ll never know that he was just doing it to save them.

“You’ll bomb them anyway, no matter what I do,” Connor forces out. “Even if I film the videos. You’d never let a loose end like that sit. They’ll die anyway, and so will I.”

“They won’t,” Roberta pledges. “We’re the sane ones, Connor. We keep our word. If you sign the contract, we won’t touch them. You can even go back to the Graveyard if you want, although I have a feeling that you won’t get as warm a welcome as you might like. All you have to do is talk.”

“I’ll be lying. Everyone will know it.” Connor says. It’s the last defense he has. All of his arguments are slipping away in the face of this vast and indescribable horror. They’d probably show him the bombing, too, make him watch live as all of his friends are consumed by the explosions. Risa. He’d watch Risa die. Connor hates himself more than anything for even thinking about agreeing to do this, but losing everyone just like that would cut a deeper wound than he’s ever experienced.

Roberta just smiles, kind and sincere. This is probably the look she gives Cam when he argues with her about having to spend time with Connor. “No, they won’t. You’ll make sure they believe it.”

Wordlessly, she offers Connor a pen and the contract. The guards let go of Connor’s arms. They don’t even have to be in the room anymore. Nothing matters, because Connor can’t do a single damn thing so long as they’ve got the Graveyard. Hell, they don’t even have to lock the doors. Connor will jail himself until the day he dies, just to keep them alive.

He signs. Roberta smiles. “See, that wasn’t too tricky, was it? All you have to do is find a way to see eye to eye.”

He meets her gaze hatefully. Connor had thought that he couldn’t hate anyone more than Roland, more than the Juvey-cops who tried to bring him in, but this raw madness in the back of his throat is far, far worse. He wants to rip her to pieces. He wants to– he wants to unwind her.

Connor appears on the news that night. He is smiling and dressed in a new suit. It fits him perfectly. The news reporter asks him about being the Akron AWOL, and if he has any advice for teenagers grappling with the possibility of being unwound. Connor looks directly into the camera and tells these unknown kids to just go along with it. Everything happens for a reason, he says. Unwinding is better than you think. I wish I could be unwound right now.

Only the last part is true.

Roberta chides him about that afterwards. No need to go overboard, she says. Still, she’s pleased, and why shouldn’t she be? The nation’s hottest topic, the most dangerous unwind, is in her pocket. At last, she’s found the way to pull Connor’s strings to perfection. As it turns out, the only thing she had to do was threaten to bomb a couple hundred children. Easy for someone without a heart.

Connor makes more videos. He despises himself more thoroughly than he ever has before. He wonders if Risa is out there somewhere, watching them all, wondering what became of him. He wonders if she hates him too now, if every single kid sees his broadcasts and curses his name. Connor understands at last why the PC wanted him. If you lose faith in your hero, you lose faith in the cause. Connor is nobody’s hero, not anymore. He is a traitor and a coward, and worst of all, he still thinks that the Graveyard will be bombed when the PC tires of him and puts him to rest.

The agony builds in his stomach as the weeks go by. Roberta has been briefing him ceaselessly in preparation for an upcoming news report. It’s quite likely the biggest deal of all of the videos so far, on one of the most popular news sources. It will be live, so Connor cannot afford a single slipup. She’s already reminded him several times of the consequences should Connor disobey. He knows.

He knows.

Connor arrives at the news show headquarters an hour in advance. He shakes the hands of several important journalists and celebrities, and they all nod their heads and say wow, he’s so well behaved for someone who once was a criminal. Connor wants to ask what his crime was, other than living, but Roberta is staring daggers into his back so Connor knows not to screw up before his big performance. He’s pretty used to ignoring hateful glares by now, anyway. Now that Connor’s the new big thing, Cam has somewhat faded out of the limelight. They still see each other, but the mandatory visits aren’t really enforced anymore. Instead, Connor gets to sit with his thoughts, which is both better and far, far worse.

The interview begins. When Connor walks onto the stage, he gets a round of applause that lasts two full minutes. He wants to scream at the audience to shut up– nothing he’s doing here is worth that sort of appreciation. News flash:  selling your soul isn’t supposed to be a good thing.

He doesn’t say this. He follows the script. The interview takes twenty minutes, and at the end, the host flashes him a smile of perfectly straight, white teeth and asks if he’s got anything else to add. Connor stares at the jaws, wonders if they belonged to someone else first, and says, “Yes, I do.”

Connor looks directly at the camera. “When I first found out I was going to be unwound, I was terrified. I thought it was the end for me. I even ran away.”

He pauses a bit, to let the audience react appropriately. Ripples of shaking heads and disappointed glance rock through the crowds. Once they settle down, Connor continues. “I met up with bigger crowds of AWOLs who all thought the same thing. We were trying to escape our natural fates, and if I could say one thing to them right now, I would tell them–”

His voice cuts off. Connor feels like he’s choking up, only no tears are coming out. Instead, he feels more composed than he has in months. “I would tell them that they were right,” he declares. “They were right to want to live. We’re just kids, and we don’t deserve to die because our parents don’t like us. All unwinds deserve to live. I hope they keep running and they never get caught, even if I was.”

Roberta is standing up, marching towards him through the shocked and upset crowd. Her eyes spell danger, but Connor keeps on going recklessly. “They’re going to bomb the Graveyard, Risa. They’re going to kill you all. You have to get everyone to safety. I’ve been trying to buy you time, but it’s no use. They know where you are. Get everyone out. Fight unwinding until you die. All of us are free.”

Hands clamp down on Connor’s shoulders. He fights his way out of the grip at once, but more guards are appearing from the wings, muscling him away. Still, Connor shouts at the camera, telling everyone he can to run and never look back. It takes several minutes to get him away, and he hopes to everything holy that it was enough time to evacuate the Graveyard.

He’s locked into a dressing room backstage. Roberta bursts in moments later. She looks completely furious. “You stupid boy. You stupid, stupid boy. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Exactly what I wanted to,” Connor grins. “I took a stand.”

“No, you’ve killed your friends,” Roberta hisses. She whips out her phone and calls somebody, looking Connor directly in the eyes while she tells them to carry out the strike.

Roberta hangs up victoriously, but Connor refuses to be cowed. “I hope you’re happy,” Roberta tells him. “They’re all dead because of you.”

“It’s not just about the Graveyard,” he says. “That’s been under threat for years. We were always going to die. But unwinds across the country will know that they still have hope, and that’s worth it to me. Try explaining that to your investors.”

Roberta’s face turns a mottled purple. “Clearly, we have no more use for you. You may not be able to be unwound, but that doesn’t mean you get to leave. I’ll have you in a cell until you rot.”

Connor’s past the point of caring about himself, though. “I’ll look forward to getting a break from your sermons, then.”

She might kill him here and now, honestly. It takes all of Roberta’s self-control to direct the guards to take Connor away and back to the PC facility. He’s shoved into his room, the door locked behind him. This might be the end of it for him, but Connor’s conscience feels lighter than it has in a very long time. If he dies here, at least it’ll be knowing that his friends believe in him again. Hopefully.

It occurs to Connor, a few hours into his new exile in the old room, that maybe he hadn’t given Risa and the others enough to get clear of the Graveyard after all. He’d known that he would have to tell them eventually, and a broadcast as popular as this was his best shot, but the Graveyard is big and unwinds are obstinate. Maybe there were still some kids inside when the bombing was ordered. Maybe he hadn’t done enough. Maybe Risa had died anyway.

The thought tears up Connor. He feels as if he’s swallowed acid or something, like his organs are physically ripping to pieces underneath his skin, worn away like time and rain against the Grand Canyon. Connor is a thousand empty hollows, and they can only be filled by the simple knowledge that the people he cares about are okay.

Time passes. It could be hours or days, Connor can’t really tell. The grief and guilt takes him out of reality. Connor swears he can hear sounds down the hall, but it could be anything from an overly loud air conditioning unit to the guards getting bored of only watching plain walls. Connor hasn’t really tried to escape. There’s nowhere for him to go.

Outside, the sounds get louder. Connor frowns, pushing himself up to stand. It almost sounds like people are arguing, plus a few distant thuds. Okay, not the AC. Maybe Roberta’s throwing a fit and finally started tossing around a few punches? Not likely, but what else could it be?

Connor slowly walks over to the door, pressing his ear against the smooth wood. It really does sound like the noises are getting closer, almost right outside– He backs up immediately, practically tripping over himself in an effort to get away. It’s good timing on his end too, because he’s hardly cleared the area before his door caves in. Connor chokes on the dust and smoke from the outside hall. Raising an arm to shield his eyes from the debris, he glances through the hole in what had once been his secure door and sees–

Risa.

Connor feels his breath catch in his chest, and not just because of the chaos with the door. “Risa?” He asks slowly.

She smiles at him. “Surprise.”

Connor takes a few tremulous steps forward, his shoes crunching on splinters of wood beneath him. She’s still in her wheelchair, but holding a large gun that she must have used to knock down the door. “Don’t point that thing at me,” he jokes, but his voice goes weak with relief and he doesn’t sound half as cool as he means to.

He’ll have to save the coolness factor for Risa. Further down the hall, Connor catches glimpses of other unwinds chasing off the guards. “You broke me out?” He asks, unable to believe his eyes.

“Of course we did,” Risa says. “What, did you think we’d just leave you there after you went to all that trouble to warn us about the attack? Not a chance.”

The attack. The sheer shock of seeing Risa had thrown that from his mind, but the memories came back full force. He reaches out desperately to take her free hand, begging her to understand him. “Risa. I didn’t want to say all those things, but they made me. Told me they’d blow you all to pieces if I didn’t support unwinding. I didn’t want to, not at all, but they said they’d kill you. You have to know that it wasn’t my choice.”

Risa just smiles. “I know, Connor. You looked so uncomfortable during all the broadcasts that we suspected something was up. Plus, the last one made it pretty clear that you didn’t believe all that bullshit.”

At last, Connor feels capable of cracking a smile. “Bullshit, huh? And here I thought I was doing a great acting job.”

Risa snorts. “Well, there might not be any Oscars in your future, but that doesn’t mean you’ll live out the rest of your days with only the PC as your company. What do you say we get out of here?”

“I’d like that a lot,” Connor says, voice thick with relief. Then, glancing at Risa– “Do you want me to take the gun? To make it easier to travel?”

Risa gives him a disbelieving glance. “Don’t be ridiculous. The gun stays with me.”

Connor raises his hands in mock surrender. “That is absolutely fine by me.”

“Good,” Risa grins, and they head back out of the twisting corridors. The other unwinds fall in line as they go, hurrying out of the complex.

As they escape out into the bright sunshine, Connor has to ask, “How did you know where to get me? And which room was mine?”

“Funny story,” Risa remarks offhandedly, “As we were breaking in, we met some strange guy named Camus Comprix. He told us where to go.”

“Cam helped you?” Connor asks, flabbergasted.

“Well, he had to be encouraged through threats of violence,” Risa admits, “but honestly, I think he was glad to be rid of you. That’s what he told me, at least. Also, he wanted to keep his kneecaps.”

Connor laughs. “Both of those are great reasons.”

There’s a helicopter waiting for them; Risa and Connor get inside, plus the unwinds who’d come with them. Connor vaguely recognizes the pilot from the Graveyard.

