Silo 49: Deep Dark

Chapter Seventeen

The group had been making tremendous progress and the archives were a different place. The shelves were absent dust and filled with organized files. The cabinets were beginning to empty and be refilled, now with newly greased skids and rust free rails. It was a beautiful thing, Marina thought. For decades this place had remained almost untouched. The historians had a case for expansion that couldn’t be argued with if the timeline really did verify out and a mere handful of generations had passed since Graham and his group had made their stand.

Sadly, not much more was being found but that didn’t matter when she considered all that they had done. It made her feel like they had accomplished something wonderful. The origins of the pocket watch would probably be forever lost, but in a way, that was fine too. It was a beautiful mystery for another time from another time.

Marina smiled and patted Greta’s shoulder as she passed her to deliver yet more logs to the shelves. These hadn’t turned out to be very useful, containing only the records of repairs without a consistent date pattern. She opened the first book to look where they wanted it shelved and found no note. She put it aside and shelved the others before returning to it. Marina had been doing a lot of this organizing too so she thought she would see if she could place it herself rather than go ask for help yet again.

Flipping open the cover, she scanned the first pages of work to see the levels. That was easy to figure out. Then she looked at the repair types to see what type of repairs. Also easy, electrical and electrical related. Feeling rather satisfied, she trailed a finger along the spines of the books arrayed before her to find the level and the type. And then it hit her.

Stepping back from the shelves she opened the book again and looked at the locations. They were all strings of numbers with little dashes between them. A junction box on Level 20 read 20-14-37J. An electrical panel on Level one read 1-11-23F. They were all like that. The letters must be the codes for the type of box and the more she looked along the lines the more that seemed likely. Another listed as switchbox had an S. Another with a R was marked relay. It was simple, logical and very mechanical.

She shoved the book in the slim bit of space between the books and the shelf and took the little book from her pocket. Opened to Walls’ letter, she saw how easy it was to read and figure out if only one knew what to look for. She considered this and wondered if Wallis had known that the only time his clues were likely to be deciphered was if there were many someones to do the deciphering, each contributing what they knew from their own lives.

She tucked the book into her pocket again and shelved the log. She bit a ragged bit on her thumbnail as she tried to figure out her next move. It was a long climb to Level 5 and would take a good while for her to make. They were due for a day off but her family would be expecting her. That wouldn’t work.

She felt a sharp pain as the ragged edge let go so she shoved that hand in her pocket and leaned her forehead against the shelves. She had to figure out how to get a day alone. She might be wrong, true, but she could be right. It was worth finding out.

Piotr died that night so making plans were the last thing on Marina’s mind once she finally discovered the fact. No one woke her so she had no idea what had happened when she stumbled out of her room to grab some breakfast before work and found the atmosphere strangely oppressive and still.

In the dining hall there were vague whispers and sidelong looks that first made Marina check to be sure she was buttoned up and then that her coveralls weren’t ripped in the back. None of her compatriots were in the room so she sat by herself to eat, the few others present clustered at the other end of the room.

She had already finished her breakfast grains, a bit of fruit and strong tea before anyone approached her. The historian shadow, Florine, walked over hesitantly. Her hunched walk was out of character, more like a shuffle than her bouncing stride.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said in a quiet and serious voice.

Marina didn’t know what to think. Clearly she had missed something vital here. Her thoughts went to her husband and daughter first. “What loss? Who was lost?” she demanded.

“Oh, I thought they must have told you. I’m sorry,” the girl trailed off, uncomfortable now.

“What in silo’s name are you talking about? Did someone die? Who was it?” Marina asked loudly, standing now, breakfast tray forgotten. “Did something happen to my family?”

The girl had been backing up, looking confused and a little frightened at Marina’s response. Though she looked behind her, probably for someone better equipped than she for giving bad news, her head whipped back around at Marina’s final words and she said, “No. No. I’m sorry. No, nothing like that!”

Her body felt like it deflated all at once when she realized it wasn’t her family. She didn’t need the stumbling words, Florine’s expression was enough. She sagged against the table and into her chair again. She put her head in her hands and tried to still her shaking limbs sourcing from her racing heart. She vaguely heard the girl give a little half sob and tell someone else that she was sorry. Marina didn’t raise her head when someone started soothing Florine and the two moved away.

