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 Alpha’s 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 one another up. 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 safehouse, and my fight with Zoe, Piper left at dawn to scout a small Omega town further 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.’
I looked up at Piper. ‘Is it possible?’
He shook his head. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘Zach and his cronies have had The Judge’s twin locked up for half a decade – that’s how they’ve been controlling him ever since. It’s all a set-up. They’ve just decided they don’t need him anymore.’
‘So what’s changed? You always said they needed him because people wanted the Council led by someone who seemed to be moderate.’
‘Not now. Listen.’ He grabbed the poster and read from it out loud:
‘In his fourteen years as Council leader, The Judge was a staunch protector of Omegas. This latest outrage by Omega agitators raises pressing security concerns for those serving on the Council –’
‘As if they haven’t all had their twins locked up for years, if not tanked,’ scoffed Zoe.
Piper kept reading. ‘– and indeed for all Alphas. This attack on the very head of our government is further proof that the growing threat of Omega dissidents endangers both Alphas and Omegas. The General, reluctantly stepping forward to fill The Judge’s role, expressed her sadness at his untimely demise. “Through this cowardly act, these terrorists have robbed the Omegas of a steadfast ally, and have demonstrated the ruthlessness and brutality of those who claim to be agitating for Omega ‘self-determination’, and who are willing to kill their own kind in order to undermine the work of the Council.”
‘They’ve killed two birds with one stone,’ he said, tossing the paper on to the grass. ‘They’ve got rid of him, finally, and by pinning it on us, they’ve stoked the anti-Omega sentiments, strengthened their own argument against the moderates.’
‘So it’s The General in charge now,’ I said.
‘Reluctantly stepping forward, my arse,’ said Zoe. ‘She’s been pushing for this for years. And The Reformer and The Ringmaster will be neck deep in the whole scheme.’
None of the Councillors went by their real names. In the past, they’d chosen their Council names to disguise their identities and protect themselves from attacks on their twins. These days, when nearly all the Councillors kept their twins imprisoned in the Keeping Rooms, if not in the tanks, the elaborate names were just pageantry. Each of the names was a statement, a way of announcing to the world their agenda.
The General; The Ringmaster; The Reformer. I remembered the trifecta of faces from Piper’s chart on the island: the three young Councillors who were the real power in Wyndham. The Ringmaster, his smile half-hidden by his mass of dark curls. The General’s angular face, her cheekbones unforgiving. And Zach, The Reformer, my twin. His face frozen in the artist’s pen-strokes. The person who I knew best, and not at all.
‘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