“So,” Connor asks, still unsettled by the realization that he might finally be free, “Where are we going, if not the Graveyard?”

“We’ve got a new place in order,” Risa says. “Don’t worry.”

An unwind by Connor’s shoulder breaks out into barking laughter. “Yeah, she’s whipped us all into shape. Got us out of the Graveyard before the place went nuclear, plus set up the new location. Most organized person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

“That sounds about right,” Connor says, letting out a low whistle. Risa smiles at him when he says it, and Connor can’t help but smile back. He’s out of the clutches of the Proactive Citizenry. His friends are alright. Most importantly, he’s back with Risa. For the first time in a while, it occurs to Connor that he might be on the up and up again. He likes the feeling.

requested by @bopeisdope, i hope you enjoy!!

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa fanfic #unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology fanfic

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au masterlist

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

the series is complete!

series spotify playlist

Chapter One: Some Run

Chapter Two: Some Flee

Chapter Three: Some Are Taken Away

Chapter Four: Friends in Dangerous Places

Chapter Five: A Treacherous Road to Safety

Chapter Six: First Day of Many

Chapter Seven: Which is Worse, Death or Distribution?

Chapter Eight: Time Must Pass

Chapter Nine: Stay Whole

Chapter Ten: Still Here

Chapter Eleven: I Still Miss You Most of All

Chapter Twelve: It's You Again

Chapter Thirteen: And Suddenly I Was a Lilac Sky

Chapter Fourteen: Dancing in the Moonlight

Chapter Fifteen: This Is Your Legacy

Chapter Sixteen: Heavy is the Head

Chapter Seventeen: Returning the Favor

Chapter Eighteen: So Die the Kids Worth Saving

Chapter Nineteen: Call Up the Cavalry

Chapter Twenty: The Final Call

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward fanfic #conrisa fanfic #space au #unwind space au #unwind connor #unwind connor imagines #unwind connor oneshot

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Twenty: The Final Call

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist

The nurse in charge of Risa’s last rites is surprisingly cavalier about the whole affair. Probably because she’s been too busy flirting with one of the guards outside to really care about Risa’s personal feelings regarding her own imminent demise. Once the nurse got over the lingering remains of a boy named Starkey still encrusted on Risa’s skin and clothes, she started ignoring Risa entirely. It’s as if Risa is nothing more than a beating heart and breathing lungs.

Then again, to the workers of the Proactive Citizenry, that’s all she’s ever been, ever since her distribution order was signed by the OH-10 State Home. More than a year ago, Risa Ward was marked for death, and now she’s finally about to face her fate. Funny, she really thought she could escape it. Guess it just goes to show that no one can avoid their path, not forever. Not Starkey. Not even Risa.

The nurse cranes her neck to glance at the soldier standing guard just outside the door of Risa’s holding room, and blushes saccharinely. Risa fights the urge to roll her eyes and asks dourly, “How’s the sweetheart?”

“Charming,” the nurse gushes, then remembers that she probably isn’t supposed to be talking to the sacrificial lamb and shuts up.

Risa snorts. “Yeah, I just love it when my future boyfriends are supportive of killing kids. It really brings out the best in both of us.”

The nurse’s eyes narrow, and she deliberately wraps the cuff too tightly around Risa’s arm when checking her blood pressure. “It’s not murder,” she says, “Murder is what you just did to that boy. This is distribution. It’s different.”

Usually, Risa would like nothing better than to engage in a fascinating debate on the true meanings of distribution, but all of a sudden it strikes her that the whole thing would be pointless. Risa is going to be dismembered regardless of whether or not she can argue with one of the Proactive Citizenry’s many nameless nurses. She’d just be wasting her breath, as if that isn’t also going to be taken away from her in a matter of hours.

The nurse smirks slightly when Risa goes silent, evidently assuming that she’s won. In a way, Risa supposes she has. Everyone in the PC has won. All this time, Risa’s been running around the galaxy in an attempt to escape this, yet here she is, having her vitals checked in preparation for the one problem she couldn’t solve, the one trap she couldn’t help but fall for.

The nurse enters something into the records, then unwraps the cuff from Risa’s arm and places it back in her basket of essentials. Her hand moves towards another device, but stalls halfway there when she gets a message, no doubt from her complicit boyfriend out in the hall. The nurse’s face flushes a happy pink when she opens the message, but quickly her smile fades, replaced by an unnerved, tight-lipped stare.

“What is it?” Risa asks, unable to resist.

The nurse shakes her head tightly. “Nothing you’ll have to be concerned with, I can assure you. Your operation will continue as scheduled.”

Risa groans. “Just tell me what’s going on. Like you said, I’ll be distributed anyway. What if my cranial matter is damaged because I’m dying of curiosity when you slice me up?”

She’s not entirely sure if that’s a thing or not, but evidently the nurse isn’t willing to risk her job like that, so the woman sighs and answers Risa. “Apparently, some contraband radio broadcast went out a few hours ago while that boy was being distributed. It told all listeners to meet up here to protest distribution. Ridiculous, I can assure you, but it’s got some of the stockholders worried. The guards have all been placed on high alert, so be confident in the fact that the PC will hold strong.”

Inside, Risa’s heart leaps. The broadcast the nurse was talking about has to be Radio Free Hayden, which means that Connor is still alive and somehow managed to get the Graveyard AWOLs to safety. No one else would have the means of uniting that many people.

If Hayden’s calling the galaxy to arms, that means they must have a plan. Admittedly, Risa would have appreciated it if they could have rescued her first, then maybe sent out the broadcast later, but perhaps it’s harder to break into the PC headquarters than she thinks. Or maybe that’s just the terror in her talking, trying to dissuade her from thinking that Connor and her friends will have enough time to break her out before Risa gets split into a thousand different vials. If they fail, this time there will be no one there to shatter the pieces and put her to rest.

Risa’s lip curls. “I don’t know. I’d tell your little boyfriend that he’ll get slaughtered with the rest when they come to save me. Don’t you know what the Akron AWOL does to Juvey-cops?”

The nurse rears back. “Don’t talk like that, young lady.”

Risa eyes her maniacally. “You already know it’s true,” she says in a sing-song voice. “Even if we lose, they’ll still get to him. Do you think you could still love your boyfriend if he had unwind parts?”

The nurse jams a syringe into Risa’s arm. Risa hisses in pain, but the nurse doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Suns, the nurse is even pleased by prospect of throwing Risa off. “Nothing will happen to Heyward. Don’t be absurd.”

“Tell Heyward to watch his back, or we’ll take it back,” Risa grins.

“Sick, all of you,” the nurse spits. “This is why we distribute kids.”

Risa’s stomach twists. “Every one of us is more deserving to live than you.”

The nurse’s lips thin to the point where they look as if they’ve been stitched shut. She doesn’t answer Risa, instead opting to tighten the restraints keeping her in place, just in case. The nurse takes a few more readings, all the while glancing frantically towards her small holo display whenever a new message from Heyward pings in. For someone who insists that Hayden’s broadcast was nothing more than a scare tactic, the nurse looks awfully worried.

As if catching her looking, the nurse grits her teeth and mutters again, “Nothing is going to happen.”

Just as she says this, Risa starts to hear voices out in the hall, shouts of surprise and confusion. Around the same time, the ground shakes. Risa lurches forward in her seat, kept in place by the restraints and only able to loll around like a doll with its strings cut.

“That doesn’t feel like nothing, does it?” Risa asks, pushing herself back into a sitting position.

The door flies open. A young man in soldier’s fatigues stands in the door, eyes wide like a startled synth-rabbit. “Time to go,” he shouts to the nurse, who wastes no time in abandoning Risa to run to the guard. 

This must be the illustrious Heyward of the nurse’s giggles and blushes, but Risa quickly realizes that he isn’t here on official business. “Wait!” She shouts desperately as the pair head to the door, “Aren’t you going to take me with you?”

The nurse doesn’t spare so much as a backward glance towards Risa, shutting the door behind her with a loud click. Risa screams again, a guttural, twisting yell, and thrashes against her restraints to no avail. The building rocks again. Risa doesn’t know what’s going on out there, but it feels as if the whole PC complex is about to be ripped from its foundations. Normally, Risa would have no problem with this, but there is the small issue that she’s still inside it, and if Connor is coming to get her, she would like him to retrieve her, not just her corpse.

The door flies open again. Risa looks to it eagerly– could the AWOLs be inside already, are the defenses here that bad– but instead, she’s just greeted by the sight of four armed guards. They undo the restraints on her chair and start to yank her into the hallway. Risa’s feet give out beneath her when the walls shake again, but other than a slight stumble, the soldiers carry on.

“Wait,” Risa says, suddenly frantic, “Where are you taking me?”

“Last minute distribution,” one of the guards grunts out. “Orders from higher up.”

No. Risa puts her entire body weight into the sole task of trying to get free. She twists and writhes and claws at the guards, hoping to slow them down or otherwise break away, but their grip remains firm. She is carried down the corridor regardless of her attempts.

When they turn around a corner, Risa realizes that she remembers this particular hallway from earlier that day. The door at the far end is marred slightly, its surface blotted by bloody handprints. Risa’s handprints. This is the room where Starkey was distributed, and soon, Risa will face that same fate within those same walls.

As they draw closer, Risa starts screaming again, the words scraping her throat as they’re forced out. No, no, NO, NO. Vividly, forcefully, Risa cannot help but remember Starkey’s last moments outside of the machine, how he had begged and pleaded with her to kill him or otherwise save him from distribution, how his words had lost all sense at the end until the only thing out of his mouth was loud, horrified gibberish. She’s there now, fully mad, absolutely terrified of what is about to befall her.

The force of her screams brings tears to Risa’s eyes, and then she’s sobbing in earnest, tripping over the sound of her begging for her own life. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to die.

(No one listens).

They’re at the door now. One of the guards pauses, reaching in his pocket for the key. Risa stares at the dried blood and gore on the surface before her. They’re here. Connor is too late. Stars, she hopes he forgives himself for it, that he won’t spend the rest of his life wondering if there were moments he wasted that, if used properly, would have led him to her in time. She’s wondering this now, and remembering a long-ago conversation with a blond boy named Hayden Upchurch, back when she was safe with friends and thought she might live to die of natural causes, if she would ever die at all.

The boy had asked her a question.

Which is better?

In front of her, the key clicks in the lock.

Death?

The guards ready themselves to pull her inside. She’s screaming again.

Or distribution?

Risa makes a choice right now. Dying is better than this. Dying is better than this. She screams once again, gutturally, and stamps her foot down hard on the shoe of the guard who’s attempting to open the door. Risa’s ears are ringing to the point where she can’t hear anything but the tumultuous beat of her heart against her temples.

And– it’s funny, really, what the power of a stressful situation can do to you. Risa didn’t think she was that strong, but the second she slams her foot against the guard’s ankle, he crumples and falls like a stone. He doesn’t move, just lies there on the ground, pulling Risa down somewhat with him. The guard doesn’t land on the ground immediately, supported as he is by the dense web of arms of the other soldiers. Risa pauses in her escape efforts momentarily, staring with confusion at why this guard has suddenly gone silent. The soldier’s head lolls to the side, and then she sees his empty eyes, the perfect circle of red leaking out from the back of his neck.