The sound of a clearing throat next to the table finally made Marina open her eyes and raise her head. It was Greta. Someone must have gone to get her. She said, “She didn’t mean to frighten you like that. She’s young and doesn’t know what it’s like to be a mother. She thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” Marina asked, not really wanting to know the answer. Why did bad things always seem to come when they were least looked for.

Greta pulled one of the chairs around next to her and sat down, a bad sign for sure. She took Marina’s hand and said, “Piotr passed last night.”

The words registered but the concept didn’t. Piotr passed last night. What is that? He was here and he ate dinner and he played a game of checkers with Taylor while Greta and she played a game of cards right next to them. Passed?

Marina shook her head and asked, “You’re telling me that Piotr is dead?”

Greta winced at the word but she nodded. Marina could see her throat bobbing as the other woman held her emotions in check. They said nothing for a moment. Greta must have managed to push down her feelings because she said, “It was an accident. On the stairs.”

The stairs? Marina put her free hand to her mouth. That would be a terrible death. How could that careful man have had an accident? What would he have been doing on the stairs anyway?

“I don’t understand, Greta. How did he have an accident on the stairs? When could he have?”

“It was stupid. Just a stupid accident.” Her voice broke then and fat tears rolled down her face.

Marina didn’t know how to ask delicately, so she decided the best approach was just to ask. “Did he fall?”

It was Greta’s turn to put her head in her hands. A muffled sob came from under her hands and she nodded.

She didn’t want to push Greta any farther. Clearly, they were all friends now but Greta and Piotr had a long history of mutual work and that had been taking root as a strong friendship, the kind one didn’t find all that often in life. She suddenly remembered his family and said, “What about his wife? His kids?”

Greta’s sobs intensified then and whatever she said then was entirely unintelligible, but Marina assumed it was just more sad confirmations. She shook her head, thinking of Piotr, thinking of him falling, of what a fall can do to a body. What his family would face when they heard about it over and over as time passed was even worse. The joke all falls became with time would prevent them from ever truly healing.

“You’re sure it was an accident?” Marina asked, though she regretted it the moment Greta raised her head. Her eyes were red and wet and very hurt at the question.

“Never mind. It had to be an accident,” Marina answered herself.

They sat there, Marina’s leftover breakfast congealing on her tray and the tea developing an oily slick on top. After a while, Greta took her kerchief from around her neck, blotted her swollen eyes and blew her equally swollen nose. She hiccupped a few times but the storm had passed and this was all just the aftereffects. Marina waited.

“It was the lights that did it,” Greta said suddenly. It meant nothing to Marina so she raised her eyebrows in question. Greta saw and explained, “The lights didn’t shift right. You know that moment of dark you sometimes get before the red lights come on after the half-dim lights go out?”

At Marina’s nod, she continued, “Well, the red ones didn’t come on last night. Something was wrong with the switch. Taylor and Piotr were on the stairs and he just…missed.” She waved her hands out, a perfect mimic of a person missing a grab for something.

“Why wouldn’t he just wait? Or call for a light or something? That’s not like Piotr at all,” Marina said, trying to picture the scene. She wouldn’t have moved at all if there wasn’t enough light. She would have called out and someone would have come with a light eventually. Or just turned them back on.

Greta shook her head. Marina could tell that she was equally baffled. No one in the silo would be careless like that. There were just some things everyone knew and what to do if the lights went out was one of them. It happened now and then. Things broke. You waited for them to be fixed and you definitely did not wander around near the stairs. When the lights went out anywhere in the silo, it could get so dark it made a person dizzy.

Even in primary school kids learned how to find the floor when it went dark. They had been put into the dark to learn how hard it was to tell up from down and how to safely get down to the floor. If you were with someone else, you were supposed to hold their hand on the floor because it helped. It sounded so simple that it was funny, until you had to do it and couldn’t tease out which way was up. But that was a closed room with no light. Some light, however weak, would have traveled through the stairwell from the other landings. Perhaps not much, but some.

Once Greta was calm again, Marina helped her to her room, a supporting arm around her waist, and put her to bed. She brought her a cup of herbal tea and a cool, damp towel for her eyes. She tried not to be impatient to leave and sat with her. As soon as Greta’s breathing took on the measured regularity of sleep, Marina quietly made a quick exit.

