Among the Betrayed

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 lason 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.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jj?*> ix eyes bugged out at Nina. She had thought she'd

'H*? 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 poi-soned 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 rein' forcements.

'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