“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.”