UnWholly

The narrator describes the Salton Sea and the escape jet, a Dreamliner, approaching for their water landing.

Starkey orders the storks to lock their legs and arms together, and they do. The plane skims along the water a few times, eventually flipping. The kids on the outside of the cluster of storks are crushed, and weapons fly from overhead compartments, killing storks by simply being smashed against them.

When the plane stops flipping, a grenade goes off, blasting a hole in the plane. As it starts to flood and the electricity fails, a stork named Bam gets a cabin door open and a life raft inflates. Bam jumps into it as it hits the water. Starkey helps a few kids out, then gets in the raft himself.

Starkey orders storks to grab weapons, which they throw in the raft. He is only willing to help the kids who make it out of the sinking plane. Trace gets stuck in the cockpit, and Starkey leaves him there to drown. 

Trace realizes he is going to die and, in his last moments, hopes his actions helping the AWOLs protected his soul.

After the plane has sunk completely, Starkey herds the storks towards the unpopulated shore. They count and realize 41 kids died in the crash. While kids attempt to mourn, Starkey convinces them to keep moving. He asks a stork named Jeevan to set up some communications monitoring and tells him they’ll steal any computers he needs. Starkey plans to turn the 128 surviving storks into a vigilante army, punishing those who try to unwind storks.

Miracolina wakes up from being tranq’d in the back of a Juvey-cop car. She worries about Lev and wonders how they got separated. When she talks to the Juvies, they say they identified her from a DNA tester. Miracolina says she escaped from a parts pirate and was looking for a safe haven with another tithe. They tell her hundreds of AWOLs were captured, and they have no information about Lev.

The Juvey-cops are nice to her. They explain that her parents never signed the unwind order. Miracolina is amused by this and realizes that knowing the order was never signed would have caused her to abandon Lev. Miracolina begins to consider that she had a purpose other than being unwound—to forgive Lev. She thinks about having a 16th birthday party and dancing with Lev there.

Traveling back to the end of the battle in the Graveyard, Hayden and some other Whollies hide out in ComBom until most of the Juvenile Authority forces leave. A remaining group of cops waits outside the plane until morning. The desert heat starts to dehydrate the kids.

Hayden asks them if they want to surrender or die in the plane. They all prefer death to unwinding. Hayden prays and others join in. They begin to run out of oxygen. A kid named Tad starts babbling, and Hayden also starts babbling. Tad dies. Hayden decides to shoot out the windshield instead of die from suffocation and dehydration.

Connor wakes up in a model home with Lev. They watch news about the Graveyard raid and find out 33 kids died and 467 were captured, leaving only about 65 who might have escaped. Connor complains about Lev rescuing him. Lev notices Roland’s tattoo but doesn’t immediately guess that it is actually Roland’s entire arm. 

The news covers Hayden shooting out the windshield of the ComBom. As he is being taken in, Hayden looks into the cameras and calls for the next Teen Uprising. Connor cheers. The news briefly notes the plane that got away might be a downed aircraft in a California lake. Connor hopes some storks survived while cursing Starkey.

They turn off the TV, and Lev pulls up Risa’s interview on YouTube. He watches her confession about blackmailing and cries. Connor mentions Lev’s hair has grown out, and they hear a car coming into the model home’s parking lot. Connor mentions that they need a new approach because the ADR has failed. He then mentions the name Janson Rheinschild to Lev.

The narrator returns to Nelson, who wakes up in a ditch after being tranq’d by Lev. After realizing what happened, Nelson is determined to find Lev and Connor again and exact his revenge.

After hot-wiring, driving, and ditching several cars, Connor and Lev arrive at a diner in Flagstaff. As they eat burgers, Connor uses Nelson’s laptop to do research. He discovers Proactive Citizenry wants to take down Risa, and Hayden is being charged with a variety of crimes.

They are unsure of what to do next. Lev suggests visiting the Cavenaugh mansion. Connor begins to research variant spellings of Janson Rheinschild. Eventually, by repeatedly misspelling the name, Connor finds some information about how the man pioneered the science behind unwinding before the war.

Connor and Lev watch an interview with Rheinschild about how he founded Proactive Citizenry with the intent of preventing abuses of his technology. Connor compares him with Oppenheimer. He realizes Rheinschild’s wife, Sonia, ran a safe house Connor was in (in the previous Shusterman book).

Connor determines that they have to go back to Ohio, to the safe house where Sonia was, an antique shop. A deputy comes in the diner, and the waitress covers for them. After the deputy leaves, she comps their meal and gives them her car keys, telling them to wreck it when they are done so she can get the insurance money. Connor is shocked. The waitress, Karla, insists that times are changing. Now, people are proud to help AWOLs.

In Karla’s car, Connor and Lev head east on Route 66 towards Ohio.