Among the Brave

the right, and they’ll issue your uniform.”

Trey hesitated.

“Don’t I get my I.D. back?” he squeaked.

“You’re part of the Population Police now, kid,” the man said, chuckling. “You don’t have any other identity anymore.”

“But—” Trey knew better than to argue. He knew he shouldn’t do anything that would fix his name or face in anyone’s mind. He shouldn’t do anything that would attract attention in any way But how could he just walk away and leave that I.D.? It was the only thing his mother had left him with. What hope did he have without it?

The man didn’t hear him.

“Next,” he called, as the second man added They’s I.D. to a huge stack in a box under the table.

Trey stood still, trying to decide whether to speak up again or not.

“Ya going to go in or get out of my way?” somebody snarled behind him. “‘Cause I’m hungry. Haven’t et in three days. I’m hoping they feed us first thing.”

Trey swallowed hard.

“Go in,” he said. Leaving his I.D. card behind, he stepped past the table and through the gates of the Grants’ former estate.

The surge of other new Population Police recruits carried him along the driveway and up the stairs through the Grants’ front door. Until he was past it, Trey didn’t even think to look for the spot on the driveway where the huge chandelier had come crashing down, killing Mr. and Mrs. Grant and endangering Lee, before Trey rescued him.

I was brave here before, Trey told himself. I can be brave again.

He kept walking.

When the press of bodies around him finally parted, Trey found himself inside a huge room he barely recognized. Surely he’d stood here before, the night of the Grants’ fatal party, but the room looked totally different now. They remembered silks and satins and shimmering glass; now the room was filled with racks and racks of gray uniforms.

“Size?” a man asked Trey.

“Um, I don’t know. I think I’ve grown since the last time I. .”

“Never mind,” the man said, thrusting a uniform into Trey’s arms.

The fabric felt scratchy against Trey’s skin. The Population Police emblem stared up at him from a sleeve of the uniform: two circles interlinked, with a teardrop shape beneath. They had heard all sorts of rumors about the meaning of the emblem. Some said the circles stood for two children, and the falling shape for the tears of mothers who had to kill their thirds. Others said the teardrop was actually a shovel, meant to bury the children the Population Police killed. Either way, being so close to the hated emblem made Trey’s stomach seize up. He let the uniform drop to the ground and he doubled over, retching.

Suddenly someone slammed a fist into the side of his head.

“Boy!” a man screamed. “You treat that uniform with respect! You pick that up this instant! You hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Trey managed to choke out He scrambled to pick up the shirt and pants. The man was still screaming — something about “pride in the organization you have just joined” and “our noble cause.” Around him, They could feel the other recruits staring in shocked silence. Some had stopped in the middle of changing, standing half-naked, with only one arm or one leg shoved into the new uniforms.

Nobody came to Trey’s defense.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the man finished up.

“Please — I just — is there a bathroom somewhere?” They managed to stammer.

The man hit Trey again, knocking him against the wall. Trey tasted a trickle of blood in his mouth. He reached up and felt his face gingerly, but decided the blood came from a self-inflicted wound — he’d bit his tongue.

“Now finish up in here and report to the next room immediately!” the man yelled — not just at Trey this time, but at all the recruits.

“Yes, sir,” some of them yelled, and the room became a flurry of activity again, as everyone crammed on the uniforms as quickly as possible.

Someone tapped Trey on the shoulder.

“Bathroom’s over that way,” a boy who was already fully dressed told him.

‘Th-thank you,” Trey said.

He crawled through the tangle of feet, no longer caring about humiliation or pain or even the need to rescue Mark and Lee. He just wanted to hide.

The bathroom, when he found it, was a vision in elegant silver wallpaper, obviously left over from the Grants. Trey shut the door tight and stared at his pale, terrified face in the mirror.

“What am I going to do?” he whispered to his reflection. Even his best ideas for bargaining or sneaking his friends out seemed like childish fantasies in the face of real fists and screams and all those gray uniforms.

Someone rattled the door handle outside.

“Hey! Give somebody else a turn!”

Trey peered frantically around the bathroom, as if hoping that the walls themselves might swallow him up, hide him for good. He couldn’t face the world outside this room right now. He just couldn’t.

But for all its elegance, the bathroom was fairly small and basic. It held a toilet and a sink. They were both stylized and sophisticated, but the sink didn’t even have a cabinet underneath that They might have hidden in. And there wasn’t a closet Just a vent above the toilet, covered in a huge, fancy brass grille.

A vent. A covered vent.

His mind racing, They stared at the pattern in the brass grille. Hadn’t he been wishing that the walls could swallow him up? Wasn’t a vent essentially a hole in the wall?

Trey rushed toward the wall, tripping over his feet in his haste. He started to fall, but his knees hit the toilet, and he turned the fall into a faster way to climb toward the vent: He put the Population Police uniform on the back of the toilet and stood on the seat.

The grille probably has screws holding it in place, and I won’t be able to take them off, he thought as he reached for the vent. But no — the grille was attached to the wall with a series of clasps and hinges that Trey figured out instantly He unhooked the grille in a flash, and pulled it back from the wall.

I won’t be able to fit, he thought. My shoulders will be too broad. This is hopeless!

But again, he was panicking for no reason.

He climbed up from the seat to the back of the toilet, and stuck his head and shoulders through the hole in the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, and he had very little wiggle room. But he did fit.

Thinking hard, he backed out and then climbed in again, this time feet first.

Ill be too heavy. The air duct will collapse under my weight, he worried, but this fear didn’t bother him much. As long as the duct didn’t collapse loudly, and didn’t fall too far, it would still be a safe place to hide.

He slid both feet in, then his torso and chest, and the duct showed no sign of giving way. At the last moment, he reached down and pulled the Population Police uniform in after him. He didn’t think the Population Police officials had kept track of which uniform went to which recruit, but he didn’t want to take any chances or leave any evidence behind.

What if I can’t put the grille back on from the inside? he wondered. But this fear too was needless. He pulled the grille down on its hinges and, by reaching back out through the holes, managed to reattach all but one of the clasps. Nobody would notice one out-of-place clasp, he assured himself.

Breathing hard, Trey scooted backward down the duct so nobody would be able to see his face at the grille.

Someone was rattling the doorknob again. This time, whoever it was started pounding on the door, too.

“Come out now!” a voice yelled. “This instant!”

This voice sounded more official. It might even have belonged to the officer who’d punched Trey before.

Trey held his breath.