The other guards see it at the same time, and start shouting in surprise. They wheel around, dragging Risa with them. She blinks stupidly at the people rushing towards her down the hallway. They’re too young to be soldiers, but they’ve got guns, big ones. They aim at the soldiers around Risa. She flings her hands in front of her face instinctively, as if that’ll do any good to stop real bullets, but she isn’t hurt. The other guards either get killed or take off running, leaving Risa’s attackers to run after them, all except one, who takes her in his arms like she’s a dying synth-dove, and whispers tenderly, “Risa?”

She blinks, and then the face comes into focus. Connor. Suns. Risa chokes and flings her arms around him. Connor holds her close, tighter than he ever has before. She thinks it’s a better embrace even than when they had been separated across the worlds and he had found her in the avenging path of an angry cyborg. One of his hands rises to cradle her head all too carefully, and when he finally leans away, he can’t stop looking at her, eyes raking her body over and over again. There’s a horrified expression on his face, a sick and twisted guilt, and it takes Risa a moment to realize why before she remembers that she’s still covered with the debris of a boy named Mason Michael Starkey.

“No,” she says quickly, “It’s not my blood, Connor. I’m fine, I promise. Look at me. I’m fine.”

Connor breathes out slowly. “But– there’s so much of it–”

He raises a shaking hand to trace at Risa’s cheek, her throat. Risa can feel the uneven stickiness of dried blood on her skin. She must look a fright, but the only thing that matters now is convincing Connor that she’s still alive.

“They unwound Starkey,” she chokes out. “I smashed the pieces so they couldn’t use him. I killed him, Connor. I killed him. Starkey wanted me to save him and I couldn’t.”

It’s strange. Risa hasn’t cried about Starkey since he came out of the distribution machine. When the nurse had expressed discomfort about Risa’s condition, Risa had been proud of what she had done. Once she’s face to face with Connor again, though, all Risa can think about is the horrible, horrible thing she had been forced to do. Sunfire, it must be all he can see when he looks at her. There is no Risa anymore, just some creature in her skin, covered in the gore of what had once been a living, breathing boy.

She waits for him to let go, to take several steps back, to run from her as you would any other monster. Instead, Connor holds her close again, and whispers against her ear, “It wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”

Risa is shaking and she can’t seem to stop. “No, you don’t understand. I pressed the button. I did it. All Heartland had to do was stand there and watch. Starkey was begging me to help, and I couldn’t do it.”

If she tries hard enough, Risa thinks that she might be able to float away into the vast and unknowable sky. Her soul could leave this terrible, exhausted frame and find somewhere else to stay, somewhere she wouldn’t have to think about everything that she has done. She could, maybe, except Connor is holding on to her tight, keeping her back on the ground like a tether. She couldn’t leave him if she tried.

“I know you, Risa,” Connor says softly. “I know that you’ve saved my life about a thousand times. I know that I fell in love with the kindest girl I ever met. I know that girl wouldn’t do something like that unless she had no choice. I know that this wasn’t your fault, and I know that we’re going to get out of here now. Is that okay with you?”

Slowly, carefully, Risa pieces herself back together enough to answer in a shallow voice, “Yes.”

Connor smiles. “That’s my girl. Come on, the others will help us out.”

Risa lets Connor lead her carefully back the way they’d come. “I’m confused. How were you possibly able to get in here? Heartland must have a small army of Juvey-cops just in case you tried something like this.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Connor says. For some reason, he’s grinning. “I had to get a large army, just in case.”

Risa frowns at him. “You have an army?”

Connor’s grin broadens. “Wait and see.”

He pulls her to a stop in front of a large window. They look out at the chaos surrounding the PC complex. At first, Risa doesn’t understand what she’s looking at. She can see the Juvey-cops immersed in fights across the area around them, but she doesn’t recognize any of their opponents at first glance.

“Who are those people?” She asks, craning her neck to see farther.

“Everybody,” Connor answers, a trace of raw wonder in his voice. “Bankers and scientists and regular, ordinary, every-day people from across the galaxy. They all heard Hayden’s distress call and showed up. There are hundreds of them, and more show up by the minute. Some of them you might recognize, though. Sonia from the boundary checkpoint. Your best friend Cam from Molokai. Suns, even Lev.”

Risa’s jaw actually drops. “You can’t be serious. Lev Calder is here? The tithe?”

“The tithe,” Connor confirms, halfway to a laugh. “Trust me, I had the exact same reaction.”

Risa shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine how he found you again.”

“You can ask him once we get out of here,” Connor promises her. “My plan was just to get you and then leave.”

Risa nods, but before she can say anything, a voice from down the hall tells them, “You won’t be doing either of those things, Lassiter.”

Risa bites back a scream. Slowly, they both turn around to see Dorian Heartland walking towards them. How is it that he always shows up when they least want to see him?

Connor grabs her arm, tugging her back down the corridor and away from Heartland. She follows him, but the door slams shut in front of their faces before they can make it out. When they pivot and try a different direction, the doors shut again.

Behind them, Heartland clicks his tongue disapprovingly. He holds up a small remote in his hand. “Security systems. You have to love them. When you run a building full of AWOLs, you have to be able to shut down sections of the complex whenever you want.”

Connor pushes Risa behind him. “Let us go, Heartland. You’ve lost.”

Heartland cocks his head to the side. “Have I? Yes, you’ve amassed quite a cult following, but those always die down over time. They’ll lose interest and we’ll be right back where we started.”

“They won’t forget this,” Connor vows. “Look around you. The galaxy is up in arms because of who you are and what you’ve done to us. No one is willing to settle anymore.”

Heartland sighs. “Yes, I must admit that your little exposé of my true identity was vexing, but I can come up with a suitable lie to hide it again. Do you think you’re the only people to attempt to reveal me over the years? I’ve had plenty of practice with making ends meet. I’ll get a new face and it’ll be like none of this ever matters.”

Risa actually snarls at him, her anger coiling white-hot in her throat. “No, you won’t. The hounds are at your door, Heartland. Your time is up.”

Heartland sniffs. “Is it?”

He pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it at Risa. His grip is perfectly steady, and Risa has no doubt that he has centuries of experience that would give him impeccable aim. She drops to the floor at once, tugging Connor down with her. The shot goes right over her ear, cracking the glass of the window. It’s a long drop down to the ground, where the only salvation would be Juvey-cops frothing at the mouth at the thought of re-capturing them.

Not a good end for Risa, then. But– an idea occurs to her. She locks eyes with Connor. “The window,” she says unsteadily.

His eyebrows lift, and she sees that he understands. They stand up shakily, each drifting slightly to the side such that their shadows seem to cut off Heartland like dark pincers.

Heartland laughs bitterly. “You won’t get another window escape, Connor Lassiter. I’ll shoot you before you manage to get that thing open, and there’s nothing to throw and break the glass here.”

“You’re right,” Connor drawls. “The only thing to break the glass is you.”

Heartland’s eyes widen. For a moment, Risa looks into the gaze of an old-Earth man and she swears she sees fear, real fear. It takes a lot to shatter a monument, to reintroduce terror into a man who thinks he’s past such base humanity.

When she and Connor lunge at Heartland, she sees it again. Heartland fires blindly at both of them, but his aim is off when he’s no longer careful and assured of himself. The bullet pings uselessly against the glass, fracturing it further. Risa’s hands connect with the man’s torso and she digs her fingers into the fabric of his clothes. His gun is next to her, and she rips it out of his hand with such brutal force that she thinks she takes some skin off his palm with it. The gun clatters to the ground behind the downed Heartland.

Risa’s fingernails are tinged with blood. Not hers. Not Starkey’s, either. Heartland’s head hits the floor with an audible thunk, but he doesn’t stay there for long. Risa and Connor force him up again, dragging the man down the hall and towards the window. He fights against their hold, but this time the momentum is in their favor, and they make traction before Heartland can shake them.

Risa sees the scene as if in slow motion. One of her hands is behind Heartland’s skull, digging into the snug skin with such force that she can feel the seams of different forced donors beneath her fingertips. The other is on his arm, pulling him forward even as he attempts to fight his way free of them. Connor’s stance mimics hers, except his hand is on Heartland’s throat instead, leaving bloody red crescents as Heartland’s diaphragm rattles for breath. Around them, soldiers and AWOLs streak past, fighting battles intense and totally independent of their own. Somehow, the three of them traverse on, interfered by no one. For Heartland’s claims of a loyal workforce, none of his guards stop to help their boss.

Or perhaps they simply don’t care. Right now, there are no age-old monoliths of distribution glory to be seen. Only an old man forced to his knees by two kids. They say the passage of the torch from generation to generation isn’t always easy. Sometimes, the old ones don’t want to give up control. Sometimes, the kids have to force the change themselves.

Heartland’s breath is fogging up the glass before Risa even knows what’s happening. His mismatched forehead leans against the window. “Please,” he says unsteadily. “You don’t know what you’re doing. We can reach an agreement.”

“No more agreements,” Connor hisses.

“Please,” Heartland insists. “You don’t– you can’t–”

A sick sense of victory taints Risa’s tongue. “Every AWOL begs for life before you unwind them. You never listened to them, why should we listen to you?”

“You children,” Heartland says, licking cracked and bloody lips, “So uncivilized.”

Risa and Connor shove in unison. The window has taken several bullet beatings by now. It doesn’t take much for the glass to break, and the full weight of Dorian Heartland is enough by far. The panes shatter around him as he falls through space. For a moment, he hangs there effortlessly, twisting midair to reach back to them for any sort of salvation, diamonds of glass collapsing around him like the rings of a planet.

Then he falls, and falls ugly and beaten. His body crumples on the ground below. Everyone fighting outside turns to stop and stare. Heartland starts to claw his way up, gaze still fixed single-mindedly on Risa and Connor up above him like a wounded synth-dog.

The first AWOL to reach him steps down hard on Heartland’s hand, sending him back down to the ground once more. Another teenager joins in, then another, then another. Heartland is engulfed in a swarm of tearing, kicking, beating AWOLs in a matter of moments. Risa catches one last glimpse of Heartland’s asymmetrical eyes glaring hatefully up at her, and then even that sliver of skin is gone, replaced instead by the mass of people. There’s one low, choking scream of agony, and then Dorian Heartland goes silent.

The teenagers don’t clear out for a while, and when they do, the lump of flesh on the ground is unrecognizable as a man, let alone a distribution magnate.

“They took back their pieces,” Connor says under his breath.

Risa feels a twisted sort of satisfaction cloud her judgment. “Good,” she says.

Turning away from the grisly scene below them, Risa notices that some of the doors have opened up again. “Guess Heartland’s remote got damaged in the fall. I think we can leave now.”

Connor sighs, an exhalation of something far more grave and terrible than just breath. “I would like to leave.”

They depart together. They’ve collected injuries throughout this whole affair, and limping slightly, they emerge into the bright sunlight of their long-awaited freedom. Risa lets her eyes close against the harsh glare, and when she opens them, a blond boy is walking towards her.

“Hayden,” Risa says gratefully.

Hayden extends an arm, pulling her in for a quick hug before releasing her to Connor’s waiting hand again. “It’s good to see you, Risa. Glad you haven’t been distributed.”

