Donald coughed into the crook of his arm, his throat tickling. Someone had put him in this position. Erskine, or Victor beyond the grave, or maybe a hacker with more nefarious designs. He had nothing to go on.
Lifting the two folders, he thought of the panic roused by a person meandering out of sight. He thought about the violence brewing in the depths of another silo. These were not his mysteries, he thought. What he wanted to know was why he was awake, why he was even alive. What exactly was out there beyond those walls? What was the plan for the world once these shifts were over? Would there be a day when the people underground would be set free?
Something didn’t sit right with him, imagining how that last shift would play out. There was a nagging suspicion that things wouldn’t end so simply. Every layer he’d peeled back so far possessed its share of lies, and he didn’t think he was done uncovering them. Perhaps someone had placed him in Thurman’s boots to keep digging.
He recalled what Erskine had said about people like himself being in charge. Or was it Victor who said it to Erskine? He couldn’t remember. What he did know, patting his pocket for the badge there — a badge that would open doors previously locked to him — was that he was very much in charge now. There were questions he wanted answers to. And now he was in a position to ask them.
Donald coughed into his elbow once more, an itch in his throat that he couldn’t quite soothe. He opened one of the folders and reached for his glass. Taking a few gulps of water and beginning to read, he failed to notice the faint stain left behind, the spot of blood in the crook of his elbow.
69
2312 – Week One
• Silo 17 •
JIMMY DIDN’T want to move. He couldn’t move. He remained curled on the steel grating, the lights flashing overhead, on and off, on and off, the colour of crimson.
People on the other side of the door yelled at him and at each other. Jimmy slept in fits and starts. There were dull pops from guns and zings that rang against the door. The keypad buzzed. Only a single digit entered, and it buzzed. The whole world was angry with him.
Jimmy dreamed of blood. It seeped under the door and filled the room. It rose up in the shape of his mother and father, and they lectured him, mouths yawning open in anger. But Jimmy couldn’t hear.
The yelling on the other side of the door came and went. They were fighting, these men. Fighting to get inside where it was safe. Jimmy didn’t feel safe. He felt hungry and alone. He needed to pee.
Standing was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Jimmy’s cheek made a tearing sound as he lifted it from the grating. He wiped the drool from the side of his face and felt the ridges there, the deep creases and the places his skin puckered out. His joints were stiff. His eyes were crusted together from crying. He staggered to the far corner of the room and tugged at his overalls, tried to get them free before he accidentally wet himself.
Urine splashed through the grating and trickled down on bright runs of wires in neat channels. His stomach rumbled and spun inside his belly, but he didn’t want to eat. He wanted to waste away completely. He glared up at the lights overhead that drilled into his skull. His stomach was angry with him. Everything was angry with him.
Back at the door, he waited for someone to call his name. He went to the keypad and pressed the number ‘1’. The door buzzed at him immediately. It was angry too.
Jimmy wanted to lie back down on the grating and curl back into a ball, but his stomach said to look for food. Below. There were beds and food below. Jimmy walked in a daze between the black machines. He touched their warm skin for balance, heard them clicking and whirring as if everything were normal. The red lights flashed over and over. Jimmy weaved his way between them until he found the hole in the ground.
He lowered his feet to the rungs of the ladder and noticed the buzzing noise. It came and went in time with the throbbing red lights. He pulled himself out of the shaft and crawled across the floor in pursuit of the sound. It was coming from the server with its back off. His father had called it a comm hub — whatever that was. He patted his chest and felt the key against his breastbone. The buzzing from the machine came and went with the flashing lights in perfect synchrony. He peered inside. There was a headset hanging on a hook with a wire dangling down from it. The piece on the end looked like something from computer class. He searched for a place to plug it in and saw a bank of sockets. One of them was blinking. The number ‘40’ was lit up above it.
Jimmy adjusted the headset around his ears. He lined up the jack with the socket and pressed it in until he felt a click. The lights overhead stopped their incessant throbbing and a voice came through, like the radio, only clearer.
‘Hello?’ the voice said.
Jimmy didn’t say anything. He waited.
‘Is anyone there?’
Jimmy cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said, and it felt strange to talk to an empty room. Stranger even than the radio with its hissing. It felt as though Jimmy were talking to himself.
‘Is everyone okay?’ the voice asked.
‘No,’ Jimmy said. He remembered the stairs and falling and Yani and something awful on the other side of the door. ‘No,’ he said again, wiping tears from his cheeks. ‘Everyone is not okay!’
There was muttering on the other side of the line. Jimmy sniffled. ‘Hello?’ he said.
‘What happened?’ the voice demanded. Jimmy thought it was an angry voice. Just like the people outside the door.
‘Everyone was running—’ Jimmy said. He wiped his nose. ‘They were all heading up. I fell. Mom and Dad—’
‘There were casualties?’ the man from level forty asked.
Jimmy thought of the body he’d seen on the stairway with the awful wound on his head. He thought of the woman who had gone over the rails, her scream fading to a crisp silence. ‘Yes,’ he said.
The voice on the line spat an angry curse, angry but faint. And then: ‘We were too late.’ Again, it sounded distant, as if the man were talking to someone else.
‘Too late for what?’ Jimmy asked.
There was a click, followed by a steady tone. The light above the socket marked ‘40’ went out.
‘Hello?’
Jimmy waited.
‘Hello?’
He searched inside the box for some button to press, some way to make the voices come back. There were sockets with fifty numbers above them. Why only fifty levels? He glanced at the server behind him and wondered if there were other comm stations to handle the rest of the silo. This one must be for the up top. There would be one for the mids and another for the down deep. He unplugged the jack and the tone in the headset fell silent.
Jimmy wondered if he could call another level. Maybe one of the shops near home. He ran his finger down the row looking for ‘18’ and noticed that ‘17’ was missing. There was no jack for ‘17’. He puzzled over this as the overhead lights began to flash once more. Jimmy glanced at level forty’s socket, but it remained dark. It was the top level calling. The light over the number ‘1’ blinked on and off. Jimmy glanced at the jack in his hand, lined it up with the socket and pressed it in until he heard a click.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘What the hell is going on over there?’ a voice demanded.