Among the Brave

Chapter Sixteen

Trey didn’t move for a long time. He couldn’t. He was paralyzed. It was like he believed that if he stood there long enough, everything would reverse itself before his eyes: The light would come back on. The men would march backward and unload Mark onto the ground. Mark would crawl backward through the barbed wire, safe and sound, his clothes magically repaired, his body untouched by electricity.

Except Trey wanted the reversal to go further than that He wanted Lee and Nina to be un-kidnapped, Mr. Talbot to be un-arrested, the Government to be unchanged. He wanted to be back at Hendricks — no, he wanted to be back at home.

He wanted his father to be alive.

Trey stopped there, in that cozy time when someone else made all his decisions for him, when someone else took care of him, when someone else told him what to do.

He had nobody now. Nobody and nothing.

Whimpering shamelessly, he wrapped his arms tightly across his chest. The papers he’d taken from the Grants’ and the Talbots’ rustled under his shirt. The fingers of his left hand brushed the top of his pants pocket and he reached on in and cradled his fake I.D. in his hand once again.

Okay, he had nothing except papers and a fake identity card. So what?

In the dimness of the woods, he staggered backward and almost tripped over the knapsack of food Mark had put down right before he climbed the fence. Even possessing food seemed pointless to Trey now. Bitterly, he kicked at the knapsack, and that actually felt good to him, as good as kicking a ball in a game back at Hendricks with Lee and the rest of his friends. He kicked the knapsack again, and it sailed so far away he didn’t know where it landed.

He didn’t go looking for it, just collapsed in a helpless heap on the ground.

Lee, I wanted to help you, he silently appealed to his friend — his friend he probably would never see again. I tried. But had he tried hard enough? Mark did. Mark did everything he possibly could. And Mark — I’m sorry I can’t save you, either.

A familiar feeling seeped through Trey. Resignation. He felt the way he’d always felt playing chess with his father, back home. They’d be going along, Trey losing a few pieces, his father losing a piece or two — and then suddenly Trey would look at the board and realize he was trapped. Nothing he could do would prevent his father from winning. And then his father would chuckle — how Trey hated that chuckle! — and say, “It’s the endgame now.~

Endgame. That’s exactly where Trey was. The Population rolice had Lee and Nina. They had Mark. They had the entire country lined up and ready to serve them. It was only a matter of time before they had Trey. Before they killed him.

Except…

Trey remembered a certain chess game he’d once played with his father. The very last one. He’d been moving his pieces around the board as usual, without much hope, agonizing over his father’s every comment: “Are you sure you want to leave your bishop there?”… “Where do you think I’m going to move my rook next?” And then something had changed in the game. Trey moved a pawn and his father fell silent. He moved his queen and his father gritted his teeth.

And in the end, Trey won. He’d worked his way out of a trap he’d thought was inescapable. And he’d managed to set a trap of his own.

Was there any way he could still win now? Was there any way he could rescue Mark and Lee — and stay alive?

Not when I’ve got just a bunch of worthless papers and a fake I.D. It’s not like that’s going to help me get past those fences. There’s no way in.

Except there was. The Population Police were letting hundreds of men and boys in through the front gates.

Trey got chills as an idea seized him. He almost wished his brain didn’t work so well; he almost longed for the old paralysis of thinking there was nothing he could do. This was the most dangerous idea he’d ever had in his entire life.

But he was going to do it.

He, Trey — the biggest coward in the world, a third child who’d spent most of his life in hiding — was going to join the Population Police.