Wool (31 page)

Once he was better composed, he reached for the doors to IT and nearly cracked a knuckle as they flew outward toward him. Sammi, a tech he knew, burst out in a hurry and stormed past. Lukas called his name, but the older tech was already gone, storming up the stairs and out of sight.

There was more commotion in the entrance hall: voices yelling over one another. Lukas entered warily, wondering what the fuss was about. He held open the door with his elbow and slid into the room, the box tight against his chest.

Most of the yelling, it seemed, was coming from Bernard. The head of IT stood outside the security gates and was barking at one tech after the other. Nearby, Sims, the head of IT security, similarly laid into three men in gray overalls. Lukas remained frozen by the door, intimidated by the angry duo.

When Bernard spotted him there, he snapped his mouth shut and waded through the trembling techs to greet him. Lukas opened his mouth to say something, but his boss was fixated less on him and more on what was in his hands.

“This is it?” Bernard asked, snatching the box from him.

“It—?”

“Everything that greaser owned fits in this little damn box?” Bernard tugged the flaps open. “Is this everything?”

“Uh … that’s what I was given,” Lukas stammered. “Marsh said—”

“Yeah, the deputy wired about his cramps. I swear, the Pact should stipulate an age limit for their kind. Sims!” Bernard turned to his security chief. “Conference room. Now.”

Lukas pointed toward the security gate and the server room beyond. “I suppose I should get to—”

“Come with me,” Bernard said, wrapping his arm around Lukas’s back and squeezing his shoulder. “I want you in on this. There seem to be fewer and fewer ratshit techs I can trust around here.”

“Unless y-you want me on the servers. We had that thing with tower thirteen—”

“That can wait. This is more important.” Bernard ushered him toward the conference room, the hulking mass of Sims preceding them.

The security guard grabbed the door and held it open, frowning at Lukas as he went by. Lukas shivered as he crossed the threshold. He could feel the sweat running down his chest, could feel guilty heat in his armpits and around his neck. He had a sudden image of being thrown against the table, pinned down, contraband yanked from his pockets and waved in his face—

“Sit,” Bernard said. He put the box down on the table, and he and Sims began emptying its contents while Lukas lowered himself into a chair.

“Vacation chits,” Sims said, pulling out the stack of paper coupons. Lukas watched the way the man’s arms rippled with muscle with even the slightest movement. Sims had been a tech once, until his body kept growing and made him too obviously suited for other, less cerebral, endeavors. He lifted the chits to his nose, took a sniff, and recoiled. “Smells like sweaty greaser,” he said.

“Counterfeit?” Bernard asked.

Sims shook his head. Bernard was inspecting the small wooden box. He shook it and rapped it with his knuckles, listening to the rattle of chits inside. He searched the exterior for a hinge or clasp.

Lukas almost blurted out that the top slid, that it was so finely crafted you could barely see the joints and that it took a bit of effort. Bernard muttered something and set the box aside.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Lukas asked. He leaned forward and grabbed the box, pretended to be inspecting it for the first time.

“Anything. A fucking clue,” Bernard barked. He glared at Lukas. “How did this greaser make it over the hill? Was it something she did? One of my techs? What?”

Lukas still couldn’t figure out the anger. So what if she hadn’t cleaned—it would’ve been a double anyway. Was Bernard furious because he didn’t know
why
she’d survived so long? This made sense to Lukas. Whenever he fixed something by accident, it drove him nearly as nuts as having something break. He’d seen Bernard angry before, but this was something different. The man was livid. He was
manic
. It was just how Lukas would feel if he’d had such an unprecedented piece of success with no cause to pin it on.

Sims, meanwhile, found the notebook and began flipping through it. “Hey, boss—”

Bernard snatched it from him and tore through the pages, reading. “Someone’ll have to go through all this,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “There might be some sign of collusion in here—”

“Hey, look,” Lukas said, holding out the box. “It opens.” He showed them the sliding lid.

“Lemme see that.” Bernard dropped the notebook to the table and snatched the wooden box away. He wrinkled his nose. “Just chits,” he said disgustedly.

