Chapter Text
Neil Josten surveys the truck stop parking lot he found himself in, and contemplates how royally screwed he is.
He wishes he could light a cigarette, to chase the last memories he has of his mother, but lighting a cigarette would be worse than stupid. Anyone who so much as glanced at him would immediately assume that he was an AWOL, and a lingering smell would make it hard for him to attempt to hitch a ride in one of the trucks, like he was hoping to do.
It’s risky, but without his mother, it’s really the only hope he has of making it to the Mexico border with any kind of speed. A teenager driving alone on a highway a few weeks out from the start of summer vacation, in a border-state especially, is worse than suspicious. His ID could probably withstand one or two traffic stops, but the risk increased every time it was run through the system. Especially once a vehicle was reported as missing or stolen.
He’d already had to burn an ID on the way here that way, after a juvey-cop had noted his car as stolen and reported his location and features before Neil—Alex, then—had managed to tranq the man. He’d used the last of his hair dye a week ago, too, and was running low on contacts and he had no way of getting more in the US without being to pass as 18 or going all the way out to another stash that might just be expired anyway. Which made it all the more important that he put some untraceable miles between him and that incident fast, even if it risked putting him a little further away from his goal of the border. The misdirection could even make up a little for the delay, if it came to that.
In Europe, he wouldn’t have had any trouble buying dye on his own, even in standard hair colors like black and brown. Hell, in Europe he could have hitched for this trip, or stolen a car to drive, instead of being reliant on luck and observation to get into a truck he’d have to hope was headed in the right direction, risking a need for a quick getaway if he was discovered & the trucker alerted the National Juvenile Authorities about an apparently AWOL stowaway, still without any meaningful way to alter his appearance & probably needing to burn another ID.
But he wasn’t in Europe. Mary had heard whispers underground that she was being sought out, and she’d booked a flight across the Atlantic without waiting to see who had kicked up the fuss, and then—
Well, then they’d needed to grab a stash and pick up new IDs from a contact in Seattle. In & out, quick as you like and then back to Canada and relative safety. It should have been minimal risk. Nathan was supposed to be at a demonstration of new Unwinding techniques in New York.
Instead, he was waiting for them.
Mary had gotten them out of the trap, had driven them to a beach bleeding out with Nathan on their tail and kicked him out of the car and told him to run. Told him not to slow down, not to trust anyone. To be anybody but himself, and not be anyone for too long. To get the hell out of this country as soon as he could. Not to look back, because she wouldn’t be catching up to him this time.
Then she’d injected herself with the volatile Clapper chemicals they kept on-hand as a final resort, stuck the detonators to her hands, and drove south.
He hadn’t even made it off the beach before the smoke from the resulting fire started drifting towards him over the sand, and he’d known it’d be too much to hope that she’d taken his father out with her. At least she couldn’t be unwound, this way, stuck in a mockery of death or twisted into an artificial life to be used against him.
Unfortunately, security at the Canadian border had been tightened before he could reach it. And since they’d had to abandon most of the stash they were supposed to pick up when the trip had turned out to be a trap… Well, he’d had neither the ID nor the cash for a bribe to make it out of the country that way.
He still knew the locations of most of their north american stashes, at least, so he’d charted a course southwestward, picking up several stashes and ending at the Mexican border. He’d made pretty good time, considering, even though it’d meant gambling on a few stupid risks like the one he was about to take.
He’d gotten relatively lucky with Millport, Arizona, though. He’d passed through the town on the way to his last stash and noted how it was a dying thing, its only real industry seeming to be being located close enough to the highway for cross-state travelers to use it as a rest stop. A town that small has so few families in it to begin with that the usual surveillance intended to keep AWOL unwinds from stowing away in the back of a truck is absent since it’d be considered a waste of resources, and would probably have been sparsely monitored even if it was there.
The cargo trailers would all be locked anyway, most of them electronically, but the lack of surveillance meant he’d have a chance to pick a lock if he found a manual one, or to sneak into a cabin—which was riskier, but slowly looking like his only option if he doesn’t want to waste any more time here. If he’s lucky, he’ll find one with a cot built into it that he can crawl under, or a baggage compartment he can climb into; being short keeps his fake IDs under 18 for now, but at least it had some advantages on the run.
A truck rolls in that seems promising—the license plate is for Arizona, but it was pulling in from the road heading southward. It has a sleeping compartment attached to the cabin, and it looks older. Probably pickable. The trucker—older, hispanic, and moving like Neil could probably take him down if he caught him by surprise if he needed to—gets out and shuffles around in the sleeping compartment, grabbing a bag and heading towards the facilities as he lets the door to the sleeping compartment shut carelessly behind him.
As soon as the man is behind a closed door, Neil moves.
