Among the Enemy

'Don't worry. They'll have the car heated for us,' the commander said as Matthias shivered.

A car slipped through the darkness and stopped in front of Matthias and the commander. The commander held the door for Matthias, then leaned in and told the driver, 'I won't be needing your services tonight. I'll drive myself.'

'As you wish, sir,' the driver said, and stepped out of the car. 'Will you be wanting security behind you?'

'I don't wish to be followed,' the commander said sharply. 'Is that clear?'

Matthias's heart ached a little as they drove out of the gates. If only he'd left Population Police headquarters weeks ago, the same day he arrived, when there was still time to rescue Percy and Alia.

The world was quiet outside the commander's car. They drove down city streets full of rubble and burned^out buildings. Matthias saw no signs of life in the ruins. He almost could have believed that everyone outside Population Police headquarters was dead.

'The rebellions are over now,' the commander said. Matthias gave him a quick glance, and he chuckled. 'Oh, yes, I'm allowed to admit that there were rebellions. The Population Police had a harder time consolidating power than we expected. But starving people do not make good warriors. And the weather was on our side. Who can fight on an empty belly in the wintertime?'

The commander pulled the car into a dark alley and turned off the engine.

'Quickly,' the commander said.

He stepped out of the car, and Matthias followed him, close at his heels. The commander climbed stairs to a brick wall and stabbed a gloved finger at a button Matthias could barely see.

'Glorious future,' the commander said into an inter^ com.

There was a buzzing, and the commander opened a windowless door in the wall. A guard stood just inside the door.

'Commander,' he said, managing a flustered salute. 'I wasn't expecting you — usually nobody comes at night.'

The commander slapped him so hard, the guard's head slammed back against the wall.

'You must be on alert always!' the commander snapped.

The guard said nothing, only bowed his head as if he'd fully deserved the slap, fully deserved the pain.

The commander began walking angrily down a long, vacant corridor. Matthias practically had to run to keep up. When they reached a door on the left side of the cor^ ridor, the commander slid a key from his pocket He looked down at the key, smiling, his anger gone. Then, almost reverently, he slid the key into the lock and turned the doorknob.

Even before the commander flipped on the lights, Matthias had the sense that he was standing before an enormous room. The darkness was that vast. When the lights flickered to life a second later, Matthias could only gape.

In front of him lay a gigantic storeroom of food. Shelves filled with canned goods ran from the floor to the ceiling— and the ceiling was high overhead, seemingly as distant as the sky. Crates of apples, oranges, peaches, and potatoes were stacked as far as the eye could see. Cans of condensed milk and wheels of cheese towered above Matthias's head.

To Matthias, who'd lived on crusts of bread from other people's garbage for most of his life, the sight before him was more dazzling than a roomful of diamonds.

'Ooooh,' Matthias breathed out. He wished fervently that Percy and Alia were still alive to see this marvel, to share this view with him. 'How did you find all this?'

He was thinking that the Population Police must have caught some amazingly skillful smuggler.

'We didn't 'find' it,' the commander replied with a chuckle. 'Oh, no. We've been storing up food here for more than a decade. Since the droughts began. Of course, we've had to throw some food away as it rots.'

'Throw it away?' Matthias repeated, uncomprehend-ingly. He looked back and forth between the commander and the mountains of food. When he peered closely, he could see signs of rot on some of the potatoes, bruises on some of the apples, the beginnings of mold on some of the cheese. 'You just throw it out?' he said. 'But… people are starving.'

The commander shrugged.

'It's our food, not theirs,' he said.

And something happened to Matthias in that moment, watching the commander shrug. He lost none of his grief, none of his anguish over his friends. But something changed inside him. He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes.

This is wrong, he thought. Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.

He thought about all the awful things that had hap-pened that he felt responsible for. The tree falling, killing innocent children, and hurting Alia. Percy being shot. Mrs. Talbot being trapped. He'd never intended anything bad to happen. He'd been trying his hardest to keep every' one safe.

But the Population Police did their evil deeds deliberately. The commander knew that people were dying, and he didn't care.

I am not like the commander, Matthias thought. We have nothing in common.

An ache grew in his throat and he wanted to sob, but he set his jaw and held it in. He'd been wrong to send Nina away, wrong to refuse to help her, wrong to let the commander treat him like a pet. He'd been wrong to think that everything ended when he lost Percy and Alia.

But those are mistakes I can fix, Matthias told himself. He breathed in the too- sweet smell of rotting food, and it was almost intoxicating. Empowering.

I can stop this evil, he thought.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was so hard, walking out of the warehouse, not to recoil from the commander's every touch. The commander put his hand on Matthias's shoulder, and Matthias had to constantly remind himself, Don't pull away, don't pull away; he has to think you're still on his side.

The commander slapped the guard again on the way out the door, and it was all Matthias could do not to yell at the commander, You're just a big bully! You know that? and to the guard, Why do you let him do that to you? Why don't you hit him back?

The commander kicked away a pile of rubbish that had apparently blown up against the car. It turned out not to be rubbish. It was a person, a vagrant who'd curled up against the warmth of the car to sleep. He huddled on the ground in pain — all skin and bones and rags.

And a soul, Matthias told himself, thinking like Samuel again.

Matthias looked around, blinking. All the lumps along the warehouse wall that looked like garbage — those were people too. Starving people, just the other side of a wall from untold riches of food. It shook Matthias that he hadn't even noticed them before.

I can make up for that, Matthias thought. / can heat up the commander, I can lead a charge of the hungry against the door. We can overpower the guard. .

No, he couldn't. As the commander had said, starving people didn't make good warriors. They wouldn't be able to overpower a flea, let alone a well-fed guard. And Matthias, even after growing and filling out, was still just a boy.

With Nina's help, with Trey…, Matthias thought, strain ing to come up with a plan.

'Come along,' the commander said.

Matthias got into the car, and the commander tucked a thick blanket around his legs. Matthias realized, as he hadn't before, that the car was familiar: It was Mrs. Talbot's car, the car he and Tiddy had stolen, now restored to its former splendor. Matthias had been too numb to notice before, and now he didn't have time to think about it.