Inside

by Maria V. Snyder

  Riley stood. “No. We need to go. Just need to get…something.” He strode into the bedroom.

  Jacob stepped closer to me and whispered, “You’re as beautiful as Riley claims. I hope you’ll visit us again.” He winked.

  I smiled and wondered what the real Ella looked like. Riley returned.

  His father spotted the ladder along the wall. “What’s this?”

  “Oh. Maintenance was testing air flow again. They must have forgotten it. I’ll return it on my way to work.” He grabbed the ladder and turned toward the door.

  “Wait,” his father said, staring at the ceiling. “They forgot to cover the vent, too. Hand me the ladder.”

  “I’ll do it, Dad.” Riley set the stepladder on the table.

  “No. You’re going to be late.” He shooed us out.

  Riley shrugged and opened the door. I hoped Logan had the sense to scoot away from the vent and to keep quiet. Jacob reached for the air shaft as Riley escorted me into the hallway. The door clicked shut.

  “Let’s hope Logan doesn’t give himself away.” He strode down the corridor. “Does he know where to go?”

  I hurried to follow. “No. I’ll have to go back and get him. Isn’t this dangerous?” I swept my arm out, indicating the hallway.

  “Not really. Just act like you belong here. Walk with confidence. No one knows who you are. Since you’re wearing a student jumper, they’ll assume you’re from another sector.”

  “Don’t you know everyone up here?” My vision of the upper levels as one big happy family was being shredded strip by strip.

  He laughed. “No. Do you know all the scrubs?”

  “There are ten times as many of us.”

  “Well, up here everyone keeps to themselves. I have a few aunts and uncles, some cousins, a friend or two and I know my fellow workers of course, but that’s about it.”

  “What about the real Ella? What if she sees me?”

  A few uppers walked toward us, and I braced for their cry of alarm. They nodded at us and continued past. Riley was right. I relaxed a bit and looked around. There wasn’t much to see. Doors and plain white metal walls, the same as in the lower levels. The only difference was the thin strip of gray carpet on the floor.

  When the uppers moved out of hearing range, Riley said, “You are Ella.”

  “I am?”

  He gave me a don’t-be-stupid look. “How do you think I justify all my time spent in our storeroom? My father likes to know what I’m doing during my off hours, so I tell him I’m training a student. Actually, his unexpected arrival helped me. Now he has met Ella and knows she’s a real person. It should keep him happy for a while. Although…”

  “What?”

  “He might start bugging me to bring you around more.”

  Confused, I asked why.

  Riley’s stride slowed as he stared at me. “You really don’t know anything about families do you?”

  “Scrub, remember? We have care facilities not families.” I believed I did a good job of keeping the bitterness from my voice, but he still frowned.

  “Well, parents want their children to grow up, earn important positions and find mates. According to them, that’s the key to happiness. My father, being no different, wants me to find a mate. It’s the reason why he was grinning so much. He’s hoping I have found someone.”

  I considered his explanation. In the lower levels, scrubs waited until after their tenure in the care facility to become couples. Care mates didn’t hook up. It was frowned upon.

  “Don’t you already have someone? Another upper?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He stopped and searched my expression. I tried to let my genuine interest show. He had been right about my lack of curiosity and my assumptions of upper life. I was determined to learn more.

  “I haven’t met the right woman yet. Guess I’m waiting for someone to…surprise me.” He continued walking.

  “Surprise you how?”

  “Oh, the usual way, I guess. Suddenly appear out of nowhere and completely change my life. You know, boring stuff.”

  He increased his stride so I couldn’t see his expression, but I thought he might be joking with me.

  “How about you?” he asked in a too-casual tone. “Anyone surprising?”

  Domotor would qualify for appearing out of nowhere and changing my life, but I didn’t think he was referring to him.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I huffed in annoyance.

  “You have to answer,” he said. “I answered you—it’s only fair.”

  I bit back a sarcastic comment about fairness and sighed. “Would you bring a child into the scrubs’ world? Add yet another body into an already overcrowded place? To be raised unloved and ignored as one of too many? I won’t do it.”

  He remained silent for a while. “You don’t have to have a child.”

  “But when you’re intimate with someone, it’s usually just a matter of time.”

  He slowed, glancing at me as if puzzled. Up ahead was a large intersection with many uppers grouped together, talking. A bunch of Pop Cops strode into view and turned toward us. Without thought I stepped back.

  Riley grabbed my hand, pulling me beside him. “Confidence,” he whispered. “You belong here.” Riley squeezed my hand in encouragement.

  Easy to say, harder to act. Especially when Lieutenant Arno was among them. I gazed at the floor, but realized it was a scrub reaction. Uppers made eye contact and nodded in greeting. With effort, I returned Arno’s semidistracted nod and continued down the hall as if my heart wasn’t trying to jump out of my body.

  Riley kept my hand as he turned left at the intersection and increased his pace. He made another left into a smaller corridor without doors and which ended. He headed straight for the end.

