“Oh, Taylor. Don’t be sorry. No one blames you. No one!” Marina assured him, guiding him to his chair and getting him down into it. He was like a puppet. He bent and moved but only in response to another. He was a wreck. Blood speckled his coveralls from shallow gouges on one cheek. She saw more gouges, deeper ones, on his wrists and hands. He must have tried so hard to hold onto Piotr when he fell to be so wounded.
She poured him a cup of water from the pitcher on his table and pressed it into his hands. “Drink,” she said and guided the cup to his mouth until he drank.
He swallowed once dutifully but a sob came and he spluttered water in the doing. She put that aside and washed his face with a cool cloth, re-wetting and wringing by turns at the small sink in the room. She kept her eyes on him at every moment. Eventually, he calmed and the sobs died down. It was a horrible replay of what she had just gone through with Greta. The difference was that Taylor wasn’t just sad and in shock from the loss, he appeared shattered.
Soon enough, he was calm but it was an eerie, absent calm. It was more like the collapse of someone who just can’t process one thing more. Greta came a bit later and assured Marina that she had gotten a little rest. She would stay with Taylor for the time being.
Marina hated to be an opportunist, but this was just too much of an opening to miss. She was upset about Piotr too, certainly, but there was something that needed doing. Piotr would probably have done the same thing had their positions been reversed.
As she opened the door, she turned and said, “We won’t be working so I’m going to take care of some things I’ve been putting off. I’d just rather not think about…this. I’ll be back tonight. Is that okay?”
She saw Taylor wince on the bed at her oblique mention of what had happened and Greta’s eyes grew shiny, but she only nodded. As Marina closed the door behind her, she saw Greta sit on the bed and stroke Taylor’s hair back just like a mother would for an upset child. It made her feel like less of a shit for sneaking away knowing they would comfort each other.
She gathered her things and pressed her hand to the book again. The only comfort Marina wanted was to see if she was right. She told her husband she was going to do so some work elsewhere for the day and earned a confused look that she ignored. She took to the stairs.
Her exercise had made a difference and the levels slipped past as she focused ever upward. She took breaks and did stretches, garnering a few curious looks as she crouched right on the landing to do them. She drank plenty of fluids and took a dose of the pills she had remaining just to be sure. This was a trip further than the one that had done her in not so long ago but she was going to get it done fast even if it killed her.
When she crested the landing on Level 34 she was exhausted and she knew she was at her limit. They were used to seeing her now and knew she was engaged in some special, possibly IT related project, and so they simply let her go where she wanted. Piotr’s office was off limits and that would be in poor taste anyway, but she borrowed an empty room and lay down for a nap. Her pack served as her pillow and she drew her knees up to her chest against the chill, but the short sleep was deep and satisfying. Her legs felt good so she took another dose of pills and spent time preparing for the next part of the climb.
She was hungry, but wouldn’t stop further. Her task was simply too urgent. Despite the fact that whatever was there, if anything was there, had been there for a very long time, she had the irrational feeling that she needed to hurry or it would be gone when she arrived.
At Level 5 she took a moment before entering the double doors. Marina wanted to look exactly like she belonged and raise no curiosity from passersby. She squared her shoulders and swung the entry door wide. Her eyes went directly to the drop ceiling. Yes, it was exactly the same as the one on her level. Above those ragged tiles would be a busy runway of pipes and conduits, air ducts and electrical wire. And there would be relay boxes. Numbered relay boxes.
Marina tore her eyes from the ceiling and pushed back her desire to loudly proclaim victory at being this close. She hurried to the section of Level 5 she needed. From the maintenance closet she extracted one ladder and one tool kit, not signing the log but hoping she’d have it back in place before anyone needed it. The next problem was that she had absolutely no idea where in all these ceilings it would be.
Each section of the level was numbered, like a slice of pie. She was in fourteen like the clue in the book indicated. That was easy. But even in the correct section, there was a whole lot of hallway space and how they were numbered wasn’t something Marina had ever picked up. Joseph probably knew but she hadn’t seen any way to bring that up when she dashed away with barely a word. Oh, hey honey, I’m off to do something entirely legitimate but mysterious so can you tell me exactly how the relay boxes in the ceilings are numbered before I do? She gave a quiet little laugh. Yeah, that would have gone over like a dropped lift bag. Then she remembered Piotr and all the humor fell away.
There was only one thing to do so she started right where she was and climbed up to peek in the ceiling. It was extraordinarily dusty and dirty up there. As she kept the foamy tile tilted up with her head, she was faced with at least an inch, maybe more, of dense grayish brown dust. It was even piled in little ridges all along the pipes. She immediately regretted letting out a deep sigh when it disturbed the surface and sent a cloud into the air. She popped her head back down to let it settle for a moment and gave an all-business nod to a resident that walked by eyeballing her. The gray coveralls with a patch that bespoke something to do with electronics and mechanical apparently gave her a pass.
When she thought it was probably safe, she poked her head back up and flicked her light around in the dim space. She could see boxes set at regular intervals along the walls on both sides. Peeking back down and then up to try to marry their locations, she decided that each box marked the change from main lines to the compartments. There were more doors than boxes so the ratio looked to be about two to one. It made sense.
There was no box near her, perched as she was at the start of the hallway near a closet, so she reset the tile and moved the ladder. It was perfect. Her head was no more than a foot from the box. It was much bigger than it had looked to be from her initial position. She thought about how much she could stuff into one of those and her excitement rose.
This box was covered with a thick layer of obscuring dust like everything else and she couldn’t even make out the engraving on it. She smoothed it away and read the designation. She had no idea if that meant she was close or not. She was in the right area, though, and that was something.
She repeated the procedure about halfway up this main rear hallway. Ahead of her, the curve of the silo wall obscured what lay beyond. She considered and counted the number of boxes she must have passed in her head. The numbers were decreasing and if she was right about the pervasive logic of the silo, the smallest ones should be where the next lower numbered section met this one.
At the last hallway junction to this section, the dividing line was denoted by a strip of very old black paint with a 14 on one side and a 13 on the other. She turned down the hallway and selected a spot. One more peek and she realized she was very close. Shining the flashlight, she tried to count down the boxes and saw there was an extra. After seeing them in their ordered lines, an extra stood out. It was like a banner hanging up to proclaim a winner. She grinned into the dim space, leaving cracks in the dust that covered her face.
It was the end of a shift and the hallways had more traffic, this one a lot more. Given that almost this entire level was residences, it made sense but it also made her work awkward. Anyone might decide to stop and see what she was doing. If there was a lot in the box, then it would be obvious. She shook her head and decided there was nothing to be done about it as she resettled the ladder at the spot she would need. A few more nods to residents and one explanation that there was a short that needed tracking down and she was ready.