“Right back at you,” Risa says. “Thanks for calling up an army for my rescue mission.”

“Connor insisted,” Hayden replies gallantly. “But of course, I could hardly pass up a chance to do another good speech.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Risa says fondly.

Hayden cracks a grin, then turns upon hearing his name called and heads over to a girl several paces away. She’s got a deep glower, but it fades slightly when Hayden says something to her, probably one of his classic jokes.

“That’s Bam,” Connor supplies. “They’re hitting it off, actually.”

“Are they, or is Hayden just wearing her down with bad jokes and sentimentality until she caves?” Risa asks doubtfully.

Connor chuckles quietly. “Hey, it’s been known to pay off before.”

She looks over at him and smiles. “I suppose it has.”

Risa leans against Connor, resting her head against his shoulder. For the first time in a very long time, she realizes that she’s got nothing more to fear, no immediate concerns.

“What happens to us?” She asks.

Connor hums slightly, thinking. “I don’t know. That’s the best part, I guess. We get to decide.”

Risa likes the idea of that. As it turns out, they’ve got plenty of time to decide. 

The fight is not over. It never will be. No one will ever stop looking for reasons to provoke each other, not until the last of the stars burn out, not until all of the ships and outposts and starfights are gone. First blood will continue to be drawn, but for once, it will not be the problem of two runaways from the OH-10 sector. Wars will be waged, and they will be safe. Those battles are not their story. They’re finally out of the books, but not for terrible reasons. Just because they’ve finally found peace.

Some people would say that peace doesn’t make for good stories. Connor and Risa would disagree. For once, their worries will be mundane. If a day goes badly, it’ll be because of something small. Maybe the galaxy doesn’t want to hear about the pitfalls of normalcy anymore, but Connor and Risa do. And they’ll do it as they have done everything since their lives started over again, how they’ll go on living for years and years to come:  together.

With Dorian Heartland out of the picture, the Proactive Citizenry lost momentum, and, over time, significant chunks of its influence. Legislators across the galaxy were severely pressured to do something about distribution, and although the Collective initially didn’t seem inclined to change it, the sheer force of the galaxy is something no one anticipated. Laws were passed dropping the age of distribution, and then, eventually, it fell off the map altogether.

This is significantly helped by one formerly contraband and now supposedly historical broadcast entitled Radio Free Hayden. Hayden and Bam poked around the PC complex after Heartland’s death and ended up finding evidence of the Proactive Citizenry working in concert with the Collective to hide scientific progress regarding organ synthesis technology. Turns out, there actually isn’t a need for distribution outside of political control, and hasn’t been for a while.

Once that information was leaked, and a subsequent uproar was kicked up, distribution was obsolete almost immediately. Information never passes quickly through space when you want it, but the universe made an exception this time. Some things are important, like our children. When they’ve gone this far for their right to live, who are we to take it away again?

The galaxy is changing. The Chancefolk are returning to their homes in greater numbers. The veil of Collective propaganda is starting to slip from our eyes, and soon, it will disappear entirely. We have a lot to learn as a species. The galaxy holds many secrets that we’ve overlooked in our mad spree to conquer all of it. Slowly, carefully, we must retrace our steps, and look for the small details that hold the greatest of importance, the most enchanting of lessons.

As for Connor and Risa? Well. Their story is over. It’s a good thing, for once. They’re free. Free of the Proactive Citizenry, free of distribution, free of Dorian Heartland. Free of fear.

And, also, free of us.

a/n: the space au has ended!! thank you all so so much for reading, this ended up being wayyyy longer than i expected but i truly had so much fun writing it + interacting with everybody about it. please feel free to ask questions about worldbuilding/yell at me for creating too much drama, i would be delighted to hear from you. over 103,000 words later, it's been a lovely time. xoxo lisa

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#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology x reader #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #conrisa fanfic #connor lassiter x risa ward #space au #unwind space au

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter One: Some Run

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor Lassiter has only existed in these worlds for sixteen turns around his system’s sun, and yet his time is already over. It’s funny, really. If he was going to be taken apart, he was really hoping that he’d be able to make it to seventeen. It always seemed like a good year. Or maybe that’s just because seventeen is when you can start the training process to get your cosmic license, and although Connor never breathed a word of it to anyone, he’s always been angling to make it past the atmosphere, even just once.

Now, it looks like he’ll get his wish to leave his birth planet behind, but that’s the only good part about all of this. Connor will never be able to explore deep space, he’ll never chase down settlements on rogue moons, and he’ll never so much as see a binary sunrise, because Connor Lassiter is going to die, and worst of all, no one in this system or any other will fight it.

Even Connor can’t believe it’s really happening. Sure, he’s had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that his home has stopped being his for quite some time now, but he always assumed he could do something to pull himself out of it. Yeah, he mouthed off in class, and only ever turned up at home after curfew, long past when he was supposed to, but none of those are grounds for this, right? Right?

Not according to his parents, because they’re the ones who have gone and signed away his grounds license. Horrific. Connor found the proof of it by accident, aimlessly scrolling through his parents’ hololibrary in search of something interesting to read or watch. Instead of a new show, though, Connor had accidentally clicked on the tab for his parents’ private work files. 

Connor usually never bothers checking that stuff– who cares about interplanetary taxes and star system loans, anyway– but just as he’d been about to go back to the entertainment folder, he’d spotted his name on a file that read:  Destined for Distribution, and then he’d known.

There’s an old saying about how it takes a lunar colony to raise a child, but sometimes even the proverbial interstellar village isn’t enough. Sometimes you can’t force your offspring to be what you want. The governments of the worlds puzzled over such a dilemma for a long time– if you can’t shape the young generation, after all, you risk losing control of all of humanity forever– and after a series of Heartland Wars and internal disputes, they came up with a solution:  distribution.

Space travel is a relatively new problem in the history of humanity, but they’ve already managed to mess it up. Those in charge at the start of it all wanted new flights, new discoveries, to take over every planet they saw regardless of who lived there and the downfalls of having to carry on a society in every direction. 

After sinking their claws into every star system they could reach, the tension of frenetic interstellar improvement slackened, and what was left was a hastily constructed dystopia, prone to falling apart under the slightest of scuffles. We’re kind of a terrible species, humans, all things considered. We don’t wait until we’ve solved world peace before we take our problems to other planetary systems. Instead, we spread out our grievances until everyone in all the worlds has to suffer as much as we did.

The problem with fast-paced space exploration is that the early adventurers burned through resources just as quickly as they did back on planet Earth, which is now barely more than a clod of ash and dust. To make up for the demands without having to change their tactics, the centralized government sent out a mandate to all its territories:  why not solve two problems in one? Get rid of the teenage crisis by using their resources in a better way. Distribute what the ferals would take up to those who could actually use it.

There’s no way the idea of distribution should have taken on as strongly as it did. Maybe it wasn’t as inhumane in the beginning as they did now, maybe it literally was just about giving away food and clothing and shelter. Now, though? Distribution doesn’t just represent physical objects. It means that the actual bits and pieces of you, the bloody matter and bleached bones that are currently in the body of a child marked for distribution, will be spun apart into individual fragments and given away. 

There’s the idea that there’s only so much space left in space, so to speak, so if you’re no longer needed, your pieces will get distributed to those who need it more. That’s how our glorious society keeps growing, no longer out but in.

Every bit of you will be gone, destined for some better purpose. Some would say that’s poetic. Connor, who is slated to be killed in just this fashion, would call it gruesome. However, no one really cares about the thoughts of someone marked for distribution, and they’re certainly not going to start now. Hell, they haven’t been listening to him for years. Why change?

As Connor swiped through the distribution forms signed in triplicate according to some tradition from a long dead planet, he was chillingly reminded of how easy it was to get rid of him. Every person born on any planet within the Collective’s reach is given a grounds license when they draw their first breath. When it’s decided that they no longer deserve the air in their lungs, the Collective takes back the air and lungs both. Your grounds license is revoked, and from that moment forward, you cease to exist in any way that matters.

After that, you’re sent for distribution. By turning in the forms to confiscate your grounds license, your parents essentially send the Juvey-cops after you. Most kids don’t find out they’re going to get distributed until the Juveys show up at their house and take them away. They’ll have just enough time for a few cries of outrage before getting packaged into a shuttle and spirited to a nearby lunar colony so the doctors can cut you to ribbons. Delightful.

If, on the off chance, you actually do manage to find out that you’re going to get torn to pieces in the name of an equal and fair government, such as Connor, you have a chance to run. He’ll try, of course, but even as he makes his final preparations to kick-AWOL, some disheartening voice in the back of his head tells him that he probably isn’t going to make it very far. You can’t do anything without a grounds license. Not easily, of course. In all honesty, it’s probably just a matter of time until the Juvey-cops catch up to him.

Of course he’s going to run, though. Connor Lassiter is not the type to sit around and wait for his death to come to him. He’ll run until they strip away his very legs. Until then, he can grab a go bag, walk around his house one last time, and then leave in the dead of night before anyone thinks to catch him.

Connor hovers one last second over the threshold of his open door. After this, his fate is up in the air. He could get caught within moments, or he could somehow find a way to stick it out until his eighteenth birthday and survive to tell the tale. The only way he’ll know the answer to that story is if he leaves now.

Connor pushes the air from his lungs and goes. The door shuts quietly behind him, and Connor Lassiter officially disappears. From now on, it’s all up to him. His best plan is to head towards a nearby interstellar transport depot, hope he can find some absentminded pilot who won’t notice some kid sneaking into the back of his starlight frigate, and take him away from this planet. Once he’s offworld, he’ll be able to breathe a little easier. There’s no way they’ll be able to find one kid in a trillion if he finds a far enough system, right?

Until then, Connor will have to keep his head low. Juvey-cops aren’t the only thugs with guns who can cause him trouble. A crop of creeps called parts pirates have sprung up, and if it wasn’t terrible enough to have your limbs hacked off by trained professionals, imagine all that happening by the hands of black market dealers. At that point, Connor would rather just turn himself in, even though that’s a possibility more remote than anything. They say it’s within their rights to take the groundsless off the streets, so whatever the parts pirates do along the way is just another obstacle he’ll have to avoid.

As if he’s got a ton of great choices, though. Connor’s going to be unwound. That term’s been discouraged by the Collective ever since the idea of distribution picked up steam– it’s discourteous to the victims of distribution, apparently, and casts a pall on the whole process– but, like, they’re taking Connor’s organs, so he feels like he can call it whatever he wants. Fuck. He’s an Unwind. Why should they care what gory words he uses to describe it? They can dry their tears with his skin grafts.

Connor makes it to the transport depot by foot about an hour and a half later. Not a bad time, all things considered, but his veins are still thrumming with an unearthly need to get away by the time the rows of landing zones come into view. It takes some difficulty to hop the fence on the back end, but it’s old and no one really bothers checking here anyway. No one turns up to a depot like this unless you’re low on fuel or maglev boots before your next trip out of the star system.

Or, of course, unless you’re Connor Lassiter and you’re going to die. Connor hits the ground and nearly takes a spill before managing to right himself just in time. It would not do to break an ankle or something before he can even get onto a ship. Injuries would only slow him down, and the Juveys would have plenty of time to wait for his unwinding while the bone mended.

