Wasteland (Wasteland - Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

grabbing onto a few secure tiles. One broke off under her hand; it skittered down the roof and disappeared in the darkness beneath them with a faint crash.
    With surprising speed, Esther crawled her way back up to her friend, who was huddled miserably, waiting for her.
    “I knew this was a bad idea,” Skar said.
    The variant was astounded that inside, no one had heard the incredible noise Esther had just made. Any one of her people would have been outside investigating the suspicious sounds within seconds. She wished (and not for the first time) that Esther wasn’t so stubborn.
    “But we just got here,” Esther whispered. She flattened down onto her stomach and crawled toward one of the many gaps in the tiles. “And I want to hear what they’re talking about.”
    Skar had no choice but to follow her. She sat next to her friend, knees huddled close and bulging eyes shut tight.
    One gap afforded a limited view of the room below. Esther glanced down, then placed her ear over the hole and concentrated. There were many people speaking at once, but she was able to detect a female voice. She had to strain to hear what she was saying.
    “We got nothing else to give him. Without gas, why would Levi even talk to us?”
    She peered through the hole. Esther could see the tops of heads, a few familiar faces. She recognized Rafe, the current leader of the town elders, a boy she hated because beneath his superior airs, he was both a coward and blowhard. As usual, he was doing his trick of talking softly. Esther had to put her ear close to the hole and focus hard in order to discern his words.
    “Maybe not to you or me, unless we got something to trade,” he was saying. “That’s all he cares about. But there’s one of us I bet he’d talk to.”
    Who were they talking about?
    There was a brief silence, followed by a faint murmuring as people stood and craned their necks, looking to see who he was discussing. Esther followed their gaze and was startled.
    It was a girl, seventeen, with dark, straight hair held back in a ponytail. Unlike everyone else in town, her robes were relatively clean and gathered neatly at her waist with a dark cord. She seemed embarrassed by all the attention, yet flattered as well.
    “I . . . I don’t know,” she was saying. “For one thing, I don’t know what good it would do. I’ve never been to the Source. I can’t even remember the last time I spoke to Levi . . .”
    Esther pulled back, as if struck. “Hey.”
    “What is it?” Skar asked, opening her eyes.
    “It’s my sister. Sarah.”
    Frowning, Esther sat back on her heels. In that position, she could see the place they were talking about, where Levi lived. The Source lay to the northeast of town and was something she saw every day, as much a part of her landscape as the sun. Although it was nearly a mile away, it was hard to miss from anywhere in town.
    The gigantic white building was like a beacon, huge and blindingly lit with electrical lights. They threw deep shadows across the trenches that lay next to it, black gashes in an overgrown field. The holes were just three of the dozens of pits scattered across town that the people dug day after day when they were unlucky enough to be assigned to the Excavation. The front and side of the Source faced a monstrous asphalt field marked with fading white lines and still crowded with the dusty remains of cars.
    Now, it seemed Rafe and his followers wanted something from Levi, something new. And they apparently needed Sarah, the childhood friend who once knew him best of all, to be the intermediary.
    Esther didn’t like it.
    She glanced at Skar, who was amusing herself by tossing a small knife up in the air and catching it. She wasn’t even paying attention, and for that, Esther felt a stab of exasperation. Skar was, after all, only who she was—a great friend, but one who was easily bored, like a little child.
    And little children needed to be protected.
    Esther knew it would be up to