“As you wish, sir,” the driver said, and stepped out of the car. “Will you be wanting security behind you?”
“I don’t wish to be followed,” the commander said sharply. “Is that clear?”
Matthias’s heart ached a little as they drove out of the gates. If only he’d left Population Police headquarters weeks ago, the same day he arrived, when there was still time to rescue Percy and Alia.
The world was quiet outside the commander’s car. They drove down city streets full of rubble and burned-out buildings. Matthias saw no signs of life in the ruins. He almost could have believed that everyone outside Population Police headquarters was dead.
“The rebellions are over now,” the commander said. Matthias gave him a quick glance, and he chuckled. “Oh, yes, I’m allowed to admit that there were rebellions. The Population Police had a harder time consolidating power than we expected. But starving people do not make good warriors. And the weather was on our side. Who can fight on an empty belly in the wintertime?”
The commander pulled the car into a dark alley and turned off the engine.
“Quickly,” the commander said.
He stepped out of the car, and Matthias followed him, close at his heels. The commander climbed stairs to a brick wall and stabbed a gloved finger at a button Matthias could barely see.
“Glorious future,” the commander said into an intercom.
There was a buzzing, and the commander opened a windowless door in the wall. A guard stood just inside the door.
“Commander,” he said, managing a flustered salute. “I wasn’t expecting you—usually nobody comes at night.”
The commander slapped him so hard, the guard’s head slammed back against the wall.
“You must be on alert always!” the commander snapped.
The guard said nothing, only bowed his head as if he’d fully deserved the slap, fully deserved the pain.
The commander began walking angrily down a long, vacant corridor. Matthias practically had to run to keep up. When they reached a door on the left side of the corridor, the commander slid a key from his pocket. He looked down at the key, smiling, his anger gone. Then, almost reverently, he slid the key into the lock and turned the doorknob.
Even before the commander flipped on the lights, Matthias had the sense that he was standing before an enormous room. The darkness was that vast. When the lights flickered to life a second later, Matthias could only gape.
In front of him lay a gigantic storeroom of food. Shelves filled with canned goods ran from the floor to the ceiling—and the ceiling was high overhead, seemingly as distant as the sky. Crates of apples, oranges, peaches, and potatoes were stacked as far as the eye could see. Cans of condensed milk and wheels of cheese towered above Matthias’s head.
To Matthias, who’d lived on crusts of bread from other people’s garbage for most of his life, the sight before him was more dazzling than a roomful of diamonds.
“Ooooh,” Matthias breathed out. He wished fervently that Percy and Alia were still alive to see this marvel, to share this view with him. “How did you find all this?”
He was thinking that the Population Police must have caught some amazingly skillful smuggler.
“We didn’t ‘find’ it,” the commander replied with a chuckle. “Oh, no. We’ve been storing up food here for more than a decade. Since the droughts began. Of course, we’ve had to throw some food away as it rots.”
“Throw it away?” Matthias repeated, uncomprehendingly. He looked back and forth between the commander and the mountains of food. When he peered closely, he could see signs of rot on some of the potatoes, bruises on some of the apples, the beginnings of mold on some of the cheese. “You just throw it out?” he said. “But . . . people are starving.”
The commander shrugged.
“It’s our food, not theirs,” he said.
And something happened to Matthias in that moment, watching the commander shrug. He lost none of his grief, none of his anguish over his friends. But something changed inside him. He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes.
This is wrong, he thought. Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It’s evil.
He thought about all the awful things that had happened that he felt responsible for. The tree falling, killing innocent children, and hurting Alia. Percy being shot. Mrs. Talbot being trapped. He’d never intended anything bad to happen. He’d been trying his hardest to keep everyone safe.
But the Population Police did their evil deeds deliberately. The commander knew that people were dying, and he didn’t care.
I am not like the commander, Matthias thought. We have nothing in common.
An ache grew in his throat and he wanted to sob, but he set his jaw and held it in. He’d been wrong to send Nina away, wrong to refuse to help her, wrong to let the commander treat him like a pet. He’d been wrong to think that everything ended when he lost Percy and Alia.
But those are mistakes I can fix, Matthias told himself. He breathed in the too-sweet smell of rotting food, and it was almost intoxicating. Empowering.
I can stop this evil, he thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was so hard, walking out of the warehouse, not to recoil from the commander’s every touch. The commander put his hand on Matthias’s shoulder, and Matthias had to constantly remind himself, Don’t pull away, don’t pull away; he has to think you’re still on his side.
The commander slapped the guard again on the way out the door, and it was all Matthias could do not to yell at the commander, You’re just a big bully! You know that? and to the guard, Why do you let him do that to you? Why don’t you hit him back?
The commander kicked away a pile of rubbish that had apparently blown up against the car. It turned out not to be rubbish. It was a person, a vagrant who’d curled up against the warmth of the car to sleep. He huddled on the ground in pain—all skin and bones and rags.
And a soul, Matthias told himself, thinking like Samuel again.
Matthias looked around, blinking. All the lumps along the warehouse wall that looked like garbage—those were people too. Starving people, just the other side of a wall from untold riches of food. It shook Matthias that he hadn’t even noticed them before.
