“Trella’s proven resistant to torture,” Karla said. “If you keep her alive, the scrubs will have someone to rally around.” She scowled at Vinco. “Or she might escape into the pipes again.”
He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head.
“She might become a martyr and you’ll have more scrubs revolting,” the doctor said.
“I don’t care,” the admiral said. His focus returned to me. “Clear.” The men holding me let go. He pulled the trigger and I screamed. Nothing else happened. I swayed with relief.
My relief was short-lived. The admiral scowled, threw his weapon down and gestured for Karla’s kill-zapper. She hadn’t been here when Zippy had knocked the other weapons out. Hers would work.
Before he could press it against me, I smiled. “Go ahead. That one won’t work either.”
“She’s bluffing,” Vinco said. “If she’s so confident, why did she scream before?”
I shrugged. “I was having a little fun.” My voice remained steady despite my muscles turning to mush.
Vinco flashed his knife. “This will work.” He grinned in delight.
Breathing was difficult, I sucked in air through my tight throat, trying not to gasp.
The admiral considered then returned Karla’s kill-zapper. “It’s too messy. Take her to the brig, Commander. Find out what she knows, but if you don’t learn anything new, feed her to Chomper.”
“Yes, sir!” Vinco snapped to action, striding toward me.
“Wait,” Doctor Lamont said.
“Now what?” Annoyance creased the admiral’s face.
She turned to Karla. “What about our bargain? You said she would be here.”
“And she is.” A nasty glee sparked in Karla’s eyes. She pointed at me. “Meet your daughter, Kiana. Trella, or should I call you by your birth name, Sadie?” She rubbed her chin as if deep in thought. “I liked the name Trella. Guess I’m partial to TRs and As.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Trella, meet your mother.”
Horror gripped Doctor Lamont’s face, but she shook her head. “You’re lying, Karla. It’s too big of a coincidence.” She uncurled her fingers. My pearl-handled comb lay across her palms. “I fell for it, too.” The faint words just audible.
“Troublemakers tend to breed more troublemakers,” Karla said. “Although, I must admit I was a bit surprised when I went digging into Trella’s records. I knew keeping your child alive would come in handy sometime—she’s your weakness. I suspect Domotor also did a little digging into the computer files and recruited her to his cause.”
“No. I don’t believe it. She looks nothing like me or Nolan,” the doctor said.
“Really?” Karla cocked her hip, studying me. “With her new blue eyes wide with fear, she looks exactly like Nolan did right before we fed him to Chomper.”
A murmur ran through the Control Room as the others either agreed or disagreed.
“Touching as all this is, there is much work to be done.” The admiral issued orders for the Pop Cops to carry the stunned officers to the infirmary. “Doctor, please make sure they are comfortable. Commander, take this scrub from my sight.”
As Vinco’s hand wrapped around my upper arm, I said, “This is just the beginning.” It was a delay tactic, but the truth of the words knitted my heart together. Even though our rebellion failed, and we had been betrayed, I stood in the Control Room. A future effort might bring the scrubs even further.
I laughed. “You can try and weed out the troublemakers, Admiral, but you’ll miss one or two and they’ll multiply. Think about it. How do you think we managed to get this far? If I can take advantage of Karla’s incompetence, then it’s only a matter of time before others do the same.”
The lieutenant commander yanked her kill-zapper and shoved it into my ribs. “Let’s see if my weapon works.”
Vinco released his grip.
“Hold on, Karla,” the admiral said. “What do you mean by incompetence, scrub?”
“Look at what we accomplished. Domotor disappeared. We opened Gateway. I escaped the brig and have been living in the upper levels for a week. We infiltrated the computer system. And I’m in your Control Room and your captain is stunned. It was ridiculously easy to break into her office. The list of her incompetence is endless.” I tsked.
She dropped the kill-zapper—the upside of my taunt. And wrapped her hands around my neck—the downside.
“I’m going to feed you to Chomper myself,” she said, and then squeezed.
She cut off my air and I feared she would crush my windpipe. Groping for her belt, I found her stunner and pulled the trigger. A jolt ringed my neck, but her fingers kept the pressure on my throat. I dropped the stunner and pried them from my numb skin, I shoved her back into the admiral and they fell to the floor together.
Now I would go to Chomper happy.
I almost jumped a meter when Logan’s chuckle vibrated in my ear. “That must have felt good,” he said. “Wish I could have been there.”
Jacy added, “We have regained control of levels one and two.”
“Trell, stay with us,” Riley said. “Once Takia can open the Control Room door, we’ll send a rescue party.”
Distracted by their voices, I had lost track of events in the Control Room. After a quick scan, my mind raced to plan a way to delay the inevitable. The admiral’s red face failed to encourage me. Vinco helped him to his feet.
“Messy or not, silence the scrub,” the admiral ordered.
Vinco advanced on me with his knife in hand.
“Overconfidence, Commander, will be your downfall,” I said. Weak, but all I could come up with.
