Unbreathing
Emby
Emby approaches the large ranch in the sedan. A large guard opens the door for him and he steps out.
The Xolair has helped his asthma a lot and he's able to enjoy the fresh air without wheezing.
"This way," the guard says, grabbing his arm.
Emby tenses up but follows the man nonetheless to a midsized house that stands in the middle of the ranch.
He can't stop thinking about that one word, that one proper noun is ruining this beautiful scene for him. Dunfee, surly he isn't thee Mr. Dunfee, surly more than one man has that last name!
Yes he's sure of it, but this whole thing is just too ominous. Not only is his last name Dunfee, but he also put Emby in his sedan and took him off to his ranch to meet his ex-wife who has been waiting for him, and he called him a special boy. Creepy.
He sighs as the guard opens the door to the house and pushes him inside. A woman walks up to them and smiles.
"Why hello who might you be?" she asks.
"I'm Zachary, the Admiral sends you his regards," Emby beams, trying to sound as charming as possible.
The woman continues to smile as she whispers something to the guard. He whispers something back to her and then she turns back to Emby.
"Well Zachary it is very nice to meet you, I'm sure you'll find that you'll be safe here."
Emby smiles as the guard pulls him out of the house through the large backdoor.
His grip tightens and begins to hurt a little bit. Emby attempts to pull his tiny wrist away from the man's large hand but the guard just tightens his grip further.
Emby begins to sweat as the brick of a man dangles his arms as if he were a prisoner being led to execution.
"We're here," the brick groans.
Emby casts his eyes away from his wrist and glances up at the building in front of him. It's large, bigger than the house, and it looks like a factory.
He's led inside and once there he realizes that he's wrong, this building isn't a factory it's a prison.
Cells line the walls and people sit inside of them. Some cry, some follow him with there eyes, some just snicker. They're of all different ages and seem to have relatively nothing in common, but Emby knows the truth. They do have something in common; they all have a piece of Humphrey Dunfee inside them and are waiting in this putrid place to give it back.
Emby is tossed into a cell; a young girl who looks about his age is already sitting there.
"Looks like Harlan has both his lungs," the guard snickers before closing the cell door and walking away.
Emby spins around and clutches the bars with his hands in panic. Then his eyes move to the girl in the corner.
Her greasy brown hair hangs partly in her eyes giving her the look of a real prisoner and that scares Emby even further.
"Do you have Harlan's right lung?" the girl asks in a soft voice as she moves closer to him.
"…I guess," Emby whispers.
The girl tilts her small sienna head and shakes her scraggly hair about.
Emby looks back at the other cells. Fear engrosses him as he looks at the other captives.
Some of them are missing things…the man in the cell across from them is missing his right eye and the woman sitting next to him is missing her left eye.
Knots form in Emby's stomach as he wishes that he could be anywhere else, even a harvest camp would probably be better.
A small girl, much, much too young to be unwound, cradles a stump where one of her fingers used to be.
"What is he going to do with them now? Why is he keeping them here?" Emby asks as he turns back to the girl in his cell.
"If he lets anyone go they'll tell someone about the horrible things he's doing here, and most likely hire someone to kill him," she answers.
"We're going to die, aren't we?" Emby asks feeling like he's back in the crate that brought him to the Graveyard.
"Yes."
Her blatancy cuts like a knife that seems to seal Emby's fate and stop his breath.
His asthma that has been seemingly under control returns, and he pulls out his inhaler.
"What's your name?" the girl asks.
Emby blinks for a second not knowing whether to say Emby or Zachary, the Admiral told him not to let anyone else name him, but then again the Admiral is the one whose responsible for his being held captive waiting to be cut into, "Emby."
"I'm Valerie, or just Val," the girl says in return.
During the next pitiful afternoon behind the cell's bars Val tells him all about the things that have been happening here.
"Those who have Harlan's parts that can be seen from the exterior and be easily taken while keeping the person alive have already been through the surgery as you can tell, but people like us who have internal or important parts have to wait till the day that they're ready, then they'll unwind us, utterly and completely, because if they're going to kill us why not sell our parts on the black market?" she had told him.
"Looks like I'm going to be unwound after all," Emby says in horror.
"What do you mean 'after all'?" Valerie asks.
"I'm already an unwind, I just thought that I was finally safe with the ADR…" Emby sighs.
"You're an unwind?" Val gasps acting as if she suddenly realized that he had some horribly contagious disease. "Did you kill someone or something?" she whispers looking scared.
Emby glares at her. "I didn't do anything! My parents died and I was given to my aunt who just spent the money that my mom gave her on her own kids and sent me to be unwound." Emby looks at her with pleading eye before he finishes, "You shouldn't believe everything that you hear about unwinds."