I can make up for that, Matthias thought. I can beat up the commander, I can lead a charge of the hungry against the door. We can overpower the guard. . . .
No, he couldn’t. As the commander had said, starving people didn’t make good warriors. They wouldn’t be able to overpower a flea, let alone a well-fed guard. And Matthias, even after growing and filling out, was still just a boy.
With Nina’s help, with Trey . . . , Matthias thought, straining to come up with a plan.
“Come along,” the commander said.
Matthias got into the car, and the commander tucked a thick blanket around his legs. Matthias realized, as he hadn’t before, that the car was familiar: It was Mrs. Talbot’s car, the car he and Tiddy had stolen, now restored to its former splendor. Matthias had been too numb to notice before, and now he didn’t have time to think about it. They were driving away. Matthias forced himself to pay close attention to the turns they made. Left at the broken lamppost, right at the sign that says “Wa—hous- Way” . . . As soon as Matthias got back to his room, he’d write it all down and reverse it, so he could lead Nina and Trey back.
They reached a stretch where the commander didn’t make any turns at all. The commander was humming. Matthias couldn’t stand it.
“Why?” he burst out. “Why keep that food, why guard it, if no one’s ever going to eat it?”
The commander chuckled.
“Oh, it will be eaten, all right,” he said. “In fact, it will serve its purpose very soon.”
Matthias tried to keep silent. If he didn’t act overly interested, he thought the commander was more likely to talk. But the commander went back to humming.
“What are you going to do with it? How
soon?” Matthias asked. He tried to sound overawed and maybe a little bit stupid. How had he sounded before they went into the warehouse, before everything changed?
The commander glanced over at Matthias. His eyes glittered in the darkness. Did he suspect anything?
“Oh, never mind,” the commander said. “It’s complicated. And it was . . . it was Tiddy’s plan.”
“Tiddy,” Matthias echoed sadly. He was totally acting now, playing the word for effect.
He looked over, and the commander had tears streaming down his face.
And, in spite of himself, Matthias felt guilty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Matthias got up the next morning and dressed himself. When a servant brought a tray of food into his room, he announced, “I won’t be needing that anymore. From now on, I’ll be eating down in the cafeteria with everyone else.”
“But, sir,” the servant said, “what shall I do with all this food?”
Matthias considered. The main part of the meal was eggs scrambled with cheese—a total luxury. The tray also held a plateful of toast, a bowl of cooked apple slices, and a frothing glass of milk.
“Eat it yourself,” he decided.
“Oh, sir,” the servant said. “Can I?”
She was a pock-faced girl as scrawny as Matthias had been when he’d first arrived at Population Police headquarters. Matthias supposed she spent her days carrying around food that she herself was not allowed to eat.
“Go right ahead,” Matthias said. “But—don’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” the girl said, curtsying. “Thank you, sir.”
Matthias walked out of his room through the commander’s office. The commander was bent over stacks of papers. Matthias stood close and tried to look at the papers without appearing interested, but the numbers marching across the pages meant nothing to him.
“Sir,” Matthias said, “I’ve been thinking. I don’t believe . . . Tiddy . . . would want me to just lie around all the time, grieving. I need to . . . do something. In his memory.”
Matthias wasn’t really lying. It was just that he’d be acting in honor of Percy’s and Alia’s memory, and Samuel’s and Mrs. Talbot’s. Not Tiddy’s.
The commander reached out and ruffled Matthias’s hair.
“You’re a brave boy,” he muttered sadly.
Matthias climbed down the stairs feeling anything but brave. He walked into the cafeteria, and the entire room became instantly hushed. Matthias felt like every eye in the room was on him.
How am I supposed to carry out a secret plan with everyone watching? Matthias wondered.
He made himself stumble on over to the woman with the trays.
“I don’t know—am I supposed to hand you money or a voucher or something?” he asked her. “Last time Mike took care of me, and before that, Tiddy.”
“Oh, you’re that boy of Tiddy’s,” the woman crooned softly. “Oh, you poor dear. Now, don’t you worry about anything. Just go on and eat.”
“Thank you,” Matthias mumbled.
When he stepped over to the women doling out the food, he was overjoyed to see Nina’s familiar brown eyes above one of the face masks. He quickly slid his hand in and out of his pocket and was ready when she handed him a bowl of oatmeal. His fingertips brushed hers; when they both pulled away, he was holding the bowl and she was holding a coiled-up scrap of paper he’d been carrying around. Her eyes widened a bit with surprise, but otherwise, she gave no indication that anything had passed between them.
Matthias took his tray of food and sat down. He hoped Nina would understand the note he’d written: Same meeting place. What time? He ate his oatmeal slowly, lingering over every bite. So he was one of the few diners who remained when Nina came out to scrub the tables. She leaned close to his ear as she stretched to reach the opposite side of his table.
“Fifteen minutes from now,” she whispered, and moved on.
Matthias scraped the last flecks of oatmeal out of his bowl, swallowed, and pushed himself away from the table. He had extra time, so he took a roundabout route to the silver bathroom. But he got delayed in the front hall because a huge crowd was gathered there, blocking his way.
