He stood up abruptly.

"We should start walking," he said. "We've wasted too much time already."

'All right," Percy said. "Where do you think we should go?"

But Matthias hadn't thought about a destination. He just wanted to move, to get away.

Percy had everything figured out anyway.

"I thought about it while you and Alia were sleeping," he said. "I think we should go to Mr. Hendricks. He's got that separate cottage — even if the Population Police raided his school when they raided Niedler, maybe they didn't catch him."

Mr. Hendricks was the headmaster of a school that Percy, Matthias, and Alia had visited, but not attended, before they went to Niedler. And Mr. Hendricks was friends with Mr. Talbot, the man who'd saved them the first time they'd been captured by the Population Police. He'd been with them at Hendricks School too. Matthias remembered their time with Mr. Hendricks as a joyous vacation. It'd been the first time he'd felt truly happy after Samuel's death.

That was before I became a murderer, he thought.

"Well?" Percy asked, and Matthias had to squint at him, trying to remember what they'd been talking about. "Should we go to Mr. Hendricks, or do you have a better plan?"

Matthias shrugged. "That's fine," he said.

He bent over and picked up Alia, and the strain on his muscles felt good. He deserved the pain in his arms, the ache in his back. He deserved worse.

Behind him, he heard Percy mumble an end to the List of Good Things game: "We're alive. We're together. And God loves us."

Matthias started walking as quickly as he could so Percy wouldn't see the tears streaming down his face.

Chapter Five