ou were supposed to wake up from nightmares. That's what Nina kept telling herself as she cowered on the floor of her concrete cell. All her life she'd had horrible dreams about being captured by the Population Police. Sometimes they carried shovels and scooped her up like trash on the street. Sometimes they carried guns and prodded her in the back or pointed at her head.

But she always woke up before anyone pulled a trigger.

Once she'd even dreamed that the Population Policeman who came for her was wearing Aunty Zenka's ruffled lace nightie, complete with a nightcap. For months after that dream Nina refused to give Aunty Zenka a good' night kiss, and nobody understood why. Nina wouldn't say, because then everyone would laugh, and it wasn't funny.

Nina knew she was right to be terrified of the Population Police. They were the bogeyman and the Big Bad Wolf and the Wicked Witch and the creep^show monster and every other villain she'd ever heard of, all rolled into one.

But like the bogeyman and the Big Bad Wolf and the Wicked Witch and the creep-show monster, the Population Police belonged in stories and nightmares, not real life.

Now Nina banged her head against the cement wall beside her.

"Wake up!" she ordered herself desperately. "Wake up!"

The banging made her head ache, and that didn't hap-pen in dreams, did it? In dreams nothing hurt. They could flog you until your back bled, and you didn't feel a thing. They could tie your feet together so you couldn't run, and the ropes didn't burn at all.

Nina's wrists and ankles were rubbed raw from the handcuffs and ankle cuffs that chained her to the wall. The skin had been whipped from her back; even the slightest touch of her shirt against her spine sent pain shrieking through her body. One of her eyes seemed to be swollen shut from the beating.