“And a sharp blade through your heart will be yours,” Vinco replied.
Why didn’t I hold on to Karla’s stunner? I thought fast. “Actually time is against me right now.”
“Time?”
The admiral answered. “She doesn’t have any left. Finish the job.”
Vinco raised the blade to slice my throat. Movement across the room caught my attention for a second.
“The admiral’s wrong,” I said. “What I meant by time was I didn’t think I had enough of it to distract you. But I did. So I guess I was wrong, too.”
Armed scrubs streamed into the room. Before the room erupted into chaos, a number of uppers had been stunned.
Vinco managed to dodge the initial blasts. With his knife still aimed at my throat, he lunged at me. I kicked him in the chest. Instead of cutting deep into the skin, his slash skimmed my neck.
Single-minded, he stepped closer. My back hit a wall, trapping me. He grinned with satisfaction as he pressed his blade under my chin. The steel bit into my jaw. Then strong arms yanked him from me and spun him around.
Riley gave him a mocking salute.
Vinco was amused. “Okay, boy. You first, then the scrub.” He pounced.
Riley twisted his hips to avoid the knife thrust and knocked Vinco’s arm aside with his hand. Vinco tried again and this time Riley grabbed Vinco’s wrist, pulled him off balance and pressed a palm to his elbow, forcing him to the ground.
“Thanks for all those lessons, Commander,” Riley said. “They’ve really paid off.”
After the takeover of the Control Room, events blurred together. Lack of sleep and the stress of the previous eighty hours caught up to me. With my body aching from Vinco’s attack, I blindly followed Riley back to the infirmary to have the cuts on my neck stitched. At this rate, I would use up all the thread.
The male doctor who had helped with Doreen was pressed into service while the others decided what to do with Doctor Lamont.
I woke hours later in the infirmary’s extra bedroom. Searching, I found the doctor bustling about the infirmary, tending the others wounded in the fight.
&n
bsp; “Go back to bed, Ella,” he ordered.
I didn’t bother to correct him. Trella, Ella or Sadie—at this point I didn’t care. Instead I said, “Every bed is full. You’ll need my help.”
He scanned the room. “Nothing serious, thank air. And only a few Pop Cops were recycled. You need your rest. Once things settle down, it’s going to be…interesting around here.”
I shuffled back to my room, thinking my task was complete and I’d leave the others to figure out the rest.
The second time I woke, Riley sat on the edge of my bed. He beamed as if he knew something I didn’t.
“What?” I asked.
“You look much better.” He smoothed a strand of hair from my face.
“I’m sure you didn’t come here to tell me that.”
“No, but it’s nice to see. Especially after…you know… Vinco.”
I shuddered at the memory of his wicked knife. Touching the tender area on my throat, I remembered how it could have been worse. “Thanks for saving me.”
“Anytime.” He flashed me another overly bright smile.
I pushed to a sitting position. “Okay, Riley, tell me what’s going on.”
“I found my brother.”
“Wonderful. How—no, let me guess. You went to the lower levels with Mama Sheepy and found the man who still had Dada Sheepy.”
“Yep. The Sheepy family is whole again. His name is Blake and he works in the kitchen.” He beamed.
I squinted. “You have more news.”
This time, he shot me a nervous smile. “I was hoping—” he pulled a necklace from his pocket “—we could make a commitment.”
A brief pulse of fear shot through me. “You mean be mates?”
“No. At least, not yet. Our tradition is to give a gift as the first step. Sort of a symbol that we plan to see how well we get along.” He laid the necklace in my palm.
A silver pendant swung from a thin chain. “A sheep?” I asked.
“I thought it appropriate, considering what has happened.”
So much had happened, and Inside would no longer be the same. But the thought of Riley by my side sent a comforting pulse through my body.
“How do I accept?” I asked.
“You wear the necklace.”
I marveled at the detail of the sheep. “Are you sure? You don’t know everything about me—”
“I do know I felt as if my heart had been shredded when I found you in our storeroom, unconscious and bleeding. And leaving you with Vinco in the holding cells was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. “We can take it slow. We have plenty of time.”
He kissed me. A sizzle traveled through me that didn’t stop when he drew back. My mouth tingled.
“Your answer?” he asked.
I kissed him, enjoying the sensation of happiness blooming inside me for the first time. Too soon, we parted.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Riley unhooked the clasp of the necklace. “Another one of our traditions is for me to make the pendant myself, but I had help from Logan and Anne-Jade.” He looped it around my neck then secured it, sweeping my hair out of the way.
I fingered the sheep. “Logan and Anne-Jade? Is it one of their gadgets?”
“Yes, but,” he hurriedly added, “it’s inactive. If you ever get into trouble and need help, you can squeeze the pendant and it will send a signal. We can trace the signal to your location and send reinforcements.”
I laughed. “Do you really think it’s necessary now?”
“I may not know everything about you, but I do know that if there is trouble, you’ll be in the middle of it.”
