Chapter Six

I kick an empty can all the way back to the elevators and find them busy. The cafeteria is on the third floor, and people are waking in droves now, heading up for breakfast. I have barely eaten since the fight; my jaw has been too sore, my appetite too sparse. Right now I just need to get upstairs to the fifth floor. I just need to try today’s code: 11000536.

Usually I take the stairs—they’re always empty—but I am too sore, especially now. So I board the elevator and try to ignore the feeling of shoulders pressing against mine, the breath of many mingling and rising. I blot away the remaining blood from my knuckles and run my fingers over broken scabs. That guard deserved a broken nose. I am happy that I was the one to give it to him. I am angry that I had to.

The doors slide open at the third floor, and the elevator clears out. Perfect. Except Daniel spots me through the crowd, and he jumps aboard before the doors can close. My muscles tighten and my breathing quickens, but the rest of me is still. Impassive.

He is an Upper Mean, tall with curly hair cut short, and he smells like bitter, astringent soap. Otherwise he is plain and unmemorable, except for an evil streak that cuts through him like acid. To describe him as heartless would be too kind.

“What do you want,” I say as the elevator glides upward. My voice is sour.

He shoves a piece of toast into his mouth and smirks. “Haven’t seen you around for the past few days, Eve. What happened? Did you get an ouchie on your face?” His fingers reach toward my bruises. I grab his wrist.

“Touch me, and I’ll destroy you,” I say quietly.

He laughs. “Hard to believe that, sweetheart.” He pulls his hand free and makes a point of wiping it on his pleated pants. “Heard you had to get medical attention, you were so bad. And against a Preme. Maybe you’re losing your edge, Evie.”

I scoff. “You think calling me a childhood nickname is going to get under my skin? Get real, Dan-Dan.”

Now his hand curls into a fist, and he studies it. He puts on a show that is meant to intimidate me. I don’t allow it to. But I do glance at the buttons of the elevator, feeling my muscles unclench when I see we are almost at the fifth floor. I don’t have it in me to fight him, not right now, but if I had to—if I had to—I would win. I am confident of that.

I was confident of that back in fourth grade when I threw an elbow into his teeth, sick of the endless taunts he leveled against us Lower Means, particularly against Maggie, who I think he had a thing for. It was the first time one of us stood up to him, and it cemented his hatred for me then and there—it serves as the foundation for our endless feud that lives on today.

The doors are slow to open, and when they do, his hand reaches out and stops me—pushes roughly against my stomach. “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

“None of your business.”

“What, think you’re going to land a job with the Premes?” He sneers, and his face looks so smug I want to punch it.

“I’d have a better shot than you,” I say hotly. I know I shouldn’t let him get to me, but I can’t help it. “My grades are better than yours. I fight, I volunteer. Maybe I’ll try for one of those guard jobs you’re always talking about,” I lie.

“Go back to where you came from, Lower Mean,” he snaps. I’ve hit a nerve.

A wicked smile curls my lips, and then I push past him and into the Preme atrium, where the floors are spotless and the air is clean. “Trash,” he mutters, but before I can retaliate, the elevator doors seal into one and he is gone.

Relax, Eve.

But I am rattled; I can feel it in my bones. Between the orange-haired boy downstairs, the guard, and Daniel, I am shaken. I need to breathe. I need to calm down and concentrate. Because today is the day. Today will be the day. 11000536.

I start forward, but I pause at the bronze sculpture of a globe that hogs the middle of the atrium. I have walked by it hundreds of times, but never have I studied it. I know it represents the world, and I know that the small red X indicates our position on a piece of land known as North America, but the whole thing is meaningless. Maybe people used to study this sort of thing when they lived aboveground, but what’s the point now?

Slowly I walk around it. Perhaps it does have meaning. Because as I stare at it, I see that the world is a very big place, and that Compound Eleven occupies a very tiny sliver of it. Under five square miles, to be precise. The number of other compounds out there must be staggering. And surely not all of them are as cruel as ours.

