Nina Idi ran back through the forest. Saving Alia, Percy and Matthias was all she cared about. The Population Police had already found her, but she could still keep them from finding the three children she had risked everything to save.
"Percy! Matthias! Alia! Run!" At this point, the population police were closing all around Nina, flashlights shining all over the place. She felt a strong grip on her shoulder, then the other one. Nina struggled to free herself but the grip only tightened more. She kicked and screamed and cried until she saw him.
The hating man walked out in front of Nina and crouched down, eye level with her. "Fancy seeing you here, Nina Idi. I see you've found Percy and Matthias, but where is your dear little Alia? Oh yeah,while you were out being careless, she found her way back to us and reported a third child, you."
Nina looked behind her, sure enough, Percy and Matthias were holding on to Nina's frail arms, after she had helped them escape.
"Don't be surprised, Nina, we suspected you were a third child the whole time, it was just a matter of getting it out of you is all." He grinned a certain way that made Nina want to punch him right in the face.
"They're third children, too! They told me! You have the wrong person!" Nina tried to wiggle away from their firm grip but it seemed that they had grown stronger than she though while she was gone.
"Oh, Nina, even if we had suspected you weren't a third child, you would have never been smart enough to work for the population police. It just turned out that Matthias, Percy and Alia were all better actors than you thought. It's a shame, really, a six year old being a better actor than a thirteen year old who has been pretending to be a normal, first child all her life." He patted her head, then motioned behind him for someone. Two burly men appeared holding rifles and started to bind Nina's hands together. Percy and Matthias did nothing to help her. They just watched her being tied without expression.
After Nina's hands were bound so tightly they turned a dark shade of violet, Percy and Matthias jerked her off the ground like she had committed a crime against them and walked her to the back of a white van. They threw her in like a sack of spuds and she was driven back to the place she had so desperately tried to save Percy, Matthias and Alia from.
Nina was pushed on the ground, then kicked repeatedly for not getting up quick enough. She was dragged to what she thought was a cellar and left in the room for a few hours until the hating man came back. It was the beginning of her capture all over again.
"So, Nina, do you have any pathetic excuses to try and save yourself with this time? 'Oh, it wasn't my idea to run away! It was theirs!' that's how it went down, right?" He chuckled to himself and leaned back in a chair, seeming to have all the time in the world.
"You are wrong to do this." Nina was huddled in the corner, not even looking in the man's direction.
"To do what? Kill you for lying to the police? No, I am not, it's part of my job. You don't make the rules. My boss does."
"For killing third children."
The man paused and thought about it. "It's a law, those who choose not to follow it have decided their fate for themselves. Not my problem."
Nina was done talking. She allowed the hating man to strap her in a chair and fill a syringe with a substance she did not know. At least it wouldn't be that painful, like a getting a flu vaccination, or Novocaine. "How many children have you killed?" Nina sat back in the chair, relaxing. She was finally going to die, and she couldn't do anything about it, just let it happen.
The hating man came back to Nina he inserted the syringe in the back of her neck, "Not kill, Nina. You'll see."
And with those final words, Nina's vision blurred and and the world slipped away into blackness.
ADVICE COLUMN.
ASK ASHLEY
Dear Ashley,
There is a law in my country the forbids the birth of third children,and I am exactly that. I have been living in a small apartment with my Grandma and Aunts all my life and not until I was sent to a girls school that I had gotten into trouble with the population police--for something I had no idea about.
My significant other, Jason, had been trying to learn the secret identities of shadow children to turn them in and get a reward, in fact, when he turned them in, he was the one who was captured, for betraying his country. To get himself out of trouble, he blamed the whole entire thing on me. I was beaten and beaten some more until I finally learned this. They told me the only way I could live was if I helped them betray three children they had arrested for being third children (ages 10, 9 and 6), but they didn't have enough information to kill them yet. I was put in a prison cell with them for much time but they wouldn't allow me any information about them, even though I was also posing as a third child being imprisoned for having been born. What I did learn, was that they lived alone and took care of themselves.
