She fumbled for the latches, could barely feel them through her gloves. Her gloves were too thick. They were going to kill her.
She rolled to her belly and crawled through the soup, her hands and knees slipping. She reached the door, gasping, and fumbled for the handle, found it, threw the door open. There was a rack of knives gleaming behind the counter. She lurched to her feet and grabbed one, held the blade in her thick mitts, and slumped to the floor, exhausted and dizzy.
Turning the blade toward her own neck, Juliette groped for the latch. She slid the point along her collar until it caught in the crack of the button. Steadying herself, her arm shaking, she moved the knife and pressed in, shoving it toward her body against all physical revulsion at the act.
There was a faint click. Juliette gasped and groped along the rim with the blade for the other button until she found it. She repeated the maneuver.
Another click, and her helmet popped off.
Juliette’s body took over for her, urging deep gulps of foul air. The stench was unbearable, but she couldn’t stop gasping for more. Rotted food, biological decay, a tepid filth of stenches invaded her mouth, tongue, nose.
She turned to the side and wretched, but nothing came out. Her hands were still slippery with soup. Breathing was painful; she imagined a burning sensation on her skin, but it could’ve been her fevered state. She crawled away from the walk-in, toward the cafeteria, out of the fog of rotting soup before she managed a gulp of air.
Air.
She took another lungful, the odor still overpowering, the soup coating her. But beyond the stench, something else was there. Something faint. Something breathable that began to force away the dizziness and the panic. It was oxygen. Life.
Juliette was still alive.
She laughed a mad laugh and stumbled toward the stairwell, drawn to the green glow of light, breathing deeply and too exhausted to appreciate this, the impossible life still in her.
9
“For you and I are past our dancing days.”
Knox saw the uproar in Mechanical as just another emergency to overcome. Like the time the basement subwall sprung a leak, or when the oil rig hit that pocket of methane and they had to evacuate eight levels until the air handlers made it safe to return. Against the inevitable flow of commotion, what he needed to do was push for order. To assign tasks. He had to break a huge undertaking down to discrete bits and make sure they fell to the right hands. Only this time, he and his people wouldn’t be setting out to repair something. There were things the good people of Mechanical meant to break.
“Supply is the key,” he told his foremen, pointing to the large scale blueprint hanging on the wall. He traced the stairwell up the thirty flights to Supply’s main manufacturing floor. “Our greatest advantage is that IT doesn’t know we’re coming.” He turned to his shift leaders. “Shirly, Marck, and Courtnee, you’ll come with me. We’ll load up with supplies and take your shadows with us. Walker, you can wire ahead to let ‘em know we’re coming. Be discreet, though. Assume IT has ears. Say we have a load of your repairs to deliver.”
He turned to Jenkins, who had shadowed under Knox for six years before he grew his own beard and moved to third shift. The assumption everywhere was that Knox’s job was his in waiting. “Jinks, I want you to take over down here. There are no days off for a while. Keep the place running, but get ready for the worst. I want as much food stockpiled as possible. And water. Make sure the cistern is topped up. Divert from the hydroponics feed if you have to, but be discreet. Think of an excuse, like a leak or something, in case they notice. Meanwhile, have someone make the rounds and check every lock and hinge, just in case the fighting comes to us. And stockpile whatever weapons you can make up. Pipes, hammers, whatever.”
Some eyebrows were lifted at this, but Jenkins nodded at the list as if it all made sense and was doable. Knox turned to his foremen. “What? You know where this is heading, right?”
“But what’s the larger picture?” Courtnee asked, glancing at the tall blueprint of their buried home. “Storm IT, and then what? Take over running this place?”
“We already run this place,” Knox growled. He slapped his hand across the floors of the mid-thirties. “We just do it in the dark. Like these levels here are dark to us. But now I mean to shine a light in their rat hole and scare them out, see what else they’re hiding.”
“You understand what they’ve been doing, right?” Marck turned to Courtnee. “They’ve been sending people out to die. On purpose. Not because it had to happen, but because they wanted it to!”
