Among the Brave

Network.”

It made sense: If the Barons had their own stations, why shouldn’t the Population Police?

Krakenaur was staring into the camera — and, it seemed, out at Trey — with frightening intensity

“These five men were caught smuggling last night,” Krakenaur was saying. He held up a handful of pictures. The camera zoomed in to focus on each face individually.

Peering into the TV screen, Trey gasped. The first picture was the sentry from the bridge the night before. He guessed that the others were the men he’d seen carrying bags across the bridge the night before. Except, in the pictures, they were all dead.

“They were stealing food from our citizens,” Krakenaur was saying, icily The camera focused on him again. “Death is too good for traitors like these. From now on, smugglers will be executed on sight. In my eyes, they are as vile and offensive as third children.”

Someone off-camera handed Krakenaur a sheet of paper. He glanced down to read it Just from the small bits of televised news he’d seen before, Trey suspected that in a regular newscast the camera would have switched to someone else or some other footage. Watching a man read a note would have been considered dead airtime. But the camera stayed trained on Krakenaur, as if it might be treason to focus elsewhere without his permission.

When Krakenaur finally looked up, his eyes seemed even colder and harder, and his voice was filled with even icier fury

“I have just been informed of other traitors,” he said. “A father and son, working in our midst Population Police officers — trusted, respected, given great responsibility And they have betrayed us! They have betrayed us all!” He pounded his fist on his desk. Trey flinched as if he were right there in the same room with Krakenaur’s rising wrath. As if Krakenaur’s fist were hitting him.

“Jonas Sabine and his son Jonathan will be executed as soon as we finish interrogating them,” Krakenaur said. “I am hereby instructing all Population Police officials to disregard all orders from Jonas or Jonathan Sabine. Hold all documents they have signed, and detain anyone carrying documents with their signatures. We are tracing the extent of their treachery, even as I speak. We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible.” Then he addressed someone off-camera. “Do we have pictures?”

Trey heard a muffed “Yes, sir” and “Right away, sir,” and a crashing sound, as if someone had knocked over a chair scrambling to obey Krakenaur. A hand slipped pictures onto his desk, and he held them up in front of the camera.

‘All Population Police officers must report all conversations and encounters they’ve had with these two men,” Krakenaur was saying as the camera zoomed in. “Or else you will be considered traitors too.”

The pictures came slowly into focus. The son’s photo was first: a freckle-faced boy with a jaunty smile and features that Trey recognized instantly.

“Liber,” Trey whispered.

It was the boy who had found Trey on the Talbots’ porch, the boy who had saved Trey’s life by telling him to hide instead of reporting him. One of only two Population Police officials that Trey had ever heard speak of freedom.

Trey felt a horrible sense of dread rising in his gut.

When the father’s picture appeared, he was not surprised. It was a man with gray hair and eyes that looked familiar — familiar because they matched his son’s. Trey had noticed the resemblance only the night before, but not quite made the connection.

It was the Population Police guard from the Grants’ house. The one who had arranged all the documents Trey had brought to Nezeree.

“Disregard all orders from Jonas or Jonathan Sabine,” Krakenaur had said. “Hold all documents they have signed, and detain anyone carrying documents with their signatures. We are tracing the extent of their treachery, even as I speak. We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible.”

Could Trey and his friends escape Nezeree before the warden found out?

Distantly, Trey heard a phone ringing in another room. As if in a trance, he stumbled out of the TV room toward the ominous sound. He tripped into the warden’s office, and it was exactly as Trey feared: The phone on the warden’s desk was ringing. The one that was a direct line to Population Police headquarters.

Chapter Thirty-One

Trey dived under the warden’s desk and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. He wished he had a knife. But he didn’t, so he put the plastic tip of the cord in his mouth and sawed it against his teeth. Finally, finally, he managed to bite off the end, leaving the wires frayed.

“What is the meaning of this?” a voice exploded behind him.

Trey spit out the plastic connector and hid the phone cord deep in the carpet. He backed out and slowly straightened up. The warden was just coming in the door. What had he seen? What had he heard?

“C-c-cockroach, sir,” Trey stammered. “I’m so sorry. I saw this bug running behind your desk, and I know how those things multiply, and I thought if I caught it—”

“Did you?” the warden asked.

“No, sir. I wasn’t fast enough. I’m sorry, sir.”

The warden regarded Trey doubtfully What if he decided to get down on his hands and knees to look for himself?

He won’t, Trey tried to assure himself. He’s too fat to fit.

The warden glanced down at his desk. Was Trey being paranoid, or was the warden looking straight at his phone? Had he heard it ringing?

A printerlike machine behind Trey began churning out paper.

“Looks like I’m getting a fax,” the warden said. “Step aside, Officer Jackson. It’s undoubtedly classified, and you wouldn’t have clearance yet to see that.”

There was a challenging note to his voice, but Trey took hope from the word “yet”.

He still thinks I’m a gun g-ho Population Police recruit, They thought. He still thinks I’ll have classified clearance someday.

“Here, sir, I’ll get the fax for you,” They said. “I won’t look at it. I promise.”

He did his best to sound earnest and overeager, not like a boy who was terrified of what that fax might say. But he didn’t have to look to know. “We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible,” Krakenaur had said. The phone call had failed, so of course the Population Police were using other methods.

“All right,” the warden said in an even tone. But he was watching Trey carefully.

The fax machine kept spitting out paper. They stood waiting, his hands over the machine, the dread growing inside him. Should he rip the papers in half when he picked them up? Should he run away with them? How could he do anything about the fax without giving himself away — and destroying any chance that Mark, Lee, and the others had for escape?

But what chance do any of us have anymore anyway? Trey wondered in despair.

The last sheet of paper churned out, and the machine lapsed into silence. Trey reached down and scooped up the papers. Without looking, he thumped them against the counter, straightening out the edges.

Do I dare to drop them? Buy myself a little time?

But he was too nervous to try that, and too scared of infuriating the warden.

The noise of a truck outside distracted him temporarily “Your prisoners from Slahood have arrived,” the warden said, glancing out the window.

Trey let the hand holding the papers fall to his side. He rushed over to the window as if his eagerness to see his prisoners had made him forget about the fax.

“We were giving our prisoner one last beating before he leaves,” the warden said. He leaned over and spoke into the intercom, “Snyder, you may send him up now.”

Trey peered out the window as a truck pulled up in front of the warden’s office. Lee, Nina, Joel, and John