“And then?” the mayor prodded.
“I guess I just wanted it gone. Not her,” he said abruptly, looking up as he made his point. “I didn’t even know what all she had. I just saw the big book, some small books and all those papers. I tried to tell myself it was probably things from the archives. Things that we had already seen and dismissed. I had to look, though. I had to be sure.”
Marina remembered the open chart, the papers collected from where she had put them and how it felt to wake up and realize someone had been moving around in her room as she slept. She hadn’t considered how strange it must have been for him to be doing it.
The mayor was about to prod him further but Taylor cut him off, raising his fingers off the chair as much as the restraints allowed. “I looked at just a few things but it wasn’t hard to figure out that she had something entirely different. I saw the journals,” he pointed with his head toward the black books on the table, “and I knew what they were. We had been walking past the pages for long enough to recognize them right away. Then I saw the chart and I sat there a while, just looking at it. Something just…broke.”
She watched him talk, her hands pressed tightly to her legs to keep them from fluttering about. It helped her keep her peace. He had sat there a while? He had sat in her room and what? Decided to kill her? To take the objects no matter the cost?
Something must have shown on her face because the council medic interjected, “Based on what I’ve been able to draw from Taylor, at that point we believe he suffered a complete break with reality. When that happens, the idea of cause and effect, of action and consequence, starts to become meaningless. It’s rare, but it does happen. Usually when there is something occurring that simply can’t be accepted.” He motioned to the array of papers and books and said, “Something like this would qualify.”
The mayor listened, nodding his understanding and then looked back to Taylor. He asked, “Does that mean you don’t remember it?”
Taylor shook his head. “No. I wish I could say that, but I do. It just seems more like something from long ago or a little unreal or something.” He stopped and looked at Marina for the first time full in the face. He said, “I’m so very sorry.”
Marina felt tears prick her eyes. If he was asking for forgiveness, then he was going to be unsatisfied. She wasn’t ready for that. Not at all. She just looked away from him and didn’t acknowledge his words.
“Marina’s account was clear. She indicated that she awoke, you struggled over the book and that you pretended to stop only to attack her again as soon as the opportunity arose. Is this accurate?” the sheriff asked.
“Basically, yes,” Taylor answered, making no excuse.
“She also reports that you stopped on your own and made no further move to prevent her escape. Is that true?” he asked, making a few notes.
Taylor nodded and said, “Yes.” It was so quietly said that it would have been missed had the room not been so silent.
The council members looked at each other, giving each other meaningful little nods that held something she wasn’t privy to and didn’t want to be privy to. The mayor’s attention returned to those gathered in front of the table and to Taylor. “You understand what happens next. We have found nothing in your testimony today that would change our original decision or override the recommendations of the medic. We’d like to offer you the opportunity to address us if you think there is more that might influence our decision.”
Taylor blanched but remained very still. No one had said the word, but they were all very aware that he would leave here and undergo remediation, possibly the most drastic kind depending on how he responded to lesser forms. Either way, he wouldn’t leave this level the man he was now. When he left, whole parts of who he was would be gone. He seemed to gather himself, straightening in his chair and clearing his throat before speaking.
“I don’t have anything that I would expect to change your mind, but I do have something to say that I hope you’ll consider.” At the mayor’s nod, he went on. “You may have already made up your minds about what you have in front of you and what we found in the archives, but I’d like you to think again. This seems like good news. It’s exciting and different and it means we’re not alone. But it’s poison.”
Marina flinched a little at the word. It was the same way he had described it in her room right before he became dangerous. She could feel her palms beginning to sweat and had to work to resist the urge to stand up and back away from him. She looked at the council medic and he met her gaze. He didn’t make an overt movement, but his look told her that everything was okay. She wondered how he did that and if that was something medics practiced.
“Just look at Marina, at me and at Piotr,” Taylor went on and Marina looked up at the mention of her name. “She couldn’t stop looking and searching. She was compelled. And she is a fairly disciplined person as far as I can tell. And Piotr. He wouldn’t stop going on about how knowing how long we had been down here would change the way people viewed things. About how they could better hope and work for a future. About what more we might find.”
He stopped himself abruptly and his expression grew first hard and then regretful.
“You killed him,” Marina said. She said it quietly but without doubt. She hadn’t meant to say it but it had come out and she knew deep inside that it must be true.
All eyes shifted to Taylor then, some alarmed and others unsure. He just looked back at Marina. He nodded and said, “I did.”
“Why?” Greta demanded. She had remained silent during Taylor’s testimony. He had, after all, been one of the four allowed in on this secret and that brought people close very quickly. “Why would you do that?”
He shrugged again. With his hands tied to the chair, it seemed his shoulders had to do his expressing. “It just happened.”
“No, that’s not an answer. Killing people doesn’t just happen,” Greta said, rising a little in her seat and pointing an accusing finger at him. “You tell me right now.”
“We were on the stairs and he just kept talking about how people would be if we could tell them why we came to the silo. About how that might mean it would all end with us back outside. He wasn’t thinking! When I tried to explain what would really happen he just brushed me off. It was like he was just too excited to listen to sense!” He paused and swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut as he remembered. “Then the lights switched but didn’t come back. We were standing there on the stairs, being still just like you’re supposed to, and he told me that I didn’t have enough faith in humanity. Enough faith?”
Taylor shook his head, his expression bitter. He looked at Marina and then Greta when he said, “Faith? Look at what happened with us. Imagine it on a larger scale. Imagine if everyone acted the way we did.”
Marina knew what he was saying. She could see from the way Greta’s eyes flicked away from hers that she understood it too. Marina had kept secrets and searched without caring about consequences from the moment she encountered the pocket watch. She hadn’t just lied to her family, she had kept her clues even from those few who were supposed to share the secret. And Greta, she had forgotten that objective truth is to be found rather than leaping to conclusions. She became more a searcher than a historian. And Piotr, well, if Taylor was to be believed, then he had been filled with dreams of sharing their new possibilities with the silo. Taylor had become a killer. It was a very grim sort of math.
“I didn’t really decide to do it or anything. I just did it. I pushed him. Hard. He went over,” he finished, his voice fading away.
No one spoke for a moment, but each of the council members looked at the table and over what lay on it. Marina didn’t know precisely what they were thinking but the fact that they were all thinking hard was clear. She wondered which way their opinion would go. She looked at the fading red lines of scratches on his hands and face and remembered the vandalism of the switch and knew that it was no sudden impulse. It would do nothing more except bring Greta pain to delve further.