Outside In. Maria Snyder V.

       www.miraink.co.uk

      To Mary-Theresa Hussey, for her editorial excellence and

      extreme patience. Thanks for the help, encouragement

      and smiley faces!

      INTRODUCTION

      MY WORLD CHANGED IN A HEARTBEAT. THAT’S HOW it felt to me. As if one second ago, I was Trella the lower level scrub, cleaning the air and water ducts of Inside, and now I am Trella the victorious leader of the Force of Sheep rebellion. Yes the name sounds ridiculous, and I still can’t believe we named a major life changing event after livestock—or actually a stuffed animal—but it made sense at the time.

      Why? Because I once thought my fellow scrubs were sheep, passive and content with the status quo. I was wrong and learned if you put enough sheep together you have a herd—a force to be reckoned with. A force that turned our world upside down and inside out.

      Of course, it really didn’t change in a second. It took six weeks, which in Inside time is six hundred hours (one hundred hours per week). But if I compared it to how long we’ve been living here in Inside—147,019 weeks—it’s a mere four thousandths of a percent. And here’s the kicker, we have another 852,981 weeks to go before we reach our destination. Mind-boggling!

      Where are we going? Good question. According to Logan, our computer expert, our metal cube-shaped world is traveling through Outer Space. And since Outer Space is incredibly huge, it will take us a total of a million weeks to get to a planet where we can go Outside and live. We’re not sure what exactly Outside is since many of Inside’s computer records have been deleted.

      According to our remaining records, another so-called “rebellion” happened around week 132,076 when Admiral Trava reported saboteurs had tried to destroy the computer systems with magnets, erasing all the historical files. But Logan says it’s bogus and he suspects the Trava family deleted those files so they could rule the people of Inside.

      Before that first rebellion, Inside was ruled by a Committee comprised of all the nine families, but the Trava family didn’t want to share. Since they were in charge of security, they had the weapons and they took control. Each family had been responsible for the different systems that keep us all alive. Air, water, hydroponics, shepherds, recycling, the infirmary, the power plant, and the kitchen. Yeah that’s a lot, but when you’re living in a big metal cube in the middle of Outer Space, you need every one.

      The Travas separated the people into uppers and lowers (a.k.a. scrubs), and kept us confined to our levels (uppers on levels three & four, scrubs on levels one & two). They sowed the seeds of distrust and created the Population Control Police (a.k.a. Pop Cops) to make sure we all followed the rules. Their propaganda worked. The scrubs, including me, thought the uppers were living in big apartments with big families and cushy jobs, while we lived in overcrowded barracks with no privacy and were forced to clean and maintain the systems (after all, rust and dust are the twin evils of Inside).

      It worked. The scrubs hated the uppers and the uppers hated us.

      Now back to our rebellion. It started with an upper named Domotor. His first attempt at overthrowing the Travas failed, but he discovered the location of Gateway—the mythical Gateway to Outside—and saved the info on disks.

      This is where I come in. Domotor hid his disks in an air duct above his rooms on level three. Later, Domotor recruited me to retrieve his disks and I did. This one event set off a whole heap of trouble for me. And my best and only friend Cog was arrested for covering for me.

      Now I’m not going to detail everything that happened. If you want to know all about it, you can go to your computer and read through this file: ISBN-978-0-373-21006-0.

      But I will summarize. I discovered the uppers didn’t have it any better than scrubs, and I met one I really liked named Riley. He helped me, along with Logan and a few others, to find Gateway. Unfortunately when Cog and I opened it, we learned Outside was really Outer Space, a big black freezing nothing that sucked my friend out. Cog’s very last act was saving my life.

      So much for freedom in Outside. But the others didn’t let the disappointment stop them. Riley, Logan and a few uppers—the rest of the Force of Sheep—still wanted to restore power to all the families. And we did. The Travas were arrested and a temporary Committee was formed.

      Even with this new Committee, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to change our ways. And with four levels, Inside was still too small for our population.

      I had a hard time sitting through meetings, so I escaped to explore the ducts every so often. Without having to worry about the Pop Cops, I could really search places I had only briefly passed.

      And guess what? I discovered that Inside wasn’t just four levels high. There was a vast space above level four. Plenty of room for many more levels. We could spread out!

      After this breakthrough, I thought Inside was done with trouble.

      Too bad, I thought wrong.

      1

      MY FINGERS ACHED AS MY LEG MUSCLES TREMBLED. Beads of sweat snaked down the skin on my back, leaving an itchy trail. I clung to the almost sheer metal wall and breathed in deep. When my heart slowed to a more normal rhythm, I relaxed my right hand’s grip and stretched for the next hand hold—a short piece of pipe. Then I repeated the motion with my left, climbing another meter higher.

      Far below, spots of daylight illuminated the half completed construction on level ten. Distant voices floated on the stale dusty air. I had passed the last of the bluelights. Nothing but blackness remained above me.

      I cocked my head, sweeping the flashlight’s beam across the wall in search of another pipe to grab. Logan had designed a special helmet equipped with a light to keep my hands free.

      “Trella?” Riley’s voice startled me.

      I lost my grip. Falling, I cursed my own stupidity for not switching my earring/receiver