Now my eyes twist around the atrium in search of something else—a sign, any sign, any indication at all of where the tunnels to other compounds could be. I don’t have to accept Compound Eleven, I already know that. I don’t even have to accept the nearby compounds Ten or Twelve. I can keep searching, on and on, for my rightful home…

The thought is soothing, just what I need. So it’s with something approaching contentment that I walk past the library, past its large glass windows that let me glimpse the long tables and rows of books inside.

It is my favorite room in the entire compound, even more than the Bowl. Means aren’t allowed up here on the Preme floor, just like Noms aren’t permitted on the Mean floors, but the rules are relaxed for the library. Our class frequented it as students, and me far more than that. Besides, if it weren’t for people like me, the entire place would be obscured by dust.

I don’t understand why. The pictures and stories the old books hold of life aboveground, when it was safe, are mesmerizing. Maybe what happened to Jack first sparked my obsession with the world up there, but it has grown into more than that. Now I often spend hours there, doing nothing more than looking at the cities and the streets, drooling over the open and unending space.

By comparison, there is nothing but dimly lit, dirty hallways down here. I suppose that isn’t true on the fifth floor. The lights are bright, the hallways sterile. And the walls aren’t concrete like they are downstairs; they aren’t covered in filth and graffiti. No, these are smooth and plastic and pristine. They glow white. Everything does.

I breathe, and the sequence begins. Right, left, right, left, right, right, right, left. I take my first right. Ten paces, then left. A quick right. It is therapeutic and cathartic, this ritual of mine.

Finally, I reach it…the door to the Oracle’s emergency exit.

Normally an elevator would be used to reach the Oracle, one that runs from the fifth floor, but for some reason it is guarded too closely.

I spent weeks trying to get past those guards, but to no avail. Then one day I overheard two of them talking, and I learned about this. A back staircase, it would seem, and the possibility was undeniably uplifting. It took many more weeks to locate the room, or at least what I think is the right room. It runs behind the elevator shaft, and it is locked under code, signs that my suspicions are correct.

I run my fingers over its cool brushed metal. My heart hammers in my chest; I don’t know why. After thirty-five unsuccessful attempts to get through this door, there is nothing to be nervous or excited about.

11000536, today’s code. I will repeat it again and again in my head until it is time for the next code: 11000537. The worst part is that, since the clock is ticking on my time here in Eleven, I can’t be certain I’ll ever crack it.

But I suppose I should be grateful that I have an educated guess to work with. It’s more than most people have. Of course, most people don’t have years upon years of concerted effort deciphering Compound Eleven’s codes.

It all started when I was a little girl, when I would help my mother work the food lines for the Noms. The same job I do now, alone. Each time I would watch the guards’ fingers hover over the keypad as they unlocked what they referred to as the “feeding dock” for us, and though most were discreet, as they are trained to be, there are a careless few in every crowd. And so with time I got a sense for the code, and I started experimenting when others weren’t watching.

The first two digits were easy to see and easy to understand: 11. As in Compound Eleven. The next three are zeroes—fillers, I have come to believe. The next digit is the floor number. But the last digit, or digits—they link to the specific door. If a floor has twenty doors under passcode, each door will be assigned a number between one and twenty, and there is no rhyme or reason to this final assignment. Trial and error is the only name of the game.

The second floor has only a handful of locked doors—little is valuable on my floor. So through repeated, varied attempts, I have figured out the code to each. I have made headway on the third floor, too. But the fifth floor is different. Valuable rooms abound. Labs are up here. The entire compound is controlled from this floor. The government rules from up here.

I tap in today’s code. There could be a hundred locked doors on the fifth floor, maybe more. And so, at my current pace of trying a single code per day, it could be months before I crack it—months that I don’t have. Or I could be on the wrong track completely; the code could be altogether different here in Preme land.

On my thinking goes, and so I barely notice when the door clicks quietly open in front of me.

When I do notice, I freeze. If my heart was hammering when I was fleeing the guard downstairs or speaking with Daniel on the elevator, it is nothing to how it feels now. Blood rushes to my brain, and I must grasp at the wall for balance. I can’t remember feeling so lightheaded before.

Deep breath, in and out. I reach an unsteady hand forward and pull open the door.

It is just a room, a dark and unused room. But light from the hallway floods the small space, and with it I see a ladder built into the far wall.

A ladder to the Oracle.