First Shift - Legacy (Part 6 of the Silo Series) (Wool) (3 page)

“Have you seen the economic reports?” Thurman asked. “Do you know how many jobs this bill created overnight?” He snapped his fingers. “Forty thousand, just like that. And that’s only from Georgia. A lot will be from your district, a lot of shipping, a lot of stevedores. Of course, now that it’s passed, our less nimble colleagues are grumbling that
they
should’ve had a chance to bid—”

“I drew this,” Donald interrupted, pulling out the sheet of paper. He showed it to Thurman as if the Senator would be surprised to see it had snuck into the folder. Donald wondered if this was the Senator’s daughter’s doing, some kind of a joke or hello-and-wink from Anna.

Thurman nodded. “Yes, well, it needs more detail, wouldn’t you say?”

Donald studied the architectural illustration and wondered what sort of test this was. He remembered the drawing. It was a last-minute project for his biotecture class his senior year. There was nothing unusual or amazing about it. His professor had given him a B, the red ink still tinged purple from where it had bled into the overlapping streaks of blue sky.

With an impartial eye, Donald would give the project a C+. It was spare where his classmates’ had been bold, utilitarian where he could’ve taken risks. Green tufts jutted up from the flat roof, a horrible cliché. Half the building was cut away to reveal the interspersed levels for housing, working, and shopping.

In sum, it was drab and boring. Donald couldn’t imagine a design so bare rising from the deserts of Dubai alongside the great new breed of self-sustaining skyscrapers. He certainly couldn’t see what the Senator wanted him to do with it, other than maybe burn it to the ground.

“More detail,” he murmured, repeating the Senator’s words. He flipped through the rest of the folder, looking for hints, for context.

“Hm.” Thurman sipped from his water bottle.

“Wait.” Donald studied a list of requirements written up as if by a prospective client. “This looks like a design proposal.” Words he had forgotten he’d ever learned caught his eye:
interior traffic flow, block plan, HVAC, hydroponics
—

“You’ll have to lose the sunlight.” Senator Thurman’s chair squeaked as he leaned over his desk. He moved Donald’s sweating bottle to a coaster and wiped the leather dry with his palm.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s nothing. Forget about it.” Thurman waved his hand, obviously meaning the circle of moisture left by Donald’s bottle.

“No, you said sunlight.” Donald held the folder up. “What exactly are you wanting me to do?”

“I would suggest those lights like my wife uses.” He cupped his hand into a tiny circle and pointed at the center. “She gets these tiny seeds to sprout in the winter, uses bulbs that cost me a goddamned fortune.”

“You mean grow lights.”

Thurman snapped his fingers. “And don’t worry about the cost. Whatever you need. I’m also going to get you some help with the mechanical stuff. An engineer. An entire team.”

Donald flipped through more of the folder. “What is this
for
?
And why me?”

“This is what we call a
just-in-case
building. Probably’ll never get used, but they won’t let us store the fuel rods out there unless we put this bugger nearby. It’s like this window in my basement I had to lower before our house could pass inspection. It was for...what do you call it—?”

“Egress,” Donald said, the word flowing back unaided.

Thurman snapped his fingers. “Right. Egress.” He pointed to the folder. “This building is like that window, something we’ve gotta build so the rest’ll pass inspection. This’ll be where—in the unlikely event of an attack or a leak—where facility employees can go. You know, like a shelter. And it needs to be
perfect
or this project’ll be shut down faster than a tick’s wink. Just because our bill passed and got signed doesn’t mean we’re home-free, Donny. There was that project out west that got okayed decades ago, scored funding. Eventually, it fell through.”

Donald knew the one he was talking about. A containment facility buried under a mountain. The buzz on the Hill was that the Georgia project had the same chances of success. The folder suddenly tripled in weight as he considered this. He was being asked to be a part of this future failure. He would be staking his newly won office on it.

“I’ve got Mick Webb working on something related. Logistics and planning, really. You two will need to collaborate on a few things. And Anna is taking leave from her post at MIT to lend a hand.”

“
Anna
?
” Donald fumbled for his water, his hand shaking.

“Of course. She’ll be your lead engineer on this project. There are details in there on what she’ll need, space-wise.”

Donald took a gulp of water and forced himself to swallow.

“There’s a lot of other people I could call in, sure, but this project can’t fail, you understand? It needs to be like
family
. People I can trust.” Senator Thurman interlocked his fingers. “If this is the only thing you were elected to do, I want you to do it right. It’s why I stumped for you in the first place.”

“Of course.” Donald bobbed his head to hide his confusion. He had worried during the election that the Senator’s endorsement stemmed from old family ties. This was somehow worse. Donald hadn’t been using the Senator at all; it was the
other way around
. Studying the drawing in his lap, the newly elected congressman felt one job he was inadequately trained for melt away—only to be replaced by a
different
job that seemed equally daunting.

“Wait,” he said. “I still don’t get it.” He studied the old drawing. “Why the grow lights?”

Senator Thurman reached for his bottle and polished off his water, the empty plastic crinkling in his fist. He smacked his lips and turned to toss the bottle into a blue recycling bin. His profile, Donald saw, was every bit as chiseled and handsome as the face he presented to the cameras. He had barely changed in all the years Donald had known him.

