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His ankle throbs, but he ignores it His lungs ache, but he doesn’t care He knows this is life and death The pain is only temporary

"Two!"

Paint chips crush beneath his feet like eggshells

"Three!"

Water sloshes in his belly,it ache even worse, but he doesn’t let it slow him down

"Four!"

The door to the warehouse is open wide The twilight spilling through the door is as glorious as the bright light of a o--he’s alht-nine-ten!"

Even before he realizes he’s been cheated, the tranq dart hits hi a full dose directly into his brain stes buckle beneath hiht as well be a million miles away His eyes cross, his vision blurs, and he sround He fights to keep conscious, while above hi field of visionAnd the moment before he loses consciousness, he hears Nelson say:

"I really do like your eyes I like them much more than the ones I have now"

12 - Nelson

J T Nelson knows he’ll never get rich selling careless kids to black itimate, there was no real money in it--but then it didn’tto accept a steady salary, health benefits, and the promise of a pension He had beenorder and bringing AWOLs to justice But all that changed on the day the Akron AWOL took hiun Nearly a year later, he still can’t get the iant look on his face as he shot the tranq bullet into Nelson’s leg

For Nelson, that was a shot heard round the world

Fro hell He was the butt of jokes--not just in his department, but around the nation He was held up to ridicule, as the cop responsible for letting the infaend and Nelson lost his job, and his self-respect Even his wife left him

But he only ed for a little while He was full of anger but kne to take anger anduseful If the Juvenile Authority no longer wanted hiht as well be in business for hi let Connor Lassiter get away, and they ask no questions

At first it was just AWOLs They were quick to fall for his various traps like the stupid kids they are Then he caught his first runaway, a kid whose DNA didn’t show up on the AWOL Unwind database He thought the blackas the subject was healthy, he got his price There were even kids like the one he caught today, ere just unlucky He’s happy to take them, too His conscience doesn’t bother him

What bothers him are their eyes

That’s what he has the most trouble with The way they look at hi expressions, always hopeful down to the last second, as if he ue him in his dreams They’re s of the soul, aren’t they? But in those early days as a parts pirate, when he looked at his own eyes in the mirror, he didn’t see what he saw in theirs His "s" showed no such expression of soulfulness, and the more he looked at his own empty eyes, the more jealous he became He wanted some of that innocence, that desperate hope for himself So one day he went to his black market contact and claimed the eyes of his latest catch as part of his payle eye, but at least that was better than nothing After that first operation, when he looked at himself in the mirror, he would see in that eye a shred of huh on hope It would re man he had once been many years before One problem, however: Now he had one blue eye and one brown That wouldn’t do

So he claimed another, but that eye didn’t quite match the first So he claimed another, and another, and with each operation he felt a sliver of innocence return to him He knows that someday soon he’ll find the eyes that will make him perfect, and then he can finally restbecause by seeing the world through other’s eyes, Nelson is bit by bit beco whole

- - -

The black marketeer wears an expensive European suit and drives a Porsche He looks ure who deals in flesh He doesn’t hide the fact that his business has made hiard of royalty Nelson envies hioes by the naner, and doesn’t refer to himself as a black marketer, but as an "independent supplier" His offshore harvest camp is hidden and mysterious Not even Nelson knohere it is, and he suspects its operation has none of the strict regulations of American harvest camps

He e froan Divan cannot step on American soil There are numerous warrants out for his arrest But the Canadians, bless them, have been far more tolerant

Divan takes possession of the boy with the daed ankle in the back of a car dealership that he uses as his front As he looks the boy over, he frowns at the swollen ankle and wags a finger at Nelson--all part of his standard ploy to barter Nelson down The boy, conscious now but still groggy froh Nelson ignores hiently on the cheek

"Don’t you worry about a thing," he tells the boy "We are not barbarians" It’s one of the lines he always uses It conveys no real information to the boy but so else about Divan