Inside Out

by Maria V. Snyder

  She considered. “It depends on what you need.”

  “We need a meeting place and we think the infirmary would be ideal.”

  The doctor stiffened as a guarded expression blanketed her face. “What for?”

  Time to slide down the chute. The scrubs needed Broken Man to rally around, and in order to be successful, the uppers would need someone, too.

  Locking gazes with her, I said, “So we can coordinate our efforts in opening Gateway.”

  She gasped as all color flew from her face.

  Riley elbowed me. “The whole heartbeat thing—does it work in reverse? ’Cause I think the doctor’s heart has stopped.”

  “You…found it?” The doctor gripped the edge of her desk.

  “I know where it is, but opening it is going to be difficult, hence the need for help. Are you willing?”

  “Of course,” she said without hesitating.

  A meeting time was set and Riley planned to contact the uppers with the details. Before he left the infirmary, he gave me a narrow metal box as long as my hand. The number ninety-eight was on the digital readout.

  “So you can listen to the bug in Karla’s office,” he explained. Then he paused as if struck by a notion. “It works the same as the receiver Anne-Jade made. With the batteries, that’s the smallest space I could cram everything in.” He touched the earring. “That’s some serious tech. We have nothing like that up here. The Travas don’t encourage invention.”

  “Then we have an advantage.” I hoped it would be enough.

  I kept Riley’s device close by, but no sound emanated. Karla must be off-shift or elsewhere. I also worried because I hadn’t heard from Jacy in a while. Feeling stronger, I paced around the infirmary.

  Finally, Doctor Lamont said, “If you’re going to be in the way, you might as well help me.” She showed me the supply cabinet behind the high counter, and asked me to organize the contents. “In an emergency, it saves precious time.”

  The shelves bulged with various sizes of bandages, packages of sutures, tape, splints and packs of gauze all heaped together. As I worked to put order to chaos, uppers stopped in, seeking medical treatment or advice. Most ignored me. But on occasion, Doctor Lamont would ask me to help with a patient. If they asked, she introduced me as her new intern, Ella.

  At one point, Lamont placed a bin full of clean bandages next to me. “Can you roll those when you have time?”

  “Sure. With such exciting tasks as these, I’m surprised you don’t have a ton of students volunteering to be your intern,” I teased.

  “Watch it or I’ll have you scrubbing bedpans.”

  “Rolling bandages right now, Doctor.” I saluted her, and exaggerated my enthusiasm for the task.

  She laughed. I liked the sound of her laughter. Light and carefree and warm. She wasn’t quick to laugh; grief clung to her skin like perfume but hadn’t doused her empathy for others.

  Around hour forty-five, my energy level dropped. A nap was more appealing than the last three shelves. I sat on the floor, resting my back when a shrill voice broke through my drowsiness.

  “Doctor?” A woman’s panicked voice.

  I stood as Lamont rushed past. A very pregnant woman clung to the door. Her face ashen, she swayed on swollen feet. Bright blood stained her pants.

  “My water broke,” she said.

  Lamont held her elbow and half carried her. I rushed to support the patient’s other side.

  “It’s not supposed to be red, is it?” she asked.

  “Where’s your mate?” the doctor asked.

  “Won’t come. Too hard.” The woman slurred her words.

  We reached the exam room.

  “Surgery?” I asked.

  “Not yet. I need to determine what’s the matter.”

  Hoisting her onto the table, I grunted with pain, but soon forgot about my injury as the woman’s condition worsened.

  Lamont shouted orders to me and the patient. I fetched bandages and sterilized instruments.

  The woman groaned and shuddered. “The baby wants to come out.”

  “Not yet. Hold on a little longer.”

  Doctor Lamont examined the patient and I held her hand. She squeezed my knuckles so hard, I thought she would crack my bones. The hand-crushing grip came every minute and was accompanied by moans from the woman.

  “Contractions,” the doctor said. “Flip that switch there.” She pointed to a wall and I extracted my hand long enough to comply.