He dumped them on the table and was about to toss the box aside, but Sims grabbed it from him. “That’s an antique,” the large man said. “You think it’s a clue, or can I … ?”

“Yes, keep it, by all means.” Bernard waved his arms out toward the window with its view of the entrance hall. “Because nothing of greater fucking importance is going on around here, is it, shit-for-brains?”

Sims shrugged noncommittally and slid the wooden box into his pocket. Lukas desperately wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere in the silo but there.

“Maybe she just got lucky,” Sims offered.

Bernard began dumping the rest of the box onto the table, shaking it to loosen the manual that Lukas knew was tightly wedged in the bottom. He paused in his efforts and squinted at Sims over the rims of his glasses.

“Lucky,” Bernard repeated.

Sims tilted his head.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Bernard told him.

Sims nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“No, I mean get out!” Bernard pointed at the door. “Getthefuckout!”

The head of security smiled like this was funny but lumbered for the door. He slid out of the room and gently clicked the door shut behind him.

“I’m surrounded by morons,” Bernard said once they were alone.

Lukas tried to imagine this was not meant as an insult directed at him.

“Present company excluded,” Bernard added, as if reading his mind.

“Thanks.”

“Hey, you at least can fix a goddamn server. What the hell do I pay these other ratshit techs to do?”

He pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose again, and Lukas tried to remember if the IT head had always cursed this much. He didn’t think so. Was it the strain of being interim mayor that was getting to him? Something had changed. It felt strange to even consider Bernard his friend anymore. The man was so much more important now, so much busier. Perhaps he was cracking under the stress that came with the extra responsibility, the pain of being the one to send good people to cleaning—

“You know why I’ve never taken a shadow?” Bernard asked. He flipped through the manual, saw the play on the reverse side, and turned the bound sheets of paper around. He glanced up at Lukas, who lifted his palms and shrugged.

“It’s because I shudder to think of anyone else ever running this place.”

Lukas assumed he meant IT, not the silo. Bernard hadn’t been mayor very long.

Bernard set the play down and gazed out the window, where muffled voices argued once more.

“But I’ll have to, one of these days. I’m at that age where your friends, the people you grew up with, are dropping like flies, but you’re still young enough to pretend it won’t happen to you.”

His eyes fell to Lukas. The young tech felt uncomfortable being alone with Bernard. He’d never felt that before.

“Silos have burned to the ground before because of one man’s hubris,” Bernard told him. “All it takes is improper planning, thinking you’ll be around forever, but because one man disappears”—he snapped his fingers—“and leaves a sucking void behind, that can be enough to bring it all down.”

Lukas was dying to ask his boss what the hell he was talking about.

“Today is that day, I think.” Bernard walked around the long conference table, leaving behind him the scattered remnants of Juliette’s life. Lukas’s gaze drifted over the items. The guilt of going through them himself vanished when he saw how they’d been treated by Bernard. He wished instead that he’d stashed away more of them.

“What I need is someone who already has access to the servers,” Bernard said. Lukas turned to the side and realized the short, full-bellied head of IT was standing right beside him. He moved his hand up to his chest pocket, making sure it didn’t bulge open where Bernard could see.

“Sammi is a good tech. I trust him, but he’s nearly as old as I am.”

“You aren’t that old,” Lukas said, trying to be polite, to gather his wits. He wasn’t sure what was going on.

“There aren’t many I consider friends,” Bernard said.

“I appreciate that …”

“You’re probably the closest thing—”

“I feel the same—”

“I knew your father. He was a good man.”

Lukas swallowed and nodded. He looked up at Bernard and realized the man was holding out his hand. Had been for a while. He extended his own to accept, still not sure what was being offered.

“I need a shadow, Lukas.” Bernard’s hand felt small in Lukas’s own. He watched as his arm was pumped up and down. “I want you to be that man.”

Juliette forced her way through the inner airlock door and scrambled to get it closed. Darkness overwhelmed her as the heavy door squealed on its hinges and settled against its dry seals. She groped for the large locking wheel and leaned on the spokes, spinning it and sealing the door tight.

