Among the Betrayed

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jj?*> ix eyes bugged out at Nina. She had thought she'd

'H*? lost all awareness of time, but she could feel seconds ticking away — useful, possibly lifesaving seconds — while the others stared speechlessly at her.

"Huh?" Percy finally said.

"I stole a lot of food," Nina said. "Then somebody poi-soned the guard, and he dropped his keys, and the hating man didn't see me pick them up, and he was in a hurry, so he didn't bring me all the way back to the cell, he just wanted to get back to Mack as soon as possible. Mack's the guard. Anyway, I have the keys, and nobody knows it, so we can escape. Come on!"

Another long pause. They didn't seem to understand.

"Did you poison the guard?" Alia asked in a small voice.

"No — I don't know who poisoned him. I don't care. All that matters is that it made him drop his keys, and now I have them, and I'm running away. And you guys can come, too, if you come now."

"Maybe it's a trick," Percy muttered.

"Maybe it's a test," Matthias muttered back. He stood up and walked over to Nina. "Why should we trust you?" he asked.

Nina's jaw dropped. She'd expected them to be delighted, grateful, eager to leave immediately. She'd never dreamed that they might question her offer.

"Why should you trust me?" she repeated numbly. "Because. . because you're sitting in this horrible prison cell, licking water off the wall and peeing in a corner. And tomorrow, if you're still here, the Population Police are going to execute you. You don't exactly have tons of choices here. I'm your only chance."

Percy and Alia came to stand beside Matthias, like rein' forcements.

"She has a point," Percy whispered to Matthias. "But…"

Nina was losing patience. This was entirely backward. They should be pleading with her, not her with them.

'And I'm a nice person," she argued. "Really I am. You don't really know me because I haven't been myself here in prison, because…" She couldn't say "because I was trying to decide whether or not to betray you." "Never mind. But you can trust me. I promise."

Percy looked at Alia. Alia looked at Matthias, who looked back at Percy.

"Okay. We're coming," Matthias announced.

"Well, good," Nina said, unable to resist a hint of sarcasm. "Glad that's decided." She turned back toward the other door, rattling the key ring in her hand.

"What's your plan?" Percy asked.

"Plan?" Nina repeated.

"Didn't you say some guard had been poisoned?" Percy asked. "How are you going to avoid all the other guards, who'll be scared and angry and looking for someone to blame?"

"Um—," Nina said.

'And where are we running away to?"

Nina felt stupid. Just as the keys had made her forget Percy, Matthias, and Alia, they'd also made her forget all logic. She couldn't just run away from prison. She had to run to someplace else.

She thought about Gran and the aunties', but it was too dangerous. And at Harlow School-everyone there knew she'd been arrested. Nobody would dare to help hide her. She swallowed hard.

"Do you know any place safe?" she asked quietly.

Again the other kids did their three-way look, this time Alia peering at Percy, Percy peering at Matthias, Matthias peering at Alia. It was probably a good thing that most of the time Nina had spent with the other kids had been in darkness, because that look would have driven her crazy.

Maybe it still would.

"We don't know any place safe," Matthias said. "Not anymore."

"Well, this is just great," Nina raged, slumping against the wall. "We have food, we have keys, we have everything we need to escape — except a place to go."

"It's not an easy thing, surviving. Out there," Percy said, jerking his head toward the metal door, as if the entire world lay just on the other side. "You need food, you need shelter, you need heat — well, not this time of year, but come winter—"

"You need to be safe from other people," Alia chimed in.

'Away from the Population Police, or anyone who might report you to the Population Police," Matthias agreed.

Nina was beginning to regret her decision. The last thing she needed right now was to be lectured by three little kids about how dangerous the world was. Didn't they think she knew that? As if there was any place away from people.

An idea tickled Nina's brain.

Away from people…

Like a slide show, her mind flashed on image after image of trees, just trees — a woods going on for miles, between vast yards that led up to two schools without windows. Schools whose students probably never went out into the woods anymore, after Nina and Jason were arrested….

"I think I know a place," Nina said slowly, still thinking.

"Does it have lots of food?" Alia said eagerly.

"No, but. ." Nina gave the bag at her waist a little tug through the material of her dress. She was being foolish again, though, because the four of them would probably eat all her stolen food before they even got to the woods. And it wasn't like there'd be food lying around in the woods — or would there? Nina remembered the new boy in Jason's group of friends from Hendricks School. He'd called himself Lee Grant, though Jason had told Nina more than once that he was sure that was a fake name. The first time Nina met Lee, he was furious because he'd been making a garden in the woods, and the other kids had trampled on it.

Food grew in gardens. Nina was a city kid, but she knew that much. If Lee Grant could make a garden in the woods, so could Nina and Percy and Matthias and Alia.

"This place I'm thinking of — we can grow our own food there," Nina said, then explained quickly. She was careful not to say Jason's name, not to give away too much about why she'd been at Harlow School or why she'd had to leave.

Once again Percy, Matthias, and Alia exchanged glances.

"I think growing food's harder than you're making it sound," Percy said.

"But" — Matthias looked around at the prison walls—"it beats being here."

"I like trees," Alia said softly.

And with those words it was settled. Nina found herself giving the other three a genuine, full-blown smile for the very first time. She was delighted that she didn't have to dodge their gaze anymore, didn't have to try to eavesdrop on them, didn't have to worry that they knew she was supposed to betray them. There wasn't a chance anymore that she might betray them.

She was saving their lives instead.