tanking Omegas. Above all, we tried to warn them away from turning themselves into refuges. These huge, secure camps were supposed to be the Council’s protection for struggling Omegas—a place where any Omega would be given food and shelter, in exchange for their labor. They were a last resort for Omegas, and a reassurance for the Alphas themselves. A guarantee that however much they might restrict Omegas to blighted land, and however high they raised their tithes, we would not take them with us into starvation. But for years now, those who entered the refuge gates had not been allowed to leave. The refuges were expanding rapidly and had become nothing more than tank complexes.
But time and again, when we tried to pass on this news at settlements, we were met with silence. Wary stares and crossed arms. I remembered how Kip and I had started the fire outside New Hobart: how it had taken on its own momentum as it built and spread. Spreading the word of the Council’s tanks was more like trying to light a fire in rain, with sodden green twigs. It wasn’t the kind of tale you could just share with a stranger in a tavern, as if it were no more than gossip about a neighbor. We could only risk raising the topic with those who were sympathetic to the resistance—and who would admit to that, after the massacre on the island? The Council, after years of denying that the island existed, was now spreading the word of the island’s defeat. The blood on its streets had rendered it safe: a cautionary tale, rather than a threat.
And the cautionary tale was working. People were warier than ever. When we approached settlements, people straightened in the fields and watched us coming, their hands firmly on their pitchforks and spades. We ventured into Drury, a large Omega town, but both times we entered taverns the noisy conversations stopped, as if the sound were a lamp suddenly extinguished. At every table, people turned to the door to assess us. Their loud conversations never resumed—whispers and mutterings replaced them. Some people would push back their chairs and leave as soon as they saw Zoe’s unbranded face. Who in the taverns within would dare to discuss the resistance with three ragged strangers, let alone a group that included an Alpha and a seer?
The most frustrating encounters weren’t with those who refused to talk to us, but those who seemed to believe us, but still did nothing. In two of the settlements people listened to our story and seemed to understand how it made sense of the Alphas’ treatment of us. That the tanks were the endpoint to which the Council’s policies of the last few years had been heading. But the question we heard, again and again, was What are we supposed to do about it? Nobody wanted to shoulder the new burden of this news. They had enough burdens already. We saw it, everywhere we went: the lean faces, the bones of eye sockets thrust forward as though trying to escape the skin. The settlements where shanties and lean-tos propped up one another. The people with teeth and gums stained a livid red, from chewing areca nut to distract from their hunger. What did we expect these people to do with the news we told them?
Two days after we’d found the abandoned safe house, and my fight with Zoe, Piper left at dawn to scout a small Omega town farther west on the plain. He returned before noon, sweat darkening the front of his shirt despite the cold.
“The Judge is dead,” he said. “It’s all over the town.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I said. The Judge had been ruling the Council for almost as long as I could remember, but he’d been under the control of Zach and his allies for years. “If he’s just a puppet, what difference does it make if he’s finally died?”
“It’s not good news if his death only clears the way for someone more extreme,” said Zoe.
“It’s worse than that,” Piper said. He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. Zoe took it and opened it. I squatted on the grass next to her to read it, trying not to think about her knife at my guts, two nights before.
Council leader killed by Omega terrorists, the headline read. In smaller print, underneath, it continued: Terrorists from the self-styled Omega “resistance” movement yesterday assassinated the twin of long-serving Council leader the Judge.