Sixteen year old Aine lives in the Colony, and his whole life was decided before he was born. In two years he will marry the girl next door, Brin, who was assigned as his Other at birth. Then he will be given a position in the Colony's workforce that best suits his talents. Each night he takes four pills, like everyone else in the Colony, and he knows the pills keep them safe and their world in order. Everything is fine. Perfect, in fact. Until Aine accidentally drops one of his pills. Terrified, he tries to hide the mistake, but when he dreams for the first time in his life, he discovers all he's been missing. What scares him more than not taking the pill, though, is how alive his dreams make him feel. Because it isn't Brin he dreams of but his best friend Kyer. Another boy. Suddenly Aine's world turns upside down, and he doesn't know what to think or who to trust. All he knows for sure is he's falling in love with Kyer, which is forbidden by the Colony's Code, and he will do anything to protect their budding relationship. Even if it means defying the Overseer and leaving the Colony behind.

The Colony Book 1: Rebellion

Brin wiped under her left eye with her free hand and sighed. “I didn’t find out what happened until years and years later, when I needed to get my red pill adjusted. I was scared about going to the Health Center, so she told me about the time they took her there and I asked what had happened.”


“They put her back on the red pills,” Brin said. “Then they kept her under a guarded watch to make sure she wouldn’t stop taking them again. She kept talking about her baby, because she thought she was pregnant, but finally one of the Physicians told her there wasno baby. There could never bea baby. The Physician explained that everyone in the Colony was born sterile.”


The news didn’t shock me as much as it did anger me. Another example of how the Colony controlled us every hour of our lives. “How did your mother take that?” I asked.


Chapter 43