by Hugh Howey
Page 26
Picking up a screwdriver, Charlotte slotted it into one of the tool pouches on her coveralls. Not sure what to do, she got to work on the drone, killing time. She would go out later that night when there were fewer people up and less chance of being spotted. First, she would get the next machine ready to fly. Donny wasn’t there – his work lay unfinished – but she could soldier on. She could piece things back together, one bolt and one nut at a time. And that night, she would go out and find the part she needed. She would win back her voice and reach out to those people in that stricken silo, if any of them were still alive.
37
The arriving lift struck midnight. Well, five past midnight. That’s when Charlotte finally built up enough nerve to venture out, and the lift sent a ding echoing through the armory.
The doors rattled open, and she stepped inside memories of a lost place and time, memories of a normal world where lifts took people to and from work. Clutching the ID card Donny had given her, she felt another pang of doubt. The doors began to close. Charlotte stuck her boot out and allowed the doors to slam against her foot, and the lift opened again. She waited for alarms to sound as the doors tried to close a second time. Maybe she should get off the damn thing and make up her mind, let the lift be on its way, grab another in an hour or two. The doors pinched her boot tentatively, and then retreated, like a monster considering whether to eat her. Charlotte decided she had delayed long enough.
She pressed her ID card to the reader and watched its eye blink green, then pressed the button for level thirty-four. Admin and comms. The lion’s den. The doors seemed to sigh gratefully as they finally met. The floors began to flash by.
Charlotte checked the back of her neck and felt a few loose strands of hair. She tucked them into her cap. Admin was a risk – she would stand out in red coveralls meant for the reactor level – but it would be even more awkward to show up where she seemed to belong while not knowing her way around or what she was supposed to do. She patted her pockets to make sure she had her tools, made sure they were visible. They were her cover. Hidden inside a large pouch on her hip, a pistol from one of the storage bins sagged conspicuously. Charlotte’s heart raced as the levels flew past. She tried to imagine the world outside that Donald had described, the dry and lifeless wasteland. She imagined the elevator going all the way up and opening on those barren hills, the wind howling inside the lift. It might be a relief.
No passengers joined her on the way up. It was a good decision, going this time of night. Thirty-six, thirty-five, and then the lift slowed. The doors opened on a hallway, the lights beyond harsh and bright. She doubted her disguise immediately. A man looked up from a gate a dozen paces distant. There was nothing familiar about this world, nothing like her home of the past few weeks. She tugged the brim of her hat down, aware that it didn’t match her coveralls. The important thing was confidence, which she felt none of. Be brash. Direct. She told herself that the days here were full of sameness. Everyone would see what they expected to see. She approached the man and his gate and held out her ID.
“You expected?” the man asked. He pointed to the scanner on her side of the gate. Charlotte swiped the card, not knowing what might happen, fully prepared to run, to pull out the pistol, to surrender, or some confusing mix of all three.
“We’re showing a, uh … power drain on this level. ” Her pretend-sick voice sounded ludicrous to her own ears. But then, she knew her voice better than anyone – she told herself that was why it sounded funny. It might sound normal to someone else. She also hoped a power drain made as little sense to this man as it did to her. “I was sent up to check the comm room. You know where it is?”
A question for him. Tickle his male ego for directions. Charlotte felt a rivulet of sweat run down the nape of her neck and wondered if there were anymore loose strands of hair. She fought the urge to check. Lifting her arm might tighten her coveralls across her chest. Sizing up the large man, she pictured him grabbing her and slamming her to the ground, hands the size of small plates pummeling her.
“Comms? Of course. Yeah. Down the hall to the end, turn left. Second door on your right. ”
“Thanks. ” Tipping her hat allowed her to keep her head down. She pushed through the bars with a clack and the tick of some invisible counter.
“Forgetting something?”
She turned. Her hand fell to the pouch by her leg.
“Need you to sign the work log. ” The guard held out a worn digital tablet, its screen a haze of curling scratches.
