Among the Betrayed (6 page)

When they were done, they searched for any dropped crumbs and ate those as well. Nina hovered beside them, pretending to look for crumbs, too. Then they all sat back, happily sated. Nina sat down beside Alia, and Alia leaned over and gave her a big hug.

“Thanks, Nina. I hope you don't get hungry later. I think that was the best meal I ever had.”

Nina could have brought Alia fresh, beautiful rolls, but she hadn't. Instead, she'd let the little girl have old, moldy, practically inedible black bread just because Nina herself was too full of the Population Police's fine meal to pretend to want it. And now Alia was thanking her.

Nina felt guiltier than ever.

D
ays passed. Nina had no idea how many, because nothing happened with any regularity. Sometimes the guard brought food; sometimes the guard pulled one of them out for questioning. Sometimes Matthias decided they could light the candle for a few minutes—but only for Alia, only when he thought she needed it.

Nobody knew when any of those things would happen.

Other than that, they could measure their time in the prison-cave only by how many times they got sleepy or thirsty or needed to go to the bathroom.

None of those needs were easily satisfied.

Their “bathroom” was just a corner of the cave they all avoided as much as they could. It stank mightily.

They had no bedding at all, not a single pillow or blanket. Sleeping on wet rock only left Nina damp and stiff and more tired than ever.

And when they were thirsty, they had to go to the dampest part of the cave and lick the wall. The guard never brought water. Matthias got the idea to keep one of the cloth bags the food had come in, in order to soak up as
much water as possible. (He told the guard they'd dropped the bag over in the bathroom corner. “He won't come in here and check,” he argued in a barely audible whisper. And he was right.) Matthias put the bag at the bottom of the damp wall, where the water dripped constantly. When the bag was saturated, he carefully squeezed the water from the wet cloth into Alia's waiting mouth, and then Percy's, and then a few precious drops into Nina's. Nina choked and spit it out.

“Yu-uck!” she screamed.

“What?” Alia asked.

“It tastes terrible,” Nina complained. The water was unpleasant enough licked straight from the wall—it tasted like rock and sulfur and, distantly, some kind of chemical Nina couldn't identify. But from the cloth bag the water tasted like rock and moldy bread and old, rotting, dirty bag. Maybe even somebody else's vomit as well.

“It's water,” Matthias said. “It'll keep us alive.”

Nina didn't say anything else. But after that, she went back to getting her water straight from the wall, a drop or two at a time, and let the others squeeze all the water from the cloth for themselves.

Nina suspected that the other three kids had had a much rougher life than she before they were captured by the Population Police. They didn't seem to mind the darkness like she did; they didn't seem to mind the lack of food. They didn't complain about the stench of the bathroom
corner. (Well, they all smelled bad themselves anyway. So did Nina.)

Nina tried as much as possible to sit close to the other kids—for body warmth and to keep the guard from tattling on her again. And maybe to learn something. But several times she woke up from a deep sleep and found that they'd moved to another side of the room and were whispering together.

“There was a draft over there,” Alia would say. “We got cold, but you looked comfortable. We didn't want to wake you.”

It sounded so innocent. Maybe it was innocent. But it still made Nina mad.

I
will
betray them,
she'd think.
That'll show them. And I won't care at all.

That was when she'd moan something like, “Oh, I miss my family so bad. Who do you miss?”

Even Alia wouldn't answer a question like that.

And later, facing the hating man, Nina would be glad for the other kids' silence. Because, with his piercing blue eyes glaring at her, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep any secrets. She felt like he knew she really was an exnay. She felt like, if he asked, she'd be forced to tell him Gran's full name and address. Whether she wanted to or not, she'd describe every single one of her aunties down to their last gray hair, and give their civil service ranks and departments.

Fortunately, he never asked about who had hidden her.
He just asked about Alia, about Percy, about Matthias.