He stifled my squawk of protest with another kiss. After a while, I forgot to be mad.
The transition from the Travas controlling Inside to a more democratic method wasn’t smooth. Even though each family elected a representative and each scrub “family” had a person attending organization meetings, many uppers still viewed the scrubs with suspicion and the scrubs in turn made planning difficult with their distrust and bitterness.
I had hoped to avoid all the political wrangling, but, since I understood both sides, I attended all the meetings to smooth relations. Even so, we had a long way to go. Overcrowding remained a problem, and a few people resisted the change in their lifestyles. Violence erupted on occasion, and Anne-Jade organized a security detail with members of all the families to keep the peace.
Being able to walk the hallways of the upper levels without worry felt liberating. Domotor also enjoyed his freedom from the hideout. He was busy preaching to everyone to be patient and understanding. All the Travas had been incarcerated for now. The Committee would decide their eventual fate. Doctor Lamont had been confined, too.
It was week 147,007, and I had received a message to meet Logan in the Control Room at hour ten. He had been camped out there since the takeover, using the computers to harvest lost information.
He hunched over a keyboard, muttering and humming to himself. I touched his arm and he almost jumped from his seat.
“Don’t scare me like that,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face.
“I’m sorry. Should I have bowed and announced my presence first? Have they coronated you fleet admiral yet?”
“Go ahead and be sarcastic.” He swiveled back to the screen. “I’m not going to tell you—ow! Let go of my ear, I’ll tell you.”
I released his lobe. He rubbed it.
“Logan?”
“All right. I found the answers to those final three files and accessed the information. Outside is something called Outer Space. It’s an airless and pressureless environment unable to support life.”
Sorrow and guilt welled. If we just had waited, Cog wouldn’t be floating out there. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Sorry. Ah…well, we are actually traveling through it. Seems it is so vast that it takes an incredibly long time to get from one planet to another.”
“Planet?”
“As far as I can tell, a planet is the real Outside.” He typed on the keyboard. The picture of the blue ceiling and greenery filled the computer’s screen. “This is our destination. We’ve been heading there for the past 147,000 weeks.”
“When are we scheduled to arrive?” But the answer popped into my mind. It’s the end and the beginning. What is it? I looked at Logan.
“Week one million,” we said together.
I groped for a chair. We had 853,000 weeks to go! My head spun as I sat. Eight thousand generations of people would be born, live and end in this metal cube before reaching the true Outside.
“There’s so much to learn about our past and why we’re here,” Logan said. “I’ve just scratched the surface. The Travas tried deleting all the files, but they were protected by the system’s safety guards and buried.”
“The system’s guards? What about the Controllers?”
Logan flipped his hand as if dismissing an underling. “No evidence of them. At least no indication that the Controllers are actual people. It’s the system’s operating parameters and fail-safes. Also certain directives have been programmed into it, which were set by the original designers.”
“What directives?”
“Like the one about our population. Once we reach Outside, the designers wanted to make sure we had enough people to survive. These directives couldn’t be changed or altered, so the Travas must have thought they were a divine message.” Logan chuckled. “Anyway, it’s amazing Domotor found those buried files, and was able to copy parts of them.”
“It wasn’t Domotor. He was the leader of the group, but Nolan Garrard was the first to find them.”
“Then Garrard was a genius.” Logan tapped a finger on his
chair. “Speaking of Garrard, did you want to read your file?”
My file? It took me a moment to remember the file marked with my birth week and hour. “No.”
“But it’s important. Your mother explains her actions. You need to forgive her.”
I glared at him. “She betrayed you, too. We almost lost.”
“Almost. She didn’t tell them everything about our plans. How do you think we rallied?”
“I don’t care. She told them enough. Besides, Karla could have planted the information about my birth parents in the computer. It could be a complete hoax and she’s not related to me at all.”
“There’s a way to prove or disprove the relationship,” Logan said.
“How?”
“With your blood. Those vampire boxes do more than test for pregnancy.”
Logan had overwhelmed me with information. I wandered around in a daze until I was needed for yet another Committee meeting. The uppers and lowers squabbled like children and I wished to be back in the infirmary, helping the doctor. Or better yet, to be with Riley in our room.
As I let the discord roll over me, I decided I needed to be the Queen of the Pipes for a little while and not worry about blood tests and overcrowding.
Returning to the air shafts, I felt light and free. I explored more of the upper levels. With the constant threat of being caught by the Pop Cops, I had limited my forays above level four. Now, I climbed into the Gap and investigated the space between the pipes and the ceiling of Inside.
I felt as if there was a missing element. Air shafts and water pipes crisscrossed above the level. No laundry chutes or waste pipes—understandable since both of them go down to level one.
Climbing over a duct, I bumped my head on the ceiling and realized the missing element was foam. There was no insulating foam. I sat until the pain subsided.
Why wasn’t there any foam? I shone my light on the metal panels, counting rivets. I lost track of time, but I didn’t care, planning to search the entire ceiling.
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