Connor slinks between rows of sleeping cruisers. He’ll have to pick his ticket to freedom carefully. A lot of the old interstellar war vets took to transportation jobs once they were out of the line of duty, apparently they like having a low-stress profession while still getting to see the stars, but they’ll aim at any unwanted visitors with the same reflexes as back in their soldier days.

No, Connor’s better off hitching a ride with a newbie or someone else who’s checked out enough to forget to do a once-over of their cargo bay. He finds the perfect place down a few rows– an old cargo boat, HBY-300s class. Old as anything, and, judging by the pervasive rust stains, not well looked after. Connor can’t see any lights on in the pilot’s seat, so he hurries up the landing ramp and immediately trips the security system. 

He doesn’t even see it coming, which is not great for his chances, obviously. He should have assumed there would be something like this, but Connor has been jittery for days now, and at some point his guard, already low, just gave up on him. Lights flash on and the beeping voice of a security AI announces him as ConNor LasSiter, AWOL. 

Too late, Connor spots the notice of registration fastened on the side of the ship, how it’s under the ownership of a former Juvey-cop. Probably one still missing the old glory days of hunting down kids who kicked-AWOL, judging by the overeager defense mechanisms. The guy spends his days ferrying shipments from one corner of the galaxy to another, and in his downtime, he picks up escaped Unwinds. How patriotic of him to fulfill such an important civic duty.

Connor swears under his breath, immediately turning tail and sprinting out of the ship. Lights start to click on across the depot’s hangar bay, and the telltale siren of things gone badly begins to echo across the empty space. Connor can hear the sounds of people starting to rush towards the ships, and he cuts an increasingly narrow diagonal across the shipyard, trying to stay out of the path of search beams.

After hauling ass back over the fence, which seems twice as difficult to climb now that he’s in danger, Connor hurtles across plain cement, aiming for the untamed forest across the road. It’s so wild in there that it would be impossible for low flying craft to find him which, judging by the increasing din of engines coming his way, is a necessity right now. 

He didn’t think they’d be able to find him so fast, but maybe one of his parents stopped by his room already and figured out he was gone. They could have called the Juvey-cops and had them here by now, especially with Mr. Reliving the Glory Days of Police Work back there already getting a facial scan on him. Connor thought he had been smart by ditching any tech so they couldn’t track him, but he’s forgotten one crucial thing about the life of an AWOL:  you don’t just have to be smart, you have to be lucky. Looks like Connor’s days of finding four leaf synth-clovers are behind him.

Out of the depot’s floodlights, the ground under Connor’s feet quickly transitions from concrete to grass. The sudden softness making him stumble. As Connor straightens back up, he has to fling an arm in front of his face to protect himself from a sudden, powerful wind coursing down around him. The grass, illuminated out of nowhere by twin blinding beams, is bent flat to the ground from the force of an engine. The engine of a small shuttle, as it turns out. A Juvey-cop’s shuttle, which has found him.

Connor can see the reflection of his eyes, wide as dinner plates, on the shiny surface of the shuttle. He looks terrified, and a bit insane, which all things considered isn’t the least realistic depiction of him. Connor’s brain is a mess. He thought he’d have a little more time until the law enforcement found him. Looks like his period of staying undercover has come and gone.

The shuttle jerks to a landing in front of him, and a man begins to come down the landing ramp, tranq gun in his hands. Connor freezes for a moment, then drags himself to attention as the man gets closer. Once he’s far enough down that Connor can read the name stitched into the pocket of his uniform– Officer J.T. Nelson– Connor gets himself together and runs, rolling under the nose of the craft to the small space underneath the belly of the ship. This clearly disorients the Juvey-cop, whose footsteps abruptly come to a halt on the metal walkway before continuing again, albeit this time slower.

“Come on out, kid,” the guy shouts, “There’s nowhere you can go.”

Connor’s not about to just turn himself in after everything, though, so he creeps further underneath the ship and around the back. The cop follows him, tucking the tranq gun into his belt so he can use his hands to help himself crouch under the lower parts of the ship in search of Connor.

“You can’t hide under here,” Officer Nelson calls, voice echoing off of the metal curves of the shuttle, “I’ll just crush you when I take off again.”

This is probably true but, as Nelson starts to stalk further around the perimeter of the shuttle, Connor gets an idea as to how he might be able to escape this little encounter. It’s a terrible idea, to be sure, and will probably get him killed if he does it wrong, but it’s not like he has any other options at the moment.

So, Connor stays deathly quiet, heart hammering in his chest as he stays pressed flat to the lower wing of the shuttle, and he waits for Nelson to walk closer. The officer indulges, drawing nearby, and Connor reaches out a trembling hand and pulls the tranq gun from the officer’s belt, just like that. Easy. The guy doesn’t even notice.

Connor eases himself out of his hiding place once Nelson has doubled back the other way, then sprints towards the landing ramp of the ship. He makes it halfway up before Nelson reacts to the sound of his heels thundering up the metal incline and bolts back towards the entrance of the shuttle.

“Get back here!” Nelson makes it to the base of the ramp just as Connor reaches the top. 

As the Juvey-cop starts to race up the landing ramp, Connor looks around wildly. His eyes land on a button near the ramp entry and he slams his palm onto it. Thankfully, the button does what Connor had hoped for and the ramp begins to fold up towards the shuttle again, unfortunately with Nelson still scrambling for purchase on the surface. Connor can’t risk the guy getting close enough for Connor to shove him off, so he looks at the tranq gun in his hands and figures out the next best thing.

Nelson reaches the same conclusion as Connor at about the same time. “Don’t you dare, kid,” he begins to shout, but Connor’s finger is already on the trigger.

The Juvey-cop jerks back with the impact of the tranquilizing dart, and he has enough time to snarl out a swear before his limp body falls backwards off of the ramp and into the grassy dirt a few feet below. The landing ramp fastens to the wall of the shuttle with a dull click, and Connor rocks back onto his heels, unable to believe what he’s just done.

He can’t stay in here forever. At some point, that cop is going to wake up, probably with reinforcements, and they’ll smoke him out or something. Then again, as the background roar of the engine reminds Connor of its presence, he realizes that he might not have to leave after all. The Juvey-cop was stupid enough to leave his ship on when he left to pursue Connor, so maybe– maybe he could just stay here after all.

Stars, maybe he could go. Up to space. Juvey-cop shuttles were designed with both ground and space capabilities in mind. He might not be able to set record hyperspace flights in this thing, but he’ll at least be able to crawl to a neighboring planet and ditch the shuttle before hitching a ride on a cruiser like his original plan.

Connor shuffles towards the pilot’s seat in the cockpit and is greeted by the sight of dozens of glowing switches and buttons, all beeping and blinking up at him. He takes a seat, staring, and then tentatively pulls up on the yoke. The shuttle lunges forward and up a little bit, sending Connor sprawling to the side until he manages to fall into the pilot’s chair once more and strap himself in.

After managing to stabilize himself and the shuttle, Connor regards the instrument panel with renewed focus. He’s never been able to get his cosmic license, and that’s damn near out of the question now that he doesn’t even have a grounds license, but he’d had a friend of a friend once who’d known a thing or two about how to fly a spacecraft. 

There was this older guy named Carson Shepherd who used to hang around the parking lot after school got out for the day. He’d sit and swap drinks with some of Connor’s friends. The guy had graduated a year or two ago, and it was anyone’s guess how he’d managed to make it to eighteen without getting his grounds license revoked. Carson had flung himself into the life of a military boeuf and wouldn’t let anyone forget it, either. He wouldn’t stop talking about how he was going to run air strafe runs on distant planets, which Connor only listened to because he’d occasionally talk about how to fly a ship.

Stuff like that was mainly brought up as a bragging point, of course, but Connor was starstruck-crazy for anything space related, so he’d tuned in as much as he could bear. Now, Connor wracks his mind for any tidbit of information Carson had given away. He needs to disengage the landing gear, he needs to get himself airborne before people start looking.

He flips a few switches and is rewarded with a grinding sound somewhere below him. A red light flickers off, and is replaced with a green one when Connor shifts the engine into a mode for takeoff. Pulling on the yoke again, this time slower, Connor is able to drag the shuttle up and up until the tops of the trees are waving below him.

He shouts once in triumph, then again, more loudly, when a readout on the dashboard offers to turn on automatic steering. Connor presses ‘accept’ as quickly as he can, then inputs a destination. Odds are, there’s a tracking beacon somewhere on this ship, so he can’t take it anywhere in the worlds, but if he swaps to another planet in the system, he can transfer to another ship that can take him far away from here.

The nav readout offers him a few choices within the same sector, OH-10, as Connor. He’s on Akron-C right now, home planet that will be home no longer, but Connor presses the button for the small moon just one orbit over, OH-10-XXIII. It’s a small lunar body, hardly anything there at all except for a State Home and some religious communities. No one would look for him there, and by the time they did, he’d be long gone.

Connor hovers by the pilot seat for a few moments longer, just in case something goes wrong, but when no warning lights flash and the air remains devoid of sirens, he accepts that he might actually have made a good decision and sinks back into his own skin, tension finally starting to melt away.

Connor watches the ship carry him up and away from the planet that had once been his own. He has no idea if he’ll ever return; if he’ll even want to, for that matter. Instead, he fixes his eyes on the ever broadening expanse of space, and lets the bright pinpricks of stars take over his mind.

Connor Lassiter is finally offworld.

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[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eleven: I Still Miss You Most of All

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor Lassiter should not be alive.

He is aware of this before he even opens his eyes, before he even wakes up at all. The knowledge is lurking somewhere in his mind without Connor being able to vocalize why it’s true. He doesn’t remember the explosion, not at first. That comes later, with the realization that he will never be wholly Connor again.

Other than the yawning maw of the terrible truth that he should have died many standard hours ago, Connor wakes to dead silence punctuated occasionally with the expensive sort of beeping only heard in nice medical zones. There’s a certain clarity to the mechanical chatter that you don’t get in haphazardly patched together med bays like the ones on the Graveyard. Connor can’t describe it with words, but he’d know it when he hears it, and he knows it now. There’s something to the fact that nothing whines or groans with exhaustion, maybe, like everything is new and actually works the way it’s supposed to. When you’re used to listening to your world collapse around you, anything that’s properly functional stands out like a sore thumb.

Connor wakes up, dreamy and relaxed. He is calm for once in his life. A voice in the back of his head tells him that isn’t right, but he shuts it out for now. Connor has been stressed for years. Can’t he have one moment to himself?

Already, though, the peace is draining away from him, collecting in puddles on this perfectly polished floor and slipping through invisible holes between the tiles. There is no grime in this room. Everything is bright and clean, and the linens covering his body are pristine white. Connor hasn’t seen something that’s actually pure white in months. Everything in the Graveyard accumulates dust and rust so quickly that it’s no use trying. It doesn’t matter how many times you wash your clothes, they’ll wear out soon enough anyway. Might as well save the effort for something that matters, like not dying.

