Among the Betrayed (7 page)

“Don't know what this world's coming to,” the man muttered as they came to the door from the luxurious hallway into the rest of the prison. Nina held her breath. Would he realize now that he needed Mack's keys?

No—he was pulling keys of his own out of his jacket pocket, jamming a key into the lock, jerking the key around, jabbering the whole time. “Mack's a good, honest man, got kids of his own—I don't know why . . .”

They were at another door. The man unlocked this one, too, with barely a pause.

Down the stairs, through another door—the man hustled Nina all the way. Nina was daring to breathe again. Then they reached the door of Nina's cell.

The hating man stopped, stared at his key ring.

“Wouldn't you know it!” he grumbled. “I'm missing this key. I'll have to go back for it.”

He glanced around toward the door they'd just come through. The disgust and impatience played over his face so clearly, Nina felt like she could read his mind:
Now I'll have to go all the way back upstairs, take this nasty girl with me, then come back down here into this muck.
Yes, that had to be what he was thinking. He even raised his foot distastefully to look at the mud on the bottom of his polished shoe.
And I don't want to have to think about this useless kid anymore, I just want to go check on poor Mack
—

“Tell you what,” the hating man said. “I'm not even going to put you in the cell. I'll just leave you in this hall. There isn't anyone else in this wing right now anyway, and that door will be locked tight. . . .” He spoke as though it were Nina, not he, who might worry that she wouldn't be imprisoned well enough. “The morning guard can put you back in your cell when he comes through on his eight
A.M.
rounds.”

He was already going back through the other door. “Can't be helped,” he muttered, and shut the door in Nina's face.

Nina stood beside the solid metal door and put her finger over the keyhole. One of the keys on Mack's key ring fit into that hole. She was sure of it. If the hating man had put her back in her cell, the keys would have done her no good; the door of the prison cell couldn't be unlocked from the inside.

But she had keys to all the doors between her and the interrogation room, with its windows to the outside.

She had keys, she had food—she could escape.

N
ina blindly poked keys into the keyhole, searching for the right one. The only light in the hallway was a dim, dirty bulb, several yards away, so she had trouble just keeping track of which keys she'd already tried and which keys she hadn't. It was also hard trying to keep the rest of the key ring from banging on the metal door while she was turning each individual key. She was sure she had to work silently. But why? Surely the hating man was already upstairs, hovering over the poisoned Mack. And he'd said there were no other prisoners down here. Except Percy, Matthias, and Alia, of course.

Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

It was strange, but Nina had not thought about them even once since that first moment her fingers closed around the guard's key ring. She'd forgotten they existed. All she'd thought about were the keys, the keyholes, her own life.

Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

Thinking about them now made Nina drop the whole ring of keys. It clattered to the stone floor and slid several inches. The sound seemed to bounce all around in Nina's
ears, as though she'd dropped a thousand keys on a thousand floors. She half wished one of the three kids—Percy, Matthias, or Alia—would pound on their cell door, yell out, “Hey! What's going on out there?”

Because then Nina would have to talk to them, have to face them, have to look into their eyes while she decided,
Should I ask them to come with me?

But none of them pounded on the door, none of them called out to her. She shouldn't have expected them to. If they had even heard the noise of the keys through the heavy wood door, they probably just assumed it was a guard making a little more racket than usual. Whether they heard the noise or not, they would have stayed cowering together in their little corner of the cell. In prison it was foolish to call attention to yourself.

In prison it was foolish to think about anyone but yourself.

Nina still didn't bend over to pick up the keys. Not yet.

Ever since the hating man had told her, days ago, “Here's the deal,” she'd been avoiding any decisions. She'd lain down in filth, she'd stumbled along behind the guard, she'd sat with her head bowed while the hating man harangued her. But she hadn't done anything to harm Percy, Matthias, and Alia. She hadn't exactly done anything to help them, either—she'd sat precisely in the middle of a perfectly balanced scale.

But now it was time to tip the scale. She had to choose.

If Nina left on her own, without a single look back,
she'd be sending Percy, Matthias, and Alia to their death. Hadn't the hating man said he was going to kill them all if he didn't get the information he needed by ten o'clock the next night? In her heart of hearts Nina knew that that “if” helped only her—if Percy, Matthias, and Alia were still in their jail cell tomorrow, he'd kill them.

But I don't have that much food,
Nina thought.
It'd be harder for four kids to hide out, traveling to safety, than just one. And Alia's so little. She probably can't walk very fast at all, and I need to walk as far as possible tonight, before anyone discovers I'm gone. One way or another, those kids are going to die. Taking them with me would just mean that I die, too.

Nina thought about Jason betraying her, about all her friends just staring when the Population Police came to arrest her.
Nobody helped me!
she wanted to yell at that small, stubborn part of herself that refused just to pick up the keys and go. But then she thought about Gran, Aunty Zenka, Aunty Lystra, and Aunty Rhoda, four old ladies who could have enjoyed the few small luxuries they could afford on their old-age pensions. They'd kept working instead, at mindless, drudgery-filled jobs, and diapered and coddled a small child in their off hours. She thought about her own mother, a woman she'd barely met, hiding her pregnancy, traveling secretly to Gran's house, sending money whenever she could. It would have been easier for everyone if they'd gotten rid of Nina right from the start.

But it would have been wrong.

Nina sighed, letting out all the damp, unhealthy prison air she'd been breathing. Then she bent down and scooped up the keys. She turned around and walked to a different door, fumbled for a different key. Amazingly, she found this one on the first try. The solid wood door creaked open.

“Alia? Percy? Matthias?” she called. “Come on. Let's get out of here.”

