Solo clicked his tongue. “No way. Nothing down there does. All toast. Besides—” He chopped his hand partway up the down deep. “There’s flooding up to—” He turned to Juliette. “Wait. Are you wanting out? To go somewhere?” He shook his head in disbelief.
“I want to go home,” Juliette said.
His eyes widened. “Why would you go back? They sent you away, didn’t they? You’ll stay here. We don’t want to leave.” He scratched his beard and shook his head side to side.
“Someone has to know about all of this,” Juliette told him. “All these other people out there. All that space beyond. The people in my silo need to know.”
“People in your silo already do,” he said.
He studied her quizzically, and it dawned on Juliette that he was right. She pictured where they currently stood in this silo. They were in the heart of IT, deep inside the fortress room of the mythical servers, below the servers in a hidden passage, hidden probably even from the people who had access to the innermost kernels of the silo’s mysteries.
Someone in her own silo did know. He had helped keep these secrets for generations. Had decided, alone and without input from anyone, what they should and should not know. It was the same man who had sent Juliette to her death, a man who had killed who knew how many more . . .
“Tell me about these wires,” Juliette said. “How did you talk to the other silo? Give me every detail.”
“Why?” Solo asked, seemingly shrinking before her. His eyes were wet with fear.
“Because,” she said. “I have someone I very much wish to call.”
51
The waiting was interminable. It was the long silence of itchy scalps and trickling sweat, the discomfort of weight on elbows, of backs bent, of bellies flat against an unforgiving conference table. Lukas peered down the length of his fearsome rifle and through the conference room’s shattered glass window. Little fragment jewels remained in the side of the jamb like transparent teeth. Lukas could still hear, ringing in his ears, the incredible bang from Sims’s gun that had taken out the glass. He could still smell the acrid scent of gunpowder in the air, the looks of worry on the faces of the other techs. The destruction had seemed so unnecessary. All this preparation, the toting of massive black guns out of storage, the interruption of his talk with Bernard, news of people coming from the down deep, it all made little sense.
He checked the slide on the side of the rifle and tried to remember the five minutes of instruction he’d been given hours earlier. There was a round in the chamber. The gun was cocked. More bullets waited patiently in the clip.
And the boys in security gave him a hard time for his tech jargon. Lukas’s vocabulary had exploded with new terms. He thought about the rooms beneath the servers, the pages and pages of the Order, the rows of books he’d only gotten a glimpse of. His mind sagged under the weight of it all.
He spent another minute practicing his sighting, looking down the barrel and lining up the small cross in the tiny circle. He aimed at the cluster of conference chairs that had been rolled into an obstructing jumble by the door. For all he knew, they would be waiting like this for days and nothing would ever happen. It had been a while since any porter had brought an update on what was going on below.
For practice, he gently slid his finger into the guard and against the trigger. He tried to get comfortable with the idea of pulling that lever, of fighting the upward kick Sims had told them to expect.
Bobbie Milner—a shadow no more than sixteen—made a joke beside him, and Sims told them both to shut the fuck up. Lukas didn’t protest at being included in the admonishment. He glanced over at the security gate, where a bristle of black barrels poked through the stanchions and over the metal duty desk. Peter Billings, the new silo sheriff, was over there fiddling with his small gun. Bernard stood behind the sheriff, doling out instructions to his men. Bobbie Milner shifted his weight beside Lukas and grunted, trying to get more comfortable.
Waiting. More waiting. They were all waiting.
Of course, had Lukas known what was coming, he wouldn’t have minded.
He would’ve begged to wait there forever.
Knox led his group through the sixties with just a few stops for water, a pause to secure their packs and tighten their laces. They passed several curious porters with overnight deliveries who prodded for details about where they were heading, about the blackouts. Each porter left unhappy. And hopefully, empty-headed.
Pieter had been right: the stairwell was singing. It vibrated with the march of too many feet. Those who lived above were generally moving upward, away from the blackouts and toward the promise of power, of warm food and hot showers. Meanwhile, Knox and his people mobilized behind them to squelch a different kind of power.
At fifty-six, they had their first spot of trouble. A group of farmers stood outside the hydroponic farm lowering a cluster of power cables over the railing, presumably toward the small group they had seen the last landing down. When the farmers spotted the blue overalls of Mechanical, one of them called out, “Hey, we keep you fed, why can’t you keep the juice on?”
“Talk to IT,” Marck replied from the front of the queue. “They’re the ones blowing fuses. We’re doing what we can.”
“Well, do it faster,” the farmer said. “I thought we just had a rat-damned power holiday to prevent this nonsense.”
“We’ll have it by lunchtime,” Shirly told them.
Knox and the others caught up with the head of the group, creating a jam by the landing.
“The faster we get up there the faster you’ll get your juice,” Knox explained. He tried to hold his concealed gun casually, like it was any other tool.
“Well, how about giving us a hand with this tap then? They’ve had power on fifty-seven for most of the morning. We’d like enough to get our pumps cranking.” He indicated the trunk of wires coiling over the railing.
Knox considered this. What the man was asking for was technically illegal. Challenging him about it would mean delays, but telling him to go ahead might look suspicious. He could sense McLain’s group several levels up, waiting on them. Pace and timing were everything.
“I can spare two of my men to help out. Just as a favor. As long as it doesn’t get back to me that Mechanical had shit to do with this.”
“Like I care,” the farmer said. “I just want water moving.”
“Shirly, you and Courtnee give them a hand. Catch up when you can.”
Shirly’s mouth dropped open. She begged with her eyes for him to reconsider.
“Get going,” he told her.
Marck came to her side. He lifted his wife’s pack and handed her his multi-tool. She begrudgingly accepted it, glowered at Knox a moment longer, then turned to go, not saying a word to him or her husband.
The farmer let go of the cables and took a step toward Knox. “Hey, I thought you said you’d lend me two of—”
Knox leveled a glare harsh enough to make the man pause. “Do you want the best I got?” he asked. “Because you’ve got it.”