The door to the sleeping compartment is unlocked. Neil would almost have preferred it if he’d had to pick the lock. Now, he can’t lock the door without possibly tipping the driver off.
There’s no time to debate locking it anyway, though, he needs to find a hiding spot that would stand up to a cursory search or he needs to get the hell out of here and try his luck with another truck.
The cot has a baggage compartment under it. It doesn’t close, but it does have just enough bags underneath it that if he can squeeze himself and his own bag behind them, he could pull them back in front of him and he wouldn’t be visible from a glance. It’s awkward, and a tight fit, wiggling backwards into the slight space, but he manages & then pulls the bags back into place in the nick of time, because just as he stops moving, the door opens.
But it isn’t the trucker.
From behind the bags he can just see a glimpse of a girl with a backpack slung over her shoulder as she jumps up into the cabin, and then her legs as she looks around swearing to herself. An AWOL Unwind, probably, and not one that seems like she’s been AWOL long, judging by the nervous energy in her left foot.
Neil curses his luck, but he’ll have to let this play out if he can. A rookie runner would probably be sympathetic to Neil Josten, but even the most sympathetic person could still be a liability. Rookie AWOLs especially—most get caught within the first 36 hours of going AWOL, and her being here would mean increased juvy-cops in the area, once she was confirmed as missing. The best case scenario would be this girl trying her luck in a different truck, or else getting caught without ever being aware of him.
When the door opens again, this time actually the trucker coming to return his bag to the sleeping compartment, Neil thinks for sure that that’ll be that, and he almost sags in relief. Hopefully the trucker will assume that he’s caught the only AWOL at this truck stop without so much as glancing under his cot, and Neil can slip out the next time he stops and continue his journey through another route.
Except—
“Shit—Janie? Fuck, kid. You been AWOL long?”
Well. He sounds sympathetic. And he knows the girl—Janie, apparently. People are generally much less likely to rat out a kid they know for being AWOL, as long as they like them, and the truck driver seems to. Neil contemplates the situation as Janie explains her circumstances. The truck driver—Janie called him “coach” and sounds genuinely relieved to see him—seems to be a local, probably coaches a local youth sports team the girl is on & then does trucking in the off-season. Which means that Neil might be shit out of luck for getting out of here. He’ll just have to sit tight & make his way back to the truck stop to try again, if that’s the case.
He waits while the driver makes sympathetic noises as Janie explains about her parents finding out about her girlfriend, and her figuring that since Arizona isn’t a state that requires “just cause” or prohibits parents signing an unwind order based on their kids’ sexuality, she figured the orders were already as good as signed. Probably, this is where her coach will say he was sorry & he’ll turn a blind eye to her trying to sneak into his truck, maybe point her in the direction of another driver actually headed out of this place if Neil is lucky. If he’s really lucky, the driver will actually be headed out of town instead of back into it, and will tell Janie where he’s going and offer to stay blind to her being there, or even go out of his way to let her out closer to the border. Then this whole clusterfuck can be salvaged, and Neil could be in a much better position than he’d hoped, and without any real extra risk. Regardless, he’s not sure if there’s anything else he can do besides sit tight & continue to avoid discovery.
He can’t trust this man’s good intentions after all, even towards a kid he knows & seems to like.
From his position behind the bags Neil can see as the trucker lifts an arm behind his head, and sucks air in through his teeth. This would be the moment of truth.
“Listen, Janie—”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“Just—This is the end of my route, pretty much, you know. And I don’t know what your plan was, or if you even had one but… Well, shit kid, I’m glad I saw you back here. ‘Cause I know a place where you can go. And I can spare the time to give you a head start getting there, even. There’s this base in South Carolina, we call it the Foxhole. I smuggle kids out for them, sometimes, when the borders are more relaxed. They help kids like you. They’re good people, and they’ll give you lots of options if you get there. They can keep you hidden till you age out, obviously, but they can also get you to a sanctuary state if you can prove you’re being unwound because of your parents finding out you have a girlfriend, or they can transfer you to California—which is a sanctuary state for kids being unwound for identity reasons anyway, but also has a larger sanctuary similar to the Foxhole, though I’m not as clear on the details there. Or they can even help you get out of the country, if that’s better for you, and maybe in a few weeks you’ll be riding with me again with a few other kids & a new ID. There’s lots of options, is the point.”
There’s a long pause.
Neil can’t see Janie’s expression, but eventually, she gives a shaky, “Okay. Yeah. Let’s--do that.”
She sits, then, almost collapses. “Thank you, Coach.”
“Sure thing, kid. Stay out of sight of the windows, and sit tight. You’re gonna be just fine.”
The trucker moves to the front of the cab & Neil settles down and resolves himself to being Fucking Inconvenienced.
Sure, this situation is a hell of a lot better than it could have been, but the truck is still actively moving away from the Mexican border, which isn’t ideal. And it could be a trap, even if it really doesn’t seem like it.
