A stunned silence filled the room, then Mr. Talbot muttered sadly, “He sounds just like Jen.”
Trey remembered that Jen and her friends had died in their quest for freedom.
Somehow that fact didn’t scare him now.
Mr. Hendricks cleared his throat.
“Trey, I admire your sentiment,” he said. “Thuly I do. And your courage. You’ve already accomplished an incredible feat, saving your friends. But the Population Police have taken over everything now. George here spent years assembling his resistance movement, and it’s all gone now; I fear that the only ones left are in this room tonight. So, your little speech was certainly impassioned and noble— but not very realistic.”
“The game is over,” Mrs. Talbot said. “We lost.”
Trey looked from face to face, trying to gauge the emotions of his friends and the adults he’d grown to admire. These were the bravest people he’d ever met. But they all looked terrified.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Hide out here forever?”
“What else can we do?” Mr. Hendricks asked.
They did mean to keep hiding, he realized. After everything that had happened, the most they felt capable of was to huddle in an out-of-the-way cottage and pray they were never discovered.
“I, for one, have had enough of hiding,” Trey said, amazed at the words he heard coming out of his own mouth. But they were true. “The Population Police are not invincible. They have mobs attacking them.” He remembered the sentry on the bridge. ‘Their own officers desert and steal their food. With all those televised speeches and cheering crowds, Aldous Krakenaur would have you believe that he’s wildly popular and totally in control. But he hasn’t consolidated his power. His organization is. disorganized. He’s vulnerable now. If we hide out and wait and bide our time, maybe we’ll miss the biggest chance of our lifetimes.”
“Again, pretty words,” Mr. Hendricks said. He had an edge to his voice now. “But what do you propose to do?”
Trey didn’t know. He felt like he’d talked himself out onto a limb, and was about to faIl flat on his face. Maybe his words were just words after all; maybe they were meaningless.
And then, he did know what he had to do.
“I joined the Population Police,” he said. “I can go back. I can watch and listen and… and sabotage them. Like Mr. Talbot did. And I can find others to help me.”
‘You’d be gambling that we managed to fool the warden back at Nezeree,” Nedley said. “And that there’s not a price out on your head because of your connection to the Sabines.”
“I can join again under another identity. In disguise. Nobody paid any attention to me as Thavis Jackson except the warden. I’d just have to avoid him and Nezeree. I can get another identity, can’t I?” Trey directed this question at Mr. Hendricks.
After a brief pause, Mr. Hendricks nodded.
“It’s a hard life,” Mr. Talbot said. “Dangerous. The most likely outcome is death.”
He stared into the fire, and Trey knew that he wasn’t just watching the flames. He was remembering all his friends and trusted colleagues, now dead. He had been beaten nearly to death himself
“I know,” Trey said. “But I have to try. Will—” He swallowed hard. “Will anyone come with me?”
The question hung in the air like smoke, and for a moment Trey feared that no one would answer it. He didn’t want to go alone. But he would if he had to.
Then Nedley stepped forward.
“I’m in,” he said. “I’m not much for waiting around; I’m ready for another adventure. If it’s the death of me, so be it.”
Lee was nodding too.
“Being in prison scared me,” he said. “Some things are… worse than death. But I stood back and let a friend be the brave one once before. This time, I’m going with Trey.”
“Me too,” Nina said.
“And me,” the chauffeur said.
Everyone looked at Joel and John, who silently shook their heads.
‘You can wait, and maybe join up later,” Trey said gently Who was he to shame anyone else for cowardice?
“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “What about me?”
Trey had almost forgotten Mark.
“This isn’t your cause,” Trey said. “It doesn’t have to be. You can go home and not worry—”
“No.” Mark was shaking his head violently. “You said all those third kids remember who they really are — don’t you think their families remember too? Don’t you think their families agonize and worry and fret, every day their kid is away? Every day of the kid’s life? My brother’s gone off without me twice already. Not again. I’ll take the truck back home and let my leg and burns heal and then — wherever you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”
Trey looked back at the grown-ups.
“We’ll do anything we can for you,” Mr. Hendricks said. “In the background. That’s — that’s the best we can do.”
He had tears in his eyes, but Trey couldn’t tell if they were tears of regret or fear. Or maybe sorrow. Maybe he was already mourning Trey and his friends.
Mrs. Talbot handed Trey the rest of the papers.
“You are responsible now for one hundred lives,” she said.
“I know,” Trey said.
He felt the full weight of the burden. He’d taken on the responsibility of rescuing Mr. Talbot and Lee and the others, and that had felt too heavy. He’d messed up again and again and again — being discovered on Mr. Talbot’s porch, rattling the weights in the Talbots’ basement, leaving the knapsack behind in the woods, crashing through the heat ducts, killing the truck’s engine right when the mob attacked. But everything had worked out in the end. Somehow, against all reason, he had faith that he could handle this responsibility as well.
With help.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Trey stood at the back of a long line of men and boys. Papers rustled under his shirt — dangerous papers, papers that could get lots of people killed. And he was waiting to walk into Population Police headquarters, the most dangerous place in the country for third children.
But he waited patiently, unfazed by the sun beating down on his head, the sullen crowd around him. His friend Lee stood by his side. And his friends Nina, Nedley, and the chauffeur were already inside.
Trey glanced over at a Population Police officer leaning lazily against a tree, watching the line.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trey wanted to tell the officer. “The only reason you can stand there so carelessly is that you don’t know what we’re about to do.”
Trey didn’t know everything either, of course. But for once in his life, he felt brave enough to face it all.