When the father’s picture appeared, he was not surprised. It was a man with gray hair and eyes that looked familiar — familiar because they matched his son’s. Trey had noticed the resemblance only the night before, but not quite made the connection.
It was the Population Police guard from the Grants’ house. The one who had arranged all the documents Trey had brought to Nezeree.
“Disregard all orders from Jonas or Jonathan Sabine,” Krakenaur had said. “Hold all documents they have signed, and detain anyone carrying documents with their signatures. We are tracing the extent of their treachery, even as I speak. We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible.”
Could Trey and his friends escape Nezeree before the warden found out?
Distantly, Trey heard a phone ringing in another room. As if in a trance, he stumbled out of the TV room toward the ominous sound. He tripped into the warden’s office, and it was exactly as Trey feared: The phone on the warden’s desk was ringing. The one that was a direct line to Population Police headquarters.
Chapter Thirty-One
Trey dived under the warden’s desk and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. He wished he had a knife. But he didn’t, so he put the plastic tip of the cord in his mouth and sawed it against his teeth. Finally, finally, he managed to bite off the end, leaving the wires frayed.
“What is the meaning of this?” a voice exploded behind him.
Trey spit out the plastic connector and hid the phone cord deep in the carpet. He backed out and slowly straightened up. The warden was just coming in the door. What had he seen? What had he heard?
“C-c-cockroach, sir,” Trey stammered. “I’m so sorry. I saw this bug running behind your desk, and I know how those things multiply, and I thought if I caught it—”
“Did you?” the warden asked.
“No, sir. I wasn’t fast enough. I’m sorry, sir.”
The warden regarded Trey doubtfully What if he decided to get down on his hands and knees to look for himself?
He won’t, Trey tried to assure himself. He’s too fat to fit.
The warden glanced down at his desk. Was Trey being paranoid, or was the warden looking straight at his phone? Had he heard it ringing?
A printerlike machine behind Trey began churning out paper.
“Looks like I’m getting a fax,” the warden said. “Step aside, Officer Jackson. It’s undoubtedly classified, and you wouldn’t have clearance yet to see that.”
There was a challenging note to his voice, but Trey took hope from the word “yet”.
He still thinks I’m a gun g-ho Population Police recruit, They thought. He still thinks I’ll have classified clearance someday.
“Here, sir, I’ll get the fax for you,” They said. “I won’t look at it. I promise.”
He did his best to sound earnest and overeager, not like a boy who was terrified of what that fax might say. But he didn’t have to look to know. “We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible,” Krakenaur had said. The phone call had failed, so of course the Population Police were using other methods.
“All right,” the warden said in an even tone. But he was watching Trey carefully.
The fax machine kept spitting out paper. They stood waiting, his hands over the machine, the dread growing inside him. Should he rip the papers in half when he picked them up? Should he run away with them? How could he do anything about the fax without giving himself away — and destroying any chance that Mark, Lee, and the others had for escape?
But what chance do any of us have anymore anyway? Trey wondered in despair.
The last sheet of paper churned out, and the machine lapsed into silence. Trey reached down and scooped up the papers. Without looking, he thumped them against the counter, straightening out the edges.
Do I dare to drop them? Buy myself a little time?
But he was too nervous to try that, and too scared of infuriating the warden.
The noise of a truck outside distracted him temporarily “Your prisoners from Slahood have arrived,” the warden said, glancing out the window.
Trey let the hand holding the papers fall to his side. He rushed over to the window as if his eagerness to see his prisoners had made him forget about the fax.
“We were giving our prisoner one last beating before he leaves,” the warden said. He leaned over and spoke into the intercom, “Snyder, you may send him up now.”
Trey peered out the window as a truck pulled up in front of the warden’s office. Lee, Nina, Joel, and John were chained together in the back. So was a fifth person, a man.
The chauffeur? Trey suddenly thought. He hadn’t recognized him at first, because the chauffeur looked twenty years older than he had the last time They had seen him, back at the Talbots’ house only a week or so earlier. Mark and I didn’t ask to have the chauffeur released, Trey thought. We didn’t even mention his name. We don’t even know his name.
The chauffeur’s appearance only intensified Trey’s fears. Everything was spinning out of control, even without the danger presented by the fax papers burning in his hand.
“I’ll go help unload the prisoners,” Trey said.
“But my fax — young man! You haven’t been dismissed!” the warden yelled from behind him.
Trey pretended not to hear, though it was a shaky pretense. He would have had to be deaf to miss those shouts. He rushed out the door anyway How long would it take the warden to catch up to him? A minute? Two? Would the warden pause to summon other guards over the intercom — guards who would come to beat him up?
Trey tried not to think about it.
Outside, the driver from Slahood was already jerking Trey’s friends and the chauffeur out of the truck bed. They stumbled and fell, knocking against one another. But the guard gave them no time to right themselves, just kept pulling on their chains until they were all in a heap on the ground.
None of them so much as cried out in pain.
“Who’s signing for this riffraff?” the guard asked.
“Me,” Trey said, blindly grabbing for the clipboard and pen the guard held out. He scrawled his most illegible signature at the bottom of the forms.
“Okay, then,” the guard said, and climbed back into his truck and drove away.
Trey knew he should be running, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the warden. Using every last second to save himself. But time seemed to stop as he stood there regarding his friends. They lay like corpses at his feet, not making the least attempt to untangle themselves. He wasn’t sure if they recognized him or not
“Everything’s okay now,” he wanted to tell them. “I’m rescuing you.” But he knew that would be a lie — he had no hope of carrying off a rescue now. Failing that, Trey at least wanted to ask some questions: “Why did you leave me? Why did you go back to the Grants’ house? Why didn’t you come back for me?”
But it was too late for questions. The warden came storming out of his office, screaming, “Give me that fax this instant!”
At the same time, the guard who had taken Mark away, Nedley, was pulling up in Mark’s battered truck Mark sat in the passenger’s seat, looking groggy but blessedly alive — for now, anyway. A body also lay in the back, but Trey couldn’t tell if he was looking at a corpse or at a living, breathing human.
That must be the prisoner that Jonas Sabine risked his life for. Wonder why Sabine cared so much? They thought dully Probably none of his questions would ever be answered. He’d die still wondering why everything had happened, what any of his bravery had been worth.