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.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trey stood at the back of the line, his knees locked, his muscles trembling. It took every ounce of courage he had just to stand still, moving only every ten minutes or so—and even then, only inching forward, closer and closer to the fearsome gates.
He needed to plan, to plot out exactly what he was going to do once he got inside. Would he put on the Population Police uniform and ask to be a guard, then set Mark and Lee and the others free at his first opportunity? Or demand to see someone in charge, then pull the papers from his shirt like a magician: “Voilà! I have these secret documents from the homes of enemies of the state. If you don’t release certain prisoners, I will set them on fire, and those secrets will be lost to the Population Police forever!”
He didn’t have a match.
The papers weren’t secret documents. They were financial forms, business incorporation papers, grocery lists. Nothing the Population Police would bargain for.
Nothing they couldn’t grab from his hand, regardless.
What if I get to the front of the line before I have a plan? Trey’s panicked brain asked him. I should get out of line, think it all over, and come back when I know what I’m doing.
But the line was hours long. He was already acutely aware of the seconds speeding by, the minutes melting away. Each passing moment made it more likely that Trey was already too late to help his friends.
Could he get help from any of the people standing near him? He looked around at rags and filth, shirts with patches on top of patches. He didn’t have the nerve to look into anyone’s face, let alone try to catch someone’s eye.
They’re joining the Population Police. What do I expect? I’m all alone in this.
And yet, he didn’t quite feel alone. He kept hearing echoes in his mind: All the times Lee had said to him, “Come on, Trey! You can do it!” when he was trying to catch a football or hit a Wiffle ball, back at Hendricks School. All the times Mr. Hendricks had murmured, “You know, you really are an incredibly intelligent boy,” when he sent Trey on errands. All the times his own father had nodded and smiled and said, “Yes, yes, that’s right. You’ve learned this perfectly,” when Trey recited his daily lessons, back home.
Trey kept shuffling forward, kept quelling his panic, kept trying to plan, kept listening to the encouraging echoes in his mind.
And then suddenly he found himself at the front of the line, before a phalanx of tables that blocked the entrance-way to the Grants’ gates.
“I.D. card, please,” a man growled.
Trey willed his hands not to shake as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic card. He laid it on the table between him and the man.
“Travis Jackson,” the man read in a bored voice.
Trey winced at the sound of the name that belonged to him, but wasn’t his. He braced himself for the man to squint at the picture and compare it with Trey’s face. And what if the man decided to test the I.D.? Trey had heard there were special chemicals, certain types of acids that would burn through a fake I.D. but leave an authentic one unscathed. They were expensive, so they weren’t used often, but what if the Population Police chose to use them now, on Trey’s card? Should he be braced to run, just in case?
But the man just tossed the I.D. to another man.
“Squad 3-C,” the man announced, and the first man wrote something down on a pad of paper.
“Go on in,” he said, lifting a hinged section of the table for Trey to pass through. “Report to the first room on the right, and they’ll issue your uniform.”
Trey hesitated.
“Don’t I get my I.D. back?” he squeaked.
“You’re part of the Population Police now, kid,” the man said, chuckling. “You don’t have any other identity anymore.”
“But—” Trey knew better than to argue. He knew he shouldn’t do anything that would fix his name or face in anyone’s mind. He shouldn’t do anything that would attract attention in any way. But how could he just walk away and leave that I.D.? It was the only thing his mother had left him with. What hope did he have without it?
The man didn’t hear him.
“Next,” he called, as the second man added Trey’s I.D. to a huge stack in a box under the table.
Trey stood still, trying to decide whether to speak up again or not.
“Ya going to go in or get out of my way?” somebody snarled behind him. “’Cause I’m hungry. Haven’t et in three days. I’m hoping they feed us first thing.”
Trey swallowed hard.
“Go in,” he said. Leaving his I.D. card behind, he stepped past the table and through the gates of the Grants’ former estate.
The surge of other new Population Police recruits carried him along the driveway and up the stairs through the Grants’ front door. Until he was past it, Trey didn’t even think to look for the spot on the driveway where the huge chandelier had come crashing down, killing Mr. and Mrs. Grant and endangering Lee, before Trey rescued him.
I was brave here before, Trey told himself. I can be brave again.
He kept walking.
When the press of bodies around him finally parted, Trey found himself inside a huge room he barely recognized. Surely he’d stood here before, the night of the Grants’ fatal party, but the room looked totally different now. Trey remembered silks and satins and shimmering glass; now the room was filled with racks and racks of gray uniforms.
“Size?” a man asked Trey.
“Um, I don’t know. I think I’ve grown since the last time I—”
“Never mind,” the man said, thrusting a uniform into Trey’s arms.
