‘The three of them have already been running things for years, really,’ Piper said. ‘But it’s a bad sign, that they felt able to get rid of The Judge once and for all. They’re confident enough of their support that they don’t even need to hide behind him anymore.’
‘More than that,’ Zoe said. ‘You’ve heard it, everywhere we go – the unease after the numbers who died at the island. I’d bet that even some Alphas were a bit restive about the killings. A stunt like this with The Judge shores up their own support – makes it seem as if it’s a righteous battle, against an Omega resistance that’s ruthlessly aggressive. Justifies their own brutal tactics.’
It was a network of fear, expertly manipulated by the Council. Not only the Omegas’ fears, but the fears of the Alphas too. I had seen how they cringed away from us, how they viewed us as walking reminders of the blast, our deformed bodies a poisonous residue. The fact that my mutation wasn’t visible didn’t make any difference: the Omega brand on my face had been enough to provoke spits and insults from Alphas who’d passed through my settlement when I was a teenager. Alphas had always shunned us, even in good times. Then came the drought years, when I was a child, and even Alphas had gone hungry. And the year the harvests failed, when I was at the settlement. People turn on one another when they’re hungry and afraid, and the Council had made sure that it was the Omegas that they blamed. This lie about The Judge’s death was just the latest part of the narrative that the Council had been constructing for years: that it was us against them.
I picked up the paper, still warm from being crushed in Piper’s pocket. ‘It’s all accelerating, isn’t it. The Council’s got everyone running scared. Alphas and Omegas both.’
‘They don’t have The Confessor anymore,’ he said. ‘Or her machine. Don’t forget what we’ve achieved.’
I closed my eyes. The one thing I ought to have been grateful for – the fact that Zach no longer had The Confessor’s cruel brilliance at his disposal – I couldn’t even think of without losing my breath, the raw pain of it like a boot to the guts. Her death was Kip’s death.
‘How much do you know about The General?’ I asked them.
‘Not enough,’ said Zoe. ‘We’ve been monitoring her since she came on the scene. But it’s been decades since infiltrators were able to penetrate the Council fort. It’s harder than ever to get into Wyndham, let alone close to the Council.’
‘What we do know is all bad news,’ Piper said. ‘She’s militantly anti-Omega, just like The Ringmaster and The Reformer.’
It still jarred, to hear Zach spoken of by his Council name. In the silo, The Confessor had said, I had another name once. I wondered if my twin ever thought of himself as Zach anymore. I suspected not – he would have wanted to leave it behind, along with the unsplit childhood that he’d been forced to share with me.
‘The General’s better established than either of them,’ Piper went on. ‘They all started young, not that it’s unusual in the Council. That place is a snake pit – plenty of Councillors don’t live long. But The General’s the sharpest of the lot, politically. She got her start working for The Commander. The rumour was that she got her place by poisoning him.’
I remembered The Commander’s death being announced when I was still living in the settlement. Untimely, the Council’s bulletin had said. Timely enough for The General, it seemed.
‘The General’s never disputed those stories,’ Piper said. ‘True or not, it suits her to be feared. Every time she’s come up against opposition, it’s ended badly – and never for her. Scandals, disgrace, backstabbings – sometimes literally. One by one, everyone who’s opposed her has been silenced, or driven out. The only reason The Judge lasted as long as he did was because he was useful to her and the other two – a popular figurehead for them to use.’
‘Why her, as the new leader,’ I said, ‘and not The Ringmaster, or Zach?’
Piper was squatting, his elbow on his knee. ‘The Ringmaster came to the Council via the army,’ he said. ‘He’s got a huge following amongst the soldiers, but he’s less of a political operator than the other two. They need him – he’s been there longer, and he’s got the common touch, and the loyalty of the soldiers, who see him as one of their own. But the word is that he’s less radical. Don’t get me wrong – he’s still notorious. He runs the army, for one thing, so when it comes to enforcing Council rule, he’s been the driving force for years. But although he’s brutal, he’s not the one driving the big reforms. Most of the worst changes – pushing the settlements further and further from decent land; the tithe increases – they seem to have originated with The General. And the tightening up of registrations came from The Reformer. Probably The Confessor too, working behind the scenes with him.’
‘And what do you know about how Zach fits in to it all?’
‘Less than you, probably,’ Piper said.
Once, I would have agreed with him. I would have argued that I knew Zach better than anyone. Now, there was a distance between us that I couldn’t breach. Between us lay The Confessor’s body, and Kip’s. All the silent people floating in those round glass tanks.
Piper continued. ‘The Reformer’s 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.’
‘You 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.
‘We 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.
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.