“Give me more time,” Nina would beg. “I don't know them yet.” (Though, secretly, Nina thought she could spend centuries in the prison-cave with them and still not know anything about them. Percy was like a rock, hard and unyielding, revealing nothing. Matthias was no more talkative than a tree. Even Alia, who looked like the weak spot on their team of three, was quiet more and more, polite and nothing else.)

“Time? You've been in there for days,” the hating man ranted back during one interrogation session in the middle of the night. “How long does it take to say, ‘My parents are so-and-so. What are your parents' names?' ”

For one terrifying instant Nina thought he really was asking her her parents' names. Against her will her lips began to pucker together to form the first syllable of her mother's name.
Rita. My mother's name is Rita. My father's name is Lou. Gran's name is Ethel. And I am . . .

Nina bit down hard, trapping all those words in her mouth. The hating man didn't seem to notice. He was pacing, facing away from her. He continued fuming.

“Even first names would help. Even initials. You've got to give me something.”

He hadn't been asking her her parents' names. He'd merely been telling her the question she was supposed to ask the others. Nina's heart pounded out a panicky rhythm that made it hard for her to think.

What if . . . what if he doesn't care about my parents'
names because he already knows them? What if he already knows about Gran and the aunties? Is that why he never asks?

Nina frantically tried to remember if she'd ever breathed a word about any of her family to Jason. She hadn't, had she? Talking to Jason, she'd wanted to seem exotic and desirable. A grandmother and a bunch of old-maid aunts didn't really fit that image.

The hating man was done pacing. He whirled on his heel, put his face right up against Nina's. They were eye to eye, nose to nose.

“You cannot play around with the Population Police, little girl,” he said. “That's how people die.”

Nina quivered.

The man stalked out and slammed the door behind him.

Nina sat alone, terrified, in the luxurious interrogation room. The table in front of her was loaded down with bowls of food. She'd been eating ravenously during their conversation. Perhaps because it was the middle of the night, instead of midday, the foods were snacks, not a real meal, mostly things Nina had never tasted before: popcorn, peanuts in their salty shells, orange cheese crackers, raisins in delicate little boxes. Nina was still starving—she was always starving, she couldn't think of a single time in her entire life when she'd had her belly completely full. But she couldn't bring herself to eat another bite, not with the hating man's threat echoing in her ears. Still, she found herself reaching out for the bowl of peanuts. She
watched her own hands lift the bowl and pour its contents down the front of her dress, making a bag of her bodice. She cinched her belt tighter, holding the peanuts in at her waist. She'd barely finished when the guard opened the door.

“He's done with you early, I hear,” the guard growled. “Back to the cell with you.”

Nina stood slowly. None of the peanuts fell out. She crossed her arms and held them tightly at her waist, keeping the belt in place. She took a step, and then another, and nothing happened. The peanut shells tickled, but Nina didn't care.

I'm stealing food from the Population Police!
Nina thought.
I'm getting away with it!

Walking back to her cell, Nina did not feel like a girl who'd nearly betrayed her parents, whose beloved Gran and aunties might be in danger. She did not feel like an illegal child, with no right to live. She did not feel like a lovesick, silly teenager who'd been betrayed by the boy she'd fallen for. She did not feel like a potential traitor to her own kind.

She felt giddy and hopeful, crafty and capable. All because of the rustle of peanut shells under her dress.

N
ina kept stealing food.

Invariably, during every meeting with the hating man there came a time when he'd leave the room briefly—to confer with the guard, to go to the bathroom, to get a new pen. And then Nina would grab whatever food was nearest and stuff it down her dress, in her socks, wherever she could. She took apples, oranges, biscuits, raisins. She took dried bananas, unshelled walnuts, cereal boxes, oatmeal bars still in their wrappers. She stole another of the bags the guard brought black bread in, and took to carrying it around with her, tied under her dress, so she could swipe even more food each time.

The problem was, she didn't know what to do with the food she stole.