  “Surgery now.” Lamont pressed a pedal and the table sprouted wheels.

  We rolled it into the surgery.

  “Don’t you need more help?” I asked.

  “Called with the switch. He should be here soon.” She launched into a flurry of instructions, leaving me no time to think.

  The events blurred together. Another upper arrived and I had two people yelling orders at me. The woman’s cries mixed with the loud bawl of a newborn. And somehow I ended up out in the exam room, holding a swaddled infant while the doctors attended to the woman in the surgery.

  If Cog could see me now, he would be incapacitated with mirth. At least, the baby was asleep. Although I marveled that she could sleep after what had happened to get her out. The doctor had said the placenta blocked the birth canal and the woman needed an emergency C-section.

  The baby weighed the same as Zippy, my small cleaning troll. More than I expected. I peered at her tiny face and wondered what name the woman would give her. Naming a person seemed a huge responsibility. In the lower levels, the scrubs handed their babies over and the Care Mothers assigned them names.

  The male doctor bustled from surgery, peeling off bloody gloves. “She’ll be fine. Thanks for your help.” He came over and examined the baby. “The mother doesn’t want to see her.” He took a small bottle from his breast pocket. Unscrewing the strange rubber-topped lid, he withdrew a thin glass tube. “Hold her still,” he instructed as he opened one of the baby’s blue eyes. He squeezed the rubber and a drop of liquid splashed into her eye.

  She startled and blinked. The doctor quickly doused her other eye, and retuned the bottle to his pocket. He held out his hands. “I’ll take her now.”

  As he settled her in the crook of his arm, she opened both eyes wide and gazed at me with brown eyes. I almost stumbled. He had changed her eye color! Is that what Domotor meant when he had said I had been born with my father’s blue eyes?

  Doctor Lamont wheeled the woman from surgery, and I helped transfer the patient from the table to a bed. The woman cried in silence. Tears flowed down her temples and her mouth gathered into a tight grimace.

  Lamont stroked the woman’s head and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be all right. The baby’s healthy. She’ll do fine.”

  Nothing the doctor said eased the woman’s misery. When we returned to Lamont’s office, she collapsed in a chair behind her desk and opened a drawer. Taking out a small glass and a bottle filled with an amber-colored liquid, she poured herself a drink. She considered, then reached for another glass and poured another albeit smaller portion.

  “Sit down, Ella. Your performance in surgery was exemplary.” She pushed the second glass toward me as I settled in the opposite chair. “Most people would faint on seeing so much blood, and to see the inside of a person’s body.”

  I sniffed the contents of the glass. The fumes stung my eyes. “I tried not to think about what it meant. Just followed orders.”

  The doctor sipped her drink. I copied her, and almost spat the burning liquid out. She chuckled. “Haven’t had spirits before?”

  “No. My friend did once, but he wouldn’t let me try it.” Good thing, too, or I would have yelled and brought unwelcome attention.

  “It’s an acquired taste. The burn down your throat and the numbing warmth in your stomach become a pleasant experience.”

  Knowing what to expect, I swallowed the second sip without choking. The doctor rested her head on the back of the chair, closing her eyes.

  “I do hav
e a question,” I ventured.

  Without opening her eyes, she raised her glass in a swirl. “Go ahead.”

  “Why is the woman so upset?”

  Her eyes snapped open and she fixed me with an incredulous expression. “You don’t know?” Seeing my evident confusion, she straightened. “Aren’t the women in the lower levels upset when they give their babies away?”

  “Some are, I guess. But this is the upper level. You have families.”

  Understanding smoothed her sharp features before lines of grief deepened. “Yes, we have families, but, up here the rule is one couple, one child. We don’t have enough room for more people, so if a couple has an accident and conceives another child, the child is sent to the lower levels.”

  The unexpected information slogged through my brain. Had she just said the child was sent to be a scrub?

  The doctor continued, “The woman is upset because the baby is her second, and the infant will be sent to a care facility in the lower levels.”

