Read Vigo's Lament: A Dystopian Thriller (Age of End Book 3) for Free Online Page B

sector, just adding records in my journal like any other day, and then the alarm went off. Even though the second wall was down, Greene was so confident in his last broadcast. I was certain we could handle the attack.” He shook his head and laughed nervously. “Man was I wrong! I went to the safe room with everyone else. We’ve done it so many times lately, it’s become somewhat of a routine. Of course, you weren’t there. Ever since Vince and Saul came to the City, I haven’t seen you at all. I guess Greene kept you busy…or locked up. Either way, I thought you were a goner.”
    “Thanks for your vote of confidence,” Charlotte said, nudging his shoulder.
    “Soon after we locked the safe room, Simon made an announcement. He said Greene was dead.”
    “It’s true,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I saw his body.”
    “Up until then, the safe room was pretty, you know, safe. Everyone was after Greene, but once Greene was dead, they focused on the safe rooms. We couldn’t just wait to see what happened. Eventually, they would get in. So we turned to the evacuation pods. The thing is, there were too many people. We weren’t going to fit. We tried to squeeze as many people as possible, but it became very clear that not everyone would make it out. Some volunteered to stay behind. The rest of us, we drew straws.”
    “Christ,” Charlotte said involuntarily.
    “I know. It sucks, but it was the only thing we could think of. I got lucky. I got a spot, but we had to leave five people behind.”
    “I’m so sorry.” She hugged him again. “But I’m glad you made it out.”
    “The entire time I was praying that Simon wouldn’t find the fire vacuum button. If he pushed that, we were all goners. It would suck out all the air, and we would suffocate to death. Fortunately, we had enough time to load into the pods. After our three pods had launched, we looked back to see if others were doing the same, but none of the other pods budged. It was just us. We had nowhere to go. We couldn’t go back. Not in the middle of that massacre. And we had never crossed the outer wall before. We didn’t know what was out here. That’s when we saw a raft in the distance. It was just a dot on the horizon, but we saw it.”
    “That was us,” Charlotte said.
    Trevor nodded. “We followed you, hoping you would lead us somewhere. Then we heard gunfire, and you disappeared. We lost you. We steered our pods towards the sound and found your abandoned raft. We didn’t know what to make of it. So we just kept going forward until we hit land. We were relieved when we saw one of Greene’s boats parked up on shore. We figured they could help us, we just had to find them first. We followed the tracks in the snow, hoping to run into them, but instead, we found you.”
    “That boat was ours,” Charlotte said.
    Trevor gave a puzzled look. “It’s not Greene’s men?”
    “I guess it is, kind of…It was .”
    Trevor gave an even more puzzled look.
    “They attacked us. That was the gunfire you heard. But we kicked them off and took their boat.”
    “Why in the world would Greene’s men attack you?”
    “Trevor, have you been living under a rock? Greene had me locked up for treason. Vince and Saul were working with Simon. We’re all fugitives. Why wouldn’t they attack us?”
    Trevor shrugged. “It was just a rumor that you were locked up. I didn’t really take it seriously.”
    “Well, it happened. The Spire has fallen. Greene is dead. The City is probably a mess. So you need to start taking it seriously.”
    Trevor held up his hands as if being wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit. “Okay. Take it easy. I’m just happy to see a friendly face.”
    Charlotte smiled. “Me too.”
    Trevor glanced at the rest of the group standing at a distance behind her. “So these guys are okay? They’re not traitors? That’s what everyone was saying before this whole thing went down.
    “It’s okay, they’re with me, unless