The fabric felt scratchy against Trey’s skin. The Population Police emblem stared up at him from a sleeve of the uniform: two circles interlinked, with a teardrop shape beneath. Trey had heard all sorts of rumors about the meaning of the emblem. Some said the circles stood for two children, and the falling shape for the tears of mothers who had to kill their thirds. Others said the teardrop was actually a shovel, meant to bury the children the Population Police killed. Either way, being so close to the hated emblem made Trey’s stomach seize up. He let the uniform drop to the ground and he doubled over, retching.
Suddenly someone slammed a fist into the side of his head.
“Boy!” a man screamed. “You treat that uniform with respect! You pick that up this instant! You hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Trey managed to choke out. He scrambled to pick up the shirt and pants. The man was still screaming—something about “pride in the organization you have just joined” and “our noble cause.” Around him,
Trey could feel the other recruits staring in shocked silence. Some had stopped in the middle of changing, standing half-naked, with only one arm or one leg shoved into the new uniforms.
Nobody came to Trey’s defense.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” the man finished up.
“Please—I just—is there a bathroom somewhere?” Trey managed to stammer.
The man hit Trey again, knocking him against the wall. Trey tasted a trickle of blood in his mouth. He reached up and felt his face gingerly, but decided the blood came from a self-inflicted wound—he’d bit his tongue.
“Now finish up in here and report to the next room immediately!” the man yelled—not just at Trey this time, but at all the recruits.
“Yes, sir,” some of them yelled, and the room became a flurry of activity again, as everyone crammed on the uniforms as quickly as possible.
Someone tapped Trey on the shoulder.
“Bathroom’s over that way,” a boy who was already fully dressed told him.
“Th-thank you,” Trey said.
He crawled through the tangle of feet, no longer caring about humiliation or pain or even the need to rescue Mark and Lee. He just wanted to hide.
The bathroom, when he found it, was a vision in elegant silver wallpaper, obviously left over from the Grants. Trey shut the door tight and stared at his pale, terrified face in the mirror.
“What am I going to do?” he whispered to his reflection. Even his best ideas for bargaining or sneaking his friends out seemed like childish fantasies in the face of real fists and screams and all those gray uniforms.
Someone rattled the door handle outside.
“Hey! Give somebody else a turn!”
Trey peered frantically around the bathroom, as if hoping that the walls themselves might swallow him up, hide him for good. He couldn’t face the world outside this room right now. He just couldn’t.
But for all its elegance, the bathroom was fairly small and basic. It held a toilet and a sink. They were both stylized and sophisticated, but the sink didn’t even have a cabinet underneath that Trey might have hidden in. And there wasn’t a closet. Just a vent above the toilet, covered in a huge, fancy brass grille.
A vent. A covered vent.
His mind racing, Trey stared at the pattern in the brass grille. Hadn’t he been wishing that the walls could swallow him up? Wasn’t a vent essentially a hole in the wall?
Trey rushed toward the wall, tripping over his feet in his haste. He started to fall, but his knees hit the toilet, and he turned the fall into a faster way to climb toward the vent: He put the Population Police uniform on the back of the toilet and stood on the seat.
The grille probably has screws holding it in place, and I won’t be able to take them off, he thought as he reached for the vent. But no—the grille was attached to the wall with a series of clasps and hinges that Trey figured out instantly. He unhooked the grille in a flash, and pulled it back from the wall.
I won’t be able to fit, he thought. My shoulders will be too broad. This is hopeless!
But again, he was panicking for no reason.
He climbed up from the seat to the back of the toilet, and stuck his head and shoulders through the hole in the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, and he had very little wiggle room. But he did fit.
Thinking hard, he backed out and then climbed in again, this time feet first.
I’ll be too heavy. The air duct will collapse under my weight, he worried, but this fear didn’t bother him much. As long as the duct didn’t collapse loudly, and didn’t fall too far, it would still be a safe place to hide.
He slid both feet in, then his torso and chest, and the duct showed no sign of giving way. At the last moment, he reached down and pulled the Population Police uniform in after him. He didn’t think the Population Police officials had kept track of which uniform went to which recruit, but he didn’t want to take any chances or leave any evidence behind.
What if I can’t put the grille back on from the inside? he wondered. But this fear too was needless. He pulled the grille down on its hinges and, by reaching back out through the holes, managed to reattach all but one of the clasps. Nobody would notice one out-of-place clasp, he assured himself.
Breathing hard, Trey scooted backward down the duct so nobody would be able to see his face at the grille.
Someone was rattling the doorknob again. This time, whoever it was started pounding on the door, too.
“Come out now!” a voice yelled. “This instant!”
This voice sounded more official. It might even have belonged to the officer who’d punched Trey before.
