Hugo screamed as loudly as he dared. But Mom was slow, she didn’t understand.

“Mom! Hurry!”

Then she came. And he didn’t need to say more. She saw what he saw, realized what he realized. The two men in black masks were on their way here. They weren’t guards—they were the danger.

“Away from the window!”

Mom grabbed him so hard it would probably leave a bruise on his arm, she never did that. But it didn’t matter, he understood why. He ran after her, in to Rasmus who was lying in bed playing a football game with the hand control on his stomach, and Luiza who was sleeping next to him and whimpering anxiously, as if she knew what was about to happen.

“The extra security door!”

“Hugo—there’s no time.”

“We have to close it, Mom!”

“Stay here, I said! With me, with us. And be completely silent.”

There was just a short staircase up to the entrance. Seven steps, he’d counted them. That’s why it was possible to hear when people came and went. He didn’t understand how the others who lived here could stand it. But now it was a good thing. They could hear when the door to the building opened and closed. They could hear two sets of feet with hard soles walk then stop. Outside their door.

Mom pulled them all close on the big bed, holding them at the same time. They sat there very, very close to each other, and it felt very serious, even Rasmus didn’t ask any questions or move a muscle the whole time—Hugo couldn’t even remember his little brother ever being that silent and still at the same time.

Then he heard something much louder than footsteps. Someone was trying to tear into their door. Hard metal pressed against the door, pressed, pressed, until it started to give.

They had a minute, maybe less.

And Hugo knew something that Mom didn’t know, that the black masks didn’t know either.

“There’s an escape route.”

“Lie still, Hugo. Quiet. In my arms.”

“A secret path. The kind Dad likes. Hurry up, Mom!”

He got up and opened the closet just a few steps away.

“Hugo, listen now, I . . .”

“Look here, Mom.”

He lay on his knees outside the closet with the door open and searching with his hand for the little knob that would open up the floor—found it, just where he remembered.

“The whole bottom, Mom, like a hatch.”

He pulled it. The unsteady floor that had rocked when he first jumped on it, now followed his hand up. He moved so Mom could see. A round hole. That became a doorway to the basement and the air raid shelter, as he hung down with his upper body and pulled away the plasterboard.

A powerful crash in the hall.

An even larger part of the front door had broken.