He hadn’t known she was sick when the two men decided she was the right fit for their needs. Wallis knew her well but Graham had only a few professional dealings with her to consider. All of them were positive but still only professional and relatively distant. He felt terrible about her tromping up so many levels to fix this thing he didn’t care one whit for anymore and was having a hard time figuring out how to go about approaching the subject. It was much harder to tell this sort of thing to a stranger.
She apparently sensed something amiss because she gave a few pointedly suspicious glances at his uncharacteristic hovering about while she worked. At one point, while she was stripping insulation from a few wires with quick, sharp flicks of her wrist, she flat out commented that he looked like he had bees in his pants.
She had caught on almost immediately that he was holding some secret as Graham looked around with a decidedly guilty air at her comment. It was obvious that he was looking to see if he were being watched and he might as well have held a sign above his head that read, ‘I’m Up to Something’. She had just shaken her head in disgust and stopped talking to him after that.
With pursed lips and a grim, business-like expression on her face, she stayed mum until the unit was repaired. When she slammed the bent lid home she turned toward Graham, hands on her hips, and considered him for a moment. Her shrewd appraisal made Graham nervous and he shuffled his feet like a child being scrutinized by a displeased parent. He knew he was doing it but was powerless to stop himself and that just made it worse. The red cheeks that followed spoke even more eloquently of him being up to something. He realized he was a terrible conspirator. It was no wonder no one from Silo 40 ever told him much.
Grace was being dosed, at least Graham assumed she was, but her gaze was sharp and clear. She finally broke the silence, cleared her throat and told him she wanted to discuss some labor swaps with him as some of his folks could address electrical problems in a pinch. The steady gaze she had held him with and the little twitch of an eyebrow gave him to understand that she knew he was up to something and would play along for the moment.
Graham was grateful she opened the door for him, even if she didn’t know what he really wanted, and he wasted no time. He rushed her down several hallways, a hurrying hand on her elbow, and then pushed her toward a broom closet. It was dark and smelled of sour old mops and even older cleaning supplies.
Both of them were a little out of breath by the time they reached the closet and Grace gave him a very strange look when he opened the door to the dank little room. After a moment, she shrugged and stepped inside, neatly disengaging his touch on her arm as she did so. Graham follow close behind and shut them into a darkness broken only by the thinnest strip of light cutting the bottom edge of the door.
He took a deep breath and began by asking her how far she would go to save the silo from what was happening inside it if she knew there was a way to do it.
Given that she was of an age with him, Graham figured she must understand what he was saying to mean the sickness. She was silent for so long that Graham feared he and Wallis had chosen wrongly after all. A dark feeling of failure started to descend upon him when she finally spoke.
“I can’t think of a single thing I wouldn’t do,” she answered. Her voice was soft and sincere as it came from the thick blackness around them.
In that darkness, Graham smiled and told her everything.
The trio was almost ready to act and fear of failure had turned Graham’s belly to water. Old habits, the ones that spoke to obedience and the need for absolute order, had lost their validity but doing this many things completely against all those habits was still a difficult prospect for him. He hadn’t been back to Level 34 since that last fateful conversation with Silo One and his stomach gurgled when he thought about talking to them.
He had gone so far as to filch the tiniest dose of the calming additive for the water and mix it in his morning tea. It wasn’t the forgetting drug, but the less intrusive calming one that simply stopped a person from caring too much about anything. He felt it was a good foil against detecting deception or undue stress when he finally did contact Silo One later on in the day. It was an unavoidable duty.
He sipped at his flask as he walked around IT, giving clarification where questions existed, orders when such were needed and encouragement to all. And avoiding Tony wherever possible. He gave him his instructions, which sent him off and running. Whatever else there was to say about Tony, in every aspect of IT except the important parts, he knew what he was doing. When he finally did manage to duck into the server room with enough privacy to go below, he knew they must have tried to reach him at some point and he took a few minutes to calm himself.
It turned out that wasn’t hard to do at all and he looked at his canteen, thinking perhaps he put just a little too much happy juice in it. He felt really good at the moment and that was probably not the mood he was going for. He shrugged and took another sip.
He made his way down the little hallway and into the kitchen facilities, dumping the remaining tea from his canteen and giving it a good wash to avoid the temptation of further indulgence. He didn’t have to worry about the water here, since by design it was pumped from the pre-conditioned water and utterly un-dosed. He cleared his throat and gave himself a stern mental talking to on the importance of remaining serious.
When he reached Silo One, he sensed a great deal of consternation at the long days since he had last called given the situation. Apparently, Silo One had tried to reach him several times but he had never been notified. He reiterated that they had only a fraction of the personnel they needed and he had to do many other jobs. That was entirely true and he felt the tension on the line ease.
He, in turn, had to suppress a giggle. He definitely had way too much of the calming additive. Negotiations ensued, though Graham doubted the voice at the other end would have called them that, and in the end, he had promised to come to check once per four days from that day on.
The reason for their repeated calls had been to ask why no records were yet available on computer. Graham thought he did a passable job of listing the enormous number of emergencies they were dealing with and then at sounding completely sincere when he apologized. He told them he would get right on it.
He figured they would be watching him until he actually took steps to do as they instructed, so he had gone from his lair beneath the servers and made a public show of compliance by sending a wire to the medic and asking him his progress in his collection of records. He decided to add a little flourish to end the message by writing that he was anxious to finalize the plan and get started.
As he hit send, Graham hoped the medic wouldn’t be equally anxious and actually start scanning records. He hoped the medic in question would be busy enough trying to tend to too many jobs and blow him off entirely for a day or so. Maybe Graham could arrange for the medic to get a dose of that calming additive too. It was great for feeling no sense of urgency. It was something to consider.
The trio needed a few more days to get their act together and he didn’t want Silo One to get any notion they had all that they needed. There was just so much to do. Talking to the right people in the other silos needed to be next on his agenda and he would need all his wits. No more happy juice for him, he decided.