First Shift - Legacy s-1

by Hugh Howey

  “What’s the latest?” Saul asked an older gentleman who was holding a headphone cupped to one ear.

  The gentleman turned, his bald head shining in the overhead light, sweat in the wrinkles of his brow, his white eyebrows high with concern. “I can’t get anyone to answer the server,” he said.

  “Give us just the feeds from 12,” Troy said, pointing to one of the other three workers. A man he had met just a week or so ago pulled off his headset and flipped a switch. The speakers in the room buzzed with overlapping shouts and orders. The others stopped what they were doing and listened.

  One of the other men, in his thirties, Troy recognized him from the cafeteria, cycled through dozens of video feeds. It was a chromatic channel-surf of chaos. There was a shot of a spiral staircase crammed with people pushing and shoving. A head disappeared, someone falling down, presumably being trampled as the rest moved on. Across the crowd, eyes were wide in fear, jaws clenched or shouting.

  “Let’s see the server room,” Troy said.

  The man at the controls typed something on his keypad. The crush of people disappeared and was replaced with a still view of quiet cabinets, each machine upright, the crystal-like precision and rigidity of the layout slightly warped by the wide angle of the lens. The server casings and the grating on the floor throbbed from the blinking overhead lights of an unanswered call.

  “What happened?” Troy asked. He felt unusually calm. He was less nervous now with a disaster unfolding than he had been moments ago losing at solitaire.

  “Still trying to determine that, sir.”

  A folder was pressed into his hands. A handful of people gathered in the hallway, peering in. News was spreading, a crowd gathering. Troy felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck, but still that eerie calmness, that resignation to this statistical inevitability.

  A desperate voice from one of the radios cut through the rest, the panic palpable:

  “—they’re coming through. Dammit, they’re bashing down the door. They’re gonna get through—”

  Everyone in the comm room held their breath, all the jitters and activity ceasing as they listened and waited. Troy was pretty sure he knew which door the panicked man was talking about. It should have been made stronger. A lot of things should have been made stronger.

  “—I’m on my own up here, guys. They’re gonna get through. Holy shit, they’re gonna get through—”

  “Is that a deputy?” Troy asked. He flipped through the folder. There were status updates from the IT Head of Silo 12. No alarms. Two years since the last cleaning. The fear index was pegged at an eight the last time it had been measured. A little high, but thankfully not too low.

  “Yeah, I think that’s a deputy,” Saul said.

  The man at the video feed looked back over his shoulder. “Sir, we’re gonna have a mass exodus.”

  “Their radios are locked down, right?”

  Saul nodded. “We shut down the repeater. They can talk among themselves, and that’s it.”

  Troy fought the urge to turn and meet the curious faces peering in from the hallway. “Good,” he said. The calm was eerie. The priority in this situation was to contain the outbreak: don’t let it spread to neighboring cells. This was a cancer. Excise it. Cut the tumor free. Don’t mourn the loss. It was just meat. It wasn’t the whole body.

  The radio crackled:

  “—they’re almost in, they’re almost in, they’re almost in—”

  Troy tried to imagine the stampede, the crush of people, how the panic had spread. He remembered waking up in that god-awful cryopod some months ago, remembered the cold in his bones, the long nightmare still trapped behind the lids of his eyes. The Order was clear on not intervening, but his conscience was muddled. He held out a hand toward the radioman.

  “Let me speak to him,” Troy said.

  Heads swiveled his way. A crowd that thrived on protocol sat stunned. After a pause, the receiver was pressed into his palm. Troy didn’t hesitate. He squeezed the mic.

  “Deputy?”

  “Hello? Sheriff?”

  The man with the bald and perspiring head cycled through video feeds, then waved his hand and pointed to one of the monitors. The floor number “72” sat in the corner of the screen, and a man in silver coveralls lay slumped over a desk. There was a gun in his hand, a pool of blood around a keyboard.

  “That’s him?” Troy asked.

  The video operator wiped his forehead and nodded.

  “Sheriff? What do I do?”

  Troy clicked the mic. “The sheriff is dead,” he told the deputy, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. He held the transmit button and pondered this stranger’s fate. It dawned on him that most of these people thought they were alone in the universe. They had no idea about each other, about their true purpose, and Troy was a god staring down at an anthill. There was another colony a pace away, but the two would never cross. And now he had made contact, a voice from the clouds.

  One of the video feeds clicked over to a man holding a handset, the cord spiraling to a radio mounted on the wall. The floor number in the corner read: “1.” Troy’s connection to this deputy became even more real.

  “You need to lock yourself in the holding cell,” Troy radioed, seeing that the least obvious solution was the best. It was a temporary solution, at least. “Make sure you have every set of keys.”

  He watched the man on the video screen.

  The entire room, and those in the hallway, watched the man on the video screen.

  The door to the upper security office was just visible in the warped bubble of the camera’s view. The edges of the door bulged outward because of the lens. The center of the door bulged inward because of the mob outside. They were beating the door down. The deputy didn’t respond. He dropped the microphone and hurried around the desk. His hands shook so violently as he reached for the keys that the grainy camera was able to capture it.

