Undivided (unwind, #4)

The fourth and final installment of the Unwind Dystology is set in a near-future America where the "Unwind Accord," signed after a devastating civil war, legalized "unwinding": the complete dissection of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 so that every part of their body is transplanted into other people. Because the teen technically "lives on" in a divided state, the law does not classify unwinding as murder. Proactive Citizenry, a powerful organization, promotes and profits from the industry, while the Juvenile Authority enforces the capture of AWOL Unwinds, teenagers who have fled their signed unwind orders. Political advertisements throughout the novel reveal proposals to expand unwinding, including the Parental Override bill, which would allow the Juvenile Authority to unwind teens without parental consent.

In Akron, Ohio, Connor Lassiter, the notorious "Akron AWOL," and Risa Ward, a former state ward and accomplished pianist, hide in the basement of an antique shop run by Sonia, widow of Nobel laureate Janson Rheinschild. Sonia reveals her husband invented a printer capable of building living human organs from stem cells. Proactive Citizenry destroyed every prototype after purchasing the patent, but Sonia hid one for decades. She entrusts it to Connor, Risa, and Grace Skinner, a young woman traveling with them, cautioning that only a convergence of events will awaken society's conscience. Connor formerly ran the Graveyard, a sanctuary for AWOL Unwinds.

Lev Calder, a former tithe (a child raised for willing unwinding as a religious sacrifice) who once nearly became a clapper (a suicide bomber with explosive blood), pursues his own campaign from the Arápache reservation, one of the most influential Chancefolk (Native American) tribes. With Una Jacali, fiancée of Wil Tashi'ne, a guitarist kidnapped and unwound by parts pirates, Lev tracks down the surviving pirates and returns one to the reservation for justice. Lev petitions the Tribal Council to open the reservation to AWOL Unwinds, but the petition fails. Devastated, he begins planning a more extreme action.

On the Hawaiian island of Molokai, Camus Comprix, the world's first "rewind" (a person assembled from the parts of dozens of Unwinds), discovers Proactive Citizenry's true agenda. Cam was designed to normalize rewinding, but the organization is secretly mass-producing military rewinds as expendable soldiers with no rights. Cam's memories of Risa, whom he loved, have been erased by nanites in his brain. Despite this manipulation, he resolves to destroy Proactive Citizenry from within.

Mason Starkey leads the Stork Brigade, composed of "storks": children abandoned as babies and later marked for unwinding. Funded by the clapper organization, the Brigade attacks Horse Creek Harvest Camp, an unwinding facility in Oklahoma, with weapons and suicide bombers. The violence horrifies Starkey's own people. His second-in-command Bam keeps her squad out of the fighting. Hayden Upchurch, a former Graveyard broadcaster, secretly calls for nonviolent uprising. When Starkey plans to massacre tithes at the next target, Bam, Hayden, and Jeevan, a young tech specialist, stage a coup, forcing him into exile with a blackmail recording. Bam takes command and cancels all attacks, while Hayden departs to hijack radio stations, calling for a rally on November 1 in Washington, DC.

Connor and Risa steal stem cells from a research hospital to test the printer. It works, producing a small ear, but Grace accidentally drops the device, shattering it. Connor decides to visit his parents in Columbus, Ohio, for personal closure and because his father, a skilled mechanic, might repair it. Sonia supports his decision and agrees to mail the 1,411 letters that AWOL teens wrote to the families who signed their unwind orders.

While Connor is away, Jasper Nelson, a disgraced former Juvenile Authority police officer turned parts pirate, uses Grace's tracking chip to locate Sonia's shop. Nelson bears the grafted face of Argent Skinner, his former apprentice and Grace's brother, whom he traded to the black marketer Divan Umarov. Nelson captures Grace, storms the shop, and tortures Sonia. He kills Jack, one of the basement teens, and tranqs Risa. Sonia reveals that Connor went to his parents' house, and Nelson sets the shop on fire before carrying Risa away. Grace recovers and dives into the burning basement to rescue the broken printer parts. Sonia dies in the fire. That evening, Nelson tranqs Connor at his parents' front door and delivers both captives to Divan aboard the Lady Lucrezia, a cargo jet converted into an airborne harvest camp with an automated unwinding machine.

Aboard the plane, Argent, now Divan's disfigured valet, secretly wakes Connor. When Starkey, sold to Divan by the clapper organization, faces the unwinding chamber, he begs Connor to kill him rather than be unwound. Connor strangles Starkey with his left hand; his right, grafted from an Unwind named Roland, proves unable to comply. Connor devises a plan: Risa contacts the admiral from the Graveyard as the only person wealthy enough to enter Divan's auction. Argent switches the labels on Connor's stasis containers with another boy's, so when Connor is unwound, his parts reach the admiral. On landing, Argent frees the remaining Unwinds and drags Nelson into the chamber to be unwound. The admiral's surgical team reassembles Connor from his own parts. He awakens after two weeks with severe cognitive difficulties but gradually improves with Risa at his bedside.

Cam executes his plan against Proactive Citizenry by repositioning the rewind ward's surveillance cameras to stream live to the internet. Feigning a breakdown, he lures his creator, Roberta Griswold, to the ward, where she confesses on camera that Proactive Citizenry controls the Juvenile Authority, funds the clapper movement, and built the rewind army. She pulls a gun, but Cam has replaced her bullets with blanks. Roberta is arrested and later tried for crimes against humanity.

Lev, having tattooed the names of 312 Unwinds over his entire body, travels to Liberty Island in New York and swings his hands together in the gesture of a clapper. There is nothing explosive in his blood, but panicked officers shoot him four times. The shooting of an unarmed boy covered in the names of the Unwound, beneath the Statue of Liberty, on camera, becomes a galvanizing national event. Lev survives with organs from living donors, including a kidney from Miracolina Roselli, a former tithe he once saved. The Tashi'ne family adopts him, and the Arápache Tribal Council unanimously reverses its earlier vote, opening the reservation to all Unwinds.

Grace delivers the broken printer to a mid-sized medical manufacturer with no ties to Proactive Citizenry; the resulting product, the "Rifkin-Skinner Biobuilder," promises to make unwinding obsolete. The 1,411 letters arrive at homes across the country, triggering waves of remorse in more than a thousand families.

Connor, Risa, and Lev reunite at Una's wedding to Wil, a "divisional matrimony" with 27 grooms, each carrying a piece of Wil's unwound body. Cam plays guitar with Wil's hands and vows to advocate for the abandoned military rewinds. The morning after, FBI agents place Connor and Risa in federal protective custody and fly them to Washington, DC, where Hayden's rally on the National Mall has drawn over a million people. Connor takes the podium and announces that the president has vetoed the Parental Override bill and is calling for a moratorium on unwinding. When Connor spots his parents in the crowd, the mob recognizes them as the people who signed his unwind order and attacks. Connor throws himself in, pulls his bloodied parents to their feet, and embraces them alongside his brother Lucas. The gesture defuses the violence; his father asks for forgiveness, and though Connor cannot grant it today, the embrace signals that reconciliation remains possible. Risa calms the crowd as Connor holds his family, knowing the nation has awakened and the era of unwinding is ending.