fallen asleep on my lap. I’d learned, then, how the weight of a sleeping child is subtly different from their weight when awake. Now, in my visions, Elsa and the children were all weightless, their hair drifting across their faces.
I woke from the waterlogged dream with a shout.
“You insisted on bringing her,” Zoe hissed at Piper, who was leaning over me to hush me.
I couldn’t speak, my mouth clenched shut against the scream that would otherwise break out again. During the dream, one of my sleeping hands had clawed at the earth. I stared at the gouge marks I’d left in the black soil.
“It’s not her fault.” Piper’s hand was pressed against my shoulder, steadying my shaking as he spoke coolly to Zoe. “You know that,” he said. “And we need her.”
“What we don’t need,” Zoe said, “is her bringing a patrol down on us.” She strode away.
For three days we watched the town. Each morning, before dawn, we set out from our base in the ruins of the forest and ventured onto the plain. We moved slowly in the deep grass, creeping to the few hillocks and copses that granted us some cover. Around New Hobart, the wall that was being hastily constructed when Kip and I escaped was now a solid structure, stoutly braced with posts. Red-shirts, the Council’s soldiers, patrolled the perimeter, and manned the huge gates. We made note of the numbers of patrols, mounted and on foot, and the time of each shift changeover. We counted the wagons that sometimes came and went, escorted by soldiers, on the main road that traced through the eastern swamps toward Wyndham. When a wagon entered the city, we noted the procedure at the gate, observing how many soldiers it took to open the gates, and counting the guards in each of the watchtowers. There were so many of them; each day of watching only confirmed the Council’s grip on New Hobart, its wall encircling the town like a strangler’s hands.
Only a few miles from where we watched, Elsa, Nina, and the children were waiting. Somewhere, too, within those guarded walls, were the papers that held more clues about the Ark, and the secrets that it contained. The soldiers were searching. The tanks were filling. The hours while we watched the town felt too long, and never long enough.
Each morning, not long after dawn, fifty or more Omegas filed out of the eastern gate. Corralled into a tight group by mounted soldiers, they were led to the farmland northeast of the city. There they labored, watched by the soldiers, until they were escorted in again in the evening, along with the barrows of harvested food.
While the farmers worked, the soldiers milled about and talked together. Once, an older Omega stumbled and dropped an armful of marrows that he was loading onto a cart. The soldier driving the wagon turned and whipped him, as casually as a horse flicking its tail at a fly. Without looking back he urged the cart away, leaving the man fallen in the mud, clutching at his face. Even from a distance we could see the blood running off his chin. The other Omegas nearby had turned to look, and one woman moved to help the bleeding man, but a shout from another soldier sent her bending back to her own task.
We noted, too, the new building on the slope of the hill inside the southern wall. Long and low, it stood out against the jumble of old houses around it. There were no windows. If it weren’t for what we knew, I might have thought it was a storehouse. As it was, I only had to look at it to feel the tank water rising within it.
The Council had occupied New Hobart for just a few months, and the tanks were not an easy thing to build. I’d seen the tank chamber underneath Wyndham, and the complex tracery of wires and pipes and flashing lights that kept those people suspended in their almost-death. I’d felt the elaborate darting of the Electric through the wires. But lately I’d also seen the children’s tanked faces in my visions, night after night. They didn’t have long.
Ω
On our third day of watching the town, Zoe came back at a run from her post, a low hill in the marshes with a view toward New Hobart’s western gate. Before she could speak she bent over, hands on knees, to reclaim her breath.