The Graveyard. For some reason, the name of the place strikes an odd chord somewhere in Connor’s mind. He should be there now, shouldn’t he? He wasn’t supposed to leave it for a while, at least another year, but now he’s in this chamber of expensive lighting and legitimate medical equipment, so obviously something’s gone wrong there. This could be Death, but Connor doubts he’d have to deal with medical infrastructure after his heart ceased to beat.

He has the brief, horrible thought that maybe he’s been unwound and this is just some part of his brain waking up in another kid’s head, but then a nurse in crisp scrubs walks through the door and greets him with a resounding, “Good to see you awake, Connor,” so maybe he’s still himself after all.

Connor squints at her. “What’s going on?”

The nurse smiles placidly. “You’ve just woken up, of course. We’ll need to run a few tests, but after that you should be cleared to go.”

Connor frowns. “Go where?”

Her smile doesn’t waver for a second, even despite Connor’s outpouring of questions. “To meet our boss, of course. He’s been waiting for a while, but of course you can’t be blamed for your tardiness. Truthfully, we weren’t even sure if you were going to wake up at all.”

Somewhere between his ribs, Connor’s heart begins to hammer. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I wake up? Who are you?”

“Connor,” the nurse says sweetly, laying a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that’s probably meant to be comforting but comes across more like a prison warden keeping her inmate in line, “You survived an explosion that decimated an entire star cruiser. No one would blame you for succumbing to the blast.”

As she says it, the memories come back in a rush. It’s not like he’d been suffering from amnesia, more like he’d been willfully trying not to think about all of the horrors he’d just experienced. Images flash through his mind in one fatal string:  the Juveys, boarding the ship, the screaming of the Deadmen as they were dragged off to their fates, Risa, climbing into an escape pod, Connor’s own pod destroyed in a shrieking of metal come undone. Roland, chasing him down. The fight in the engine room and the resulting inferno.

Nothing makes sense after the explosion. Connor remembers Roland yelling in surprise, the sudden upheaval as the ground beneath his feet was shot away, and then falling, falling without respite. For what could either have been half a second or perhaps an eon, Connor’s mind had been a mess of confusion, like he was hearing not just his own panicked thoughts but Roland’s terrified inner monologue as well, but then everything had sorted out and Connor was just Connor, unconscious in the burning wreck of the Graveyard, utterly alone and waiting to die.

Except he hadn’t died and he had woken up here. Connor doesn’t remember getting picked up, but he hadn’t remembered a lot after losing consciousness, which is often how unconsciousness works in the first place. Another thing that Connor doesn’t remember is what happened to Risa, and that troubles him even more than whatever happened to him. What if her pod was engulfed in the blast? What if she’d come that close to getting out alive just for the Graveyard to pull her back into death?

Connor would never forgive himself. Although the explosion in the engine room wasn’t necessarily his fault– he distinctly remembers yelling at Roland to stop shooting wildly, after all– but he was still there, and that puts enough blood on his hands to paint everything in red.

Connor needs to see her. It’s an urge akin to dying of thirst, he craves the sight of her more than anything else. If he dies here and now, at least he could see her one more time before he goes. He misses her like a chopped off limb. If this is where their stories diverge, Connor thinks he will nurse this wound until he can do nothing else. He’ll lose his mind gnawing at the stump of where there was once something bright and beautiful, a girl who knew him better than anyone else and still wanted him at the end of the worlds.

Maybe she’s here. Maybe this is where they put all the victims of the explosion. “Where is she?” Connor asks, voice thick and dry.

The nurse cocks her head to the side. “Where is who?”

Connor opens his mouth to answer, but it occurs to him that, if these people aren’t one hundred percent on his side, he probably shouldn’t give them any more reasons to look for Risa, so he snaps his jaws shut again. It won’t matter anyway, they already knew Connor and Risa ran away together back at the start of it all. Even if they both die from this, their names will always be spoken together in the same breath, two halves of the same story. Connor likes that far more than he would care to admit. It only makes sense that she would be a part of him forever.

The nurse is still looking at him quizzically, so Connor starts talking again to distract her from his slip up. “So, I can leave after you declare me fit or something?”

The nurse shakes her head. “You’ll have to talk to the man in charge, of course.”

Connor nods impatiently, “Yes, but after that, I can go?”

The nurse laughs as if he’s told a funny joke, although Connor isn’t sure that he has. “Oh, no. You’re still to be distributed, of course. We’re not going to let one conversation get in the way of that.”

Connor immediately tenses up and starts to catalog all the ways he could get out of here. His body still feels a little tired, but that’s nothing. The door is at the far end of the white, shiny room, and although this nurse is between him and the exit, Connor is fairly certain he could knock her down if he needed to.

“You’re going to distribute me?” He asks, trying to buy time while he thinks of an escape plan.

“Why wouldn’t we?” The nurse queries, seemingly oblivious to the obvious answer. “Distribution benefits the galaxy, Connor. Surely you don’t think just one life is more important than all of us in the grand scheme of things. Besides, I thought you would have seen the importance of distribution by now, especially considering your arm.”

Connor’s frantic search of the room comes to an abrupt stop. “What do you mean, considering my arm?” He asks slowly.

The nurse gestures to his right arm, which up until now has been comfortably hidden beneath the pristine white linens. “It was replaced in the explosion. Funny how that works.”

Cautiously, carefully, as if expecting to see a monster instead of a limb, Connor reaches out his left arm to pull the sheets away from his right side. Immediately, he has to clap his good hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. There is still an arm attached to his right shoulder, yes, but it isn’t his. The skin is darker, the muscles stronger in unfamiliar places. And, most pressingly of all, there is the tattoo of a shark inked into the skin of the forearm that is not Connor’s. Which means, of course, that this is Roland’s arm on Connor’s body.

Connor presses himself back against the bed, trying to swallow back the wave of nausea that crests over him. He’s heard rumors of things like this happening, of course, freak accidents out in the farthest reaches of space that ended up with two people accidentally swapping parts, but  he always assumed they were just ghost stories fabricated to scare students out of making hyperspace jumps without correctly calculating their trajectories. He never thought it would actually happen to him, nor that, of all the donors, he would end up with the arm of someone who wanted to kill him. Who tried to kill him, and was shooting at Connor until his very last breath.

As if thinking along the same lines, the fingers on Connor’s stolen right arm twitch a little, forming a fist before relaxing again. Connor does not remember ever commanding the digits to move, which means that some part of Roland is still in control. The doctors saw the arm swap, obviously, but how do they know for certain that Connor’s brain wasn’t affected? What if there are still bits and pieces of Roland left in Connor’s head, never to return to normal again? When Connor thinks of Risa, when he thinks of hurting someone, will it be his own choice or Roland somehow, poisoning his mind?

Fighting back bile, Connor asks the nurse, “Can you put it back? My arm, I mean. Can you give me back my arm?”

The nurse chuckles. “That would be incredibly difficult. The donor is in a, ah, precarious position right now. The explosion decimated his body so much that even we couldn’t use it. So no, you can’t have your arm back.”

Something in Connor feels a strange sense of sick joy that these people, whoever they are, wouldn’t be able to use the rest of Roland as distributed material. He may have died, but he got out without giving in, and that’s more than most ferals can say. Again, Connor isn’t wholly certain if the thought is his or Roland’s, but regardless of the source, he gets the feeling that they’re both in agreement over this.

While Connor is at war with himself, the nurse stands, checking a few readouts on a holopad before gesturing for him to stand. “You seem in fine condition, so we’ll take you to meet the boss. He’s right down the hall. I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting for long.”

Connor eyes her closely, but the woman gives nothing away. It’s probably smart to run now, but Connor is, admittedly, a little curious to see just who’s in charge around here. There are no logos anywhere, no clue as to where he is, so getting some answers would be nice.

The second the nurse escorts Connor out of the med room, he’s greeted with the sight of at least a dozen soldiers loitering in the hall outside. So much for trying to run away. Trying to instill a sense of false bravado into his voice, Connor asks casually, “All this security for me? Gee, I’m honored you think so much of me.”

The nearest soldier glares but says nothing. So much for getting a reaction. Committed to the cause now, Connor steps in front of him, grins, and says, “Nice socks, idiot.”

The soldier glances down at his boots, confused, thus breaking his cold demeanor for what he eventually realizes is just a little trick on Connor’s end. Connor flashes him a jaunty smirk, which makes the glare return to the soldier’s face in full force. One small victory is enough for Connor, though, and he heads down the hall to his fate with his spirits high.

The nurse leads him to a door, and knocks once before ushering him inside. The door shuts tight behind him, leaving Connor with no choice but to face the man waiting for him.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Something about the guy fills Connor with a sickly sort of dread, although for the life of him, he cannot explain why. He looks a little young for someone to be treated with this sort of respect, more like mid-thirties instead of in his fifties or sixties, but this, again, feels wrong. 

As the man leans forward to get a better look at Connor, the harsh lighting overhead reveals details of his face that hadn’t been visible at first glance. Although great care has obviously been taken to ensure that each surgery was as smooth as possible, evidence of many new pieces of flesh still reveal themselves under the bright lights. The cheekbones are a little too high for his facial structure, his eyes are too bright for a man of this age, and his skin is impossibly tight and smooth. Connor has seen many rich parents with a lot of work done, but this guy beats them all out. Connor can’t imagine how many kids must have been put under the knife to keep this man looking fresh, but they probably could have filled the whole damn Graveyard.

“Who are you?” Connor hisses.

The man smiles. “Honestly, Connor, I was hoping you’d piece that together a little sooner. Here, I’ll give you a hint:  you’re speaking to the head of the Proactive Citizenry.”

Alarm bells go off in Connor’s head. Of all the people to want Connor in pieces, the PC has got to be at the top of the list. They’ve hated Connor ever since he stole that Juvey-cop’s ship what feels like a lifetime ago. Hayden, Connor, and Risa have listened in to Centerworld radio frequencies on countless nights, laughing themselves senseless over the vitriol of the pro-distribution propaganda aimed at Connor. It’s not so funny anymore, though, when Connor is in the belly of the synth-beast with no friends left to protect him.

“So, you’re the CEO or something?” Connor asks. “Fascinating. Do you meet with all of the kids you’re about to distribute? Do you like to know our tragic backstories before you steal our parts?”

The man scoffs. “We’re not stealing, Connor, we’re taking what we’re owed. And no, I’m not the CEO. Try again.”

Connor squints at him. Maybe the guy’s older than he thought. “You’re the, uh, father of the CEO? Grandfather?”

The man rolls his eyes. “Don’t be silly, Connor. I am PC. I started it.” 

Connor shakes his head. “No, that’s impossible. Proactive Citizenry is old-Earth ancient. It was made when humans first started exploring the galaxy. There’s no way even your great-grandparents could have started it.”

It’s unthinkable. Connor hasn’t brushed up on his history in a while, so he doesn’t remember the exact name of Proactive Citizenry’s creator, but it can’t be this guy. That was centuries ago. Whoever started this whole mess is long dead, their bones withered away to ash.

Unless.

Unless, of course, they found a way to stay around. Maybe the creator’s original bones are ash, but who’s to say that they couldn’t just swap them out, piece by piece? Donor by donor? Distribute by distribute?

