Elise could tell that all of them were tired, including her and Puppy, but they set out anyway. The adults seemed eager to get down, and after seeing the bizarre Elise felt the same way. She told Jewel she wanted to go home, and Jewel said that’s where they were heading. “We ought to make things how they used to be,” Elise told them both.
For some reason that made Jewel laugh. “You’re too young to be nostalgic,” she said.
Elise asked what nostalgic meant, and Jewel said, “It’s where you think the past was better than it really was, only because the present sucks so bad.”
“I get nostalgic a lot,” Elise declared.
And Jewel and Solo both laughed at that. But then they looked sad after. Elise caught them looking at each other like this a lot, and Jewel kept wiping at her eyes. Finally, Elise asked them what was wrong.
They stopped in the middle of the stairway and told her. Told her about Marcus, who had slipped over the rails when that crazy crowd had knocked her down and Puppy had gotten away. Marcus had fallen and died. Elise looked at the rails beside her and didn’t see how Marcus could slip over rails so high. She didn’t understand how it had happened, but she knew it was like when their parents had gone off and never came back. It was like that. Marcus would never come laughing through the Wilds again. She wiped her face and felt awful for Miles, who wasn’t a twin anymore.
“Is that why we’re going home?” she asked.
“It’s one of the reasons,” Jewel said. “I never should’ve brought you here.”
Elise nodded. There was no arguing with that. Except she had Puppy now, and Puppy had come from here. And no matter what she told Jewel, Elise wasn’t giving him back.
Juliette allowed Elise to lead the way. Her legs were sore from the run down; she had nearly lost her footing more than once. Now she was eager to see the kids together and home, couldn’t stop blaming herself for what had happened to Marcus. The levels went by full of regrets, and then there was a call on the radio.
“Jules, are you there?”
It was Shirly, and she sounded upset. Juliette pulled the radio from her belt. Shirly must’ve been with Walker, using one of his sets. “Go ahead,” she said. She kept a hand on the rail and followed Elise and Solo. A porter and a young couple squeezed by heading in the other direction.
“What the hell is going on?” Shirly asked. “We just had a mob come through here. Frankie got overrun at the gates. He’s in the infirmary. And I’ve got another two or three dozen people heading through this blasted tunnel of yours. I didn’t sign on for this.”
Juliette figured it was the same group that led to Marcus’s death. Jimmy turned and eyed the radio and its news. Juliette turned down the volume so Elise couldn’t hear.
“What do you mean by another two or three dozen? Who else is over there?” Juliette asked.
“Your dig team, for one. Some mechanics from third shift who should be sleeping but want to see what’s on the other side. And the planning committee you sent.”
“The planning committee?” Juliette slowed her pace.
“Yeah. They said you sent them. Said it was okay to inspect the dig. Had a note from your office.”
Juliette remembered Marsha saying something about this before the Town Hall. But she had been busy with the suits.
“Did you not send them?” Shirly asked.
“I may have,” Juliette admitted. “But this other group, the mob, my dad and them had a run-in on their way down. Someone fell to their death.”
There was silence on the other end. And then: “I heard we had a fall. Didn’t know it was related. I tell you, I’m this close to pulling everyone back and shutting this down. Things are out of hand, Jules.”
I know, Juliette thought. But she didn’t broadcast this. Didn’t utter it out loud. “I’ll be there soon. On my way now.”
Shirly didn’t respond. Juliette clipped the radio to her belt and cursed herself. Jimmy hung back to speak with her, allowing Elise to walk further ahead.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” Juliette told him.
The two of them walked in silence for a turn of the staircase.
“The people in the tunnel, I saw some of them taking what’s not theirs,” Jimmy said. “It was dark when they brought us over, but I saw people carrying pipe and equipment from my silo back to this one. Like it was the plan the whole time. But then you said we were going to rebuild my home. Not use it for spares.”
“I did. I do. I do mean to rebuild it. As soon as we get down there, I’ll talk to them. They aren’t taking spares.”
“So you didn’t tell them it was okay?”
“No. I… I may have told them it made sense to come get you and the kids, that the extra silo would mean certain… redundancies—”
“That’s what a spare is.”
“I’ll talk to them. I promise. Everything will be all right in the end.”
They walked in silence for a while.
“Yeah,” Solo finally said. “You keep saying that.”
Silo 1
30
Charlotte awoke in darkness, damp with sweat. Cold. The metal decking was cold. Her face was sore from it resting so long on the steel. She worked a half-dead arm from beneath her and rubbed her face, felt the marks there from the diamond plating.
The attack on Donny returned like a dimly remembered dream. She had curled up and waited. Had somehow held back her tears. And whether exhausted from the effort or terrified of moving, she had eventually succumbed to sleep.
She listened for footsteps or voices before cracking the tarp. It was pitch black outside. As black there as under the drone. Like a chick from a nest, she crawled out from beneath the metal bird, her joints stiff, a weight on her chest, a terrible solitude all around her.
Her worklight was somewhere beneath the tarp. She uncovered the drone and patted around, felt some tools, knocked over and noisily scattered a ratchet set. Remembering the drone’s headlamp, she felt inside an open access panel, found the test switch, and pressed it. A golden carpet was thrown out in front of the bird’s beak. It was enough to find her worklight.
She grabbed this and a large wrench as well. She was no longer safe. A mortar had flown into camp and had leveled a tent, had taken a bunkmate. Another could come whistling down at any time.
She aimed her flashlight toward the elevators, afraid of what they could disgorge without warning. In the silence, she could hear her heartbeat. Charlotte turned and headed for the conference room, for the last place she’d seen him.
There was no sign of struggle on the floor. Inside the conference room, the table was still scattered with notes. Maybe not as many as before. And the several bins scattered among the chairs were gone. Someone had done a poor job of cleaning up. Someone would be back.
Charlotte doused the lights and turned to go. Stepping through the place where he’d been attacked, she saw this time the splattered blood on the wall. She felt the sobs she’d wrestled down before falling asleep rise up to seize her throat, constricting it, wondered if her brother was still alive. She could see the man with the white hair standing there, kicking and kicking, an unholy rage in him. And now she had no one. She hurried through the dark warehouse toward the glowing drone. Pulled from sleep, shown a frightening world, and now she’d been left alone.
The light from the drone’s beak spilled across the floor and illuminated a door.
Not quite alone.
Charlotte gathered her wits. She reached into the access panel and turned the drone’s headlamp off. She carefully rearranged the tarp. It would no longer do to leave things amiss — she must always assume she might have visitors. With her worklight bobbing, she made for the door, stopped, went back for her tool bag. The drone was now a distant priority. With her tools and light, she hurried past the barracks and to the end of the hall, into the flight room. The workbench on the far wall held a radio pieced together over the weeks. It worked. She and her brother had listened to the chatter from distant worlds. Maybe there was a way to make it transmit. She pawed through the spare parts he had left for her, searching. If nothing else, she could listen. Maybe she could find out what they’d done to him. Maybe she could hear from him — or reach out to another soul.