Val looks as though he just slapped her across the face as she says, "Emby I'm sorry, I guess I just listen to what my parents say too much, you're right I need to form an opinion for myself, and I trust you."
Emby nods, fear prevents him from smiling and so all he can do is bob his head.
"My parents hate unwinds, my dad's a Juvey-cop, he's pretty strict and likes to keep the threats of having me unwound if I miss behave constant…I wonder what he'd think if he knew that I'm about to be unwound…" she trails off.
Emby shrugs, but he isn't really listening anymore. All he can focus on is the gripping fear, he feels like his unwind order had been signed a second time.
Val seems to sense it because she quickly taps on his shoulder.
"They say it isn't painful." Her words anger him so much!
"Does it matter?" he snaps. Suddenly he's pushed into a memory; he once said those words, almost exactly, in the shipping crate. Now he realizes that, that is no consolation, it doesn't matter.
She just shrugs again as if it doesn't matter either way, as if she doesn't even care that they're on death's door.
"Why are you so calm?" Emby asks.
"I'm not, I'm a wreck. I just hide things well."
Emby feels tears on his cheeks and he begins coughing till it turns into a severe coughing fit.
Valerie just pulls one of the blankets from the corner and throws him the other one.
"I guess that the nights of luxury where I had two blankets to sleep on are over aye?" she jokes as she wraps the blanket around her and seemingly drifts off to sleep.
Emby wraps his own flee bitten piece of cloth around him and tries to sleep but something stops him. Maybe it's that he's trying to sleep on a hard tiled floor or maybe it's that he's afraid that when he wakes up he'll be on an unwinding table.
Emby's awoken from his short night of sleep by a banging noise.
"The unwindings have started, and you're first on the list," the brick of a guard says with a laugh as he opens an old man's cell.
"Of course you're too old for anyone to buy you're parts, but at least Harlan will have his kidney back."
"No! Please I have a family they need me!" the man begs as he gets dragged away.
The other captives just sit there, no one makes a move to stop him, no one does anything.
Emby can't believe that the unwindings have started and he can't help but wonder where his name is on the list.
That very day three more people are dragged away. One is a teenage boy who apparently has bits of Harlan's brain, there's a woman who has some of Harlan's veins, then there's the man with Harlan's vocal cords.
Last night's sleep deprivation was nothing like this night's for Emby. His eyes closed and all he could hear was the screams of the taken.
The next day the guard stomps down the hall about to give a death sentence to someone. He walks past Emby's cell to that of a man who's already missing an arm.
"Looks like you're lucky enough to have gotten two of Harlan's parts," the brick laughs.
The brick returns later that same day and this time he doesn't walk past Emby's cell.
He fiddles with his keys as he opens the cell door.
Then he grabs Emby's arm much tighter then before and laughs at Emby's astonished features.
Emby wants to fight somehow he wants to do something but he doesn't. He just lets the guard drag him to his death.
The walk seems longer than any walk that Emby has every walks and he swears that the hallway is everlasting.
Prisoners mumble as he walks by and he sees the fear in their eyes, there's no pity, only relief that they aren't in his place yet.
Finally the guard pushes the door open and he's met with the blinding Texas sun.
"Please let me go. I'll do anything! If you want money I can get you all the money you want!" He knows that it's a lie, but he doesn't care.
"Shut-up or I'll break your neck, because Harlan don't need your neck," the brick laughs.
Emby sees in his eyes that he'd do it and that shuts him up.
He's pushed into the house where he met the woman that said he'd be safe, she's a worse liar than him.
Once inside he sees the Admiral.
The Admiral smiles and stands up to greet Emby.
"Zachary! Please take a seat," he offers pointing at one of the chairs that's placed around the kitchen table.
Emby just tilts his head away from the old man.
"Here have something to eat, I'm sure that she'll fix you up whatever you want," Admiral Dunfee says as he points to his ex-wife behind him.
"Please don't do this to me, please! I thought you wanted to save unwinds not unwind them yourself! Please Mr. Dunfee! Please!" Before Emby even knows what's happening he's on the floor with tears in his eyes shaking.
"Zachary, we all do what we can to stop unwinding, you're part is to save my son's life and reverse his unwinding."
"Your son doesn't have a life! You're son is dead! I'm not! Please don't kill me!" Emby cries.
"Well Zachary, it seems that you've lost your privileges to a last meal," the Admiral says as he points at the brick of a guard and motions for him to get rid of Emby.
Brick pulls the crying boy out of the house and through the ranch. All the while Emby is kicking and screaming.