Trey held his breath.
Moments later, he heard a splintering sound. Through the narrow range of view the grille provided, he could see the bathroom door swing open.
“There’s nobody in here!” the official-sounding voice cried out in disgust.
Then Trey heard a yelp of pain, which probably meant that the official was punching whoever had summoned him to the bathroom.
But nobody put his face up to the grille to look for Trey. Nobody seemed to notice he’d disappeared. Nobody called out, “Travis Jackson! Come out of hiding right now!”
Trey breathed a huge but silent sigh of relief.
He was safe.
He congratulated himself on his brilliance. Mr. Hendricks is right, he thought. I am a genius. He felt as triumphant as if he’d just single-handedly defeated the Population Police.
Maybe I can, he thought. And depending on where the duct led, he might have just discovered a way to save Mark and Lee and the others.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Trey slid down the duct backward, dragging the Population Police uniform behind him. It was slow going, because he had so little room to maneuver, and because he was terrified of making any noise. More than once the buttons of his flannel shirt scraped against the metal duct, and then he froze, horrified at the thought that someone might be about to rip the duct apart, screaming out, “Aha! You! We know everything now! You’re not Travis Jackson! You’re about to die!”
No, they’ll just think that the Grant house has mice, Trey comforted himself. They’ll put out poison, and I can avoid that.
Trey knew he wasn’t thinking very rationally. But he kept inching onward, feet first. That began to bother him. He wished he had eyes on his toes. What if he was about to kick out another brass grille? What if he were about to slide out into another room—one less innocuous than the bathroom? What if he was at this very moment slipping past some sort of opening that anyone could see? Trey kept turning his head and looking back over his shoulder, but that gave him a terrible crick in his neck, and he could barely see past his own body anyway. And there seemed to be nothing but darkness ahead.
He kept going.
When it seemed as though he had been crawling backward for hours, he hit a metal wall where he’d expected open air. Was he disoriented, crawling crooked? No—the wall extended on, straight and smooth, totally blocking his path. Had he reached a dead end? How could a duct just end like that? He didn’t let himself panic. He stretched his legs out, tapping experimentally in all directions with his toes, and discovered that the metal walls he’d expected to find were missing to his left and right. Suddenly it all made sense: He’d reached a fork in his path, the place where the duct leading to the bathroom branched off from some main line. This was his route to the rest of the house.
“Right or left? Which will it be?” he muttered to himself. He tried to picture the ductwork in relationship to the floor plan of the entire house. He thought the left fork led toward the front door, and so was probably useless, but that was mostly just a guess. He moved his feet toward the right and began painstakingly turning the corner. Then he stopped, mid-turn.
“Stupid,” he said under his breath. “Don’t you know you can go face first now?”
He retreated, shoved his feet the opposite direction down the duct, and soon was crawling forward, feeling his way with
his hands and fingers instead of his feet and toes. He still couldn’t see anything ahead of him, but the change made him feel better.
I ought to challenge Lee and the other boys to a heat duct race as soon as we get back to school, he thought. I’d beat everyone.
He was almost enjoying crawling through darkness.
Heroism by hiding, he thought. Now, that I can handle. I’ll have to change my motto. What would it be in Latin?—Virtus, I think, for “heroism,” and latente for “hiding….”
That was when he saw the light.
At first it was just a gray shadow up ahead, a slight variation on all the endless blackness. But as he scurried forward, trying harder than ever to crawl silently, the brightness grew. Soon he could see a whole patterned grid of light in the duct in front of him. And he could hear voices.
“Unacceptable! Unacceptable, I tell you!” a man sputtered.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but at first Trey couldn’t place it. It wasn’t Mr. Talbot or Mr. Hendricks or any of his teachers at school. It wasn’t the screaming man from the uniform room. What other men’s voices had Trey ever heard?
Cautiously, he moved toward the light and peeked out a grille that was even larger and fancier than the one in the bathroom. He was looking down at a dark-haired man sitting at a huge desk. Rows of uniformed Population Police officers sat before him, like schoolchildren being scolded. Trey jerked back quickly, afraid one of them might look up at the wrong time. He rested his cheek against the cool metal of the duct, and listened to the pounding of his heart. What if they’d already seen him? What if they could hear his heartbeat too?
But nobody screamed out, “Hey! There’s a boy hiding behind that grille!” Nobody yelled, “Capture him!” Gradually, Trey’s terror ebbed, and he could listen again.
“We are in charge now!” the man continued his tirade. “I am in charge now!”
And suddenly Trey knew who the man was. Trey had heard his voice only once before, on television, at the Talbots’ house. Trey was eavesdropping on Aldous Krakenaur, the head of the Population Police, and now, the head of the entire country.