The Refuge Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

always seemed like an outsider—it comes from being split late, and not raised in Wyndham like the other two. But he had the Confessor, and that made him hugely powerful. I think the tanks are his pet project—and the database, too. He’s never been smooth, like the General is—she can charm as well as intimidate. The Reformer’s just as ruthless, though, in his own way.”
    â€œYou don’t need to tell me that,” I said.
    Piper nodded. “But now that he’s lost the Confessor, allegiances might have shifted.”
    I remembered how Zach had let me escape, after Kip and the Confessor’s deaths. I could still hear the waver in his voice as he’d shouted at me to go before the soldiers arrived. If they find out you were involved, that’ll be it for me . Was it the General or the Ringmaster he feared? Or both? Before the silo, I might have convinced myself that, on some level, Zach had wanted me set free. But whatever part of me could have believed that had been left on the silo floor, along with Kip.
    â€œWe need to get to Sally’s quickly,” Piper said. “We don’t have a choice. From there, we start mustering the resistance, seeking the ships. They’ve wiped out the island; they’ve got rid of the Judge; they’re dismantling the resistance network, bit by bit.”
    The sky above us, sulky with clouds, took on a new and pressing weight, and I felt that the three of us were very small. Just three people on the wind-scoured plain, against all the Council’s machinations. Each night, as we trudged through the long grass, there were more and more tanks being readied in the refuges. Who knew how many they’d tanked already. And more people were arriving at the refuges every day.
    I couldn’t claim that I understood Zach anymore, but I knew enough to know this: it would never be enough. He wouldn’t be satisfied until we were all tanked.

chapter 4
    The next night, well after midnight, I began to sense something. I was jittery, and found myself scanning the darkness around us as we walked. Once, when Zach and I were little, wasps had made a nest in the eaves of our house, right outside our bedroom. For days, until Dad found the nest, a buzzing and scraping had kept us awake, lying in our small beds and whispering of ghosts. What I felt now was like that: a high-pitched buzz at the edge of my hearing, a message that I couldn’t interpret but that soured the night air.
    Then we passed the first sign for the refuge. We were about halfway between Wyndham and the southern coast, skirting the wagon road. But we passed close enough to the road to see the sign, and crept nearer to read it. The wooden board was painted in large white letters:
    Your Council welcomes you to Refuge 9—6 miles south.
    Securing our mutual well-being.
    Safety and plenty, earned by fair labor.
    Refuges: sheltering you in difficult times.
    It was illegal for Omegas to attend schools, but many managed to scrape together the basics of reading, learning at home, as I had, or in illicit schools. I wondered how many of the Omegas who passed the refuge’s sign could read it at all, and how many of those would believe its message.
    â€œ In difficult times ,” Piper scoffed. “No mention of the fact that it’s their tithes, or pushing Omegas out to blighted land, that make the times so hard.”
    â€œOr that if the difficult times pass, it makes no difference,” added Zoe. “Once people are in there, they’re in for good.”
    We all knew what that meant: the Omegas floating in the nearly-death of the tanks. Trapped in the horrifying safety of those glass bellies, while their Alpha counterparts lived on unencumbered.
    We kept clear of the road, following it from a distance among the cover of gullies and trees. As we approached the refuge I found myself slowing, my movements sluggish as we drew closer to the source of my disquiet. By