  19

  ONCE I UNDERSTOOD, THE DOCTOR’S EXPLANATION slammed into me, shattering my beliefs. “Uppers are only allowed one child?” The foreign concept refused to find an empty seat in my logic.

  “Yes. We have limited space, so the Travas have made it a law.” The doctor peered at me in concern.

  Perhaps if I broke down her information into manageable bits. “You mentioned the couple having an accident. How can getting pregnant be an accident? If you have sex, you’re bound to have a baby in time.”

  “We have birth control, Ella. Women can choose if they want a baby or not. I’m guessing by your horrified surprise, scrubs don’t have that option.”

  The revelation made perfect sense and yet made no sense at all. My mind grappled with it. It explained why Riley only saw his brother once, why he had said you don’t have to have a child, and it meant perhaps my mother hadn’t abandoned me. I could have been a second or third child—an astounding notion! Finally Domotor’s comment about my blue eyes made sense.

  “Those drops?” I asked.

  “Drops?”

  “In the baby’s eyes.”

  “Oh. To change the color so the babies blend in with the scrubs and don’t get teased for being different.”

  It didn’t always work. I mulled over what she had said about birth control. Why not let the scrubs use birth control? With the overcrowded conditions getting worse every hour, why not limit the number of children born?

  “Ella, are you all right?” Doctor Lamont stood beside me. She placed a cold hand on my forehead. “You lost all color in your cheeks. Take another sip of your drink.”

  I gulped the spirits, welcoming the harsh sting as it ripped down my throat. I asked Lamont why scrubs weren’t offered birth control.

  “Truthfully, I’m surprised they don’t. The uppers have assumed scrubs don’t cherish their offspring. That they keep having babies because they don’t have to care for them. Basically, we all thought the crowding in the lower levels was your own fault.” She returned to her seat. “Interesting how certain facts have been ignored in the computer. Or deleted.”

  I mulled over the ignorance on both sides. The results created two groups of people who distrusted each other, which would be ideal if you didn’t want them to join forces. Again my contemplations looped back to why they let the scrubs grow in number.

  We did the grunge work, but even if we limited births, there still would be plenty of scrubs to work. Another theory popped into mind. “Is the birth control hard to make? Or of limited quantity?”

  “Not really. It’s grown in hydroponics. You only need to ingest it when you’re planning to be intimate.” She jerked her head as if struck with a sudden thought. “You didn’t seem concerned about your damaged ovary. Was it because you don’t want children?”

  “Yes. I’m not going to be intimate with anyone so that—” I waved toward the infirmary “—doesn’t happen to me or to a child.”

  We discussed various reasons the Travas would allow the scrubs to increase in number, but we couldn’t find a logical explanation.

  “I’ll ask LC Karla next time I see her,” I joked.

  But Doctor Lamont’s demeanor turned to ice. “If that woman was injured, I would not save her life. In fact, I would happily feed her to Chomper myself.” She stood and strode from the room, claiming she needed to check on her patients.

  While I agreed with the doctor about Karla, I wondered what the LC had done to cause such a strong reaction from a caring individual.

  The meeting with the uppers who’d agreed to help us convened in the doctor’s sitting room at hour sixty. Riley and Doctor Lamont stood apart from the group, who talked among themselves in low whispers, getting acquainted and reminiscing about prior events. Riley’s father, Jacob, kept peering at his son as if amazed the boy was there.

  After learning about the uppers’ birth control, I had wanted to discuss so much with Riley, but the group arrived and we had limited time.

  Takia Qadim was the most vocal and spoke for the group. “Why will this attempt work when our first one failed?” Her sharp and intelligent gaze focused on me.

  I willed my heart to stop its panicked thumping, and reminded myself about the need for full disclosure. “First we already know where Gateway is.” A mixture of expressions spread over the four uppers. I waited for the information to sink in.

  “Second, we have access to the other hidden files. One led us to the location, and I’m reasonably sure the others will tell us how to open Gateway and what to expect on the other side.”