Courtnee bit her lip and didn’t say anything, just stared at the blueprint.
“We need to get going,” Knox said. “Walker, get that wire out. Let’s load up. And think of something pleasant to chat about while we’re on the move. No grumbling about this where some porter can hear and make a chit or two ratting us out.”
They nodded. Knox slapped Jenkins on the back and dipped his chin at the younger man. “I’ll send word when we need everyone. Keep the bare bones you think you’ve gotta have down here and send the rest. Timing is everything, okay?”
“I know what to do,” Jenkins said. He wasn’t trying to be uppity, just reassuring his elder.
“All right,” Knox said. “Then let’s get to it.”
• • • •
They made it up ten flights with little complaint, but Knox could begin to feel the burn in his legs from the heavy load. He had a canvas sack stuffed full of welding smocks on his wide shoulders, plus a bundle of helmets. A rope had been strung through their chin straps, and they clattered down his wide back. Marck struggled with his load of pipe stock as they kept trying to slide against one another and slip out of his arms. The shadows brought up the rear, behind the women, with heavy sacks of blasting powder tied together so they hung around their necks. Professional porters with similarly full loads breezed past them in both directions, their glances signaling a mix of curiosity and competitive anger. When one porter—a woman Knox recognized from deliveries to the down deep—stopped and offered to help, he gruffly sent her on her way. She hurried up the steps, looking back over her shoulder before spiraling out of view, and Knox regretted taking his exhaustion out on her.
“Keep it up,” he told the others. Even with the small group, they were making a spectacle. And it was growing ever more tiresome to hold their tongues as news of Juliette’s amazing disappearance gyred all around them. At almost every landing, a group of people, often younger people, stood around and gossiped about what it all meant. The taboo had moved from thought to whisper. Forbidden notions were birthed on tongues and swam through the air. Knox ignored the pain in his back and lumbered up and up, each step driving them closer to Supply, feeling more and more like they needed to get there in a hurry.
As they left the one-thirties, the grumblings were fully in the air. They were nearing the upper half of the down deep, where people who worked, shopped, and ate in the mids mingled with those who would rather they didn’t. Deputy Hank was on the stairwell of one-twenty-eight, trying to mediate between two arguing crowds. Knox squeezed past, hoping the officer wouldn’t turn and see his heavily loaded train and ask them what they were doing up this far. As he ascended past the ruckus, Knox glanced back to watch the shadows slink past, hugging the inner rail. Deputy Hank was still asking a woman to please calm down as the landing sank out of sight.
They passed the dirt farm on one-twenty-six, and Knox figured this to be a key asset. The thirties of IT were a long hike up, but if they had to fall back, they would need to hold at Supply. Between their manufacturing, the food on this level, and the machinery of Mechanical, they might be self-sufficient. He could think of a few weak links, but many more for IT. They could always shut off their power or stop treating their water—but he really hoped, as they approached Supply on weary legs, that it wouldn’t come to any of that.They were greeted on the landing of one-ten by frowns. McLain, the elder woman and head of Supply, stood with her arms crossed over her yellow coveralls, her affect screaming unwelcome.
“Hello, Jove.” Knox fixed her with a wide smile.
“Don’t Jove me,” McLain said. “What’s this nonsense you’re after?”
Knox glanced up and down the stairwell, shrugged his heavy load higher up his shoulder. “Mind if we step in and talk about it?”
“I don’t want any trouble here,” she said, her eyes blazing beneath her lowered brow.
“Let’s go inside,” Knox said. “We haven’t stopped once on the way up. Unless you want us collapsing out here.”
McLain seemed to consider this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned to three of her workers, who formed an imposing wall behind her, and nodded. While they pulled open the gleaming doors of Supply, she turned and grabbed Knox’s arm. “Don’t get comfortable,” she told him.
Inside the front room of Supply, Knox found a small army of men and women in their yellow coveralls, waiting. Most of them stood behind the low, long counter where the people of the silo normally waited for whatever parts they needed, whether newly fabricated or recently repaired. The parallel and deep aisles of shelves beyond ran into the gloomy distance, boxes and bins bulging off of them. The room was noticeably quiet. Usually, the mechanical thrumming and clanking sounds of fabrication could be heard worming their way through the space. Or one might hear workers chatting unseen back in the stacks while they sorted newly fashioned bolts and nuts into hungry bins.
