Nelson feels the little hairs on the back of his neck rise and embed themselves in his collar.
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes, yes—you’re probably right.” Then Divan puts down his spoon. “However, did anyone actually see or identify the body?”
“I wasn’t at Happy Jack. I imagine it was a mess.”
“Exactly,” says Divan slowly. “A mess.” Then he picks up his coffee and takes a long, slow sip. “Which means that any number of things could have happened.” Then he puts down his coffee and leans closer. “I believe these rumors may be true. Do you have any idea how much the parts of the Akron AWOL would go for? People will pay obscene amounts for a piece of him.” Then he smiles. “I’ll pay you ten, maybe twenty times what I paid you for today’s catch.”
Nelson tries not to react, but he knows that by not saying anything, his greed has expressed itself. But for him, this particular moment of greed is not about money. Bringing in Connor Lassiter wouldn’t just be about the cash, it would even out a very imbalanced score.
It’s as if Divan can read his mind. “I am telling you this before any of my other suppliers. It would bring me great pleasure if you were the one to catch him, considering your history with him.”
“Thank you,” Nelson says, genuinely grateful for the head start.
“Word has it that there are some sizable AWOL populations in hiding. It would be wise to find those places, as there’s a good chance he’s working for the Anti-Divisional Resistance now.”
“If he’s alive, I’ll catch him and bring him to you,” Nelson tells him. “One thing, though.”
Divan raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Nelson levels his stare, making it clear that this is nonnegotiable, and says, “I get his eyes.”
Part Four
Leviathan
SURGEONS HARVEST ORGANS AFTER EUTHANASIA
by Michael Cook, May 14, 2010, BioEdge web journal
How often is this going on in Belgium and the Netherlands? Bioethics blogger Wesley Smith drew our attention to a conference report by Belgian transplant surgeons about organ procurement after euthanasia. As the doctors from Antwerp University Hospital explained in the 2006 World Transplant Congress (in a section called “economics”), they killed a consenting forty-six-year-old woman with a neurological condition and took her liver, two kidneys, and islets.
In a 2008 report, the doctors explained that three patients had been euthanased between 2005 and 2007. . . .
At the time of writing the article, the doctors were enthusiastic about the potential for organ donation in countries where euthanasia is legal. . . .
The curious thing about this is how little publicity this has received, even though the Belgian doctors published their achievement in the world’s leading journal of transplant surgery. ~
Transplantation
, July 15, 2006;
Transplantation,
July 27, 2008.
Full article is available at:
http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8991/
21 • Lev
It’s a very rare thing that a clapper doesn’t clap, because by the time one gets to the stage of being willing to make one’s own blood explosive enough to take out a whole building, that soul is far beyond the point of no return.
There had still been a spark of light in Levi Jedediah Calder, however. Enough to ignite a powerful change of heart.
The clapper who didn’t clap.
It made him famous. His face was known nationwide and beyond. WHY, LEV, WHY? magazine headlines read, with his life story spread out like a centerfold, ready to be ogled and gobbled by a world greedy for dirt and personal tragedy.
“He was always the perfect son,” his parents were quoted as saying more than once. “We’ll never understand it.” To see their teary interviews, you’d think Lev had actually blown himself up and truly was dead. Well, maybe in a way he was, because the Levi Calder he had been on the day he was sent to be tithed no longer existed.
Almost a year after his capture at Happy Jack Harvest Camp, Lev sits in a detention center rec room on a rainy Sunday morning. He is not a resident of the detention center; he’s a visitor on a mission of mercy.
Across from him sits a kid in an orange jumpsuit, his arms crossed. Between them are the sorry ruins of a jigsaw puzzle left from the last person to sit at the table, one of many unfinished projects that plague this place. It’s February, and the walls are halfheartedly hung with Valentine’s Day decorations that are supposed to add a sense of festivity but just seem sadistic, because in an all-boys’ detention center, only a select few are finding romance this year.
“So you’re supposed to have something useful to say to me?” the kid in the orange jumpsuit says, all attitude, tattoos, and body odor. “What are you, like, twelve?”
“Actually, I’m fourteen.”
The kid smirks. “Well, good for you. Now get out of my sight. I don’t need spiritual guidance from baby Jesus.” Then he reaches out and flicks up Lev’s hair, which, over the past year, has grown to his shoulders in a very Jesus-like way.
Lev is not bothered. He gets this all the time. “We still have half an hour. Maybe we should talk about why you’re in here.”
“I’m in here because I got caught,” the punk says. Then his eyes narrow, and he takes a closer look at Lev. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
Lev doesn’t answer. “I would guess you’re sixteen, right? You’re labeled a ‘divisional risk,’ you know that, don’t you? It means you’re at risk for being unwound.”
“What, you think my mother would unwind me? She wouldn’t dare. Who’d pay her friggin’ bills?” Then he rolls up a sleeve, revealing that the tattoos visible on his wrists go all the way up to his shoulder. Bones and brutality painted on his flesh. “Besides, who’s gonna want these arms?”
“You’d be surprised,” Lev tells him. “People actually pay extra for ink as good as yours.”
The punk is taken aback by the thought, then studies Lev again. “Are you sure I don’t know you? You live here in Cleveland?”
Lev sighs. “You don’t know me, you just know of me.”
Another moment, then the punk’s eyes go wide with recognition. “No way! You’re that tithe kid! I mean the clapper! I mean the one who didn’t blow up! You were all over the news!”
“Right. But we’re not here to talk about me.”
Suddenly the punk seems like a different kid. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sorry I was an ass before. So, like, why aren’t you in jail?”
“Plea bargain. Not allowed to talk about it,” Lev tells him. “Let’s just say talking to you is part of my punishment.”
“Damn!” says the kid, grinning. “They give you a penthouse suite, too?”
“Seriously, I’m not allowed to talk about it . . . but I can listen to anything you want to tell me.”
“Well, all right. I mean, if you really wanna hear it.”
And then the kid launches into a confessional life story that he probably never told anyone before. It’s the one positive thing about Lev’s notoriety—it gets him respect among those who usually don’t give it.
These kids in detention always want to know all about him, but the terms of the settlement were very clear. With so much sympathy from some people, and so much anger from others, it was “in the public’s best interest” to get Lev out of the news as quickly as possible and keep him from becoming the national voice against unwinding. In the end, he was sentenced to house arrest, complete with a tracking chip embedded in his shoulder, and 520 hours of community service every year, until his eighteenth birthday. His service consisted of picking up trash in local parks and ministering to wayward youth about the ills of drugs and violent behavior. In return for the relative lightness of his sentence, he agreed to give them all the inside information he knew about clappers and other terrorist activities. That part was easy—he knew very little beyond his own clapper cell, and the other members were all dead. He was also put under a permanent gag order. He could never speak in public about unwinding, tithing, and what happened at Happy Jack. He was basically sentenced to disappear.