  I scanned the ceiling, looking for air vents. “Riley, where are we going?”

  “Trust me.”

  Almost running now, I kept close to him. When we reached the end, he let go of my hand and stepped to the side, disappearing.

  “Hey,” I called and he poked his head out.

  “Optical illusion. Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

  I felt around. The wall on the left side of the end was solid. The right side appeared to have a solid wall, but the wall was actually a meter past where it should have connected to the end. The corridor jigged to the right for a meter before going straight again, but it looked like another end. After I made the turn, I glanced back. The illusion worked from both sides.

  However this hallway was only about two meters long and contained one door. Riley typed in a number sequence on the lock and the door opened into our storeroom. Relief coursed through me when we entered and I plopped on the couch. I couldn’t believe I had just strolled through the upper level.

  “That’s why no one knows this room is here,” he said.

  It made sense. Unless you put your hands on the walls, you wouldn’t discover the illusion. “How did you find it?”

  “Lightbulb duty.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “During training, the newbies get assigned lightbulb duty. We go around changing lightbulbs in the corridors and public areas. Then we fix the broken filaments. A painstaking process.” He waved his hand as if pushing away the memory. “Anyway, I was assigned this sector and the bulb at the end must have just burned out. It was still hot and I dropped it. The bulb landed on the rug and then rolled through the wall.”

  He grinned. “It’s amazing, but that bulb has never burned out since I found this place.” Riley pulled a drawer open. It was filled with lightbulbs.

  After stashing the upper’s training uniform under the couch with Zippy,
I found Logan in the air shaft not far from Riley’s room. We returned to the lower levels and he raced to make his shift on time. The poor guy would be awake for thirty hours straight. Not fun, but doable. Having worked my shift, Anne-Jade would also be dragging. Perhaps the news of Gateway’s existence would wake her up.

  Gateway. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around all the implications. But I did know actions and alliances needed to be made and I couldn’t do it on my own. So I climbed into the heating vents to visit Domotor.

  He sat in front of the computer, but turned an expectant expression toward me. I kept my face neutral, but couldn’t maintain it for long.

  “You found it!”

  I smiled. “We know the location.”

  “Yes.” He shouted and banged his chair’s arms with his fists. “When are you going to open it?”

  “It’s not going to be easy.” I explained what Logan had said about the alarms. “We need trustable uppers and we need to know more about Outside. Do you even know what’s there?”

  He played with the long strands of his hair. “Not really. I was hoping there would be more information in the computer system.”

  “Logan said there were about ten hidden and protected files. He moved them.”

  “Protected how?”

  “With passwords.”

  “Passwords are the old security system. Those files are probably what I’ve been searching for. Did Logan move the files so we can access them down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I can find them now.” Domotor returned his attention to the computer.

  “Wait for Logan. He mentioned how the ports log your ID number every time you open a file.”

  “I’ve very familiar with the security system, Trella. I don’t need Logan.” His voice huffed.

  I tried to reason with him. “I’d rather we all be together when you try to open those files. You only have ten guesses. The way we figured out the password for Gateway was by all of us bouncing ideas off each other.”

  “Fine. I’ll wait. With nothing else to do, I’ve become an expert in waiting.”

  I ignored his snippy tone. “What about the uppers? Do you know who would be willing to help us?”

  “I can give you the names of those who said they would support me. For security, I made sure no one knew who the others were. But one of them ratted me out, and once I was arrested and interrogated—” he shuddered with horror “—I couldn’t hold out. I gave her a few names, hoping one of them was indeed her spy. Karla was a power-hungry lieutenant then, but she arrested all the people I named and recycled them all.” A hitch caught his voice, and his eyes shone with grief. “At least I saved the others, and they wisely stopped looking for the files, keeping quiet.”

  “Why didn’t they recycle you?”

  “Karla suspected I knew more, but her superior officer was satisfied. I spent two centiweeks in the holding cells before the Travas released me. They claimed I was spared recycling for cooperating with them. I went back to my duties, but no one would talk to me or even look at me. The rumors had spread, and everyone feared I was a Trava spy.” He huffed. “Ironic.”

  “When did all this happen?” I asked.

  “About sixteen centiweeks ago. After I was released, I played the game, acting timid and obedient. Eventually, the Travas stopped monitoring me. I waited another three centiweeks before searching the network for the location of those hidden files. Guess I didn’t wait long enough.” He rubbed his back. “Karla hadn’t forgotten about me.”

  I waited for the rest of his story.

  “She suspected and had me interrogated again.” He closed his eyes and hugged his chest for a moment. “He broke my back, but I didn’t say a word about the disks I hid. After I recovered, Karla sent me down here as punishment, but also to wait and see what I would do or who I would contact.”

  “The spy?”

  “I guessed wrong. I doubt Karla would kill her own, so he or she is still spying for her.” Domotor pulled out a wipe board and wrote down five names. He handed the board to me.