  The door cracked along the center. Someone in the comm room drew in an audible breath. Troy wanted to launch into the statistics. He wanted to explain the cancer analogy. He had studied and trained to be on the other end of this, to lead a small group of people in the event of a catastrophe, not to lead them all.

  Maybe that’s why he was so calm. He was watching a horror that he should have been in the middle of, that he should have lived and died through.

  The deputy finally secured the keys. He ran across the room and out of sight. Troy imagined him fumbling with the lock on the cell as the door burst in, an angry mob forcing their way through the splintered gap in the wood. It was a solid door, strong, but not strong enough. It was impossible to tell if the deputy had made it to safety. Not that it mattered. It was temporary. It was all temporary. If they opened the doors, if they made it out, the deputy would suffer a fate far worse than being trampled.

  “The inner airlock door is open, sir.”

  Troy nodded. The cancer had probably metastasized in IT, had spread from there. Maybe the Head—but more likely his shadow. Someone with override codes. Here was the curse: a person had to be in charge, had to guard the secrets. Some wouldn’t be able to. It was statistically predictable. He reminded himself that it was inevitable, the cards already shuffled, the game just waiting to play out.

  “Sir, we’ve got a breach. The outer door, sir.”

  “Fire the canisters now,” Troy said.

  Saul radioed the control room down the hall and relayed the message. The view of the airlock filled with a white fog.

  “Secure the server room,” Troy added. “Lock it down.”

  He had this portion of the Order memorized.

  “Make sure we have a recent backup just in case. And put them on our power.”

  “Yessir.”

  Those in the room who had something to do seemed less anxious than the others, who were left shifting about nervously while they watched and listened.

  “Where’s my outside view?” Troy asked.

  The mist-filled scen
e of people pushing on one another’s backs through a white cloud was replaced with an expansive shot of the outside, of a claustrophobic crowd scampering across a dry land, of people collapsing to their knees, clawing at their faces and their throats, a billowing fog rising up from the teeming ramp.

  No one in the comm room moved or said a word. There was a soft cry from the hallway. Troy shouldn’t have allowed them to stay and watch. What was the point?

  “Okay,” he said. “Shut it down.”

  The overweight man shimmering with sweat fumbled with his keypad. Someone coughed into their fist. The view of the outside went black. There was no point in watching the crowd fight their way back in, no reason to witness the hills while they were coated in those who managed to make it that far.

  “I want to know why it happened.” Troy turned and studied those in the room. “I want to know, and I want to know what we do to prevent this next time.” He handed the folder and the microphone back to the men at their stations. “Don’t tell the other silo Heads just yet. Not until we have answers for the questions they’ll have.”

  Saul raised his hand. “What about the people in 12?”

  “The only difference between the people in Silo 12 and the people in Silo 13 is that there won’t be future generations growing up in Silo 12. That’s it. Everyone in all the silos will eventually die. We all die, Saul. Even us. Today was just their day.” He nodded to the dark monitor and tried not to picture what was really going on over there. “We knew this would happen, and it won’t be the last. Let’s concentrate on the others. Learn from it.”

  There were nods. Saul wiped his brow, then the seat of his pants.

  “Individual reports by the end of this shift,” Troy said, feeling for the first time that he was actually in charge of something. “And if anyone from 12’s IT staff can be raised, debrief them as much as you can. I want to know who, why, and how.”

  Several of the exhausted people in the room stiffened before trying to look busy. The gathering in the hallway shrank back as they realized the show was over and the boss was heading their way.

  The boss.

  Troy felt the fullness of his position for the first time, the heavy weight of responsibility. There were murmurs and sidelong glances as he headed back toward his office. There were nods of sympathy and approval, men thankful that they occupied lower posts. Troy strode past them all. He turned the corner, dodging the man on the ladder, who had moved a few fixtures down to replace another bulb.

  More will go out, Troy thought. For all their careful engineering, there was no way to make a thing infallible. The best they could do is plan ahead, stockpile spares, not mourn the dark and lifeless cylinder as it was discarded and others were turned to with hope.

  Back in his office, he closed the door and leaned back against it for a moment. His shoulders stuck to his coveralls with the light sweat worked up from the swift walk. He took a few deep breaths before crossing to his desk and resting his hand on his copy of the Order. The fear persisted that they’d gotten it all wrong. How could a room full of doctors plan for everything? Would it really get easier as the generations went along, as people forgot and the mad whispers from the original survivors faded?

  Troy wasn’t so sure. He looked over at his wall of schematics, that large blueprint showing all the silos spread out amid the hills, fifty circles spaced out like stars on an old flag he had once served. It was an underground metropolis of sunken skyscrapers, of people completely cut off from one another and from the barren world.

  A powerful tremor coursed through Troy’s body: his shoulders, elbows, and hands twitched. He gripped the edge of his desk until it passed. Opening the top drawer, he fished through his pens until he found a red marker. He crossed to the large schematic, the shivers still wracking his chest.

  Before he could consider the permanence of what he was about to do, before he could consider that this mark of his would be on display for every future shift, left to glare down at those who manned this rudderless desk, before he could consider that this may become a trend, an act taken by the other silo Heads, a shared mark of their collective failure, he drew a bold ‘X’ through Silo 12.