“Because, Donny—” He turned and smiled. “This building I want you to design for me—it’s going to go
below
ground.”

2110 • Silo 1

Troy held his breath and tried to remain calm while the doctor pumped the rubber bulb. The inflatable band swelled around his bicep until it pinched his skin. He wasn’t sure if slowing his breathing and steadying his pulse affected his blood pressure, but he had a strong urge to impress the man in the white coveralls. He wanted his numbers to come back
normal
.

His arm throbbed a few beats while the needle bounced and the air hissed out.

“Eighty over fifty.” The band made a ripping sound as it was torn loose. Troy rubbed the spot where his skin had been pinched.

“Is that okay?”

The doctor made a note on his clipboard. “It’s low, but not outside the norm.” Behind him, his assistant labeled a cup of dark gray urine before placing it inside a small fridge. Troy caught sight of a half-eaten sandwich among the samples, not even wrapped.

He looked down at his bare knees sticking out of the blue paper gown. His legs were pale and seemed smaller than he remembered. Bony. He felt the urge to pee but had already gone as much as he could.

“I still can’t make a fist,” he told the doctor, working his fingers in and out.

“That’s perfectly normal. Your strength will return. Look into the light, please.”

Troy followed the bright beam and tried not to blink.

“How long have you been doing this?” he asked the doctor.

“You’re my third coming out. I’ve put two under.” He lowered the light and smiled at Troy. “I’ve only been out myself for less than a month. I can tell you that the strength will return.”

Troy nodded. The doctor’s assistant came over and handed him another pill and a cup of water. Troy hesitated. He stared down at the little blue capsule nestled in the crease of his lifeline.

“A double dose this morning,” the doctor said, “and then you’ll be given one with breakfast and dinner. Please do not skip a treatment.”

Troy looked up. “What happens if I don’t take it?”

The doctor shook his head and frowned, but didn’t say anything.

Troy popped the pill in his mouth and chased it with the water. The cup looked identical to the one he’d peed in. He hoped they washed them thoroughly. A bitterness slid down his throat.

“One of my assistants will bring you some clothes and a fluid meal to kick-start your gut. If you have any dizziness or chills, you’re to call me at once. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here in six months.” The doctor made a note, then chuckled. “Well, someone else will see you. My shift will be over.”

“Okay.” Troy shivered. The doctor looked up from his clipboard.

“You’re not cold, are you? I keep it a little extra warm in here.”

Troy hesitated before answering. “No, doctor. I’m not cold. Not anymore.”

••••

Troy entered the lift at the end of the hall, his legs still weak, and studied the array of numbered buttons. The orders they’d given him included directions to his office, but he vaguely remembered how to get there. Much of his orientation had survived the decades of sleep; it was other items that seemed to be slipping away.

Memory wasn’t supposed to work like this. He felt as though he were on a ship beset by fog. There were breaks where he could spot the shoreline, the recent past, but much of what lay inland was obscured. Voices rang out, drifting over the water. Troy sensed bad things happening to the people deep in the woods.

The doors to the lift closed automatically, and he shook away the image. His apartment was on thirty-seven; he remembered that. His office was on thirty-four. He reached for a button, intending to head straight to his desk, and instead found his hand sliding up to the very top. He still had a few minutes before he needed to be anywhere, and he felt some strange urge, some tug, to get as high as possible, to rise through the soil pressing in from all sides.

The button for the top floor clicked and glowed to life as he applied pressure. Something loomed above him. He could feel an attraction upward, a thread running clear through the top of his skull and yanking him like a puppet. There was something there he needed to see, something he’d left behind.

Troy struggled to remember as the lift lurched upward. He groped for this gossamer and fading dream, this glimpse through the mist—but the bitterness in his throat and the pills in his stomach were a tide tugging him away from the shore. Why had he been crying earlier? Or had he cried? He couldn’t remember. His stomach grumbled around the shake he’d been forced to drink. He shivered but was not cold.

The elevator accelerated up the shaft. There was a whooshing sound as another car or maybe the counterweight zoomed by. He knew these things. The round buttons flashed as the floors passed. There was an enormous spread of them, seventy in all. The centers of many were dull from years of rubbing. This didn’t seem right. Just yesterday, the buttons were shiny and new. Just yesterday,
everything
was.

The elevator slowed. Troy palmed the wall for balance, his legs still uncertain.

The door dinged and slid open. Troy blinked at the bright lights in the hallway. He left the elevator and followed a short walk toward a room leaking chatter. His new boots were stiff on his feet, the generic gray coveralls itchy. He tried to imagine four more times of waking up like this, feeling this weak and disoriented. Five shifts of six months each. Five shifts he hadn’t volunteered for. He wondered if it would get progressively easier or if it would only get worse.

The bustle in the cafeteria seemed to modulate as he entered. A few heads turned his way, utensils pausing. He saw at once that his gray coveralls weren’t so generic. There was a scattering of colors seated at the tables, forks paused between plate and mouth. A large cluster of reds, quite a few yellows. No other grays.

That first meal of sticky paste he’d been given rumbled once more in his stomach. He wasn’t allowed to eat anything else for six hours, which made the aroma from the canned foods overwhelming. He remembered the fare, had lived on it during his orientation. His orientation after—

He couldn’t remember. It was there, but he was losing it. And the food he had once grown tired of suddenly seemed appetizing.