Among the Enemy

room with him and Nina. Matthias was a little relieved when Nina shook her head sadly.

'How could we do any of those things without becom^ ing as bad as the Population Police ourselves?' she asked. 'Killing indiscriminately, not caring who dies? And what if we're caught?'

That word—'caught' — seemed to linger in the air, dangerously.

'So you're not doing anything?' Matthias asked.

'We are,' Nina said carefully. 'I can't tell you what it is. I don't know everything myself. It's. . Mr. Talbot told us that's the best way to run something like this, so if any of us are caught and interrogated and. . and tortured, we won't give away everything.' She grimaced. 'I shouldn't have even mentioned Trey and Lee. Try to forget what I said about them.'

Matthias buried his head in his hands. He didn't care about Nina's secrets. He'd pinned such hopes on this meeting with Nina, but it was worthless. He'd just wasted the entire afternoon, when he could have been finding his way back to his friends.

'Matthias?' Nina was saying. 'There are stories floating around about you. People say you saved Officer Tidwell's life.'

'I did,' Matthias said. 'Sort of.'

'And you went in with Officer Tidwell to a meeting with the commander.'

'Yeah,' Matthias said.

'But nobody sees the commander. Only the other leaders like Officer Tidwell.'

'So?' Matthias asked.

'So you've already gotten better access than any of the rest of us, and we've all been here for weeks. I know you want to get back to Percy and Alia but. . maybe you should let someone else sneak out and go help our friends. Or maybe they're just fine now, with Mrs. Talbot and the guy you saw in the tree.'

Matthias looked up at Nina, and it was awful, what she was saying. How could he stay here, helping Nina, never knowing what had happened to Percy and Alia?

Someone began pounding on the bathroom door. Nina scrambled up and struggled to jam herself back through the heat vent.

'Just a minute,' Matthias called.

He ran water in the sink, hoping that would mask the sound of the vent cover clanging against the wall. As soon as Nina was out of sight, he opened the door.

Tiddy was standing there, beaming.

'Hey, little buddy, I made it back safely. Aren't you glad?'

'Sure,' Matthias said.

'Mike said you worried about me all day,' Tiddy con' tinued. 'The guards told me you were in here. Mike took good care of you while I was away, didn't he?'

'Uh, yeah,' Matthias said. He swallowed hard. 'Did you — did you, um, take care of all the bad guys?'

'I'd say so!' Tiddy laughed.

Matthias felt a chill traveling through his body. A premonition of horror.

'How?' Matthias asked. 'Did you shoot them all? Forty rebels?' Don't say you shot any children, he prayed. Oh, please, not Percy and Alia.

'No,' Tiddy said regretfully. 'None of those cowards dared to show their faces. But we made sure we wouldn't have any more trouble from that sector. We burned them out.'

For the first time, Matthias noticed the smudges of ash on Tiddy's face, the tiny, singed hairs escaping from his cap.

'Burned them out?' Matthias repeated stupidly.

'We burned everything within a fifty-mile radius of that cabin,' Tiddy said. 'Nobody could have survived that!'

Chapter Twenty-One

Nobody could have survived that. . Nobody could have survived that. . The words seemed to whirl around Matthias, blocking out every other sound. Maybe Tiddy kept talking; maybe he just stood there waiting for Matthias to congratulate him.

Percy, Matthias thought. Alia. Mrs. Talbot. The man in the tree. Nobody.

There was no room for any hope now. No reason to try to move heaven and earth to get back to a certain cabin in a certain woods, the last place he'd seen his friends. The cabin was gone, the woods were gone.

His friends were gone.

Matthias gripped the doorframe because his legs seemed incapable of holding him up now. Matthias was surprised to find his hand could still hold on when his legs had failed: He wouldn't have thought it mattered if he stood or fell. He didn't care anymore if the Population Police found him out, learned of his true loyalties. He didn't care if they killed him.

Still, his hand held on.

'— so strange?' Tiddy was asking, and the words seemed to come at Matthias from across a great distance. They seemed to have traveled across a burning woods.

Matthias shrugged, because nothing mattered anymore. But his ears started working again. Tiddy repeated his question. It wasn't, Why are you acting so strange? It was, 'Why do I feel so strange?'

'Tiddy?' Matthias said cautiously. He was surprised his voice worked. It came out thin and weak, like the birdcalls he and Percy and Alia had used as signals. Not Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!' but What's wrong with Tiddy? What's wrong with Tiddy?

Tiddy was swaying back and forth, stumbling from side to side.

'My eyes—,' he moaned. 'I can't see!'

He balled up his fists and rubbed them into his eye sockets. He seemed to be trying to rub his eyes out.

'Don't! Stop!' he screamed.

He fell to the ground and thrashed around as if struggling with an invisible opponent. A few guards standing nearby came over and watched curiously.

'Hey, Tids, what's wrong?' the one asked.

The other yelled out, 'Call a medic!'

'I — can't — breathe!' Tiddy gasped.

He clutched his throat and thrashed about even more violently.

And then he stopped moving. His hands loosened from his own throat. His head fell back against the marble floor.

And Matthias knew that Tiddy was dead.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Matthias went numb. Too much had happened, and i w ft nothing made sense. He'd witnessed too many deaths to have any feelings left.

He stood still, clutching the bathroom doorframe while guards ran around, roping off the area by Tiddy's body. Tiddy lay right between two marble pillars, so they had something to tie the ropes to.

'What if it's biological?' someone asked, and then the words 'germ warfare' whispered their way through the crowd that had gathered. People began panicking then; they ran.

Matthias kept clutching his doorframe.

The next group of people who came all wore masks over their faces and rubber gloves on their hands. They picked up Tiddy's body. They swabbed the floor with strong-smelling chemicals.