Free Resistance (The Institute Series Book 2) by Kayla Howarth Page B

based. We have battery storage tanks that charge throughout the day to give us the electricity we need at night.”
    “What happens if one of the panels break?” Drew asks.
    “Someone fixes them. If we don’t know how, we learn from someone who can, or we fiddle with it until it works,” Mum replies. “That rule applies to everything. If it’s broken, fix it. If you can’t fix it, find someone who can. We have handy-man types but their list of jobs is always ridiculously long so we only ask them as a last resort.”
    We drive out of the gravel driveway and onto the road. I look back at the property and while I can’t really see much through the big group of trees hiding the house from the road, the smoke from the chimney and the pathway from the road are clearly outlined. I can see why that house definitely isn’t the best hiding spot for a fugitive rebel group.
    “How many of us are there?” Shilah asks.
    “More than you would think,” Mum replies, but doesn’t elaborate.
    “Well there can’t be too many. There’s roughly only 600 Defective people countrywide,” Drew says. “And of that 600, I think the Institute would have at least 200 of them.”
    “While you are correct in saying we don’t have that many here, definitely not 400, you’re wrong in assuming that every statistic the Institute gives you is accurate,” Mum says. “1 in 5000 was a very broad guestimate that was made many years ago and never updated. There’s no telling how many of us are out there, but the statistics we have show that there’s probably a lot more out there than the government expects or leads us to believe. We’re finding Defective people in every city we go to for recruitment. How would that be possible if 1 in 5000 was correct?”
    “Why wouldn’t they tell us there’s more?” Drew asks.
    “What would the public do if they were to find out that say, one in fifty were Defective? Finger pointing, accusations, vigilante executions, maybe? The government doesn’t want to be responsible for that happening again. They can’t afford more lives lost. They probably don’t want us knowing that we are stronger in numbers than what they think either. Anything to avoid a war with us.”
    “Is it one in fifty?” I ask. That would mean there could be 60,000 of us out there. That’s a big jump from 600.
    “We can’t know for sure, but we are confident our numbers are in the thousands, even the tens of thousands,” Mum replies.
    Maybe this is one of those things we shouldn’t really be discussing in front of Drew. Who knows what he might do with that kind of information. Although, I assume Mr. Brookfield would have the same stats, so maybe it’s not so important to keep to ourselves. Drew suddenly pinches his head, right at the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. “Sorry. Might have overshared a bit there,” Mum says, smiling a little. She was thinking the exact thing I was.
    “What happened?” Drew asks. “When did we get in the car?”
    “That is so cool,” Shilah says.
    That is cool. I want to try it. But no one in this car knows I have the ability to do that, and if Mum can’t really control it, I might make someone forget their whole life or something. That wouldn’t be good. I’m under the impression this memory tweaking ability of hers can’t be reversed.
    We continue to drive west. Sugar cane, corn, and wheat crops slowly minimise the farther we get, and dry land begins to fill the area.
    “So where are we going?” I ask.
    “I figure we’ll go to the most western point today. You’ll hardly ever have to come out here, unless you’re on food deliveries. We’ve taken over some old underground dwellings in the desert. Some people live out here full time; the ones who are too frail, young, or unable to do any of the hard work on the farms for any reason. It’s also our last resort if someone comes looking. They’re right on the border of the radiation barrier so it’s the safest place