The Three Most Wanted Read Online Free Page A

home was mostly made by people, Jon wasn’t wrong. A normal change for a New Adult, even if my adult freedom had been seized by force and wiles and remained as fragile and elusive as a flower’s scent on a windy day.
    Our physical home couldn’t be much smaller and still fit us all inside. It didn’t even have a porch; the legally required enclosed forest stove burned in any weather and the cook would just have to get wet.
    “We’re going to have to remember we’re supposed to be rich, if we meet anyone,” I remarked, handing the sleeping mats in to Jon.
    Everyone we knew from our little town would be out hunting for work. Failing that, showing up each day at the place they wanted or thought they were most likely to obtain a job, begging for errands to run, making coffee and generally getting underfoot until the boss cracked and granted them informal apprenticeship, proper employment, or told them to clear off and never come back.
    “Yeah, we’d better get our story straight,” said Jon.
    If all had gone as the EuroGov intended, our job-seeking classmates—now legal New Adults—would never have thought of any of us reAssignees again after we’d been shipped off to the Facility for medical recycling. But that was before the book—and the escape.
    By the time Bane returned, announcing the area safe and carrying an armful of firewood, I’d filled the stove pan with water and Jon was tap-tapping his way back up from the stream with the refilled autoFiltration bottles. Stove lit and water boiled, I added some to three of the special hiking food sachets and mixed thoroughly. The smell was nothing whatsoever like chicken stew. Stewed boot leather, perhaps. Handing the sachets out regardless, I closed my eyes for a moment to say grace and raised a cautious forkful to my lips.
    “I think we’re going to miss those army ration packs.” I chewed the tasteless mush once and swallowed. Wait a moment ... Suddenly the mush stuck in my throat, though the food I was worried about was already eaten. “Where did those ration packs come from?”
    Jon’s head rose, the rapid movement of his fork ceasing.
    “Well, they were stolen, there’s not much doubt about that,” said Bane. “But you knew that. They weren’t from... Wearmfell. As far as I’m aware.” Wearmfell. The military ration-pack factory the Resistance had captured—slaughtering all the guards in the process, even the ones who surrendered without a fight.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Jon. “As far as you’re aware?”
    “It means exactly that,” snapped Bane, clearly reluctant to divulge his part in that murderous raid quite like this.
    Did it matter? Wherever the army ration packs we’d all been eating during our trek to York had come from, they’d probably been acquired in much the same way.
    “I hate dealing with the Resistance.” I stabbed the ground with the end of my fork. “Let’s... let’s not any more, okay?”
    “Gets my vote.” Jon started on his safe-but-bland legally-purchased-from-a-hiking-shop-by-Bane meal again.
    “Unless we have to,” agreed Bane, guardedly.
    “Let’s try very hard not to have to!”
    When we’d finished Bane put the biodegradable sachets into a biodegradable scentSeal bag and went off into the woods to bury it. Didn’t want any bears visiting us in the night.
    “Why don’t we turn in?” I suggested when he came back, though it was barely eight-thirty.
    “Okay, but we need to keep watch,” said Bane.
    “ Seriously?” I asked
    “Yeah, if someone does come along at night, they’ll expect real hikers to be tucked up inside asleep, won’t they?” said Jon.
    “And what could we do, run away? How long would we last without our stuff?”
    “Gah!” Bane dragged his hands through his hair. “Fine! No watch, then.”
    “Though, uh, what about... wolves... and things?” said Jon.
    “Tent’s supposed to be permeated with some stink bears don’t like much.”
    “What about