Among the Free

accomplish this morning.'

'Of course,' Philip said, stepping back.

Oscar turned to go, the camera shot lingering on his muscular back. Then he turned back around.

'One more thing,' he said. 'What you've been doing, interviewing people about their experiences with the Population Police… That could be helpful, as we form our new government We want to make this truly a government of the people. I have a vision of people standing right here, testifying, talking about the mistakes of the past and their hopes for the future. It could be… cleansing.'

'What an excellent idea!' Philip gushed. 'We've accumulated so much footage already, which we'll be showing momentarily…'

Luke watched Oscar disappear from the TV screen. Through the window, out on the lawn, he could see Oscar striding away from Philip and the cameraman, toward the headquarters building.

If he came in here, into the dining hall, would he recognize me? Luke wondered. Does he know what I did? Would he call out, 'Oh, yes, my brave friend, I'm so proud of you, so grateful for the part you played. Come and help us plan our government'?

Would I want him to?

On the TV screen, Philip was introducing the footage Simone and Tucker had taped the night before of people entering the gates of the big celebration.

'Here's one of the more humorous responses we got,' Philip said.

And then Luke saw his own image on the TV. Onscreen, he had Eli's quilt clutched around his shoulders and a desperate look in his eye.

'You — you're calling this Freedom News, right?' he was saying on the TV.

'Yes, that's right,' Simone said. 'We are.'

The TV glowed with her loveliness, the camera clearly illuminating her lustrous blond hair, her bright blue eyes, her confident stance. Too quickly, the focus slid back to Luke with his wild hair, wild eyes, and ragged quilt.

'Then I'm free not to talk,' the televised Luke said. When he'd spoken those words, he'd thought he sounded dignified and noble, like a legal citizen claiming his rights. But on the TV screen his voice came out squeaky, shifting from high to low ranges just in the course of six words. He sounded crazy. He sounded like he deserved to be mocked.

Luke blushed and slid lower in his seat.

Hiding again.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The first time Luke had come to the Population Police headquarters building, when it was still the Grant family's private home, he'd spent a lot of time wandering around wondering who he was supposed to be and how he was supposed to act. After he finished his scrambled eggs breakfast, he found himself doing the same thing. Before, he'd been plagued by servants watching him, asking him questions about his math grades and scolding him for not changing into his tuxedo in time for dinner. Everyone acted as if they knew everything about him, and he worried that they really did. He worried that they knew he was a fraud.

This time, no one seemed to take any notice of him at all. He was just another kid without an identity in a country full of kids whose identities had been erased.

'I suppose we can be anyone we want to now,' Luke overheard a girl saying as he walked through the crowd outdoors.

'And we can do anything we want. That's freedom, isn't it?' the boy beside her said. He leaned over and gave her a kiss, dipping her down as if they were dancing.

'Or not,' the girl said as soon as he released her. She wiped the back of her hand against her lips, as if she were trying to wipe away his kiss.

Wandering past, as good as invisible, Luke wondered if this really was freedom, this sense of being lost. A year ago, hiding, he'd felt like he'd had no choices; now he felt like he had too many. He could keep wandering, he could go back to the horse stable, he could go to Mr. Hendricks's house, he could go home, he could go find Oscar…

What's the right thing to do? he wondered.

Now that he'd seen Oscar on TV, heard him claim credit for the coup, Luke didn't feel like he could leave. In his mind, Luke kept seeing Oscar as he'd looked on the TV screen: powerful, confident, his muscles bulging, his hair slicked back. He'd been wearing a suit. Luke kept holding that image up against the way he himself had looked on TV, huddled in the quilt, his hair in disarray, his voice cracking as he tried to say, 'Then I'm free not to talk.'

Again and again Luke told himself, Obviously Oscar has everything under control. It's not like he needs your help. But there was always an echo in his mind, a tiny voice that asked, But do you trust Oscar?

Luke remembered how Oscar had told Luke that he'd been born poor, like Luke, and that he hated Barons, the people who had all the money. But Oscar had told Smits Grant, who was a Baron, that he was a Baron himself. Luke remembered how little concern Oscar had had for Smits's fate, how calm Oscar had been when Mr. and Mrs. Grant had died, how he'd scoffed when Luke had asked if it was possible to fight the Government peacefully.

If I could just see what Oscar was doing right now, Luke thought, then maybe I'd feel better.

Luke turned around and went back into the headquarters building. He used the back door again, but this time he went past the dining hall, out into rooms he hadn't seen since the house belonged to the Grants. Back then, he'd thought of the house as an impossible maze, full of passage^ ways that doubled back on themselves and rooms that didn't ever seem to stay in the same spot when he walked past. He knew the rooms really hadn't moved around; he knew the real problem had been his own fear and panic.

I've got nothing to fear now. I'm free, remember? I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not. The Population Police are out of power. Nobody's got any reason to want to kill me. I don't even have to talk to Oscar if I don't want to. I can just. . watch.

The rooms he passed through were empty of the lavish furniture the Grants had once owned. Luke didn't know if the Population Police had taken it away, or if looters had carried it off after the Population Police left. Certainly nobody else seemed interested in these rooms now: Luke hadn't seen a single other person since he'd left the dining hall. Luke wondered about the contents of the filing cabi' nets that lined some of the walls, but when he pulled out the drawers, he discovered they were all empty.

Oscar said there would be trials, Luke remembered. Maybe these drawers held records that proved all the crimes the Population Police officials were guilty of, and the records have been taken somewhere else safe, to be evidence.

Somehow, though, the sight of all those empty drawers bothered him.

He moved on, looking for stairs. The really important Population Police officials had had their offices on the second floor, so it made sense that Oscar would be established there too. Didn't it?

Then Luke came to a doorway he remembered very well, and he stopped in his tracks.

'The secret room,' he whispered.

Three times Luke had stepped through that doorway, each time with a different person. Three times he'd watched somebody type a special code into a panel on the wall, sealing off the room and making it soundproof and secure. Three times he'd sat in that room struggling to make sense of some new, devastating revelation. Once he'd held a key to the room in his own pocket, but he had no idea where that key was now. Too much had happened to Luke since then.

Luke was sure the door would be locked, but he reached out and tried the doorknob anyway.

It came off in his hand.

Luke gasped and looked around fearfully, as if expecting someone to yell at him. But nobody was in sight, and who would scold him for a broken doorknob when the whole government had fallen apart?

Luke put the doorknob back in its socket and gently pushed the door open. The room was windowless, and