Fragments Read Online Free PDF Page B

unlikely to be repeated.”
    “Their crimes were conducted through the direct application of senatorial power,”
     said Tovar. “Who exactly are you trying to send a message to?”
    “To anyone who treats a human life like a chip in a poker game,” said the man, and
     Marcus felt the room grow tense. The new senator was staring at Tovar coldly, and
     even in the back of the room Marcus could read the threatening subtext: If he could
     do it, this man would execute Tovar right along with Delarosa and Weist.
    “They did what they thought was best,” said Senator Kessler, one of the former senators
     who’d managed to weather the scandal and maintain her position. From everything Marcus
     had seen, and the inside details he’d learned from Kira, Kessler and the others had
     been just as guilty as Delarosa and Weist—they had seized power and declared martial
     law, turning Long Island’s tiny democracy into a totalitarian state. They had done
     it to protect the people, or so they claimed, and in the beginning Marcus had agreed
     with them: Humanity was facing extinction, after all, and with those kinds of stakes
     it’s hard to argue that freedom is more important than survival. But Tovar and the
     rest of the Voice had rebelled, and the Senate had reacted, and the Voice had reacted
     to that, and on and on until suddenly they were lying to their own people, blowing
     up their own hospital, and secretly killing their own soldier in a bid to ignite fear
     of a fictional Partial invasion and unite the island again. The official ruling had
     been that Delarosa and Weist were the masterminds, and everyone else had simply been
     following orders—you couldn’t punish Kessler for following her leader any more than
     you could punish a Grid soldier for following Kessler. Marcus still wasn’t sure how
     he felt about the ruling, but it seemed pretty obvious that this new guy didn’t like
     it at all.
    Marcus crouched down and put a hand on Isolde’s shoulder. “Remind me who the new guy
     is.”
    “Asher Woolf,” Isolde whispered. “He replaced Weist as the representative from the
     Defense Grid.”
    “That explains that,” said Marcus, standing back up. You don’t kill a soldier without making every other soldier in the army an enemy for
     life.
    “‘What they thought was best,’” Woolf repeated. He looked at the crowd, then back
     at Kessler. “What they thought was best, in this case, was the murder of a soldier
     who had already sacrificed his own health and safety trying to protect their secrets.
     If we make them pay the same price that boy did, maybe the next pack of senators won’t
     think that kind of decision is ‘best.’”
    Marcus looked at Senator Hobb, wondering why he hadn’t spoken yet. He was the best
     debater on the Senate, but Marcus had learned to think of him as the most shallow,
     manipulative, and opportunistic. He was also the one who’d gotten Isolde pregnant,
     and Marcus didn’t think he could ever respect the man again. He certainly hadn’t shown
     any interest in his unborn child. Now he was showing the same hands-off approach with
     the sentence. Why hadn’t he picked a side yet?
    “I think the point’s been made,” said Kessler. “Weist and Delarosa have been tried
     and convicted; they’re in handcuffs, they’re on their way to a prison camp, they’re
     paying for—”
    “They’re being sent to an idyllic country estate to eat steaks and stud for a bunch
     of lonely farm girls,” said Woolf.
    “You watch your tongue!” said Kessler, and Marcus winced at the fury in her voice.
     He was friends with Kessler’s adopted daughter, Xochi; he’d heard that fury more times
     than he cared to count, and he didn’t envy Woolf’s position. “Whatever your misogynist
     opinion of our farming communities,” said Kessler, “the accused are not going to a
     resort. They are prisoners, and they will be sent to a prison camp, and they will
     work harder than you