The woman in gray scowled at Octavia, and she fell silent.
The line moved again, and soon they were being led outside. In the distance, Glass saw a group of Protectors with shaved heads running alongside some exhausted-looking figures. From the way the Protectors were screaming at them, Glass gathered that they were also prisoners. Were more of her friends among them? She squinted into the sunlight, mind racing.
More alert than she’d been before, Glass tried to observe as many details as she could about the Stone. What had looked like a single structure from the outside was more like a collection of buildings in a honeycomb pattern, not unlike the layout of the Colony. Some structures they passed were no more than skeletons, bare steel beams surrounding piles of rubble, while others were more intact.
White-clad Protectors were everywhere, but oddly, they didn’t seem to be doing much. Since she’d arrived at the Colonists’ camp, every day was a constant flurry of activity, with people weeding the garden, collecting firewood, chasing after the children, or building new structures. What did these people do all day?
There were at least some signs of actual life in the center of the building, which the woman called the “Heart of the Stone” as she led them toward it. It was a tiny forest—maybe a courtyard once—now full of trees, some of them bearing fruit. Glass breathed in the smell of ripening apples and pears, dimly hearing the woman’s droning explanation of something about religious ceremonies and offerings to Earth. The group started out again before Glass was ready to leave the comforting green canopy.
“Now I will take you all to meet our leader and see our bounty,” the blond woman said reverentially, leading them back through the building. “Soren has returned from a long spirit walk and is eager to meet you all.” Glass and Lina exchanged nervous glances. Meet felt like an odd word to use with girls who’d been drugged and kidnapped. And this was the person in charge, who’d given the orders and approved the Protectors’ violent actions.
The building opened up onto a huge vista, so sprawling and bright that Glass nearly staggered from the scope of it. An enormous rectangular field full of planters stretched out before them, and beyond that, a river basin, glittering in the midday sunshine. As her eyes adjusted, she took in more details: the remains of fallen buildings along the far horizon, the crops in the field. There was a lone woman in a white dress picking through the crops with a careful squint, her black hair falling over one shoulder.
Something strange caught her eye, and Glass stepped closer to get a better glimpse. There were wheels underneath one of the planters, this one full of potatoes and other root vegetables. As the blond woman started a speech about Earth’s bounty, two realizations struck Glass: that potatoes grew under the ground, not in heaped piles, and that every single planter here had wheels.
They weren’t planters at all. They were carts. This wasn’t a farm, just a place to sort through the food these people had looted.
Anger swept aside her fear as Glass thought about how hard everyone had worked getting ready for the Harvest Feast. The weeks spent working the fields, the hours spent hunting, the days spent gathering and drying fruit.
“You’re just thieves.” The words tumbled out of Glass’s mouth before she had time to stop them. Next to her, Lina gasped and shook her head, but it was too late.
The woman stopped talking, eyes narrowing, as everyone turned to stare. “How dare you speak about the Protectors that way.” Glass recoiled as the woman strode toward her, hand raised.
But then the dark-haired woman from the field strolled up, wiping dirty hands on her white tunic dress. The blond woman stopped in her tracks.
“Peace, sister,” the dark-haired woman said. “I’d like to hear what she has to say.” Her eyes were crinkled at the corners, and bright with curiosity. She smiled at Glass, and there was only warmth in it.
“Please, tell me,” the woman said. “How are we thieves?”
An alarm rang in Glass’s mind, warning her to be careful despite the woman’s gentle demeanor. But then she thought about the anguish in Luke’s face when he saw her dragged away. The terrified screams and shouts of pain that filled the clearing after the explosions went off.
“This bounty isn’t some gift from the Earth. It’s food you stole from communities who worked hard to feed their people, their children. You have a field here,” Glass said, motioning to it. “Why aren’t you growing anything? Do you people not know how?”