Turning the blade toward her own neck, Juliette groped for the latch. She slid the point along her collar until it caught in the crack of the button. Steadying herself, her arm shaking, she moved the knife and pressed in, shoving it toward her body against all her most human instincts.
There was a faint click. Juliette gasped and groped along the rim with the blade for the other button until she found it. She repeated the maneuver.
Another click, and her helmet popped off.
Juliette’s body took over for her, compelling her to take deep gulps of foul air. The stench was unbearable, but she couldn’t stop gasping for more. Rotted food, biological decay, a tepid filth of stenches invaded her mouth, tongue, nose.
She turned to the side and retched, but nothing came out. Her hands were still slippery with soup. Breathing was painful; she imagined a burning sensation on her skin, but it could’ve been her fevered state. She crawled away from the walk-in, toward the cafeteria, out of the fog of rotting soup, and took another gulp of air.
Air.
She took a lungful, the odor still overpowering, the soup coating her. But beyond the stench, something else was there. Something faint. Something breathable that began to force away the dizziness and the panic. It was oxygen. Life.
Juliette was still alive.
She laughed madly and stumbled toward the stairwell, drawn to the green glow of light, breathing deeply and too exhausted to appreciate this, the impossible life still in her.
40
Knox saw the uproar in Mechanical as just another emergency to overcome. Like the time the basement subwall had sprung a leak, or when the oil rig had hit that pocket of methane and they had to evacuate eight levels until the air handlers made it safe to return. Against the inevitable flow of commotion, what he needed to do was push for order. To assign tasks. He had to break a huge undertaking down to discrete bits and make sure they fell to the right hands. Only this time, he and his people wouldn’t be setting out to repair something. There were things the good people of Mechanical meant to break.
“Supply is the key,” he told his foremen, pointing to the large-scale blueprint hanging on the wall. He traced the stairwell up the thirty flights to Supply’s main manufacturing floor. “Our greatest advantage is that IT doesn’t know we’re coming.” He turned to his shift leaders. “Shirly, Marck, and Courtnee, you’ll come with me. We’ll load up with supplies and take your shadows with us. Walker, you can wire ahead to let ’em know we’re coming. Be careful, though. Assume IT has ears. Say we have a load of your repairs to deliver.”
He turned to Jenkins, who had shadowed under Knox for six years before he grew his own beard and moved to third shift. The assumption everywhere was that Knox’s job was his in waiting. “Jenks, I want you to take over down here. There are no days off for a while. Keep the place running, but get ready for the worst. I want as much food stockpiled as possible. And water. Make sure the cistern is topped up. Divert from the hydroponics feed if you have to, but be discreet. Think of an excuse, like a leak or something, in case they notice. Meanwhile, have someone make the rounds and check every lock and hinge, just in case the fighting comes to us. And stockpile whatever weapons you can make up. Pipes, hammers, whatever.”
Some eyebrows were lifted at this, but Jenkins nodded at the list as if it all made sense and was doable. Knox turned to his foremen. “What? You know where this is heading, right?”
“But what’s the larger picture?” Courtnee asked, glancing at the tall blueprint of their buried home. “Storm IT, and then what? Take over running this place?”
“We already run this place,” Knox growled. He slapped his hand across the floors of the midthirties. “We just do it in the dark. Like these levels here are dark to us. But now I mean to shine a light in their rat hole and scare them out, see what else they’re hiding.”
“You understand what they’ve been doing, right?” Marck turned to Courtnee. “They’ve been sending people out to die. On purpose. Not because it had to happen, but because they wanted it to!”
Courtnee bit her lip and didn’t say anything, just stared at the blueprint.
“We need to get going,” Knox said. “Walker, get that wire out. Let’s load up. And think of something pleasant to chat about while we’re on the move. No grumbling about this where some porter can hear and make a chit or two ratting us out.”
They nodded. Knox slapped Jenkins on the back and dipped his chin at the younger man. “I’ll send word when we need everyone. Keep the bare bones you think you’ve gotta have down here and send the rest. Timing is everything, okay?”
“I know what to do,” Jenkins said. He wasn’t trying to be uppity, just reassuring his elder.
“All right,” Knox said. “Then let’s get to it.”
They made it up ten flights with little complaint, but Knox could begin to feel the burn in his legs from the heavy load. He had a canvas sack stuffed full of welding smocks on his wide shoulders, plus a bundle of helmets. A rope had been strung through their chin straps, and they clattered down his wide back. Marck struggled with his load of pipe stock as they kept trying to slide against one another and slip out of his arms. The shadows brought up the rear, behind the women, with heavy sacks of blasting powder tied together so they hung around their necks. Professional porters with similarly full loads breezed past them in both directions, their glances signaling a mix of curiosity and competitive anger. When one porter—a woman Knox recognized from deliveries to the down deep—stopped and offered to help, he gruffly sent her on her way. She hurried up the steps, looking back over her shoulder before spiraling out of view, and Knox regretted taking his exhaustion out on her.
“Keep it up,” he told the others. Even with the small group, they were making a spectacle. And it was growing ever more tiresome to hold their tongues as news of Juliette’s amazing disappearance gyred all around them. At almost every landing, a group of people, often younger people, stood around and gossiped about what it all meant. The taboo had moved from thought to whisper. Forbidden notions were birthed on tongues and swam through the air. Knox ignored the pain in his back and lumbered up and up, each step driving them closer to Supply, feeling more and more like they needed to get there in a hurry.
As they left the one—thirties, the grumblings were fully in the air. They were nearing the upper half of the down deep, where people who worked, shopped, and ate in the mids mingled with those who would rather they didn’t. Deputy Hank was on the stairwell of one-twenty-eight, trying to mediate between two arguing crowds. Knox squeezed past, hoping the officer wouldn’t turn and see his heavily loaded train and ask them what they were doing up this far. As he ascended past the ruckus, Knox glanced back to watch the shadows slink past, hugging the inner rail. Deputy Hank was still asking a woman to please calm down as the landing sank out of sight.
They passed the dirt farm on one-twenty-six, and Knox figured this to be a key asset. The thirties of IT were a long hike up, but if they had to fall back, they would need to hold at Supply. Between their manufacturing, the food on this level, and the machinery of Mechanical, they might be self-sufficient. He could think of a few weak links, but many more for IT. They could always shut off their power or stop treating their water—but he really hoped, as they approached Supply on weary legs, that it wouldn’t come to any of that.