But he’s not there yet. He’s still here, in the car, waiting to be transferred inside. Right here is where the hull of this little ship of fools is thinnest, and if he’s going to sink their plans, it has to happen between the car and the back door of the county jail. As they prepare for his “perp walk,” he thinks about his chances of breaking free—because as much as his parents may have imagined this night, so has he, and he’s made up a dozen valiant escape plans. The thing is, even his daydreams are fatalistic; in every anxiety-filled fantasy, he always loses, gets tranq’d, and wakes up on an operating table. Sure, they say they don’t unwind you right away, but Starkey doesn’t believe it. No one really knows what goes on in the harvest camps, and those who find out aren’t exactly around to share the experience.

They pull him out of the car and flank him on either side, grasping his upper arms tightly. They are practiced in this walk. Lady-Lips grips Starkey’s fat file in his other hand.

“So,” says Starkey, “does that file show my hobbies?”

“Probably,” says Lady-Lips, not really caring either way.

“Maybe you should have read it a little more closely, because then we’d have something to talk about.” He grins. “You know, I’m pretty good with magic.”

“That so?” says Mouthpiece, with a twisted sneer. “Too bad you can’t make yourself disappear.”

“Who says I can’t?”

Then, in his finest Houdini fashion, he raises his right hand, revealing the cuff no longer on it. Instead, it dangles free from his left hand. Before they can even react, Starkey slides the penknife he used to pick the lock out of his sleeve, grips it in his hand, and slashes it across Lady-Lips’s face.

The man screams, and blood flows from a four-inch wound. Mouthpiece, for once in his miserable life of public disservice, is speechless. He reaches for his weapon, but Starkey is already on the run, zigzagging in the shadowy alley.

“Hey!” yells Mouthpiece. “You’re only making it worse for yourself.”

But what are they going to do? Reprimand him before they unwind him? The Mouthpiece can talk all he wants, but he’s got no bargaining position.

The alley turns to the left and then to the right like a maze, and all the while beside him is the tall, imposing brick wall of the county jail.

Finally he turns another corner and sees a street up ahead. He charges forward, but just as he emerges into that street, he’s grabbed by Mouthpiece. Somehow he made it there before Starkey. He’s surprised, but he shouldn’t be, because doesn’t every Unwind try to run? And couldn’t they build a twisting alley specifically designed to waste your time and give the Juvey-cops an advantage that they never really lost?