Margaret Haddix - Among the Betrayed

ina slipped the ring of keys around her left wrist 1 % and pushed it up her arm — farther, farther — until the ring stayed in place on its own. The points of the keys bit into her arm, but it wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation. It woke her up.

I have keys.

I have food.

I have twenty'four hours.

I need a plan.

The hating man strode back into the room. Nina didn't have the slightest idea how long he'd been gone. Maybe she'd been sitting there fingering the keys through her sleeve for hours.

"I can't believe thit!" the man fumed. "Mack's — I've got someone else with Mack now. I'll take you back to your cell. Come on! I want to get back here as soon as I can. . "

Nina stood up, feeling the full weight of the food bag tied around her waist, the pinch of every individual key around her arm. As slowly as she dared, she circled the table toward the hating man. He grabbed her arm — her right one, fortunately — and pulled.

"Don't know what this world's coming to," the man muttered as they came to the door from the luxurious hallway into the rest of the prison. Nina held her breath. Would he realize now that he needed Mack's keys?

No — he was pulling keys of his own out of his jacket pocket, jamming a key into the lock, jerking the key around, jabbering the whole time. "Mack's a good, honest man, got kids of his own — I don't know why.. "

They were at another door. The man unlocked this one, too, with barely a pause.

Down the stairs, through another door — the man hus' tied Nina all the way. Nina was daring to breathe again. Then they reached the door of Nina's cell.

The hating man stopped, stared at his key ring.

"Wouldn't you know it!" he grumbled. "I'm missing this key. I'll have to go back for it."

He glanced around toward the door they'd just come through. The disgust and impatience played over his face so clearly, Nina felt like she could read his mind:

Now I'll have to go all the way back upstairs, take this nasty girl with me, then come back down here into this muck.

Yes, that had to be what he was thinking. He even raised his foot distastefully to look at the mud on the bottom of his polished shoe.

And I don't want to have to think about this useless kid anymore, I just want to go check on poor Mack —

"Tell you what," the hating man said. "I'm not even going to put you in the cell. I'll just leave you in this hall. There isn't anyone else in this wing right now anyway, and that door will be locked tight…." He spoke as though it were Nina, not he, who might worry that she wouldn't be imprisoned well enough. "The morning guard can put you back in your cell when he comes through on his eight A.M. rounds."

He was already going back through the other door. "Can't be helped," he muttered, and shut the door in Nina's face.

Nina stood beside the solid metal door and put her finger over the keyhole. One of the keys on Mack's key ring fit into that hole. She was sure of it. If the hating man had put her back in her cell, the keys would have done her no good; the door of the prison cell couldn't be unlocked from the inside.

But she had keys to all the doors between her and the interrogation room, with its windows to the outside.

She had keys, she had food — she could escape.

Nina blindly poked keys into the keyhole, searching for the right one. The only light in the hallway was a dim, dirty bulb, several yards away, so she had trouble just keeping track of which keys she'd already tried and which keys she hadn't. It was also hard trying to keep the rest of the key ring from banging on the metal door while she was turning each individual key. She was sure she had to work silently. But why? Surely the hating man was already upstairs, hovering over the poisoned Mack. And he'd said there were no other prisoners down here. Except Percy, Matthias, and Alia, of course.

Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

It was strange, but Nina had not thought about them even once since that first moment her fingers closed around the guard's key ring. She'd forgotten they existed. All she'd thought about were the keys, the keyholes, her own life.

Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

Thinking about them now made Nina drop the whole ring of keys. It clattered to the stone floor and slid several inches. The sound seemed to bounce all around in Nina's ears, as though she'd dropped a thousand keys on a thousand floors. She half wished one of the three kids — Percy, Matthias, or Alia — would pound on their cell door, yell out, "Hey! What's going on out there?"

Because then Nina would have to talk to them, have to face them, have to look into their eyes while she decided, Should I ask them to come with me?

But none of them pounded on the door, none of them called out to her. She shouldn't have expected them to. If they had even heard the noise of the keys through the heavy wood door, they probably just assumed it was a guard making a little more racket than usual. Whether they heard the noise or not, they would have stayed cowering together in their little corner of the cell. In prison it was foolish to call attention to yourself.

In prison it was foolish to think about anyone but yourself.

Nina still didn't bend over to pick up the keys. Not yet.

Ever since the hating man had told her, days ago, "Here's the deal," she'd been avoiding any decisions. She'd lain down in filth, she'd stumbled along behind the guard, she'd sat with her head bowed while the hating man harangued her. But she hadn't done anything to harm Percy, Matthias, and Alia. She hadn't exactly done anything to help them, either — she'd sat precisely in the middle of a perfectly balanced scale.

But now it was time to tip the scale. She had to choose.

If Nina left on her own, without a single look back, she'd be sending Percy, Matthias, and Alia to their death. Hadn't the hating man said he was going to kill them all if he didn't get the information he needed by ten o'clock the next night? In her heart of hearts Nina knew that that "if" helped only her — if Percy, Matthias, and Alia were still in their jail cell tomorrow, he'd kill them.

But I don't have that much food, Nina thought.

It'd be harder for four kids to hide out, traveling to safety, than just one. And Alia's so little. She probably can't walk very fast at all, and I need to walk as far as possible tonight, before anyone discovers I'm gone. One way or another, those kids are going to die. Taking them with me would just mean that I die, too.

Nina thought about lason betraying her, about all her friends just staring when the Population Police came to arrest her.

Nobody helped me! she wanted to yell at that small, stubborn part of herself that refused just to pick up the keys and go. But then she thought about Gran, Aunty Zenka, Aunty Lystra, and Aunty Rhoda, four old ladies who could have enjoyed the few small luxuries they could afford on their old-age pensions. They'd kept working instead, at mindless, drudgery-filled jobs, and diapered and coddled a small child in their off hours. She thought about her own mother, a woman she'd barely met, hiding her pregnancy, traveling secretly to Gran's house, sending money whenever she could. It would have been easier for everyone if they'd gotten rid of Nina right from the start.

But it would have been wrong.

Nina sighed, letting out all the damp, unhealthy prison air she'd been breathing. Then she bent down and scooped up the keys. She turned around and walked to a different door, fumbled for a different key. Amazingly, she found this one on the first try. The solid wood door creaked open.