OR NOT FOLLOWED SO MUCH AS WATCHED. Someone was watching me, from among the trees, or in one of the ruined kilns. Still, it didn't bother me to begin with. I was scared that Morrison, or somebody, would come for me, but I didn't think this watcher was from the Innertown. Which wasn't that logical, maybe, but I figured, if I was next— and for a couple of days, there, I really was convinced that I would be the next kid to be taken—if I was next, if the bastards wanted me, they could find me anytime at home, but I didn't think they could touch me out here on the headland. Which was stupid because I had to have known that, if they wanted me, they would just come and get me, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The police were in on it, that was obvious now, and the town hall was probably in on it too. The Homeland bloody Peninsula Company weren't just in on it, they were probably running the whole thing from somewhere in their Outertown offices, some kind of ethnic-cleansing scheme, clearing the streets of potential troublemakers or whatever, or maybe just keeping us all scared, so that when their great Homeland plan finally kicked into motion, they'd have a docile population to man the waste-incineration units or whatever it was they were going to build to replace the plant.
