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 have 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.”