Now, he’ll either have to sneak off the next time the truck stops, or (more likely) wait until after the truck drops off Janie and probably heads back to Millport.
The main problem with sneaking out past Janie is that it’d be hard to explain why he doesn’t want to go to South Carolina too.
“Neil Josten”, when talking to anyone who already assumes he’s AWOL, is the child of neglectful parents who were living in northern Utah when they decided that their storked son was more trouble than he was worth. He’d seen it coming for a while, though, and was headed to Mexico where he had an uncle who’d never really gotten along with his father & liked him enough to help him out.
“Neil Josten” was also a very good camper. He’d made it this far for this long by avoiding people as much as possible, and was only stowing away on a truck because he’d lost most of his supplies running from a juvey-cop a few weeks back.
“Neil Josten” wouldn’t have any reason to look a good samaritan’s gift horse in the mouth or the promise of help crossing the border, aside from the general mistrust most AWOLs developed if they survived for a significant amount of time on their own.
But Abram has priorities that run separately than those of your standard AWOL. And most of his experience on the run being in Europe means that he doesn’t know nearly enough about the underground networks that might help AWOLs, including this “Foxhole”. He has no way to verify that the information this trucker has is accurate or anything other than an elaborate ruse to lure Janie into a false sense of security.
And if it is legit—does the government know about it, and just turn a blind eye? Do the Moriyamas? Even assuming it’s genuinely safe, would they show the same compassion to him—the son of the man who was the face of the unwinding procedure—as they would to the AWOL Neil Josten was supposed to be, unwind order or no?
Would he be willing to live with bringing extra attention down on their heads, if it ever got back to his father that he was there?
No. It’d be better to get out of the country another way, and lay low for a while. Find out if Europe was still viable if he could, maybe call his uncle. Keep heading south, otherwise—
His musing is interrupted by the unmistakable sound of furious texting, but that—surely she couldn’t be. Oh, hell. She Was. That wouldn’t do.
“Are you fucking suicidal, or just that stupid?” Neil hisses furiously as he pushes the bags forward and slides out from under the cot. “Get rid of that goddamn phone! It’ll bring the NJA down on us faster than you can call your parents to beg them to take their decision back.”
“What the fuck?”
Janie stares at him unblinking as he snatches the phone from her slack hands, dismantles it, and rolls the window down just enough to shove the individual components out onto the road one at a time.
He might not have much experience being AWOL in the states, but his mother had always stressed that even burner phones were too much of a risk when they were in the US. He has to assume that that’s doubly true if the NJA are actively looking for you.
“Were you… under there the whole time?”
Of course, salvaging as much of this situation as he could does have some negative consequences. Namely, now Janie knows that he’s here. And he’ll probably have to Talk to her.
At least he can stretch a little, since he’s already out from under the cot.
“Uh. Mystery dude?”
Neil sighs, and resigns himself to at least a minimum amount of conversation.
“Yes. I was under there the whole time. And, now that you’re not going to bring the NJA down on all of our heads, I’d like to go back under there. It’d be… really swell if you let me stay our little secret & don’t throw me under the bus so I can sneak out of here the next time the truck stops for gas or something.”
“Why not just… Tell Hernandez you’re here? I doubt he’d rat you out, especially when he’s already helping me. I’ve known him basically forever, he coaches my Exy team. He’s not the kind of person who’d turn you in, or who’d lie to me about this sanctuary he’s helping me get to. And this place seems nice, too. Probably be better off coming with me than just going wherever it is you’re going on your own.”
Neil’s heart gives a twinge at the mention of Exy. Maybe he’d have been unwound sooner rather than later if he’d stayed at Evermore, used as puzzle pieces for the next prototypical rewound after he’d developed his muscle memory to its potential, with the excess discarded or folded in to supply the Moriyama’s grunts with replacement parts, but he’d have had Exy, and friends, maybe. He knows he’s better off on the run, that being unwound is a horrifying bastardization of death, and that his father would never have anesthetized him for it. But there’d be a sick sort of consolation to being useful, and wanted. And these last few weeks on the run since his mother died and left him in this godforsaken country have been a special level of hell.
It hurts being reminded of a future he might have clung to if he’d been anyone else, living in any other world.
But it doesn’t change anything. Not really.
“I know you’re new to being AWOL,” he says, more acidly than really warranted, “but I haven’t made it as far as I have by trusting things that ‘seem nice’. I hope it works out for you, I really do, but I’m going to keep heading south on my own as soon as I can get out of here.”
And then he crawls back under the cot, pushing the bags out a little more than he did previously now that he’s already been discovered so that he can lay a bit more comfortably. Maybe he can snag an hour or two of sleep before the truck stops and he drags himself out of this mess.