Now it was just silence and distrustful glares. Knox stood with his people, their sacks and loads slumping exhaustedly to the floor, sweat on their brows, while the men and women of Supply watched, unmoving.
He had expected a more amicable welcome. Mechanical and Supply had a long history together. They jointly ran the small mine beneath the lowest levels of Mechanical that supplemented the silo’s stockpile of ores.
But now, as McLain followed her boys back inside, she graced Knox with a look of scorn he hadn’t seen since his mother passed away.
“What in the hell is the meaning of this?” she hissed at Knox.
He was taken aback by the language, especially in front of his people. He thought of himself and McLain as equals, but now he was being snapped at as if by one of Supply’s dogs.
McLain ranged down the exhausted line of mechanics and their shadows before turning back to him.
“Before we discuss how we’re cleaning this problem up, I want to hear how you’re handling your employees, whoever was responsible.” Her eyes bore through him. “I am correct in assuming you had nothing to do with this, right? That you’ve come to apologize and shower me with bribes?”
Shirly started to say something, but Knox waved her off. There were a lot of people in the room just waiting for this to go undiplomatically.
“Yes, I do apologize,” Knox said, grinding his teeth together and bowing his head. “And no, I just learned of this earlier today. After I found out about the cleaning, in fact.”
“So it was all your electrician,” McLain said, her thin arms crossed tightly over her chest. “One man.”
“That’s right. But—”
“I’ve meted out punishment to those involved here, let me tell you. And I suppose you’ll have to do more than banish that old fart to his room—”
There was laughter behind the counter. Knox put a hand on Shirly’s shoulder to keep her in place. He looked past McLain to the men and women arranged behind McLain.
“They came and took one of our workers,” he said. His chest may have been heavy, but his voice still boomed. “You know how it happens. When they want a body for cleaning, they take it.” He thumped his chest. “And I let them. I stood there because I trust this system. I fear it, just as any of you.”
“Well—” McLain began, but Knox continued in that voice that routinely gave calm commands over the racket of machines run amok.
“One of my people was taken, and it was the oldest of us, the wisest of us, who intervened on her behalf. It was the weakest and most scared of us who braved his neck. And whoever of you he turned to for help, and who gave it, I owe you my life.” Knox blinked away the blur and continued. “You gave her more than a chance to walk over that hill, to die in peace and out of sight. You gave me the courage to open my eyes. To see this veil of lies we live behind—”
“That’s quite enough,” McLain barked. “Someone could be sent to cleaning for even listening to such nonsense, to such drivel—”
“It’s not nonsense,” Marck cried down the line. “Juliette is dead because of—”
“She’s dead because she broke these very laws!” McLain snapped, her voice high and shrill. “And now you march up here to break even more? On my level?”
“We aim to break heads!” Shirly said.
“Leave it!” Knox told them both. He saw the anger in McLain’s eyes, but he also saw something else: the sporadic nods and raised brows among the rank and file behind her.
A porter entered the room with empty sacks in each hand and looked around at the tense silence. One of the large Supply workers by the door ushered him back onto the landing with apologies, telling him to return later. Knox composed his words carefully during the interruption.
“No person has ever been sent to cleaning for listening, however great the taboo.” He allowed that to sink in. He glared at McLain as she moved to interrupt, but she seemed to decide against it. “So let me be sent to cleaning by any of you for what I’m about to say. I will welcome it if these facts do not move you to instead push forward with me and my men. For this is what Walker and a few of you brave souls have shown us this morning. We have cause for more hope than they’ll dare give us. There’s more at our disposal to broaden our horizons than they’ll allow. We have been raised on a pack of lies, made to fear by the sight of our kinsmen rotting on the hills, but now one of us has crossed over that! They have seen new horizons! We have been given seals and washers and told that they should suffice, but what are they?”