“Excuse me,” he murmured. “Could you let me through?”
The cluster of dark uniforms around him seemed like a forest, impenetrable. Then one officer glanced down at him.
“It’s the boy,” she gasped, and the clump of uniforms parted before him.
Matthias walked forward as officers moved aside to give him even more room. This wasn’t what he was used to. He was used to having to scramble between people’s legs, always having to watch out so nobody stepped on him. He wasn’t used to being noticed at all, and now everyone was staring at him, almost reverently.
He reached the front of the crowd. He was facing the very spot where Tiddy had died, the two pillars now framing a huge vase full of roses. A banner across the floral arrangement proclaimed, ONE OF OUR BEST. Around the display of roses, people had left mementos and messages. Matthias saw ribbons and medals, bracelets and scraps of paper covered in heart-broken scrawls: WE MISS YOU, TIDDY.
The crowd was absolutely silent, watching Matthias. He realized they expected him to add something to the memorial, but he’d brought nothing with him; he hadn’t even known there was a memorial. Thinking frantically, he looked around, and his cap rattled against his ears. The cap! Well, that would have to do. He took off his cap and left it at the base of the roses. Then he backed away, watching the crowd. People began following his example, surging forward to lay their own caps beside Matthias’s. Now everyone was watching the impromptu cap-laying service, so Matthias was able to duck into the silver bathroom without being seen.
His heart pounded strangely. What was that all about? he wondered.
He peered into the vent where Nina had climbed out the last time, but the duct beyond was empty and dark.
Someone knocked on the door. “Cleaning!”
It was Nina’s voice. Matthias fumbled with the lock, and then she slipped through the doorway.
“Aren’t you scared someone might have seen you?” Matthias asked. “There are a hundred people out there.”
“Believe me, I’m invisible,” Nina said wryly. “And anyone who wants to check will see I’ve been loaned from the kitchen to the housecleaning crew.” She set down a large bucket full of cleaning solutions, scrub brushes, and rags on the floor. She squirted a stream of ammonia into the toilet, selected a brush, and began scrubbing.
Matthias made a face at the overpowering odor. “Do you have to do that while we’re talking?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” Nina said. “They time us. If I don’t have this bathroom sparkling clean in ten minutes, I’m in trouble.”
“I’ll do the sink, then,” Matthias said.
Nina handed him his own bottle of noxious chemicals.
“Why did you want to meet?” she asked as they both scrubbed away.
Matthias told her about the immense storehouse of food and his idea that it could be distributed to the hungry.
“Hmm,” Nina said.
“Hmm? That’s all you can say?” Matthias asked. “The Population Police have food, and people are starving. So let’s give it away.”
“Matthias, it’s not that simple,” Nina said. “Where is this warehouse again?”
Matthias told her as best he could.
“Oh,” Nina said. “That’s a problem.”
“Why?”
Nina shook her head, her braids thumping against her thin shoulders.
“Never mind,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Matthias pushed his rag against the porcelain so hard, he feared he’d pull the sink from the wall.
“It is simple,” Matthias said. “You and me and Trey, we can work together. It’d be like—” He almost said, like Percy and Alia and me, but the words stuck in his throat.
Nina let the brush fall into the toilet. She stared at Matthias, her ey
es wide and distressed.
“Matthias, it’s just that . . . Trey and—and the others . . . they don’t know you like I do. They’re a little bit suspicious, because you’ve had it so easy ever since you got here. The rest of us are being worked to death, and you’re getting your food delivered on trays. And people are saying that you’re Tiddy’s son or maybe the commander’s long-lost grandson. And you haven’t been acting like you want to help us with—”
“I lost my friends!” Matthias protested, his voice coming out entirely too loud for someone holding a secret meeting.
“But don’t you see?” Nina said, her eyes burning. “We all have—we’ve either lost someone we loved or left someone behind or been through some terrible experience. Or maybe all of those. But we’re going on. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, because of what we went through.”
“So am I,” Matthias muttered. He blinked hard, trying desperately not to break down. Not in front of Nina. Not when she sounded so fierce.
“But what you’re telling me now, it’s too perfect,” Nina said. “It’s almost like we’re being set up.”
Matthias froze. He could feel the harsh chemicals of the cleaning supplies eating into his skin.
“You think I’m lying?” he asked. “Making it all up? I was there. I saw the food. I smelled it.”
His voice was too loud again. Nina winced and glanced anxiously toward the door.
“I believe you,” she said soothingly, her voice a near whisper. “I know you think you’re telling me the truth. But if the commander somehow knew about our plot, if he somehow knew you were connected to us, then the perfect way to ruin our plot would be to set up this fake storehouse of food, get you to tell us about it, and totally distract us from our goal.”
Matthias stared at her.
“You think it was fake?” he finally said. “You think I’m being used?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Nina said. “Go back to the commander. Keep acting like—like his grandson or whatever, to make sure he still likes you. And spy on him. Eavesdrop on his meetings. Steal papers from his desk. Find out what his plan for all that food is. Just . . .”