Connor draws in a sharp, horrified breath, and the man nods, looking pleased. “You get it now, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. I always liked the eyes, I must say. That was the part I hated getting rid of the most. I held onto my original pair for as long as I could, but they gave out in the end. Everything does. No matter what anyone tries, Connor Lassiter, resistance will get you nowhere. Even if you’re the Akron AWOL.”

Connor feels like he might throw up. “You’re the one who created the PC? You must be centuries old. There’s no way you could have kept swapping out dead body parts that long, you’d have to give out at some point.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have the money for it,” the man muses, “But that has never been a problem for me. The Heartlands have always been blessed with wealth. Any problem can be solved if you just give people a good enough reason to solve it. Money often does the trick.”

The Heartlands. That does it. Mental gears click into place, and Connor remembers the guy’s name at last. “You’re Dorian Heartland. The original supporter of distribution.”

Heartland spreads his hands indulgently, as if expecting applause. “There you go. See, maybe I’ll be able to turn a profit from your brain matter after all.”

Connor stares at him unthinkingly. “You want my brain?”

“I want all of you,” Heartland says soothingly. “That’s how distribution is meant to work, remember? No part wasted. I would love one of your eyes for myself, though. Mine are starting to get a little foggy, and I only take parts from the best characters. Having the irises of the Akron AWOL, now, that would be something. I am made of history, Connor Lassiter. Both the successes and the failures. It’s a reminder to all of my people that they can join me in two ways:  under my empire, or under my knife.”

Connor’s stomach roils. “Those aren’t all just feral parts, then. You’ve had adults unwound.”

Heartland tsks. “Naughty word, Connor. Unwinding. We’ve made it a professional process, there’s no need to degrade it like that. But yes, you’re right. The parts still work, even when they’re not young. I am made of many men and women. Do you remember that cop whose ship you stole? I have one of his ears so I could hear you in a crowd and know it was you, just in case. There was a parts pirate once who thought he could outdo me, a man named Divan. I have a good chunk of his brain, now there was a man who could do business. Another pirate was a little too brutal for my tastes– the Burmese Dah Zey, I’m certain you’ve heard of him before. These are his hands. And then, a woman named Roberta Griswold– I told her to make cyborgs a thing, and she let me down. Now her lungs keep me breathing.”

Heartland takes a deep gulp of air, chest heaving with the passion of all the people he's dismembered. Connor wants to yell at him to shut up, but some horrified part of him is fascinated by all the names, all the sick ends, and he stays silent.

“Part of my heart belongs to a useless boy named Argent Skinner. You probably don’t remember Argent, actually. He was really obsessed with you, you know.” Heartland’s voice is wheedling, like a teenager teasing a friend about a schoolgirl crush. It sets Connor’s teeth on edge. “You didn’t even notice him. He worked at the boundary checkpoint where you slipped under the radar. He was going to track you down while you were passing through his little station and take you with him, but you managed to give him the slip. That made him so angry that he came to the PC. I took that anger and I made it glorious. I made it me.”

Connor’s right arm twitches at his side, the foreign fingers curling into a tight fist. He wants to slam it into Heartland’s nose, hear the bones crack and watch the blood gush forth. Connor’s been in fights back when he was still in school, and he’s definitely been angry before, but nothing like this. This rage consumes him, but it isn’t Connor’s. Judging by the way the arm with the shark tattoo keeps jerking forward like it has plans of its own, Connor would wager a guess that it’s Roland bursting forth again, wanting to make his vengeance known.

Heartland follows Connor’s line of vision and his lips curl into something almost akin to a smile. “See, Connor? I’m not the only one with borrowed pieces. You’re just like me.”

Connor shakes his head frantically. “I’m nothing like you. I didn’t want this. You did.”

Heartland tilts his head to the side, acknowledging this. “True, I did want it. I wanted it better than anyone else, too. Even when Centerworld started losing steam for distribution, I wanted it still. I had to step in a few times to convince them to keep it up, but they got there in the end.”

Connor feels like screaming. He kind of wants to, except he’s afraid that if he shouts too loudly Heartland will come to admire his vocal chords and decide to take those, too. He has a twisted mental image of Risa hearing his voice from the shadows and running towards it only for Heartland to emerge, smiling as coldly as her as he is at Connor right now.

“This has all been a lie, then. Everything about distribution being used to further the life of the galaxy. It was never about the galaxy, was it? It was only about protecting you. Your life.” Connor chokes out.

Heartland nods, extending his hands in a theatrical gesture. “I don’t care about the rest of them. Why should I? I made the distribution project work in the first place. They didn’t help, why should they reap the rewards? It’s about equal labor for equal pay, and they didn’t contribute one thing. Now they will. I mean, don’t you hate it when slackers get all the privileges that you had to fight for?”

Connor’s throat is tight. “Why are you telling me all of this? Why are you even talking to me at all? Does monologuing make you live longer, too?”

Heartland chuckles. “No, no. I just want you to understand. I hate to say it, Connor, but your little adventure has caught on across the galaxy. I want you to release a holo saying that you condone any attempts to avoid distribution, that you’ve learned your lesson and it’s better for everyone to follow the rules. Once you prove you’re with us, the little hero of the ferals will be forgotten, and no one else will be inspired by your misguided attempt to run. It’s as easy as that, boy. Five minutes of your time, that’s all I need.”

Connor’s brow furrows. “So you want me to go against literally everything I believe, and then what? You let me go?”

Heartland’s borrowed eyes dance with mirth. “No, no. You misunderstand me. This is not a deal we’re making, this is an order. You will make the speech, and then you will be distributed. I do not trust you to live in any world. I want all loose ends tied up, and that involves you.”

Connor’s stomach does a slow roll. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, why the sunfire would I help you? Usually, when someone wants something, they have to give a little first. Thought you’d know about that from all your high profile business bullshit.”

“Watch your mouth, Connor, or I’ll take your tongue first,” Heartland says chidingly. “This isn’t business. This is me extracting use from a useless bit of biological matter. I don’t need you alive. I don’t even need you to want to do this. I have ways of making you comply.”

Connor takes an involuntary step back. He tries the door behind him, but it’s locked; Connor didn’t even hear the pin slide into place. He must have been too distracted staring at the monstrosity before him.

Heartland smirks. “There’s nowhere to run, Connor. Nowhere to go. Your only option is me.”

The man sinks back into his chair, not even bothering to block Connor. And why should he? They’re high up in some kind of office building, several stories off the ground. There are no other doors except the locked one behind him. According to Heartland, there really is no way out.

Heartland, though, has had several centuries worth of comfortable, cozy life. Heartland has not had to risk himself in a very long time. Heartland has no idea the distance a feral would go to survive, because he has not had to fight tooth and nail for so much as one more day alive. Connor, however, has, and Connor will never go out like this. As long as there is any way out, Connor will take it. Even if that way out involves the window overlooking a drop at least five stories to the ground.

Connor launches himself towards the glass pane. Of all the ideas he’s had, this is probably the worst, but it’s that or get distributed, so no hurt feelings there. He grabs an office chair as he goes, slamming it through the window and breaking it instantly. 

Heartland’s face goes waxy. “Lassiter, be serious. You cannot possibly–”

Connor silences him with a glare. “Never tell me what I can’t do. Don’t you know ferals never follow the rules?”

And with that terrible bit of drama, Connor throws himself from the window. He turns as he falls, catching hold of the narrow lip. He’s not strong enough to hold himself from this forever, but he doesn’t have to be. All he needs is to slow his fall bit by bit, piece by piece, by dropping from ledge to ledge until he’s on the ground. An awning stretching over a few windows catches him for a while, letting him roll to a stop before crawling to the next ledge, and so on and so forth until he’s halfway down the side of the building. 

Victory practically within his grasp, Connor makes the incredibly stupid decision to look down, and immediately regrets it. The ground, although closer to him than when he’d first leapt out of the building, seems lightyears away. Connor’s feet loll perilously over the precipice, and he has to snap his eyes shut so he doesn’t lose it completely. It’s not about making it to the bottom. All he has to do is find the next window ledge. Connor reaches out with trembling fingers and it’s within his grasp, then he can awkwardly shuffle his body down and over. Then the next ledge, and the next. He can do this.

Eyes still shut, Connor stretches out a foot to find the next ledge, but his legs refuse to go any lower. Risking another glimpse down, Connor realizes that he’s actually on the ground. He shades his eyes with his hand, staring up at the building he’s just escaped. Heartland may have centuries of knowledge over Connor, but the man has no idea how to handle a mad runaway. Funny, except he’s definitely sending reinforcements to track down Connor right now, so he’s got to get a move on.

Right on cue, the doors to the building burst open and a swarm of soldiers flood out. Connor turns and runs into the city around him, not caring where he’s headed so long as it takes him away. He has absolutely no idea what planet he’s on, let alone what system, but that doesn’t matter. Connor always knows how to run, regardless of his exact position in the galaxy.

He takes an abrupt turn down some alleyways, hoping the tight quarters will shake at least a few of the soldiers as they scramble for position. Connor whips around corners left and right, but his mad dash comes to a sudden halt when he comes face to face with a dead end. Swearing under his breath, Connor doubles back, but the soldiers are bearing down on him and there’s nowhere to go. The walls are high and slick with something that’s hopefully just oil, so Connor can’t climb his way out of this one.

Well, he’s never backed down from a fight, has he? Connor swallows hard, glancing around for something he can use as a weapon. There’s no way he can fight off all of these soldiers, but maybe he can try, at least. There’s no way he’s going down without giving it his all.

Just before Connor can pick up an unwieldy piece of metal pipe and hope for the best, a door swings open to his left and a voice hisses at him, “Quick! In here!”

Connor has no other options, so he lunges for the door, which slams behind him just as the soldiers round the corner. Connor is immediately plunged into darkness, but he can just make out the snap of a lock into place.

A handheld light flicks on; harsh and fluorescent, probably an old industrial bulb. That design is common in outer territories, but Connor didn’t expect to find anything so cheaply made here. He hadn’t been able to get a good glimpse of the city due to the fact that he was running for his life, but the brief snippets of the cityscape he had caught seemed polished and very, very expensive.

The light doesn’t just reveal income, though, it also draws into focus several faces all clustered around Connor. They seem to be of various ages, but all are teenagers and, judging by the slightly haunted look in their eyes that Connor saw most fiercely in the Graveyard, all are kids running from distribution.

One of the younger boys stares unabashedly at Connor. “So, it’s true. You’re actually the Akron AWOL.”

An older girl with bright streaks of pink in her hair glares at the boy who had spoken. “Shut up, Emby. You promised you’d be cool about this.”

“I am,” Emby protests, “I’m just asking, that’s all. No need to get defensive, Mai.”

Connor chuckles in spite of himself. After hearing Heartland’s little sermon, he wasn’t entirely sure that he would ever be able to laugh again, but the easy banter broke through his defenses before he realized what was happening. Painfully, it also reminds him of the Graveyard, all the conversations he’ll never hear again.

“He’s fine,” Connor assures Mai. “And yes, I’m Connor. You’re, uh, Emby?”

“That’s what they call me,” the younger boy assures him with an audibly congested sniff. “Mai came up with the nickname. Short for mouth-breather. She said it’s right on the money.”

“You don’t have to directly quote me every single time,” Mai grumbles.

Connor smirks, then turns to the other teenagers still standing around him. “Who are the rest of you?”