S
ix eyes bugged out at Nina. She had thought she'd lost all awareness of time, but she could feel seconds ticking away—useful, possibly lifesaving seconds—while the others stared speechlessly at her.

“Huh?” Percy finally said.

“I stole a lot of food,” Nina said. “Then somebody poisoned the guard, and he dropped his keys, and the hating man didn't see me pick them up, and he was in a hurry, so he didn't bring me all the way back to the cell, he just wanted to get back to Mack as soon as possible. Mack's the guard. Anyway, I have the keys, and nobody knows it, so we can escape. Come on!”

Another long pause. They didn't seem to understand.

“Did you poison the guard?” Alia asked in a small voice.

“No—I don't know who poisoned him. I don't care. All that matters is that it made him drop his keys, and now I have them, and I'm running away. And you guys can come, too, if you come
now.”

“Maybe it's a trick,” Percy muttered.

“Maybe it's a test,” Matthias muttered back. He stood up
and walked over to Nina. “Why should we trust you?” he asked.

Nina's jaw dropped. She'd expected them to be delighted, grateful, eager to leave immediately. She'd never dreamed that they might question her offer.

“Why should you trust me?” she repeated numbly. “Because . . . because you're sitting in this horrible prison cell, licking water off the wall and peeing in a corner. And tomorrow, if you're still here, the Population Police are going to execute you. You don't exactly have tons of choices here. I'm your only chance.”

Percy and Alia came to stand beside Matthias, like reinforcements.

“She has a point,” Percy whispered to Matthias. “But . . .”

Nina was losing patience. This was entirely backward. They should be pleading with her, not her with them.

“And I'm a nice person,” she argued. “Really I am. You don't really know me because I haven't been myself here in prison, because . . .” She couldn't say “because I was trying to decide whether or not to betray you.” “Never mind. But you can trust me. I promise.”

Percy looked at Alia. Alia looked at Matthias, who looked back at Percy.

“Okay. We're coming,” Matthias announced.

“Well,
good,”
Nina said, unable to resist a hint of sarcasm. “Glad that's decided.” She turned back toward the other door, rattling the key ring in her hand.

“What's your plan?” Percy asked.

“Plan?” Nina repeated.

“Didn't you say some guard had been poisoned?” Percy asked. “How are you going to avoid all the other guards, who'll be scared and angry and looking for someone to blame?”

“Um—,” Nina said.

“And where are we running away to?”

Nina felt stupid. Just as the keys had made her forget Percy, Matthias, and Alia, they'd also made her forget all logic. She couldn't just run away from prison. She had to run
to
someplace else.

She thought about Gran and the aunties', but it was too dangerous. And at Harlow School—everyone there knew she'd been arrested. Nobody would dare to help hide her. She swallowed hard.

“Do you know any place safe?” she asked quietly.

Again the other kids did their three-way look, this time Alia peering at Percy, Percy peering at Matthias, Matthias peering at Alia. It was probably a good thing that most of the time Nina had spent with the other kids had been in darkness, because that look would have driven her crazy.

Maybe it still would.

“We don't know any place safe,” Matthias said. “Not anymore.”

“Well, this is just great,” Nina raged, slumping against the wall. “We have food, we have keys, we have everything we need to escape—except a place to go.”

“It's not an easy thing, surviving. Out there,” Percy said,
jerking his head toward the metal door, as if the entire world lay just on the other side. “You need food, you need shelter, you need heat—well, not this time of year, but come winter—”

“You need to be safe from other people,” Alia chimed in.

“Away from the Population Police, or anyone who might report you to the Population Police,” Matthias agreed.

Nina was beginning to regret her decision. The last thing she needed right now was to be lectured by three little kids about how dangerous the world was. Didn't they think she knew that? As if there was any place away from people.

An idea tickled Nina's brain.
Away from people
 . . . Like a slide show, her mind flashed on image after image of trees, just trees—a woods going on for miles, between vast yards that led up to two schools without windows. Schools whose students probably never went out into the woods anymore, after Nina and Jason were arrested. . . .

“I think I know a place,” Nina said slowly, still thinking.

“Does it have lots of food?” Alia said eagerly.

“No, but . . .” Nina gave the bag at her waist a little tug through the material of her dress. She was being foolish again, though, because the four of them would probably eat all her stolen food before they even got to the woods. And it wasn't like there'd be food lying around in the woods—or would there? Nina remembered the new boy in Jason's group of friends from Hendricks School. He'd called himself Lee Grant, though Jason had told Nina more
than once that he was sure that was a fake name. The first time Nina met Lee, he was furious because he'd been making a garden in the woods, and the other kids had trampled on it.

Food grew in gardens. Nina was a city kid, but she knew that much. If Lee Grant could make a garden in the woods, so could Nina and Percy and Matthias and Alia.

“This place I'm thinking of—we can grow our own food there,” Nina said, then explained quickly. She was careful not to say Jason's name, not to give away too much about why she'd been at Harlow School or why she'd had to leave.

Once again Percy, Matthias, and Alia exchanged glances.

“I think growing food's harder than you're making it sound,” Percy said.

“But”—Matthias looked around at the prison walls—“it beats being here.”

“I like trees,” Alia said softly.

And with those words it was settled. Nina found herself giving the other three a genuine, full-blown smile for the very first time. She was delighted that she didn't have to dodge their gaze anymore, didn't have to try to eavesdrop on them, didn't have to worry that they knew she was supposed to betray them. There wasn't a chance anymore that she might betray them.

She was saving their lives instead.

T
he four of them decided, after much debate, to wait before they unlocked all the doors and slipped out of the prison.

“If someone got poisoned, everything will be topsyturvy for a while,” Percy said. “We should probably wait until the middle of the night.”