Resonance Read Online Free PDF Page B

we’d cleaved. Billions of lives in each one, unravel­ing to nothingness. Billions dead, by our hands.
    My own hands began trembling so badly, my fingers blurred. I was going to be sick.
    I bolted for the girl’s bathroom and barely made it in time. When I was done, I sank down on the tile floor, spent and shaking, my breath coming in desperate pants.
    The door opened and Ms. Powell came in. “I’m sorry,” she said, crouching next to me. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you. There are better ways . . .”
    â€œTo say I killed a planet’s worth of people? Next time try a greeting card.” My stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left to throw up.
    â€œCome on,” she said, helping me to my feet. I hobbled to the sink and rinsed my mouth out, as if I could wash away the taste of what I’d done. Simon and Iggy, fading to nothingness as they played near the pond. A playground full of children. I’d killed them.
    I scrubbed my hands over my face. “It’s murder. It’s genocide.”
    â€œYou didn’t know,” she said, handing me a towel, calmer and more reasonable than anyone should be. Then again, it wasn’t news to her. “Even most Cleavers haven’t been told.”
    I had known, deep down. From the minute I’d watched Park World Simon fade, I’d known cleavings were wrong.
    And they were still happening. “Do my parents know?”
    â€œI doubt it,” she said. “Outside the Major and Minor Consorts, very few people know the truth.”
    I gripped the edge of the sink. The girl who stared back from the mirror didn’t look like me. She didn’t look like a murderer, either, but it turned out she was both. “If it’s such a secret, how did the Free Walkers find out?”
    â€œA Consort physicist with a theory and a conscience. It was generations ago, well before I was born. The discovery created a schism within the Consort; in the end, those advocating cauterization were branded heretics. They fled to save their own lives. We’ve been considered traitors ever since.”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell people? Every day you keep quiet, we cleave more Echoes. More people die. The Consort might be evil, but most Walkers are decent people. They’d stop if they knew the truth.” My parents would never allow it. God knows Addie wouldn’t.
    â€œDo you think we haven’t tried? We can’t force people to believe.”
    â€œYou won’t have to force them. Just explain, like you did with me.”
    â€œYou had the benefit of growing up with a Free Walker. Your entire childhood, Monty was counteracting the Consort’s influence. Haven’t you ever wondered why you and your sister turned out so differently?”
    Addie had been four when we moved in with my grand­father. She’d started school soon after, leaving Monty and me alone.
    â€œMonty wasn’t raising me as a Free Walker, he was manipulating me into finding Rose.” I clutched my pendant so hard the tines bit into my palm.
    She looked away. “He was also teaching you to value lives instead of taking them. He gave you tools that most Walker children never learn.”
    I thought back to the Walks we’d taken when I was little, the songs he sang, the tricks and shortcuts he’d shown me. All because I was his best, brightest girl.
    Or so I’d thought.
    â€œHum a tune both deft and kind,” I murmured. “Monty wouldn’t let me cleave. He taught me how to tune instead.”
    â€œCauterization’s not the only thing we do. Often, tuning a world is enough to protect it from the Cleavers, and it takes far less time.”
    â€œWhy not cauterize every Echo? Set them free?”
    â€œBecause the drop in energy to the Key World would leave it too vulnerable. Protecting the Key World and the Echoes is a balancing act. Until we convince the Walkers to stop