Among the Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Matthias's head spun. He took off his headphones, but his ears still rang with the sound of the officials' applause.

Why are they so excited? Matthias wondered. They've been able to find fake I.D.'s before. His weeks in Population Police prison proved that.

"Absolutely foolproof," Officer Barstow had said. He'd sounded smug and overwhelmingly happy, like he'd just found enough food to feed everyone or figured out a way to end all disease.

No, Matthias reminded himself. This is the Population Police. They'd be overjoyed over some absolutely foolproof way to kill third children.

Third children. Matthias. Nina. Trey. Lee. And all the others.

It wasn't anywhere near dinnertime yet, but Matthias tore out of his room and raced for the cafeteria. The doors were locked, and a guard stood before them, looking bored.

"I'm hungry," Matthias announced. "Think there's any way I could sneak in there and get a snack?"

"Of course n—," the guard started to snap. Then he looked at Matthias more closely. "Oh. You're Tiddy's friend. Sure, go ahead. They'll do anything for you."

The guard opened the doors and Matthias slipped inside.

What if Nina's loaned out to housekeeping detail this afternoon? What will I do then?

But Nina was in the kitchen, chopping carrots alongside several other girls. How was Matthias supposed to get her away to talk to him alone? They should have worked out a code word, he realized. They should have worked out a whole coded language.

And then Matthias knew what to say.

"Excuse me." He tried to sound childish and innocent, like the little kid he'd been back when Samuel was alive. "I saw this really neato, interesting bug outside, and I don't know what it was, and I thought if someone could come look at it with me. . It's the kind of thing Tiddy could have helped me with."

He saw the girls exchange glances at Tiddy's name.

"A bug?" one of the girls said. "Outdoors? In January?"

Oops, Matthias thought.

But "I'll go with him," Nina said, sighing heavily, like it was a big sacrifice. "I've got to hang out those wet towels anyhow."

"Be quick about it," a hatchet-faced woman said from behind Nina. "No dawdling over some silly insect that doesn't know enough to die in the wintertime." She punched down a huge lump of bread dough for emphasis.

Nina paused to pick up a big basket of towels, then Matthias followed her out a back door.

"Where's the bug?" she said in a bright, fake voice that was probably mostly for the benefit of the girls and women who might still be able to hear from the kitchen.

"There's one in my room, for starters," Matthias whis-pered back. "Not the insect kind. That's why I didn't want to meet anywhere inside. What if there's a bug in the bathroom, too?"

"What if there's a bug on your uniform?" Nina countered. "What if there's a bug in that tree?" She pointed up at a stunted, leafless branch overhead. "This is dangerous, us being seen together."

She plopped down her basket of towels before a makeshift clothesline.

"But I had to tell you what I heard," Matthias said. Quickly, he reported on the demonstration in the commander's office. The more Matthias talked, the more terrified Nina looked. Her face went pale and drawn. She dropped the towel she'd started to hang on the line. She gasped just at the mention of Officer Barstow's name.

'Are you sure it was Officer Jason Barstow?" she demanded.

"Yeah," Matthias said.

"But that's my Jason — I mean, the one who tricked me. It was his fault I ended up in Population Police prison. I'd heard he was involved in some big, secret project for the Population Police, but…"

Matthias kept talking. Nina began shaking her head violently when he got to the part about the sizzling sound, the officers' applause.

"No, it can't be true. They can't be ready so soon," she moaned.

'And they've got our I.D. cards," Matthias finished up. "Right? They took mine away when I joined the Population Police — well, a little after that, because Tiddy forgot. Do they have yours and Trey's and everyone else's, too? Do you think they'd use that Project Authenticity test on our cards, even though we're in the Population Police?"

Nina's eyes burned into his.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Then we've got to run away," Matthias said. "Leave the Population Police, go somewhere we can get other fake LD.'s… "

He didn't know how it was possible. Even from the backyard, standing by Nina's clothesline, he could see the enormous wall, the stern line of Population Police guards by the gate.

Nina was shaking her head anyway.

"Matthias, it doesn't matter if we run away or not," she said sadly. "They're going to do that new test on every' body's I.D. Everybody's in the entire country."