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him. Maybe the seventeen "rebels" in the cabin had been smuggling medical supplies. Sometimes people did that. Once, Matthias remembered, a man had come and asked Samuel if they could use his tunnel to store some stolen medicine.
    "You'd be helping people, old man," the smuggler had said. "The people who are going to get this medicine would die without it. The Government certainly isn't doing anything for them."
    Samuel had asked the man for a few days to think it over. Matthias remembered watching Samuel sit and pray and think. Finally he told the smuggler no.
"What about the people the medicine was intended for?" Samuel had asked. "What happens to them when you steal their medicine? What if they die? It's not my place to decide who lives and who dies, whose life has the greater value."
"But—those people are Barons. They're rich. They have everything they need!" the smuggler had argued.
"Maybe not," Samuel had said. "Not if they're unwilling to share with the poor. They need love, and they need compassion, and they need to know God. Stealing from them won't give them any of those things."
    The smuggler had left shaking his head at Samuel's foolishness. Matthias thought maybe the smuggler had offered Samuel money too—money to feed himself and Percy and Alia. Matthias hadn't really understood. If this safe contains medicine, he told himself, still turning the lock, I'm giving it to Percy and Alia. I don't care who else was supposed to have it.
    The lock clicked one final time, and Matthias jerked on the safe door. It actually opened an inch or so.
Medicine, medicine, medicine . . . , Matthias chanted to himself as he swung the safe door farther out.
Flat white plastic cards fell out on the ground.
Fake I.D.'s.
Matthias picked up one in disgust and threw it against the wall.
"I could make these myself, if I needed to," he muttered, and started to slam the door of the safe. Then he reconsidered. If someone found them hiding here in this secret room, they'd be in even bigger trouble if they didn't have identity cards. The identity cards could be "proof" that they weren't the three kids who had slipped away from the Population Police truck.
Matthias forced himself to slow down and search through the stack, until he found cards with pictures that bore some resemblance to himself and Percy and Alia. Most of the cards were for adults, so it took quite a while. By the time Matthias held three suitable I.D.'s in his hand, Percy was moaning.
"Over here, I think there's a cabin ahead. Oh no! Bullet! Shot! Climb hill! Hide!" he said, his voice crescendoing to a shriek. In his dreams, he seemed to be reliving the attack of the night before. He thrashed around on his bed so violently that Matthias feared he'd hurt himself even worse. Matthias put his hand on his friend's forehead, to calm him down and smooth the hair out of his face. But Percy's forehead was fiery hot; Matthias jerked his hand bade as though Percy's skin could burn him. ,
    "You've got a fever," Matthias said. "Thaf s all. Just a little fever. I—" His voice shook. "I'm going upstairs to look for medicine there."
    His legs trembled as he climbed the stairs and pushed up on the trapdoor. He was surprised by the bright sunlight that greeted him. It was still very early morning, but the woods outside the splintered door and broken win-dows seemed to sparkle. Percy's prediction had been right: It had snowed overnight.
Matthias refused to let himself be dazzled by the scene. He gingerly shut the trapdoor and focused his eyes on the ruined cabin.
It had probably not looked like much to begin with, but now it was a nightmarish place of overturned chairs and dark stains everywhere.
Bloodstains. Bloodstains from where seventeen rebels had fought and died.
Why didn't they just stay hidden in the secret underground room? Matthias wondered. But he thought he knew the answer. If they hadn't fought back, the Population Police would have come in and searched the place; they would have