Logan met my gaze. “How should I type it? Week one million or the millionth week?”

“Try both.”

Unable to remain seated, Riley and I joined Logan at the computer. I held on to the back of his chair as he typed the millionth week and hit Enter. The words disappeared and the password prompt returned. This time he entered week one million.

“Are you sure?” Logan’s finger was poised over the key.

I let go of the chair and clutched Riley’s arm. “Yes.” I wanted to turn away, but I watched the screen. It turned black then lines of text raced across, matching my heart’s rhythm. I couldn’t read the words; they kept jumping up as more white lines streaked on the screen.

“Logan?” I didn’t care if I used his name.

“Yes! Got it!”

I wrapped my arms around Logan’s neck and kissed him on the cheek, then turned and hugged Riley. Caught up in the excitement, he leaned back and picked me off the floor, spinning me around.

Logan rattled off a bunch of numbers.

“How do I find it?” I asked, still dizzy and thrilled Riley’s arms supported me.

“Oh, right.” Furious typing and a crude schematic of Inside appeared, showing a cube with a pulsing dot near the bottom of one side. “It’s along the west wall in Quad G1. That’s hydroponics.”

“You’d think the workers would notice it,” Riley said.

“Maybe it’s one of those near-invisible hatches Trella found,” Logan said.

“Near-invisible?” Riley looked down at me.

He held me close. Tall and with his strong arms wrapped around me, I knew I should extricate myself from his embrace, but a part of me wanted to stay. “Some doors are hard to see. Perhaps the vines have grown over it,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. Lots of vines,” Logan said.

Annoyed, Riley’s muscles tightened. “Your friend’s a lousy liar. What are you hiding?” When I hesitated, he moved his hands to my shoulders and pushed me back so he could see me better. “Enough. The location…the existence of Gateway is huge. No. It’s way bigger than that…it’s a whole other phenomenon. The repercussions are going to be unimaginable if it is really there and it works. I need to know everything right now, or I’m going to…”

“To what? Report me? You risk being implicated.”

“No. I’m going to follow you. Yes, even through those vents until I know the whole story.”

Logan eyed him. “You’ll get stuck.”

“It’s ridiculous. He’s not going to do it,” I said.

“Then I won’t let you leave until you tell me.” Riley straightened, trying to look bigger.

“Two against one,” I said. “And I’m armed.” I rested my hand on my tool belt.

He deflated and dropped his hands, but, by the gleam in his eyes, I knew he hadn’t given up.

“How about in exchange for Sheepy?”

“Really? You’d give me Sheepy?” I called his bluff.

“Yes.”

He meant it, and my reaction surprised me. I would have loved to have the little sheep. “No. Sheepy stays with his mama.” I put my hand up to stop Riley. “Just let me think.”

As Riley had said, discovering Gateway’s existence was a whole other realm of problems and possibilities. If caught right now, Riley would be recycled just for knowing about it. Too late to save him. Remembering his lecture about choices and sacrifices didn’t make me feel any better.

“You’d better sit down,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

“So Gateway wouldn’t be on the wall in hydroponics, but on the real outer Wall?” Riley asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And no one knows about this except the three of us?”

“As far as I know. I’ve never seen anyone in the Gap, but it’s possible high-ranking uppers could know or find it in the computer.”

“Complete and detailed diagrams and blueprints of Inside have been deleted,” Logan said. He had been searching through the computer, trying to gather as much information as he could about the Controllers.

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t the engineers need them?” Riley asked.

“Each system—water, air, electrical and heating—has its own blueprints. Let’s see…if I put them…together.” Logan typed. “Still not showing Trella’s Gap or Gateway. Lot’s of other stuff’s missing, too. Historical records and logs have been wiped clean up until…week 132,076.”

Almost one hundred and fifty centiweeks ago.

“The first log is written by Admiral Peter Trava. He mentions saboteurs wielding magnets and trying to destroy Inside. He says they were stopped with no loss of life, but with major damage to the computer, causing data loss.” Logan scrolled through a few more pages. “Something’s wrong. The deletion was too clean for a magnet.”

“Do you know when the files were deleted?” I asked.

“The same week Admiral Pete’s entry was written, which was only fifteen centiweeks ago. Whoa! It’s bogus.”

“What happened that week?” I asked.

“Could have been when a few of the uppers tried to get into protected files on the system,” Riley said. “My dad told me about it. Maybe they got too close to the truth, and the Travas decided to delete all the data prior to their takeover and write the bogus entry to explain it.”

“Not all the data,” Logan said. “There are about ten hidden and protected files in the system. I bet the Controllers don’t know about them. The location of Gateway was one of them. Maybe the dissenters buried these files. They’re all password protected.” He clucked and hummed like a child with a brand-new toy.

“Could those be the files Domotor wanted?” Riley asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Trella, what’s your birth week?” An odd tone shook Logan’s voice.

“It’s 145,487. Why?”

“And the hour?”

“Why do you need to know?” I asked.

“Humor me.”

“Hour four point fifteen.”

He whistled.

“Logan, tell me.”

“There’s a file here named with your birth week and hour.”

“What?” I moved closer to the monitor. He pointed.

“Why did you think it referred to me?”

“It says, ‘For my daughter born on…’ It’s one of the ten files Domotor or whoever thought was important, so I just guessed it might have something to do with you.”

“Can you open it?”

“Nope. Just like the others. The password question is ‘Smile and show me your pearly teeth. How many do you have?’” He glanced at me. “Count your teeth.”

“That’s too easy, and what if I lost one?”

“Have you?”

“No, but I think it’s referring to something else.” The words pearly teeth had jumped out at me. My sole possession. The comb with the pearls. The answer was the number of teeth on my comb.

“And it would be…”

“Something I don’t have with me, so we can’t answer the question anyway.”

“It’s getting late. The next shift starts in an hour,” Riley said.

I looked at the clock in surprise. So engrossed in our puzzle, I hadn’t kept track.

“I just need a couple minutes.” Logan’s fingers danced on the keyboard. “I want to put these files where I can get to them from the lower level computers.”

Anxious to get moving, I fidgeted behind Logan.

Riley also had a worried look. “Are you sure all this time you spent on the computer hasn’t been recorded or traced?”

“Yep. I’m ghosting. No port. No problem.”

“What does that mean?” Riley asked.

“Uh…just that I can get into the system without a port.”

Logan was a bad liar, but his cry of alarm distracted us both.

“What now?” I really didn’t want to know the answer.

“Gateway’s going to suck a lot of energy when it opens. Plus it has a command to alert all of Inside’s systems. We’re going to need people in the network to cover the call,” Logan said.

Yet another problem. Nothing was simple.

“I can cover electrical,” Riley said, “but we’ll need to recruit other uppers to help.” He considered. “There are a number of uppers who supported Domotor and have been lying low since his capture. But if I tell them we found Gateway, they’ll probably laugh in my face.”