She was hungry. She could easily have eaten it all herself. But once she was back in her jail cell with the other three, her stomach squeezed together at the thought of eating so much as a crumb of the stolen food. What if they heard her chewing? How could she eat such delicacies while they were starving, right there beside her? (How
could she eat any of the Population Police's food when the other three were starving?)

She did think about sharing. That was probably why she'd reached for the bowl of peanuts in the first place, because she felt so guilty about not taking the rolls for Alia. But how could she explain where she'd gotten all that food?

An evil thought crept into her mind one night when the guard shoved her back into her cell and she saw the other three cuddled together. Nina sat down beside them and leaned into Alia, and Alia squirmed away in her sleep, closer to Matthias. The ground was wet and hard, and Nina was freezing. Everything seemed hopeless; Nina didn't care what happened to anyone else as long as
she
got warm, as long as
she
got dry clothes, as long as
she
got out of jail.
I could use the food,
she thought.
Like a bribe. I could tell them they can have as much as they want to eat, as long as they tell me their secrets. No—I'd dole it out, a peanut at a time, a raisin at a time, with every one of my questions. Who's “Sa-”? Where'd you get your I.D.'s? Who else should have been arrested with you?

Nina didn't do it. She just kept stealing food she couldn't eat, couldn't give away, couldn't use. She felt like she'd been in prison forever and she would stay in prison forever. She saw nothing ahead of her but more nights sleeping in damp, filthy clothes on cold, hard rock, more days trying to overhear the others' whispers, more randomly spaced trips to the hating man's room, where he
yelled at her and gave her food she could not eat, only steal.

Then one day he cut her off.

“You have twenty-four hours,” the hating man barked at her. “That's it.”

Nina stared back at him, her brain struggling to comprehend. She'd practically forgotten that twenty-four hours made a day—that there were things such as numbers and counted-off hours in the world.

“You mean . . . ,” she said, more puzzled than terrified.

“If you do not tell me everything I need to know by”—he looked at the watch on his wrist—“by ten-oh-five tomorrow night, you will be executed. You and the three exnays.”

Nina waited for the terror to come, but she was too numb. And then she was too distracted. Mack, the guard, was pounding at the door to their meeting room. The hating man opened it, and Mack stumbled in, slumping against the table. Nina saw he still clutched the ring of keys he always used to get her in and out of her cell. His long arms hit the wood hard. Then his fingers released, and the keys went sliding across the table and onto the floor.

“Poi—,” Mack gulped. “Poisoned . . .”

The hating man sprang up and grabbed a phone, punching numbers with amazing speed. “Ambulance to the Population Police headquarters immediately!” he demanded. “One of our guards has been poisoned.”

He dragged Mack out into the hall, Mack's feet bouncing against the floor. “Stay with me, Mack,” the hating man muttered. “They're coming to help you.”

“Unnhh,” Mack groaned.

Both of them seemed to have forgotten Nina. Nina looked down and saw the guard's key ring on the floor, just to the left of her chair. All the keys stuck out at odd angles. Slowly, carelessly, as if it were nothing more than just another stray peanut shell, Nina bent down and picked up the whole ring.

N
ina slipped the ring of keys around her left wrist and pushed it up her arm—farther, farther—until the ring stayed in place on its own. The points of the keys bit into her arm, but it wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation. It woke her up.

I have keys.

I have food.

I have twenty-four hours.

I need a plan.

The hating man strode back into the room. Nina didn't have the slightest idea how long he'd been gone. Maybe she'd been sitting there fingering the keys through her sleeve for hours.

“I can't believe this!” the man fumed. “Mack's—I've got someone else with Mack now. I'll take you back to your cell. Come on! I want to get back here as soon as I can. . . .”

Nina stood up, feeling the full weight of the food bag tied around her waist, the pinch of every individual key around her arm. As slowly as she dared, she circled the
table toward the hating man. He grabbed her arm—her right one, fortunately—and pulled.