Another building lies far away from the house and the prison; it looks kinda like the prison but more brutal.
Emby gets pushed inside and then escorted to an operation table by the guard. Then the guard leaves and Emby is stuck with the doctors.
"Mr. Dunfee tries to keep things as good for his patients as he can here, so it's much like an actual unwind facility," the nurse says as she pushes Emby onto the table and straps him in with restraints.
Emby takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He feels a prick in his neck and opens his eyes again.
"What was that?" he croaks.
"The only pain that you'll feel throughout this procedure," the nurse soothes.
"Can you please put me out?" Emby asks, "I really don't want to be here while you do it."
"It's your body, you have to be here," she whispers.
"I know but just please put me out, I don't want my consciousness to be here," Emby replies.
"Sorry, Mr. Dunfee wants this to be as official as possible."
Tears stain Emby's eyes as he gazes up at her face.
"They're going to start now; it will only take three hours. Right now they're replacing your blood with a synthetic oxygen-rich solution," the nurse tells him.
"Please don't," Emby begs.
"Dear Zachary, we already have."
"Please undo it!"
"Zachary this blood will help people, you're a hero!" the nurse chimes.
"I don't want to be a hero! I just want to live!"
"Zachary you will live, just differently, imagine your lung in the first ever rewound human!" the nurse says sounding actually happy and astounded.
Emby hears strange noises that panic him. "What's going on?" he asks.
"They're just proceeding with the surgery."
"Yeah but what are they doing?" Emby asks.
"Harvesting your feet," the nurse whispers.
Emby nearly hurls but instead he starts coughing frantically.
"Make them stop!"
"They already did it," the nurse repeats.
Emby's head swirls as he stares at the lights above him.
"When I got to the Graveyard I thought that I was safe, I thought that I was free from ever having to worry about being unwound again, but turns out it was actually my demise."
"Oh Zachary, its ok now."
"Doesn't it suck that if I had gotten any other lung I wouldn't be unwound and I could be safe at the Graveyard with the other teens?" Emby asks.
"…Don't think about that now, just be brave," the nurse advises.
"Where's that Valerie girl's name on the list?" Emby asks.
"After yours," the nurse answers.
Emby blinks, "But Harlan only needs one lung, do you think that you could try to convince the Admiral to spare her?"
"I'll see Zachary," she answers.
"I really wish that I had just died that day and never gotten a replacement lung," Emby says.
"Zachary darling we can't talk anymore," the nurse whispers.
"Why?" Emby asks.
"Sshh, sshh Zachary it's ok."
"Zachary can you hear me? Blink twice if you can," the nurse says.
Emby chooses not to blink; he doesn't feel like answering her.
"Zachary blink twice!" she screams.
Emby smiles inside and feels like Connor does after he says nice socks, a small but sweet victory.
"He's just messing with you, that's how unwinds are," he hears a doctor mumble.
Emby feels hurt and offended so to show that the doctor's wrong he blinks once then twice.
"Good, good, Zachary you're going to have to stop blinking now, but I'll still be here."
He feels a hand stroke the back of his head and then she's gone.
"So do you think this rewinding will work?" a doctor asks.
"I don't see why it wouldn't." another doctor replies.
"Medical miracles now a days aye?"
"Yep medical miracles."
Emby has never felt so alone. He has no friends, and no family.
"We're almost done."
"Let's hurry I'm starving."
"Whelp, nice work, lets go have lunch!"
Valerie
Emby doesn't know that his simple suggestion saved her. She might still be behind bars and she may be forever, but she's alive.
The Admiral saved her after the nurse asked him if he could.
She owes her life to Emby and she intends to do something for him in return, perhaps she'll kill the Admiral or maybe she'll join the ADR. She had big plans of doing all this once she escapes, because she will escape.
Day by day they put the puzzle pieces together and rebuild Harlan, each day they get closer to their goal and Val never wants to see their result.
She'll have to escape before then.
This was supposed to be way different. Valeria was supposed to die not Emby and it was supposed to be a multi-chapter story with a whole romance and runaway adventure, but this happened instead.
Anyway, please, please request a one-shot! Give me the name of a character you'd like me to write about and a plot for it and I'll do it! I want to do one for Cyfi and Hayden but please request more! Next one will probably be for Pastor Dan because that one's all planned out. And if you have a plot for the Hayden and Cyfi ones tell me in a review! Also tell me if you want me to update this with the other one-shots or if you think they should be separate. I haven't finished Unwholly yet but I'm working on it so don't request anything for that that. (I've finished Unstrung)
Thanks! Please review! Disclaimer: I don't own Unwind, that's all Neal Shusterman