  “Why do you need us?” Hana Mineko asked. Her black hair had been piled on top of her head in a pleasing twist of curls. She fiddled with a curl hanging by her ear, pulling it straight and releasing it. The hair sprang back each time.

  “When Gateway is open, it will alert all the systems in Inside, and we need you to cover the alert so the Controllers and the Travas don’t know. Once we know exactly what to expect on the other side of Gateway, then we can plan how to use it.”

  “Why don’t you know what’s in the rest of the files?” Takia asked.

  “They’re protected by passwords. We haven’t figured out the rest of them yet.” A rumble of alarm rolled through the uppers. “We have the password clues, and I hoped as a group we could deduce the answers.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Jacob said. “Provided you open the files, we then have to hide your activity from the Trava family while you open Gateway.” He looked around. “You’re going to need to recruit more uppers.”

  “We have two scrubs willing to ghost through the network and aid in hiding data. And don’t forget Domotor.” As long as he listened to Logan’s instructions.

  Breana Narelle pulled her shirt down over her pregnant belly. “Four people were recycled last time because Domotor was caught. This time we all know who’s involved. What if someone here is the person who ratted us out?”

  “We know who spied for Karla and she hasn’t been invited back. Obviously you don’t say anything to anyone, but especially not to Kiana Garrard,” I said, proud I didn’t stutter over her name. It’s possible she hadn’t abandoned me, but she still caused much pain and suffering.

  Most of the group nodded with understanding, but Jacob flashed the doctor a strange, pain-filled look, which she returned. I wondered if they both knew Kiana.

  “Why should we risk our lives for the scrubs?” Breana asked. “They hate us and are jealous of us. They won’t do anything to help us. Why should we help them?”

  I counted to ten before answering her, reminding myself she has been fed lies about the scrubs all her life. Then I explained to the group just how much the scrubs had done to get me here. The ghosting through the network, Cog’s sacrifice and Jacy’s risks as well as the amazing fact that not one scrub has yet to provide information to the Pop Cops despite the fantastic rewards offered by the LC.

  “The Travas are our mutual enemy. They have lied to you and to the scrubs to keep us fro
m joining together. Think about it. The scrubs outnumber the uppers ten to one. But you have control of the systems keeping us alive, and the Travas have control of us both. Teaming up takes the Travas out of the equation. We can return to the times when each family had an equal say.”

  My speech worked and the uppers set about planning. They wanted to hear the password clues and I read them aloud. Two questions produced answers right away. Six left. I repeated the first question and everyone brainstormed.

  During an unusual lull in the conversation, LC Karla spoke from my pocket. Terrified faces turned to me and I hurried to explain about the listening device and Riley’s receiver. I retreated to my room to hear the conversation better.

  “…another busted scanner? That’s three this shift. Something’s going on,” the LC said. Her voice strained with frustration.

  “It can’t be sabotage. No scrub was allowed near them. They were guarded the entire time by my men,” a man said. His voice sounded familiar.

  “Eyes on the devices? Or an ensign stationed outside the supply cabinet?”

  “Why would it matter?”

  “The scrubs are using the air shafts to get around, you idiot!”

  “Lieutenant Commander, no one is in the shafts. The RATSS have found no evidence.”

  “I saw her with my own eyes, Commander.” Karla’s tone was even, but each word had a little kick to it as if she bit back her anger.

  She was talking to Vinco, the knife-wielding bastard.

  “I believe you. But she’s not there now. She’s hiding with this Broken Guy. We need to entice her out,” Vinco said.

  “I’ve tried. I promised to not recycle her friend if she turned herself in. It didn’t work.”

  “Perhaps we need to find someone she cares for more,” Vinco said.

  “She has no other friends. The general opinion is she’s a loner and detests being among the scrubs. Not that I blame her.”

  “She might think you’re bluffing about her friend. Schedule him for execution. Parade him down through the lower levels on his way to Chomper’s Lair, take him inside and kill-zap him if she doesn’t give herself up.”