“Diego,” another boy announces himself. His eyes flash, giving the impression of cleverness. Clever enough to not get involved in Mai and Emby’s squabbling, at least, which gives him some credit.

An older boy introduces himself as Vincent. The harsh light from the bulb shines off of countless piercings all over his face; Connor has no idea what piercing shop would have agreed to give a teenager that many studs, everyone knows that giving tattoos or piercings to AWOLs is just damaging the merchandise, but Connor himself is standing here with someone else’s ink, so maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Seeing as Vincent is idling rather close to Mai, Connor immediately suspects them of being together, and his theory is proven correct when their hands brush together in a move that’s probably not nearly as slick as they think it is.

Two more teenagers introduce themselves as Blaine and Bam, respectively. Both of them seem vaguely unapproachable, but that energy kind of extends to the whole group save Emby. It makes sense, though; if you want to survive on your own in the underbelly of a city like this, you’ve got to be able to cut off anyone at a moment’s notice. These kids are used to living off the skin of their teeth, although this doesn’t explain why they risked their necks to get Connor to safety.

Connor folds his arms across his chest. “Why am I here?”

Bam scoffs. “Would you like it better if we dumped you back out there for the soldiers to find you?”

Connor arches a brow. “If that’s your attitude, why did you save me in the first place? Suns, how’d you even know I was here?”

Blaine flashes Connor a sharp grin that’s about as warm as light reflecting off of a scalpel. “We keep close watch of everyone in this city. Dozens of Juvey-cops converged on one building out of nowhere. When the Juveys made that mass arrest on some unclaimed cruiser two days ago, we all waited for the news that Connor Lassiter had been caught, but it never came out. There’s no way they’d pass up a chance to brag about getting you at last, so we put two and two together and figured out you’d have to be here. We’ve been keeping an eye out in case you managed to run, but we didn’t think you’d be lucky enough to run right by us.”

“That’s a great coincidence for me, then,” Connor says, still not entirely believing it.

Diego snorts. “He left out the part where we hacked into the citywide security cams months ago. We tracked you the second you left and hurried over so we could catch you before it was too late. Coincidence is for cowards.”

This earns him an irate glare from Mai. “Feel free to spill any more of our secrets while you’re at it, Diego. I’m sure caution means nothing when it comes to the starloving Akron AWOL.”

Diego just chuckles, which Connor has to respect, because Mai looks like she wants to tear the boy to shreds. “He’s not going to trust us unless we give him a reason, obviously. Look at him. He’s already thinking about running.”

This is, admittedly, true. Like Connor thought at the start, then. Diego is the smart one. Well, if they’ve got access to every sec-cam in the city, maybe they’re all the smart ones. That would explain how they survive down here, certainly.

Connor does his best to look as casual as he can. “You want something from me, obviously, or you wouldn’t have bothered to save me. How about we cut to the chase and you tell me what that is?”

Bam shrugs. “We want you gone. Sooner you’re offworld, the better. We don’t want the Juveys nosing in on our operation. Plus, we’ve got friends at some of the distribution colonies. Figured you’d be inclined to at least pretend to help.”

Connor frowns. “What friends? Maybe I know them.”

Bam actually looks a little chagrined at this. “Well, I don’t know him personally. But, uh, we tuned in to his radio show. Thought it was great. He convinced us to try and rescue AWOLs if we found them. That’s how we got Emby and Vince. He’s a friend of yours, actually. We want you to save Hayden Upchurch.”

Connor feels his shoulders sag in relief. “Hayden’s alive?”

“For now,” Bam mumbles. “He’s in a colony somewhere, so time is ticking. It feels wrong that he should die when he’s done so much for us.”

Connor can’t help a wicked grin. “So you’re a fan, huh? I’ll have to tell Hayden that he’s got admirers across the systems.”

Bam slugs him in the shoulder, which, ow. “Shut up, Lassiter. Just do it.”

Connor rubs his aching arm. “Alright, alright. I’ve got no problems with that. Say, how do you know where he is? Have they been announcing where the kids from the Graveyard went?”

He tries to keep the obvious longing from his voice, but clearly he doesn’t do such a good job of it, because Emby pipes up loudly, “You’re looking for Risa Ward, aren’t you? Is she, like, your girlfriend?”

This immediately earns the younger boy swats on the head from Mai and Bam at the same time. “She’s not my girlfriend,” Connor hastens to say, which only makes him feel more like an idiot instead of less. 

His cheeks heat up while he forces out the words, so he’s pretty sure that no one believes him at all. It’s not Connor’s fault if he got distracted by the idea. It seems nice, after all. Having Risa be his girlfriend. It would probably be cool. If, you know, Connor had any idea where she was, or if she was still whole.

Mai’s visibly smirking now. “Relax, she’s still alive. Actually, we caught a transmission yesterday that you’ll probably want to hear.”

Confused, Connor follows her to a corner of their little hideaway, where he’s presented with an absolute abomination of a radio unit. It’s been patched together from the wrecks of several old computing systems, practically a distribution project in its own right, but it turns on when Mai presses a few buttons. She has to knock it on the side a couple of times before the control panel turns on, but then Mai selects a past broadcast and Connor doesn’t care about anything anymore, because he hears his own name crackling out of the system, and best of all, it’s Risa who says it.

The voice is grainy and heavily distorted, but Connor would know her anywhere. “Hey, Connor,” Risa’s recording begins, “This is Risa. If you can hear me– well, you’re alive, and that’s a relief.”

Connor feels as if he’s falling forever. Maybe he did slip when he was trying to climb down from Heartland’s building after all, and maybe this is just a hallucination his brain has cooked up to distract himself from a slow, painful death at the bottom of a skyscraper. If this is what death brings him– Risa talking to him at last, wanting him there with her like he wants her– then maybe he’ll accept it after all.

Connor mentally shakes himself, trying to focus again. Risa keeps talking, heedless of Connor’s mental distraction. “I made it out, but I’m stuck on a planet somewhere near the Graveyard. My pod was damaged and I can’t leave, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t know your situation, but I need you, Connor.  I’m on–”

A break in the recording. Connor leans forward instinctively, terrified he’s missed something, but then he hears faint sounds in the background and realizes that Risa must be talking to someone else in the room. She asks a question, and the voice that answers her is distinctly male, which makes Connor irrationally angry. He does his best to calm down, though. Risa is stranded. She can’t help it if there’s some guy with her. She’s still talking to him, trying to reach him against the odds.

A rush of static and Risa’s voice appears again. “I’m on Molokai. Find me, Connor. Please.”

The transmission ends and the room fills with silence, but Connor stays there still, swaying slightly, hoping that she’ll say something, anything more. He would listen to her describe the weather or the flight over to Molokai in her escape pod, even the boring things, just so long as he could have one more moment with her voice in his ears. He misses her desperately, he realizes. More than the Graveyard, more than anyone he’d met on that doomed cruiser. It’s been him and Risa for so long that he’s almost forgotten how to be by himself again, despite the fact that every other year of his life was just that.

The quiet persists, and Connor comes to the understanding that the others must be waiting for him to say something. “Well,” he says awkwardly, “I need to get to Risa. You don’t have a ship that I could borrow, by any chance, do you?”

Mai beams triumphantly. “I was hoping you would ask. We don’t have a ship of our own, but we have something better.”

Connor turns to her curiously. “And what’s that?”

“A way to get into any ship,” Vincent answers him. “Any ship, any building, anywhere. We figured out how to make fake grounds licenses, but these hack the system every time. It doesn’t know how to handle your license, so it just bypasses every security barrier on instinct. It’ll let you in any door. You can walk right up to a shipyard and take whatever you want. That’s how we’ve stayed undercover so long, we’ve all got new licenses. We have a few extra just in case, you can take one.”

Connor eyes him cautiously. “You’re just going to give me one? Free of charge? That’s awfully nice of you.”

“We’re not terrible people,” Blaine snorts. “We just expect you to uphold your end of the bargain. Get to Risa, then get to the colony. Pick a ship big enough to hold the kids you save. We have friends who don’t want to get distributed, and more than Bam’s celebrity crush.”

This earns him a vengeful kick to the knees from Bam, but Connor’s the one who feels like his legs have been knocked out from under him. “You want me to storm a distribution colony?”

“We want you to repay the favor we’re giving you now,” Mai clarifies. “You owe us, Lassiter. Don’t die with the debt.”

Connor nods slowly. “I’ll try. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want their friends in pieces.”

“You’d better mean that,” Blaine threatens, but he allows Diego to open a carefully locked box and pull out a holopad.

“This is your new identity,” Diego announces. “You’re now Elvis Robert Mullard, a Juvey-cop who recently celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Congratulations.”

He flicks through a few holoscreens, snapping a quick photo of Connor which probably looks terrible so he can enter it into their prepared false license registration. Connor frowns. “What about the real Elvis Mullard? Won’t he be mad that I’m stealing his life?”

Diego shakes his head. “Elvis died in the Graveyard explosion. I’d say rest in peace, but he wanted us in pieces, so actually I hope it was, like, super painful for him. Now you get his license and we all live happily ever after.”

Connor nods uncomfortably. “I’m fine with that.”

“Good,” Diego says crisply, “Because from here on out, you are Elvis Mullard. Forever.”

He swipes up on his holopad, and a blue band of light appears around Connor’s left wrist, flashing fast-paced streams of text before disappearing again.

“So that’s it?” Connor asks, staring at the place above his hand where the hologram had just been.

“That’s it,” Diego confirms. “You’re a new man. How does it feel?”

“The exact same,” Connor mumbles.

Blaine chuckles. “Well, you did nothing. Not yet, at least. Remember your end of the bargain.”

“I’m going to,” Connor assures him.

Bam eyes him suspiciously. “You’d better. Anyway, you need to get going before they send reinforcements down on all of us. The shipyard’s just a couple of blocks from here. Steal any one you like, get to Molokai, then repay your debt. If we think you’re backing out, we can cancel your license and set the cops on your ass in a heartbeat. Just remember that.”

Connor holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not going to back out. Jeez. Trust a guy, will you?”

This earns him six blank stares, and Connor sighs. “Fine, fine. I’ll save them. I promise.”

Emby waves as Connor heads to the door. “It was nice to meet you, Connor!”

Somehow, Connor finds it within himself to grin. “It was great to meet you too, Emby. Don’t let the rest of these killjoys get you down.”

“I won’t,” Emby pledges.

Connor breaks into a broad grin, letting that be the last the shady group sees of him, then heads back out into the street. The soldiers have evidently attempted to retrace their steps to find Connor, because the alleyway is long deserted. 

Connor stands for a moment in the dull darkness. Somewhere above him, a small, one-man starship screams up to the atmosphere. Connor tracks it with his eyes until it’s gone. In that ship could be a Juvey-cop ready to sentence another feral to death, or a flight student taking off on their first solo trip. Or maybe it’s holding a boy, a boy like Connor, utterly alone again but this time bolstered by the knowledge that he will not be that way forever. He will find Risa. He will find his friends. And then, at the end of the galaxy, they will rest in the knowledge that they outsmarted a man older than distribution itself. There is still time for everything to go according to plan.

a/n: at last, the dorian heartland easter eggs make sense.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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