Among the Betrayed

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 for' ever. 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 ran- domly 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 hat-ing 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 bounc' ing 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.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ina slipped the ring of keys around her left wrist 1 % 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 thit!' 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.

'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 hus' tied 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.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nina 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