  The marker squealed as it was dragged violently across the paper. It seemed to cry out with a distant and mournful voice.

  Troy blinked away the blurry vision of the red X and sagged to his knees. He bent forward until his forehead was against the tall spread of papers, old plans rustling and crinkling as his chest shook, not with shivers, but with sobs.

  With his hands in his lap, shoulders bent with the weight of another job he’d been pressured into, the pills shrinking away from the force of his sadness, Troy cried. He bawled as silently as he could so those across the hall wouldn’t hear.

  In one fist, he clutched the cap from the red marker. In the other, the marker itself, uncovered, tip pressed into his damp palm, spread a stain across his flesh the color of blood.

  13

  2049 • RYT Hospital, Dwayne Medical Center

  Donald had toured the Pentagon once, had been to the White House twice, went in and out of the Capitol building a dozen times a week, but nothing he’d seen in D.C. prepared him for the security around RYT’s Dwayne Medical Center. The process hardly made the hour-long meeting with the Senator seem worthwhile.

  By the time he passed through the full body scanners leading into the nanobiotech wing, he’d been stripped, given a pair of green medical scrubs to wear, had a blood sample taken, and had allowed every sort of scanner and bright light to probe his eyes and record—so they said—the infrared capillary pattern of his face.

  Heavy doors and sturdy men blocked every corridor as they made their way deeper and deeper into the NBT wing. When Donald spotted the Secret Service agents—who had been allowed to keep their dark suits and shades, he saw—he knew he was getting close. A nurse scanned him through a final set of stainless steel doors. The nanobiotic chamber awaited him inside.

  Donald eyed the massive machine warily. He’d only ever seen them on TV dramas, and this one loomed even larger in person. It looked like a small submarine that had been marooned on the upper floors of the RYT, or maybe some kind of time machine from a sci-fi flick. Hoses and wires led away from the curved and flawless white exterior in bundles. Studded along the length were several small glass windows that brought to mind the portholes of a ship.

  “And you’re sure it’s safe for me to go in?” He turned to the nurse. “Because I can always wait and visit him later.”

  The nurse smiled. She couldn’t be out of her twenties, had her brown hair wrapped in a knot on the back of her head, was very pretty. “It’s perfectly safe,” she assured him. “His nanos won’t interact with your body. We often treat multiple patients in a single chamber.”

  She led him to the end of the machine, which Donald thought was shaped like a Tylenol capsule. He could imagine a giant bursting its fist through the wall, plucking the chamber up, and popping it in his mouth. There was a locking wheel on the very end of this massive pill. The nurse gave it a spin, and a hatch opened with a sticky, ripping sound from the rubber seals and a slight gasp of air from the difference in pressure.

  “If it’s so safe, then why is that thing so thick?”

  A soft laugh. “You’ll be fine.” She waved him toward the hatch. “There’ll be a slight delay and a little buzz after I seal this door, and then the inner one will unlock. Just spin the wheel and push to open.”

  “I’m a little claustrophobic,” Donald admitted.

  God, listen to himself. He was an adult. Why couldn’t he just say he didn’t want to go in and have that be enough? Why was he allowing himself to be pressured into this?

  “Just step inside please, Mr. Keene.”

  A Secret Service agent in the corner smiled. Donald wanted to ask him why he didn’t step inside as well if he was so brave.

  The nurse placed her hand on the small of Donald’s back. Somehow, the pressure of a young and pretty woman watchin
g, not to mention the asshole in the corner, was stronger than his abject terror of the oversized lozenge packed with its invisible machines. He wilted and found himself ducking through the small hatch, his throat constricting with panic.

  Why didn’t they give him a mask? They should’ve given him a mask. Or would the nanos pass right through it? How small were they? He tried to remember how many zeros there were in a nanometer as the door behind him thumped shut, leaving him in a small curved space hardly big enough for two. The locks behind him clanked into the jamb. There were tiny silver benches set into the arching walls on either side of him. He tried to stand up, but his head brushed the ceiling. Donald reached for the handle on the inner door, torn between seeking the larger space inside the pill and his fear of the tiny machines that awaited him there.

  An angry hum filled the chamber—the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. The air around Donald felt charged with electricity. He wondered if it was to kill any strays. He looked for an intercom, some way to communicate with the Senator through the door so he didn’t have to go any further. It felt like he couldn’t breathe; he needed to get out. There was no wheel on the outer door. Everything had been taken out of his control—

  The inner locks clanked. Donald lunged for the door and tried the handle. Holding his breath, he opened the hatch and escaped the small airlock for the larger chamber in the center of the pill.

  “Donald!” Senator Thurman looked up from a thick book. He was sprawled out on one of the benches running the length of the long cylinder. A notepad and pen sat on a small table; a plastic tray held the remnants of dinner.

  “Hello, sir.” He said this with the minimal parting of his lips.

  “Don’t just stand there, get in. You’re letting the buggers out.”

  Against his every impulse, Donald stepped through and pushed the door shut, and Senator Thurman laughed. “You might as well breathe, son. They could crawl right through your skin if they wanted to.”