The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix

top of the tower. Now that Dek had pointed it out, Tessa noticed the streaks of white and gray and brown running down from the windows. And Tessa could see now that all the windows were broken. Only a few jagged shards of glass remained in place, throwing off reflected light from the sun.
    She looked to Gideon, wondering what brilliant deductions he’d figured out, staring at the tower.
    “Still,” Gideon said stubbornly. He wasn’t looking at the tower. He was glaring at Dek. “Still. We have to make it look like we’ve come in peace.”
    “But we haven’t,” Dek said. “We can’t. Not when our whole country’s at war.”
    There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. Theywalked on, each step tense and fearful. It was a relief finally to reach the base of the tower, out of sight of the dark windows overhead. Tessa saw that a metal door hung open, rusted half off its hinges, revealing a flight of stairs inside.
    “So we’re going to be really, really quiet climbing up there?” Tessa whispered. “Just in case?”
    “Won’t work,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “We don’t have any weapons with us. If someone up there does …” He leaned his head into the stairwell, tilted it upward and shouted, “We surrender! We surrender!”
    The words echoed back at him,
-ender … –ender … –ender …
But no other voice replied.
    Gideon pulled his head back out into the sunlight.
    “You two want to wait here while I go up?” he asked.
    Yes,
Tessa thought. But somehow it seemed like it would be more frightening to stand around at the bottom of the tower, waiting.
    “I’ll go with you,” she said.
    She turned toward Dek, expecting the other girl to say,
Okay! Let me know what you find up there!
But Dek was already headed for the stairs.
    “I’m in,” she said.
    Why?
Tessa wondered.
Why isn’t she letting Gideon and me take all the risk, like she did before?
    Tessa noticed the stiff way Dek held her shoulders, the way she clenched her jaw as she walked.
    Oh,
Tessa thought.
Dek doesn’t trust us. She isn’t sure we’d tell her the truth about what we’d see.
    All three of them began climbing the stairs together. Tessaguessed that Dek wasn’t worried about any land mines being left here, because she wasn’t making any effort to walk behind the other two.
    Birds fluttered around them, darting for the open door.
    Oh, yeah,
Tessa thought.
If there were any explosives around here, the birds would have set them off already.
    She was proud of herself for figuring this out. She turned and looked behind her, and realized that she, Dek, and Gideon were leaving footprints in the thick layer of bird droppings.
    And that’s another reason for Dek to be convinced there’s no one above us in this tower. Anyone else would have left footprints too.
    This helped Tessa relax a little climbing the stairs. But it still wasn’t a pleasant experience. The bird droppings covered the stair railings too, so Tessa didn’t want to hold on, even in spots where the concrete of the stairs had crumbled away. The farther they climbed, the darker it got, since there were no windows actually in the stairwell. Two flights up, Gideon pulled a flashlight out of somewhere—and muttered, almost apologetically, “Standard military issue.” That helped a little. The three of them just had to cluster together, staying near the light.
    Finally, panting and sweating, they reached the end of the stairs. Another door sagged from its hinges here, more rust than anything else, and Gideon shoved gingerly past it, into a wide open room.
    “We surrender?” he said softly, but this was clearly pointless. The room held nothing but broken glass and twisted metal and the thickest layer of bird droppings Tessa had ever seen. With a complaining cry, one last crow swooped out the broken window.
    Tessa startled at the noise, then bent over, her hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath.
    “What … a relief,” she murmured, her heart