Each night since then he's tried to sneak away, but every time, he's been caught and sent back. Now that the Admiral's five watchdogs have left, though, the kids on sentry duty are getting lax. As Lev sneaks between the jets, he finds that a few of them are even asleep on the job. Stupid of the Admiral to send those other kids away without having anyone to replace them.

Once he's far enough away he turns on his flashlight and tries to find his destination. It's a destination told to him by a girl he had encountered a few weeks before. She was very much like him. He suspects he'll meet others tonight who are very much like him as well.

Aisle thirty, space twelve. It's about as far from the Admiral as you can get and still be in the Graveyard. The space is occupied by an ancient DC-10, crumbling to pieces in its final resting place. When Lev swings open the hatch and climbs in, he finds two kids inside, both of whom bolt upright at the sight of him and take defensive postures.

"My name's Lev," he says. "I was told to come here."

He doesn't know these kids, but that's no surprise—he hasn't been in the Graveyard long enough to know that many kids here. One is an Asian girl with pink hair. The other kid has a shaved head and is covered in tattoos.

"And who told you to come here?" asks the flesh-head.

"This girl I met in Colorado. Her name's Julie-Ann."

Then a third figure comes out from the shadows. It's not a kid hut an adult—midtwenties, maybe. He's smiling. The guy has greasy red hair, a straggly goatee to match, and a boney face with sunken cheeks. It's Cleaver, the helicopter pilot.

"So Julie-Ann sent you!" he says. "Cool! How is she?"

Lev takes a moment to think about his answer. "She did her job," Lev tells him.

Cleaver nods. "Well, it is what it is."

The other two kids introduce themselves. The flesh-head is Blaine, the girl is Mai.

"What about that boeuf who flies the helicopter with you?" Lev asks Cleaver. "Is he part of this too?"

Mai gives a disgusted laugh. "Roland? Not on your life!"

"Roland isn't exactly . . . the material for our little group," Cleaver says. "So, did you come here to give us the good news about Julie-Ann, or are you here for another reason?"

"I'm here because I want to be here."

"You say it," says Cleaver, "but we still don't know you're for real."

"Tell us about yourself," says Mai.

Lev prepares to give them the armed-robbery version, but before he opens his mouth, he changes his mind. The moment calls for honesty. This must begin with the truth. So he tells them everything, from the moment he was kidnapped by Connor to his time with CyFi and the weeks after that. When he's done, Cleaver seems very, very pleased.

"So, you're a tithe! That's great. You don't even know how great that is!"

"What now?" asks Lev. "Am I in, or not?"

The others become quiet. Serious. He feels some sort of ritual is about to begin.

"Tell me, Lev," says Cleaver. "How much do you hate the people who were going to unwind you?"

"A lot."

"Sorry, that's not good enough."

Lev closes his eyes, digs down, and thinks about his parents. He thinks about what they planned to do to him, and how they made him actually want it.

"How much do you hate them?" Cleaver asks again.

"Totally and completely," answers Lev.

"And how much do you hate the people who would take parts of you and make them parts of themselves?"

"Totally and completely."

"And how much do you want to make them, and everyone else in the world, pay?"

"Totally and completely."  Someone has to pay for the unfairness of it all. Everyone has to pay. He'll make them.

"Good," says Cleaver.

Lev is amazed by the depth of his own fury—but he's becoming less and less frightened of it. He tells himself that's a good thing.

"Maybe he's for real," says Blaine.

If Lev makes this commitment, he knows there's no turning back. "One thing I need to know," Lev asks, "because Julie-Ann . . . she wasn't very clear about it. I want to know what you believe."

"What we believe?" says Mai. She looks at Blaine, and Blaine laughs. Cleaver, however, puts his hand up to quiet him. "No—no, it's a good question. A real question. It deserves a real answer. If you're asking if we have a cause, we don't, so get that out of your head." Cleaver gestures broadly, his hands and arms filling the space around him. "Causes are old news. We believe in randomness. Earthquakes! Tornados! We believe in forces of nature—and we are forces of nature. We are havoc. We're chaos. We mess with the world."

"And we messed pretty good with the Admiral, didn't we," says Blaine slyly. Cleaver throws him a sharp gaze, and Mai actually looks scared. It's almost enough to give Lev second thoughts.

"How did you mess with the Admiral?"

"It's done," says Mai, her body language both anxious and angry. "We messed, and now it's done. We don't talk about things that are done. Right?"

Cleaver gives her a nod, and she seems to relax a bit. "The point is," says Cleaver, "it doesn't matter who or what we mess with, just as long as we mess. The way we see it, the world doesn't move if things don't get shaken up—am I right?"

“I guess.”

 "Well, then, we are the movers and shakers." Cleaver smiles and points a finger at Lev. "The question is, are you one too? Do you have what it takes to be one of us?"

Lev takes a long look at these three. These are the kinds of people his parents would hate. He could join them just out of spite, but that's not enough—not this time. There must be more. Yet, as he stands there, Lev realizes that there is more. It's invisible, but it's there, like the deadly charge lurking in a downed power line. Anger, but not just anger: a will to act on it as well.

"All right, I'm in." Back at home Lev always felt part of something larger than himself. Until now, he hadn't realized how much he missed that feeling.

"Welcome to the family," says Cleaver, and gives him a slap on the back so painful, he sees stars.

_{36 Risa}

Risa is the first to notice something's wrong with Connor. Risa is the first to care that something's wrong with Lev.

In a moment of selfishness, she finds herself aggravated by it, because things are going so well for her now. She finally has a place to be. She wishes this could remain her sanctuary beyond her eighteenth birthday, because in the outside world she'd never be able to do the things she's doing now. It would be practicing medicine without a license—fine when you're in survival mode, but not in the civilized world. Perhaps, after she turned eighteen, she could go to college, and medical school— but that takes money, connections, and she'd have to face even more competition than in her music classes. She wonders if maybe she could join the military and become an Army medic. You don't have to be a boeuf to be in a medical unit. Whatever her choice ends up being, the important thing is that there could be a choice. For the first time in a long time she can see a future for herself. With all these good thoughts in her life, the last thing she wants is something that will shoot it all down.

This is what fills Risa's mind as she makes her way to one of the study jets. The Admiral has three of his most accessible and well-appointed jets set aside as study spaces, complete with libraries, computers, and the resources to learn anything you want to learn. "This is not a school," the Admiral told them shortly after they arrived. "There are no teachers, there are no exams." Oddly, it's precisely that lack of expectation that keeps the study jets full most of the time.