The air in her suit was growing stale; she could feel the dizziness overtaking her. Turning around, keeping one hand on the wall, she stumbled forward through the darkness. The puff of outside air that she’d allowed inside seemed to claw at her back like a horde of mad insects. Juliette staggered blindly down the hallway, trying to put distance between herself and the dead she’d left behind.

There were no lights on, no glow from the wallscreens with their view of the outside world. She prayed the layout was the same, that she could find her way. She prayed the air in her suit would hold out a moment longer, prayed the air in the silo wouldn’t be as foul and toxic as the wind outside. Or—and just as bad—that the air in the silo wouldn’t be as devoid of oxygen as what little remained in her suit.

Her hand brushed the bars of a cell just where they should have been, giving her hope that she could navigate the darkness. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find in the pitch black—she had no plan for salvation—she was simply stumbling away from the horrors outside. It hardly registered for her that she had been there, had gone
outside,
and was now in someplace new.

As she fumbled through the office, sucking on the last breaths of air in her helmet, her feet knocked into something and Juliette went sprawling forward. She landed roughly on a soft mound, groped with her hand, and felt an arm. A body. Several bodies. Juliette crawled over them, the spongy flesh feeling more human and solid than the husks and bones outside—and more difficult to move across. She felt someone’s chin. The weight of her body caused their neck to turn, and she nearly lost her balance. Her body recoiled at the sensation of what she was doing, the reflex to apologize, to pull her limbs away, but she forced herself forward over a pile of them, through the darkness, until her helmet slammed into the office door.

Without warning, the blow was hard enough that Juliette saw stars and feared blacking out. She reached up and fumbled for the handle. Her eyes might as well have been sealed shut, the utter darkness was so complete. Even the bowels of Mechanical had never seen such deep and perfect shadow.

She found the latch and pushed. The door was unlocked but wouldn’t budge. Juliette scrambled to her feet, her boots digging into lifeless bodies, and threw her shoulder against the door. She wanted out.

The door moved. A little. She could feel something slide on the other side and imagined more bodies piled up. She threw herself again and again into the door, grunts of effort and frustrated tiny screams echoing in her helmet. Her hair was loose, sweaty, and matting to her face. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Was growing more faint as she poisoned her own internal atmosphere.

When the door slid open a crack, she tried to force her way through, one shoulder first, squeezing her helmet past, then pulling her other arm and leg after. She fell to the floor, scrambled around, and shoved herself against the door, sealing it tight.

There was a dim light, almost impossible to notice at first. A barricade of tables and chairs was pressed in against her, scattered from her efforts to get through. Their hard edges and spindly legs seemed intent on ensnaring her.

Juliette heard herself wheezing for air and knew her time had run out. She imagined the poison all over her like grease. The toxic air that she’d let in was a cloud of vermin just waiting for her to crawl out of her shell so they could eat away at her.

She considered lying down and letting her air supply run out instead. She would be preserved in this chrysalis of a suit, a well-built suit, a gift from Walker and the people of Supply. Her body would lie forever in this dim silo that shouldn’t have existed—but so much better than to rot on a lifeless hill and fly away, piece by piece, on a fickle breeze. It would be a good death. She panted, proud of herself for making it somewhere of her own choosing, for conquering these last few obstacles. Slumping against the door, she very nearly lay down and closed her eyes—but for the nagging of her curiosity.

Juliette held up her hands and studied them in the dim glow from the stairwell. The shiny gloves—wrapped in heat tape and melted to form a bright skin—made her look like a machine of sorts. She ran her hands over the dome of her helmet, realizing she was like a walking toaster. When she had been a mere shadow in Mechanical, she’d had a bad habit of taking things apart, even those that already worked. What had Walker said of her? That she liked nothing more than peering inside of toasters.

Juliette sat up and tried to focus. She was losing sensation, and with it the will to live. She shook her head and pulled herself to her feet, sent a pile of chairs crashing to the floor. She was the toaster, she realized. Her curiosity wanted it open. This time, to see what was
outside
. To take one breath and know.