‘I barely remember writing the damn thing,’ he admitted. And who would want to see him? He assumed it would be another doctor, maybe a silo head, maybe whoever was running this shift.
He rubbed his temples, could feel the pressure building between them. Perhaps he should just do as they wanted and be put back to sleep, back to his dreams. Now and then, he had dreamed of Helen. It was the only place he could be with her.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. But I still don’t understand what I could possibly know.’ He rubbed his arm where they’d taken the blood. There was an itch there. An itch so deep it felt like a bruise.
Senator Thurman nodded. ‘I tend to agree with you. But that’s not what she thinks.’
Donald stiffened. ‘She?’ He searched Thurman’s eyes, wondering if he’d heard correctly. ‘She who?’
The old man frowned. ‘The one who had me wake you.’ He waved his hand at the bunk. ‘Get some rest. I’ll take you to her in the morning.’
31
• Silo 1 •
HE COULDN’T REST. The hours were cruel, slow and unknowable. There was no clock to mark their passing, no answer to his frustrated slaps on the door. Donald was left to lie in his bunk and stare at the diamond patterns of interlocking wires holding the mattress above him, to listen to the gurgle of water in hidden pipes as it rushed to another room. He couldn’t sleep. He had no idea if it was the middle of the night or the middle of the day. The weight of the silo pressed down upon him.
When the boredom grew intolerable, Donald eventually gave in and looked over the report a second time. He studied it more closely. It wasn’t the original; the signature was flat, and he remembered using a blue pen.
He skimmed the account of the silo’s collapse and his theory that IT heads shadowed too young. His recommendation was to raise the age. He wondered if they had. Maybe so, but the problems were persisting. There was also mention of a young man he had inducted, a young man with a question. This young man’s great-grandmother was one of those who remembered, much like Donald. His report suggested allowing one question from each inductee. They were given the Legacy, after all. Why not show them, in that final stage of indoctrination, that there were more truths to be had?
The tiny clicks of a key entering a lock. Thurman opened the door as Donald folded the report away.
‘Feeling better?’ Thurman asked.
Donald didn’t say.
‘Can you walk?’
He nodded. A walk. When what he really wanted was to run screaming down the hallway and punch holes in walls. But a walk would do. A walk before his next long sleep.
They rode the lift in silence. Donald noticed Thurman had scanned his badge before pressing the button for level fifty-four. Its number stood bright and new while so many others had been worn away. There was nothing but supplies on that level if Donald remembered correctly, supplies they weren’t ever supposed to need. The lift slowed as it approached a level it normally skipped. The doors opened on a cavernous expanse of shelves stocked with instruments of death.
Thurman led him down the middle of it all. There were wooden crates with ‘AMMO’ stencilled on the side, longer crates beside them with military designations like ‘M22’ and ‘M19’. There were rows of shelves with armour and helmets, with boxes marked ‘MEDICAL’ and ‘RATIONS’, many more boxes unlabelled. And beyond the shelves, tarps covered bulbous and winged forms that he knew to be drones. UAVs. His sister had flown them in a war that now seemed pointless and distant, part of ancient history. But here these relics stood, oiled and covered, reeking of grease and fear.
Beyond the drones, Thurman led the way through a murky dimness that made the storehouse seem to go on for ever. At the far end of the wide room, a glow of light leaked from an open-doored office. There were sounds of paper stirring, a chair squeaking as someone turned. Donald reached the doorway and saw, inexplicably, her sitting there.
‘Anna?’
She sat behind a wide conference table ringed with identical chairs, looked up from a spread of paperwork and a computer monitor. There was no shock on her part, just a smile of acknowledgement and a weariness that her smile could not conceal.
Her father crossed the room while Donald gaped. Thurman squeezed her arm and kissed her on the cheek, but Anna’s eyes did not leave Donald’s. The old man whispered something to his daughter, then announced that he had work of his own to see to. Donald did not budge until the Senator had left the room.
‘Anna—’
She was already at the massive table, wrapping her arms around him. She began whispering things, comforting words as Donald sagged into her embrace, suddenly exhausted. He felt her hand caress the back of his head and come to a rest on his neck. His own arms interlocked around her back.
‘What’re you doing here?’ he whispered.
‘I’m here for the same reason you are.’ She pulled back from the embrace. ‘I’m looking for answers.’ She stepped away and surveyed the mess on the table. ‘To different questions, perhaps.’
A familiar schematic — a grid of fifty silos — covered the table. Each silo was like a small plate, all of them trapped under glass. A dozen chairs were gathered around. Donald realised that this was a war room, where generals stood and pushed plastic models and grumbled over lives lost by the thousands. He glanced up at the maps and schematics plastered on the walls. There was an adjoining bathroom, a towel hanging from a hook on the door. A cot had been set up in the far corner and was neatly made. There was a lamp beside it sitting on one of the wooden crates from the storeroom. Extension cords snaked here and there, signs of a room long converted into an apartment of sorts.
He turned to the nearest wall and flipped through some of the drawings. They were three layers deep in places and covered in notes. It didn’t look as if a war was being planned. It looked like a scene from the crime shows that used to lull him to sleep in a former life.
‘You’ve been up longer than me,’ he said.
Anna stood beside him. Her hand alighted on his shoulder, and Donald felt himself startle at being touched at all.
‘Almost a year now.’ Her hand slid down his back before falling away. ‘Can I get you a drink? Water? I also have a stash of Scotch down here. Dad doesn’t know half the stuff they hid away in these crates.’
Donald shook his head. He turned and watched as she disappeared into the bathroom and ran the tap. She emerged, sipping from a glass.
‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. ‘Why am I up?’
She swallowed and waved her glass at the walls. ‘It’s—’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘I was about to say it’s nothing, but this is the hell that keeps me out of one box and in another. It doesn’t concern you, most of this.’
Donald studied the room again. A year, living like this. He turned his attention to Anna, the way her hair was balled up in a bun, a pen sticking out of it. Her skin was pale except for the dark rings beneath her eyes. He wondered how she was able to do this, live like this.
There was a printout on the far wall that matched the table, a grid of circles, the layout of the facilities. A familiar red X had been drawn across what he knew to be silo twelve in the upper left corner. There was another X nearby, a new one in what looked to be silo ten. More lives lost. And in the lower right-hand corner of the grid, a mess that made no sense. The room seemed to wobble as he took a step closer.
‘Donny?’
‘What happened here?’ he asked, his voice a whisper. Anna turned to see what he was looking at. She glanced at the table, and he realised that her paperwork was scattered around the same corner of the facility. The glass surface crawled with notes written in red and blue wax.