There was no one on the ladder. Jimmy slipped the rifle over his shoulder and doused the flashlight so no one would see him coming. His palms made the softest of rings on the metal rungs. He was halfway up when he felt Shadow slithering and clacking his way up between the ladder and the wall.
Jimmy hissed at the cat to stay put but it disappeared ahead of him. At the top of the ladder, Jimmy unslung his rifle and held it in one hand. With the other, he pressed the flashlight against his stomach and turned it on. Peeling the lens away from his overalls a little at a time, he cast just enough glow to pick his way through the servers.
There was a noise ahead of him, Shadow or another person, he couldn’t tell. Jimmy hesitated before continuing on. It took for ever to cross the wide room with the dark machines like this. He could hear them still clacking, still whirring, still putting off heat. But when he got close to the door, the keypad was no longer blinking its sentinel light at him. And there was a void beyond the gleaming door — a door that stood halfway open.
More noise outside. The rustle of fabric, of a person moving. Jimmy killed the flashlight and steadied his rifle. He could taste the fear in his mouth. He wanted to call out for these people to leave him alone. He wanted to say what he had done to all those who came inside. He wanted to drop his gun and cry and beg never to have to do it again.
He poked his head into the hall and strained to see in the darkness, hoped this other person couldn’t see him back. The hall contained nothing but the sound of two people breathing. There was a growing awareness that a dark space was shared with another.
‘Hank?’ someone whispered.
Jimmy turned and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash of light. The rifle kicked him in the shoulder. He retreated into the server room and waited for screams and stomping boots. He waited what felt like for ever. Something touched his boot and Jimmy screamed. It was Shadow purring and rubbing against him.
Chancing his flashlight, he peered around the corner and allowed some light to dribble out. There was a form there, a person on their back. He checked the deep and dark hallways and saw nothing. ‘Leave me alone!’ he yelled out to all the ghosts and more solid things.
Not even his echo called back.
Jimmy looked over this second man only to discover it wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman. Her eyes had thankfully fallen shut. A man and a woman coming for his food, coming to steal from him. It made Jimmy angry. And then he saw the woman’s swollen and distended belly and got doubly angry. It wasn’t as if they were hurting for food, he thought.
92
2345
• Silo 1 •
DONALD SET HIS alarm for three in the morning, but there was little chance of him falling asleep. He’d waited weeks for this. A chance to give a life rather than take one. A chance at redemption and a chance for the truth, a chance to satisfy his growing suspicions.
He stared at the ceiling and considered what he was about to do. It wasn’t what Erskine or Victor had hoped he would do if someone like him was in charge, but those men had got a lot wrong, least of all who he was. This wasn’t the end of the end of the world. This was the beginning of something else. An end to the not knowing what was out there.
He studied his hand in the dim light spilling from the bathroom and thought of the outside. At two-thirty, he decided he’d waited long enough. He got up, showered and shaved, put on a fresh pair of overalls, tugged on his boots. He grabbed his badge, clipped it to his collar, and left his apartment with his head up and his shoulders back. Long strides took him down a hall with a few lights still on and the distant clatter of a keyboard, someone working late. The door to Eren’s office was closed. Donald called for the lift and waited.
Before heading all the way down, he checked to see if it would be all for naught by scanning his badge and pressing the shiny button marked fifty-four. The light flashed and the lift lurched into motion. So far, so good. The lift didn’t stop until it reached the armoury. The doors opened on a familiar darkness studded with tall shadows — black cliffs of shelves and bins. Donald held his hand on the edge of the door to keep it from shutting and stepped out into the room. The vastness of the space could somehow be felt, as though the echoes of his racing pulse were being swallowed by the distance. He waited for a light to flick on at the far end, for Anna to walk out brushing her hair or with a bottle of Scotch in her hand, but nothing in that room moved. Everything was quiet and still. The pilots and the temporary activity were gone.
He returned to the lift and pressed another button. The lift sank. It drifted past more storage levels, past the reactor. The doors cracked open on the medical wing. Donald could feel the tens of thousands of bodies arranged all around him, all facing the ceiling, eyelids closed. Some of them were well and truly dead, he thought. One was about to be woken.
He went straight to the doctor’s office and knocked on the jamb. The assistant on duty lifted his head from behind the monitor. He wiped his eyes behind his glasses, adjusted them on his nose and blinked at Donald.
‘How’s it going?’ Donald asked.
‘Hmm? Good. Good.’ The young man shook his wrist and checked his watch, an ancient thing. ‘We got someone going into deep freeze? I didn’t get a call. Is Wilson up?’
‘No, no. I just couldn’t sleep.’ Donald pointed at the ceiling. ‘I went to see if anyone was up at the cafeteria, then figured since I was restless, I might as well come down here and see if you wanted me to finish out your shift. I can sit and watch a film as well as anyone.’
The assistant glanced at his monitor and laughed guiltily. ‘Yeah.’ He checked his watch again, had somehow already forgotten what it just told him. ‘Two hours left. I wouldn’t mind slagging off. You’ll wake me if anything pops up?’ He stood and stretched, covered his yawn with his hand.
‘Of course.’
The medical assistant staggered out from behind the desk. Donald stepped around and pulled the seat away, sat down and propped up his feet as though he wouldn’t be going anywhere for hours.
‘I owe you one,’ the young man said, collecting his coat from the back of the door.
‘Oh, we’re even,’ Donald said under his breath as soon as the man was gone.
He waited for the lift to chime before launching into action. There was a plastic drink container on the drying rack by the sink. He grabbed this and filled it with water, the musical pitch of the vessel filling like a rising anxiety.
The lid came off the powder. Two scoops. He stirred with one of the long plastic tongue depressors and twisted the lid on, put the powder back in the fridge. The wheelchair wouldn’t budge at first. He saw that the brakes were on, the little metal arms pressing into the soft rubber. He freed these, grabbed one of the blankets from the tall cabinet and a paper gown, tossed them onto the seat. Just like before. But he’d do it right this time. He collected the medical kit, made sure there was a fresh set of gloves.
The wheelchair rattled out the door and down the hall, and Donald’s palms felt sweaty against the handles. To keep the front wheels silent, he rocked the chair back on its large rubber tyres. The small wheels spun lazily in the air as he hurried.
He entered his code into the keypad and waited for a red light, for some impediment, some blockade. The light winked green. Donald pulled the door open and swerved between the pods towards the one that held his sister.