Emek smiled broadly when I arrived. Blood seeped from under the bright-colored cuff on my wrist. “Welcome to the crapsuckers. Grab a pair of overalls, a plunger and follow Rat. He’ll be your partner.”
“Rat?”
He pointed to a young scrub. Despite the name, Rat wore clean overalls and his brown hair was trimmed and tidy. His manner remained pleasant even when we unclogged a bilious wad, reeking with the most horrible stench. My eyes watered and I almost lost the contents of my stomach.
I needed a distraction so I asked him, “How did you get the name Rat?”
“It’s my nickname. My real name is Mark.”
“Okay, so how’d you get your nickname?”
“Rats like me. I keep their population down and make sure the rest are healthy.”
“Healthy rats?”
He laughed. “Most people don’t want to know what goes on in solid-waste facility. All they want is clean water and fertilizer. Rats are important to our world. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“You’re right.”
“Bet you don’t know about the bugs either.”
I held a hand up. “I don’t, and I don’t want to. For certain things, ignorance really is bliss.”
My comment turned my thoughts to Gateway. What if I couldn’t open it? What if I was caught and killed before seeing Outside? I was a mess. One minute I was convinced Gateway didn’t exist, the next, I waxed maudlin over the possibility of not opening it. Just because we found a few coordinates in the computer, shouldn’t make me an instant believer.
I forced that line of thought away. It wasn’t helping, and I could ‘what if’ until I was reduced to a quivering puddle. Instead, I followed Rat and tried not to breathe through my nose.
Shoveling black goo from the bottom of the incinerator was my last task.
“Isn’t this maintenance’s job?” I asked.
“Nope. This is good stuff.” He dumped a shovel full into the bin. “That’s it. Take the bin to the recycling plant and then you’re done.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the sheep’s pen. Want to come? I’m good with sheep, too.”
“No, thank you. Ignorance remember? Best I don’t become an expert in waste management.”
He waved as he left. And I realized he enjoyed his work. His job was used to punish other scrubs, but he didn’t see it that way. He knew his job was vital to Inside and was content. Why couldn’t the rest of the scrubs be content? Maybe they were, and I hadn’t noticed.
“Trella? What are you doing here?” Logan asked as I pushed the bin through the sorting piles. Dark half-circles hung under his eyes.
I waved the cuff in front of his bleary eyes. “I pissed my supervisor off. She assigned me extra duty.”
“Anne-Jade will be glad. She’s worried because she fell asleep in the air shaft, but she didn’t see your supervisor, so she hoped it would be okay.”
“She did fine. I’m glad you came over. Broken Man wants to open those files. When can you get the password questions?”
“My next off-shift.”
“Great. Also can you…” I checked for Pop Cops. “Get security information about the uppers?”
“Depends on what you want to know.”
I already memorized the names Domotor had given me. Reciting the list of uppers to Logan, I asked, “Can you find out which one of these people is working undercover for the Travas?”
“If the information is listed in the computer system, but it’s unlikely.”