I was in talking to the man who captured me when a guard was poisoned. The guard had dropped his keys and attracted my keeper's attention for a long enough time for me to pick up the keys being unnoticed. He called for the ambulance and left with the guard, me with the keys. I am torn between attempting to save myself, or me and the three children. What should I do?
Sincerely,
The third child
Dear Third Child,
It sounds like you're in an awfully tough predicament. You could either save yourself or save the lives of three children who have lived a tougher and not as long life as yourself. If you were to save yourself, and not the three children, what would happen to them? What would happen to yourself? If you save the children, as well as yourself, what do you suppose would happen then, what would you do from then on? I honestly don't suggest running from the law for any reason, but if you would like to help your fellow prisoners, who are unable to help themselves at this time, you should also think of the consequences you face when you are saving three people instead of just one. You could be seen, you could be caught by the police and then all three of you could face a fate worse than the one you had back at the prison. But, if you choose to save yourself and only yourself, think of the children, and what would happen to them if you left them in the prison, what would they think of you if you had ran away and had the chance to help them but chose not to. What if they have families that they want to get back to? A grandma and aunties that miss them, like yours do? Keep these in mind when you make your final decision and I hoped this helped your problem a bit.
Sincerely,
Ashley
Dear Ashley,
I have decided to help the three children escape with me. My biggest fear was that they'd slow me down and we'd for sure get caught, turns out, I'm the slow one! We are on our way back to a forest behind my old school where we'll grow a garden a live for a while. If it wasn't for your decent advice, I surely wouldn't have helped them and who knows what I would be doing now, probably returning to the jail, begging them to take me back. The woods are scary at night and they'd be worse if I were alone. They've taught me so much about surviving in the wilderness without adult care, I acutally kind of have to think for myself instead of having rules and teachers determine my every move. Thank you, Ashley for helping me make the choice I did. We're making much better time than I ever would have by myself.
Thank you so much,
Nina Idi
AMONG THE BETRAYED: PROBLEMS;EDITORIAL.
Dear Margaret Peterson Haddix,
In your story, "Among the Betrayed," it was full of many scientifically fictional adventures that the main character, Nina Idi, and three others, Matthias, Percy and Alia, shared while running away from the population police, the people that monitor and eliminate any third child births.
Nina and the other three children are all illegal and on the run from the population police, however, as the story continues to unfold, Nina finds it harder to remain trusting the three children when they tell her nothing about themselves. Although she knew that the three children had taken care of themselves before she found them, she had no idea their survival skills would be just as good in the wilderness as it was in the city where they came from before. She continues to believe theya re hiding something, but she is not sure as to what.
This story is hard to perdict, the characters are not obvious as to whom is bad and whom is good, nor are there very many clues to help lead you to the ending.
In short, this book is full of suspence and is at the very least predictable. This book has kept me intrigued for the time I read it, and I hope to continue the series to the end.
COMMERCIAL.
In the book "Among the Betrayed," author Margaret Peterson Haddix introduces a girl by the name of Nina Idi, she is living in a time where third child births are prohibited because of famines. Nina Idi, or by her real name Elodie, is a third child and she has been imprisoned for being accused of turning in third children for a reward with her boyfriend Jason, or Scott. The Population Police offer Nina to either help them betray other third children or to die. When Nina first sees the children, they are only 6, 9 and 10. She has a hard time deciding whether or not to betray them. Until a guard was poisoned and he dropped his keys in a place quite convenient for Nina to pick up and escape both herself and the three other children.Nina is running away from the population police, being accused for something she did not do. As they run away, Nina learns more, not a lot more, about the children and they, her. When they finally reach their destination (a forest behind Nina's old school) they discover a food garden that eventually leads to Nina's doom. Or does it? DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN.
