Chapter 15
The surprise on Riley’s father’s face transformed into a smile. He had the same build as his son, but his thinning hair was brown and cut short. Riley’s blue eyes must have been inherited from his mother. His father’s brown eyes and beak nose gave him a friendly and inquisitive appearance.
“I see we have a visitor,” he said as he stepped into the room and closed the door.
“Dad this is Ella, the student I’ve been training,” Riley said. “Ella, this is my father, Jacob.”
“Hello Ella, I’ve heard so much about you.”
I shot Riley a look.
His father chuckled. “Don’t worry. Nothing bad. Riley says you’re a quick learner and coming from him that’s high praise.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Something happen?” Riley asked his dad.
“No. I had to work through my breaks, so my supervisor let me leave a little early.” He glanced at the clock. “Shouldn’t you be reporting for duty? Or are you training Ella here?” He smiled broadly with a gleam in his eyes.
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,” he father said. Jacob stared at the ceiling. “They forgot to cover the vent, too. Hand me the ladder.”
“I’ll do it dad.” Riley set the step-ladder 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 jumpsuit, 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’re 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, 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 store room? 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 wouldn’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 referred 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 arm, pulling me beside him. “Confidence,” he whispered. “You belong here.”
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 semi-distracted nod and continued down the hall as if my heart wasn’t trying to jump out of my body.
Riley 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 stepped to the side and disappeared.
“Hey,” I called and he poked his head out.
“Optical illusion. Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
I reach a hand out. 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 store room. 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?”
“Light bulb duty.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “During training, the newbies get assigned light bulb duty. We’d go around changing light bulbs 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 boxes of light bulbs.
After stashing the upper’s training uniform under the couch with Zippy, I found Logan in the airshaft 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 expression neutral, but couldn’t maintain it for long.
“You found it!”
I smiled. “We know the location.”
“Yes.” He shouted and banged his chair 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 me 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.”