“Right. ” Charlotte took the plastic stylus hanging from a cord of wire repaired with tape. She studied the entry box in the center of the screen. There was a place to write the time and a place to sign her name. She filled in the time and glanced at her chest, already forgetting. Stan. Her name was Stan. She scrawled this messily, tried to make it look casual, handed him the tablet and stylus.
“See you on your way out,” the guard said.
Charlotte nodded and hoped her way out would prove just as uneventful.
She followed his directions down the main hall. There was more activity, more sounds than she expected at that time of night. There were lights on in a few of the offices, the squeak of chairs and filing cabinets and keyboards clattering. A door opened down the hall, and a man stepped out, pulled the door shut behind him. Charlotte saw his face, and her legs went numb. She staggered a few steps on stalks of bone and meat, wobbly. Dizzy. Nearly fell.
She lowered her head and scratched the back of her neck, disbelieving. But it was Thurman. Slimmer and older-looking. And then images of Donny curled in a ball and being beaten half to death flooded back. The hallway blurred behind a coat of tears. The white hair, the tall frame. How had she not recognized him then?
“You’re a ways from home, aren’t you?” Thurman asked.
His voice was sandpaper. It was a familiar scratch. As familiar as her mother’s or her father’s voice would’ve been.
“Checking a power drain,” Charlotte said, not stopping or turning, hoping he meant her coveralls and not her gender. How could he not hear that it was her voice? How could he not recognize her gait, her frame, the bare patch of skin on the back of her neck, that few square inches of exposed flesh, anything to betray her?
“See to it,” he said.
She walked a dozen paces. Two dozen. Sweating. Feeling drunk. She waited until she was at the end of the hall, just starting to make the turn, before glancing back toward the security station. Thurman was there in the distance, speaking with the guard, his white hair like the bare sun. Second door on the right, she reminded herself. She was in danger of forgetting the guard’s directions to the comm room, such was the pounding of her heart and the racing of her mind. She took a deep breath and reminded herself why she was there. Seeing Thurman and realizing it was he who had laid into Donny had stunned her. But there was no time for processing that. A door stood before her. She tested the knob, then stepped inside.
••••
A lone man sat inside the comm room, staring at a bank of monitors and flashing indicators. He turned in his seat as Charlotte entered, a mug in his hand, a great belly wedged between the armrests. Fine wisps of hair had been combed across an otherwise bald head. He peeled back one of the cups from his ear and lifted his eyebrows questioningly.
There had to be half a dozen radio units scattered across the U-shaped arrangement of workbenches and comfortable chairs. An embarrassment of riches. Charlotte just needed one part.
“Yeah?” the radio operator asked.
Charlotte’s mouth felt dry. One lie had gotten her past the guard; she had one more fib prepared. She cleared her mind of having seen Thurman in the hallway, of images of him kicking her brother.
“Here to fix one of your units,” she said. She pulled a screwdriver from a pocket and briefly imagined having to fight this man, felt a surge of adrenaline. She had to stop thinking like a soldier
. She was an electrician. And she needed to get him talking so that she wasn’t. “Which is the one with the bum mic?” She waved her screwdriver across the units. Years of piloting drones and working with computers had taught her one thing: there was always a problem machine. Always.
The radio operator narrowed his eyes. He studied her for a moment, then glanced around the room. “You must mean number two,” he said. “Yeah. The button’s sticky. I’d given up on anyone taking a look. ” The chair squeaked as he leaned back and locked his fingers behind his head. His armpits were dark stains. “Last guy said it was minor. Not worth replacing. Said to use it until it gave out. ”
Charlotte nodded and went to the machine he had indicated. It was too easy. She attacked the side panel with her driver, her back to the operator.
“You work down on the reactor levels, right?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. Ate across from you in the cafeteria a while back. ”
Charlotte waited for him to ask her name again or to resume some conversation he’d had with a different tech. The driver slipped out of her sweaty palm and clattered on the desk. She scooped it back up. She could feel the operator watching her work.
“You think you’ll be able to fix it?”
