She hoped to rise above the injustices strewn about her, to escape this last spasm of civility before chaos reigned. It was coming, she knew. But as high as she and Raph climbed, there were people throwing open doors to explore and loot, to claim territory, to yell down from landings some finding or shout up some question. In the depths of Mechanical, she had lamented how few had survived. And now it seemed like so many.
Stopping to fight any of this would be a waste of time. Juliette worried about Solo and the kids. She worried about the razed farms. But the weight of the explosives in her pack gave her purpose, and the calamity surrounding her gave her resolve. She was out to see that this never happened again.
“I feel like a porter,” Raph said, wheezing between words.
“If you fall behind, we’re heading for thirty-four. Both of the mid farms should have food. You can get water from the hydro pumps.”
“I can keep up with you,” Raph insisted. “Just saying it’s unbecoming.”
Juliette laughed at the proud miner. She wanted to point out the number of times she’d made this run, always with Solo lagging behind and waving her on, promising he’d catch up. Her mind flashed back to those days, and suddenly her silo was still alive and thriving, churning with civilization, so far away and moving forward without her — but still there and alive.
No more.
But there were other silos, dozens of them, teeming with life and lives. Somewhere, a parent was lecturing a child. A teenager was stealing a kiss. A warm meal was being served. Paper was being recycled into pulp and back into paper; oil was gurgling up and being burned; exhaust was being vented into the great and forbidden outside. All of those worlds were humming forward, each of them ignorant of the others. Somewhere, a person who dared to dream was being sent out to clean. Someone was being buried, another born.
Juliette thought of the children of Silo 17, born into violence, never knowing anything else. That would happen again. It would happen right here. And her annoyance with the Planning Committee and Father Wendel’s congregation was misplaced, she thought. Had her mechanics not lashed out? Was she not lashing out right then? What was any group but a bunch of people? And what were people but animals as prone to fear as rats at the sound of boots?
“—catch up with you later, then,” Raph called out, his voice distant, and Juliette realized she was pulling away. She slowed and waited for him. Now was not a time for being alone, for climbing without company. And in that silo of solitude, where she had fallen for Lukas because he was there for her in voice and spirit, she missed him more terribly than she ever had. Hope had been stripped away, foolish hope. There was no getting back to him, no seeing him ever again, even as she was deathly sure that she would join him soon enough.
A foray into the second mids farm won some food, though it was deeper than Juliette remembered. Raph’s flashlight revealed signs of recent activity: boot prints in mud that had not yet dried, a watering pipe broken for a drink that continued to drip but had not yet emptied, a stepped-on tomato that was not yet covered in ants. Juliette and Raph took what they could carry — green peppers, cucumbers, blackberries, a precious orange, a dozen underripe tomatoes — enough for a few meals. Juliette ate as many blackberries as she could, for they travelled poorly. She normally shied away from them, hated how they left her fingers stained. But what once was nuisance now seemed a blessing. This was how the last of the supplies went in a hurry, each of a few hundred people taking more than they needed, even the things they didn’t truly want.
It wasn’t far to thirty-four from the farm. For Juliette, it almost felt like a return home. There would be ample power there, her tools and her cot, a radio, some place to work during this last tremble of a dying people, some place to think, to regret, to build one last suit. The weariness in her legs and back spoke to her, and Juliette realized she was climbing once again in order to escape. It was more than vengeance she was after. This was a flight from the sight of her friends, whom she had failed. It was a hole she was after. But unlike Solo, who had lived in a hole beneath the servers, she was hoping to make a crater on the heads of others.
“Jules?”
She paused halfway across the landing of thirty-four, the doors to IT just ahead. Raph had stopped at the top step. He knelt down and ran his finger across the tread, lifted it to show her something red. Touched his finger to his tongue.
“Tomato,” he said.
Someone was already there. The day Juliette had wasted curled up and crying in the belly of the digger haunted her now.
“We’ll be fine,” she told him. The day she had chased Solo came back to her. She had thundered down these steps, had found the doors barred, had snapped a broom in half getting inside. This time, the doors opened easily. The lights inside were full bright. No sign of anyone.
“Let’s go,” she said. She hurried quietly and quickly. It wouldn’t do to be spotted by people she didn’t know, wouldn’t want them following her. She wondered if Solo had at least been cautious enough to close up the server room and the grate. But no, at the end of the hall she saw the server room door was open. There were voices somewhere. The stench of smoke. A haze in the air. Or was she losing her mind and imagining Lukas and the gas coming for him? Is that why she was here? Not for the radio, to find a home for her friends, nor to build a suit, but because here was a mirrored place, identical to her own, and maybe Lukas was below, waiting for her, alive in this dead world—
She pushed her way into the server room, and the smoke was real. It gathered at the ceiling. Juliette hurried through the familiar servers. The smoke tasted different than the burnt grease of an overheating pump, the tang of an electrical fire, the scorched rubber of an impeller running dry, the bitterness of motor exhaust. It was a clean burning. She covered her mouth with the crook of her arm, remembered Lukas complaining of fumes, and hurried into the haze.
It was coming from the hatch behind the comm server, a rising column of smoke. There was a fire in Solo’s hovel, his bedding, perhaps. Juliette thought of the radio down there, the food. She unzipped her coveralls and pulled her sweat-soaked undershirt up over her face, heard Raph yelling at her not to go as she reached down and lowered herself onto the ladder, practically slid down it until her boots slammed into the grating below.
Staying low, she could just barely see through the haze. She could hear the crackle of flame, a strange and crisp sound. Food and radio and computer and precious schematics on the walls. The one treasure not on her mind as she rushed forward was the books. And it was the books that were burning.
A pile of books, a pile of empty metal tins, a young man in a white robe throwing more books onto the pile, the smell of fuel. He had his back turned, a bald patch on the back of his head glimmering with sweat, but he seemed unconcerned by the blaze. He was feeding it. He returned to the shelves for more to burn.
Juliette ran behind him to Solo’s bed and grabbed a blanket, a rat scurrying out of its folds as she lifted it. She hurried toward the fire, eyes stinging, throat burning, and tossed the blanket across the pile of books. The blaze was momentarily swallowed, but it leaked at the seams. The blanket began to smoke. Juliette coughed into her shirt and ran back for the mattress, needed to smother the fire, thought of the empty reservoir of water in the next room, all that was being lost.
The man in the robe spotted her as she lifted the mattress. He howled and threw himself at her. They tumbled into the mattress and the nest of bedding. A boot flashed toward her face, and Juliette jerked her head back. The young man screamed. He was like a white flapping bird loose in the bazaar and swooping at heads. Juliette yelled for him to get away. The blaze leapt higher. She tugged at the mattress, him on top of it, and the man spilled off the other side. Only moments to get the fire under control before all was lost. Only moments. She grabbed Solo’s other blanket and beat at the flames. Couldn’t fight them and the man both. No time. She coughed and yelled for Raph, and the man in the robes came at her again, his eyes wild, arms flailing. Juliette lowered her shoulder into his stomach, ducked beneath his arms, and the man spilled over her back. He fell to the ground and encircled her legs, dragging her down with him.