  I scanned the list. Most of them were women. One name jumped out at me.

  Domotor watched me. “Call me old-fashioned. When I implicated my cohorts, I named mostly men.”

  “Who did you implicate?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.” The word was a whisper.

  Domotor gazed across the room, seeing into the past. “There were ten of us.” He huffed in sad amusement. “Ten—the magic Inside number. Before I knew about the Trava takeover, I always wondered why there were nine major families. I learned later that Inside’s original power structure had a voting system, which needed an odd number of voters.” He paused. “I had supporters from each of the eight remaining families. A few were mates.”

  He returned his focus to me. “One of the couples was your parents.”

  I didn’t care about my parents. To prove it, I imagined a thin coat of metal along my skin. So they tried to help Domotor. So what?

  “After being tortured, I named your father, Nolan Garrard, as an accomplice.”

  His name clanged on my defenses even though I already knew he had been recycled.

  When Domotor didn’t see any reaction he continued. “I also named Blas Sanchia and Shawn Lamont. Ramla Ashon was also recycled.”

  The other names didn’t clang. “I thought the uppers all had two family names.”

  “The children do. Once you find a mate, then you pick one family to be a part of. If you don’t find a mate, then you have the support of two families.”

  With this new knowledge, I read the names on the board again. Jacob Ashon was listed. “Is Ramla Ashon…?”

  “Riley’s mother.”

  “And…Kiana Garrard?”

  “Your mother.”

  Her name stabbed through my metal defense. My parents had tried to change things, and my father had been recycled. But those events happened after I was born. No. I didn’t care. I forced my metal skin to grow thicker.

  “Do you want to know about your—”

  “No.” I read the list again. Kiana Garrard, Jacob Ashon, Hana Mineko, Takia Qadim and Breana Narelle. “Do you know which one of these uppers is the spy?”

  “No. I thought it was Blas Sanchia.”

  How would I isolate the spy? My limited knowledge of the uppers once again hindered me. I trusted Riley, but could I trust his father? Perhaps Riley would have a few ideas or Logan could track the uppers’ computer usage and see if one of them could access restricted Trava files.

  “What about Gateway?” I asked.

  “Find it underneath the foam. Dissolve the insulation and expose the door for now.”

  It was hour fifty-two. Eight hours remained before my next shift. I calculated the time needed to sleep, eat and get to the outer wall. Not enough, searching for Gateway would have to wait until my next break. Although, I had time for one errand.

  I left Domotor and climbed to level four. Reaching my hidden cabinet, I removed the comb. It was a beautiful gift and should be used and displayed. After counting the teeth, I pocketed it in my tool belt and headed down.

  Finding a warm spot to sleep, I dozed in the shaft. If I was Queen of the Pipes, I should request a better throne. Dreams of Outside swirled through my mind. The doorway hovered in front of me, but stayed the same distance away no matter how fast I ran.

  My supervisor waited for me at the beginning of my shift. She scowled at me, and I knew it wouldn’t be good. It wasn’t. She yanked my arm out and slapped a red cuff around my left wrist. It bit into my skin.

  “For failure to finish your shift. Explain,” she ordered, “and don’t try the broken troll excuse. Your troll was found in the air shaft i
n perfect condition, but no one could find you.”

  My thoughts raced. “I fell asleep.”

  “Where?”

  “Air shaft seventeen.”

  “You’re lying.” She uncapped a marker and wrote the number ten on the cuff. “Report to Emek in solid-waste handling for ten hours extra duty. It can be broken into five-hour increments during your next two off-shifts.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Have Emek sign the cuff and return to me after assembly. Failure to comply will result in your permanent reassignment to Emek’s team.”

  Her punishment was extreme for a first offense. “But—”

  “My supervisor was not happy over your disappearance. Now I’m on notice. I’ll be watching.”

  True to her word she stayed until I hefted the troll into the shaft, and she waited at each transition point during the next ten hours. I thought she would follow me down to the solid-waste plant in Sector H1, but she just made sure I headed in the right direction.

  Emek smiled broadly when I arrived. Blood seeped from under the bright-colored cuff on my wrist. “Welcome to the crap cleaners. Grab a pair of overalls, a plunger and follow Rat. He’ll be your partner.”

  “Rat?”

  He pointed to a young scrub. Despite the name, Rat wore clean overalls and his brown hair was trimmed and tidy. His manner remained pleasant even when we unclogged a bilious wad, reeking with the most horrible stench. My eyes watered and I almost lost the contents of my stomach.

  To distract myself, I asked him, “How did you get the name Rat?”

  “It’s my nickname. My real name is Mark.”

  “Okay, so how’d you get your nickname?”

  “Rats like me. I keep their population down and make sure the rest are healthy.”

  “Healthy rats?”

  He laughed. “Most people don’t want to know what goes on in solid-waste handling. All they want is clean water and fertilizer. Rats are important to our world. Bet you didn’t know that.”