Unsouled

The third installment of Neal Shusterman's four-book Unwind Dystology continues the story of teenagers in a future America where the "Unwind Accord," passed to end a devastating civil conflict called the Heartland War, allows parents to have children between thirteen and seventeen "unwound," a process in which every body part is harvested and transplanted into others. Flashback chapters follow scientists Janson and Sonia Rheinschild, whose neurografting research, the transplant science enabling grafted body parts to integrate fully into recipients, was co-opted to make unwinding possible.

Connor Lassiter, the notorious fugitive known as the "Akron AWOL," drives toward Ohio with Lev Garrity. Lev is a former tithe, a child raised from birth to be willingly unwound as a religious offering. He instead became a clapper, someone whose blood is replaced with explosive compounds for use as a suicide bomber, though he ultimately chose not to detonate. Connor is presumed dead after the violent takedown of the airplane Graveyard, a hidden Arizona refuge where he sheltered hundreds of AWOL Unwinds, teenagers who fled their unwind orders. He and Lev are headed to find Sonia, an old woman who once sheltered Connor and Risa Ward, a fellow fugitive Connor loves, in her antique shop basement. Sonia is the wife of Janson Rheinschild, the scientist whose work made unwinding possible and whom Proactive Citizenry, the powerful organization he founded, systematically erased from history. Connor believes Sonia holds a secret that could serve as a weapon against Proactive Citizenry.

Their journey stalls in Kansas when Connor hits an escaped ostrich, totaling the car. He walks to the town of Heartsdale to steal a vehicle but is recognized by Argent Skinner, a checkout clerk who idolizes the Akron AWOL. Argent attacks Connor, drags him to a storm cellar, and ties him to a pole. Connor earns the trust of Argent's older sister, Grace Skinner, who is labeled "low-cortical," a term for intellectual disability. When Argent posts a photo with Connor to social media, facial-recognition software alerts the authorities. Grace orchestrates the escape, convincing police the photo was fake and helping Connor overpower a deputy and disguise himself in the deputy's uniform. Lev, who tracked Grace to the house, spots the disguised Connor and sprints to intercept the squad car but is struck by it, suffering a dislocated shoulder and internal bleeding.

Lev directs them west to the Arápache Reservation in Colorado. The Arápache, a fictional tribe, are among the ChanceFolk, Native peoples who never signed the Unwind Accord and sometimes grant asylum to fugitive Unwinds. Lev names Dr. Elina Tashi'ne, a medicine woman whose son Wil was taken and unwound by parts pirates, illegal bounty hunters who sell captured teenagers on the black market. Lev's connection to the tragedy earns them entry. On the reservation, the Juvenile Authority publicly confirms Connor is alive. Chal, Elina's husband and a lawyer, devises a misdirection: in exchange for legal help, the Hopi tribe announces it is granting Connor and Lev asylum, sending authorities on a false chase. A warning shot shatters the Tashi'ne home's window. Lev discovers that Una, Wil's fiancée, fired it, wanting the outsiders gone.

In a parallel storyline, Risa Ward is on the run after the Graveyard takedown. Trapped by a parts pirate in a Wyoming barn, she kills him with a concealed pitchfork and endures two nights before reaching his phone. She calls the Tyler Walker Foundation, run by Cyrus Finch (CyFi), who brings her to a "revival commune" near Omaha where recipients of an unwound boy's transplanted parts live together. Risa heals, leaves, and resolves to rebuild the resistance. In Omaha, a salon owner named Audrey rescues Risa from a street attack, gives her a disguising makeover, and tells her Connor is alive.

Camus Comprix, known as Cam, is the world's first composite human, "rewound" from the parts of dozens of unwound teenagers. He lives under the control of Proactive Citizenry and his handler, Roberta Griswold. At a Washington gala, Senator Barton Cobb and General Edward Bodeker express interest in Cam's future, but Cam privately despises his creators. He tours universities as their showpiece while secretly hacking their servers and amassing damaging internal communications. When he learns Connor is alive, Cam flees Washington. Following the fragmented musical memories of Wil Tashi'ne, whose hands now reside in his body, Cam reaches the reservation and finds Una's guitar shop. Una, hearing Wil's music played by a stranger, knocks Cam unconscious and holds him captive. Connor discovers the situation, intervenes, and learns Cam possesses evidence against Proactive Citizenry. Cam must come with them.

Mason Michael Starkey leads a band of "storks," children abandoned on doorsteps as infants and later marked for unwinding. After surviving a plane crash, Starkey keeps over a hundred kids alive through raids and disguise schemes. He launches an armed assault on Cold Springs Harvest Camp, liberating hundreds and forcing a terrified fourteen-year-old to execute the camp director after Hayden Upchurch, Connor's former head of tech at the Graveyard who is imprisoned at the camp, refuses. Hayden later proposes a stealth liberation of MoonCrater Harvest Camp using underground lava caves. Nearly three hundred kids are evacuated without casualties, but Starkey stays behind and hangs five staff members. Bam, Starkey's tough second-in-command, discovers he has impregnated three girls to make them "unwind-proof." Hayden shows Bam that Starkey's violence fuels pro-unwinding legislation rather than ending it. A mysterious force then raids the mine and recruits Starkey into an alliance with the clapper movement, offering advanced weapons in exchange for more atrocities. Starkey accepts.

Jasper T. Nelson, a disgraced parts pirate, partners with Argent to hunt Connor. When Argent's fabricated leads are exposed, he reveals Grace has a subcutaneous tracking chip, giving Nelson a means to find Connor.

Lev decides to stay on the reservation to unite the ChanceFolk tribes against unwinding. Grace announces she will accompany Connor to keep Cam in line. They drive east with Cam, examining the hacked Proactive Citizenry files at an iMotel in Kansas. The documents reveal that the organization funds political advertising on both sides of the unwinding debate, keeping the public locked in a false choice between types of unwinding so no one questions whether the practice should exist at all. They arrive in Akron and find Sonia's antique shop, where Risa has already taken shelter. Sonia takes them to the home of Hannah, a teacher who once helped Connor and Risa. Connor pushes Risa away, feigning indifference to protect her, but they share a kiss that confirms their true feelings.

Grace spots Proactive Citizenry operatives arriving for Cam. She hides Connor and Risa while Cam is seized. Cam protects the others by refusing to reveal their identities. Roberta takes him to Molokai for "cortical retuning," brain modification to suppress his independent thinking.

At Sonia's shop, the old woman reveals the full history: Janson fought unwinding by inventing an organ printer, a device that builds living human organs from cultured cells, making unwinding obsolete. He sold the patent to BioDynix Medical Instruments, but Proactive Citizenry ensured the company buried the technology because the unwinding industry was too profitable to allow an alternative. Janson's research assistant Austin, a former street kid whose missing fingers were regrown by the printer, was unwound as a warning. Grace asks what everyone is thinking: What if one organ printer still survives, hidden in the corner of an antique shop? Sonia confirms it does.

On the reservation, Lev takes the stage at a public concert, reveals the names of the parts pirates who took Wil, and asks in Arápache who will help track them down. Una's voice rises from the crowd, and the applause builds into a roar.

In an epilogue set years earlier, the widowed Sonia hides the last organ printer prototype in a storage unit, donates Janson's money to Austin's friends founding the Anti-Divisional Underground, and reflects that when the time is right, even the deadest of dreams can be resurrected.