She shrugged. “I need to take it with me. Should have it back tomorrow. ” She pulled the side panel off and loosened the screw holding the microphone’s cord to the casing. The cord itself unplugged from a board inside the machine. On second thought, she undid this board and pulled it out as well. Couldn’t remember if she had one installed already, and it made her look as though she really knew what the hell she was doing.
“You’ll have it tomorrow? That’s great. Really appreciate this. ”
Charlotte gathered the parts and stood up straight. Pinching the brim of her hat was enough of a goodbye; she turned and headed out the door, leaving too hastily, she suspected. The side panel and screws had been left on the counter. A real tech would’ve put them back, wouldn’t they? She wasn’t sure. She knew a few pilots from a different life who would’ve laughed to have seen her pretending to be technically inclined, modding drones and building radios, putting grease rather than rouge on her face.
The operator said one last thing, but his words were pinched off as she pulled the door shut. She hurried down the hall and toward the main corridor, expecting to round the bend and find Thurman there with a handful of guards, wide shoulders blocking her way. She slotted the screwdriver back into her pocket and coiled the microphone wire up, cradled it and the board to her chest. When she turned the corner, there was no one in the hall except the guard. It took what felt like hours to walk down that corridor to the security gate. It took days. The walls pressed in and throbbed with her heartbeat. Her coveralls clung to her damp skin. Tools rattled, and the gun weighed heavy at her hip. With each step, the lift doors somehow drew two steps further away from her.
She stopped at the gate, remembered the place on the slate to mark her time out, and made a show of checking the guard’s clock before scratching the time.
“That was quick,” the guard said.
She forced a smile but didn’t look up. “Wasn’t a big deal. ” She handed him the tablet and stepped through the clacking gates. Behind her, down the hall, someone closed an office door, boots squeaking on tile. Charlotte marched toward the lifts and jabbed the call button once, twice, wishing the damn thing would hurry. The lift dinged its arrival. There was a clomp of boots behind her.
“Hey!” someone yelled.
Charlotte didn’t turn. She hurried inside the elevator as someone else clacked through the security gates.
“Hold that for me. ”
38
A body slammed against the lift doors, a hand jutting inside. Charlotte nearly screamed in fright, nearly slapped at the hand, but then the doors were opening, and a man crowded into the lift beside her, breathing hard.
“Going down, right?”
The name patch on his gray coveralls read Eren. He caught his breath while the doors closed. Charlotte’s hand was trembling. It took two tries to scan her card. She reached for the button marked “54”, but caught herself before pressing it. She had no business being on that level. No one did. The man was watching her, his own card out, waiting for her to decide.
What level for the reactor? She had it written down on a piece of paper inside one of her pockets, but she couldn’t very well pull it out and study it. Suddenly, she could smell the grease on her face, could feel herself damp with sweat. Cradling the radio parts in one arm, she pressed one of the lowest levels, trusting that this man would get off before she did and she would have the elevator to herself.
“Excuse me,” he said, reaching in front of her to swipe his card. Charlotte could smell stale coffee on his breath. He punched the button for level forty-two, and the lift shivered into motion.
“Late shift?” Eren asked.
“Yeah,” Charlotte said, keeping her head down and her voice low.
“You just waking up?”
She shook her head. “Night shift. ”
“No, I mean are you just coming out of freeze? Don’t think I’ve seen you around. I’m the on-shift head right now. ” He laughed. “For another week, anyway. ”
Charlotte shrugged. It was boiling hot inside the lift. The numbers were counting down so damn slowly. She should’ve pressed a nearby floor, gotten off, and waited on the next lift. Too late, now.
“Hey, look at me,” the man said.
He knew. He was standing so close. Too close for anything but suspicious scrutiny. Charlotte glanced up; she could feel her breasts press against her coveralls, could feel hair trailing out from her cap, could feel her cheekbones and stubble-free chin, everything that made her a woman, not least of which was her powerful revulsion at this strange man staring at her, this man who had her trapped and powerless in a small lift. She met his gaze, feeling all of this and more. Helpless and afraid.
