They wouldn’t have the best intentions, but they would have her knife.
She stopped on thirty-two to listen, hands clamped to the railing. Holding her breath to keep quiet was almost impossible—her lungs were crying out for deep gulps of air. But she remained still, the pulse in her palms beating against the cool railing, the distinct sound of footsteps still below her and louder now. She was catching up! She took off again, emboldened, taking the steps three at a time, her body sideways as she danced down the stairs as she had in youth, one hand on the curving railing, the other held out in front of her for balance, the balls of her feet just barely touching a tread before she was flying down to the next, concentrating lest she slip. A spill could be deadly at such speeds. Images of casts on arms and legs and stories of the unfortunate elderly with broken hips came to mind. Still, she pushed her limits, positively flying. Thirty-three went by in a blaze. Half a spiral later, over her footfalls, she heard a door slam. She stopped and looked up. She leaned over the railing and peered down. The footfalls were gone, leaving just the sound of her panting for air.
Juliette hurried down another rotation of the steps and checked the door on thirty-four. It wouldn’t open. It wasn’t locked, though. The handle clicked down and the door moved, but it caught on something. Juliette tugged as hard as she could—but to no avail. She yanked again and heard something crack. With a foot braced on the other door, she tried a third time, yanking sharply, snapping her head back, pulling her arms toward her chest and kicking with her foot—
Something snapped. The door flew open, and she lost her grip on the handle. There was an explosion of light from inside, a bright burst of illumination spilling out the door before it slammed shut again.
Juliette scrambled across the landing and grabbed the handle again. She pulled the door open and struggled to her feet. One broken half of a broomstick lay inside the hallway; the other half hung from the handle of the neighboring door. Both stood out in the blinding light all around her. The overhead lamps inside the room were fully lit, the bright rectangles in the ceiling marching down the hall and out of sight. Juliette listened for footsteps but heard little more than the buzzing of the bulbs. The turnstile ahead of her winked its red eye over and over, like it knew secrets but wouldn’t tell.
She got up and approached the machine, looked to the right where a glass wall peeked into a conference room, the lights full on in there as well. She hopped over the stile, the motion a habit already, and called out another hello. Her voice echoed back, but it sounded different in the lit air, if that were possible. There was life in here, electricity, other ears to hear her voice, which made the echoes somehow fainter.
She passed offices, peeking in each one to look for signs of life. The place was a mess. Drawers dumped on the floor, metal filing cabinets tipped over, precious paper everywhere. One of the desks faced her, and Juliette could see that the computer was on, the screen full of green text. It felt as though she’d entered a dream world. In two days—assuming she’d slept that long—her brain had gradually acclimated to the pale-green glow of the emergency lights, had grown used to a life in the wilderness, a life without power. She still had the taste of brackish water on her tongue, and now she strolled through a disheveled but otherwise normal workplace. She imagined the next shift (did offices like these have shifts?) returning, laughing, from the stairwell, shuffling papers and righting furniture and getting back to work.
The thought of work had her wondering what they did here. She had never seen such a layout. She almost forgot her flight down the stairs as she poked about, as curious about the rooms and power as the footsteps that had brought her there. Around a bend she came to a wide metal door that, unlike the others, wouldn’t open. Juliette heaved on it and felt it barely budge. She pressed her shoulder against the metal door and pushed it, a few inches at a time, until she could squeeze through. She had to step over a tall metal filing cabinet that had been yanked down in front of the heavy door in an attempt to hold it closed.
The room was massive, at least as big as the generator room and far larger than the cafeteria. It was full of tall pieces of furniture bigger than filing cabinets but with no drawers. Instead, their fronts were covered with blinking lights, red, green, and amber.
Juliette shuffled through paper that had spilled from the filing cabinet. And she realized, as she did so, that she couldn’t be alone in the room. Someone had pulled the cabinet across the door, and they had to have done this from inside.
“Hello?”
She passed through the rows of tall machines, for that’s what she figured they were. They hummed with electricity, and now and then seemed to whir or clack like their innards were busy. She wondered if this was some sort of exotic power plant—providing the lighting perhaps? Or did these have stacks of batteries inside? Seeing all the cords and cables at the backs of the units had her leaning toward batteries. No wonder the lights were blaring. This was like twenty of Mechanical’s battery rooms combined.
“Is anyone here?” she called out. “I mean you no harm.”
She worked her way through the room, listening for any movement, until she came across one of the machines with its door hinged open. Peering inside, she saw not batteries but boards like the kind Walker was forever soldering. In fact, the guts of this machine looked eerily similar to the inside of the dispatch room’s computer—
Juliette stepped back, realizing what these were. “The servers,” she whispered. She was in this silo’s IT. Level thirty-four. Of course.
There was a scraping sound near the far wall, the sound of metal sliding on metal. Juliette ran in that direction, darting between the tall units, wondering who the hell this was running from her and where they planned to hide.
She rounded the last row of servers to see a portion of the floor moving, a section of metal grate sliding to cover a hole. Juliette dived for the floor, her tablecloth garb wrapping around her legs, her hands seizing the edge of the cover before it could close. Right in front of her, she saw the knuckles and fingers of a man’s hands gripping the edge of the grate. There was a startled scream, a grunt of effort. Juliette tried to yank back on the grate but had no leverage. One of the hands disappeared. A knife took its place, snicking against the grate, hunting for her fingers.
Juliette swung her feet beneath her and sat up for leverage. She yanked on the grate and felt the knife bite into her finger as she did so.
She screamed. The man below her screamed. He emerged and held the knife between them, his hand shaking, the blade catching and reflecting the overhead lights. Juliette tossed the metal hatch away and clutched her hand, which was dripping blood.
“Easy!” she said, scooting out of reach.
The man ducked his head down, then poked it back up. He looked past Juliette as if others were coming up behind her. She fought the urge to check—but decided to trust the silence just in case he was trying to fool her.
“Who are you?” she asked. She wrapped part of her garment around her hand to bandage it. She noticed the man, his beard thick and unkempt, was wearing gray overalls. They could’ve been made in her silo, with just slight differences. He stared at her, his dark hair wild and hanging shaggy over his face. He grunted, coughed into his hand, seemed prepared to duck down under the floor and disappear.
“Stay,” Juliette said. “I mean you no harm.”
The man looked at her wounded hand and at the knife. Juliette glanced down to see a thin trace of blood snaking toward her elbow. The wound ached, but she’d had worse in her time as a Mechanic.