She didn’t need to go looking for the scene because the landing was still awash with people. Deputies tried to keep gawkers from the rails overlooking the ‘splash zone’, as it was called. Porters struggled up the stairs while the lifts were unavailable and were grumbling as they trudged upward.

But all the rest, and there were a good many, were gawkers. They might be there under the guise of being on their way to a shift or home from a shift or on an impromptu visit to the Memoriam, but they were really pausing too long because they were hoping for a tidbit of information. As Marina stood there by the entrance, she heard people betting on whether or not it was a fall or a jump. She was disgusted. People were usually so good, but when something like this happened they were positively gruesome.

Marina saw her husband before he saw her. She pushed her way through the gawkers until she got near him. His arm went across the chest of the man in front of her with a rough, “Stay back. Let them work.”

She stopped short as the man in front of her did. She gaped at him, never having seen this side of him before. He was intimidating.

He saw her over the shoulder of the man he had stopped and grimaced. “Sorry, honey!”

The man pushed Joseph’s arm off his chest and exclaimed, “Don’t call me honey!”

Joseph rolled his eyes and motioned for Marina to go back toward the Memoriam then called for Sela to take his spot. He waited until she got there and Marina could see the very serious expression on her daughter’s face. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the onlookers. Joseph stepped through the little crowd and gave Marina a one armed hug when he reached her.

She wasted no time and asked, “Why are people still here?”

He sighed and said, “You don’t want to know. It’s a bad one.”

Marina blanched at the matter of fact way her husband said it. He was Piotr yesterday. Today he was a bad one. It was too much to try to tie together. She took a handful of his coverall sleeve and tugged, “Tell me. He was my friend.”

Joseph’s face lost the hard edge and he patted her hand, “Yeah, I know. Are you sure you really want to know all this?”

She nodded and bit her lip.

“Well, it’s an Othered mess down there. He hit the landing on 73, the lifts and from there he basically fell apart and went everywhere,” he said, back in deputy mode and speaking with such a lack of feeling that Marina felt nausea rise in her belly. She put a hand over her mouth and choked back a cry. Joseph cleared his throat and went on, his voice less clinical, “He wouldn’t have felt it. For him it was over as soon as he hit that first landing.”

“You’re sure?” Marina asked, hoping that was true.

“Very sure,” he said.

It was said with such confidence that Marina realized she didn’t want to know the detail that gave him that level of surety. She lowered her hand from her mouth and gripped his arm again, “How could this have happened?”

Joseph seemed at a loss for that one. “I don’t know. Why would he have fallen like that? It was almost like he was aiming for it or something. You don’t fall that far sideways. But he didn’t jump, that we know. He was with someone else and their story matches the facts. He fell. He just tripped on the stairs and fell when the lights went out.”

“What about Taylor?”

“The other guy is fine. A little banged up from trying to grab him when he fell, but physically he’ll be fine. He’s a mess though,” Joseph said and pointed at his head. Of course Taylor wouldn’t be fine. It had been clear that Piotr viewed Taylor as a son and friend. Taylor just as clearly admired Piotr. No, he wouldn’t be fine at all after that.

“The lights?” Marina asked.

“That was weird. Some idiot jammed a piece of cloth between the contacts inside the switch. How does that happen, I ask you? Probably a prank, but I doubt very much whoever did it thinks it’s funny now. They certainly won’t if I find out who it was,” Joseph answered, his voice grim at the thought of the person who sabotaged the lights.

“It’s been all night. Why are people still here?”

“Uh, well,” Joseph started. At Marina’s hard look he made a face and said, “We were done, but people keep finding, uh, more stuff.”

Marina’s bile rose and she was pretty sure she was a hair’s breadth from vomiting up her breakfast. She took a step backward and leaned over, her breath pushing out like she might be able to breathe it out with her lungs instead of spew it from her stomach. Joseph rubbed her hunched back, trying to be supportive even while keeping half an eye on the landing.

She stood and pushed his arm away, not ungently but without hesitation either. “Get it taken care of. He has a family. It’s not entertainment,” she said, her breath still coming out in uneven puffs. She pointed toward the people remaining on the landing and hissed, “And get them out of here.”

Without waiting for an answer she turned and went back into the Memoriam and straight to her room. She fished the book from her hiding place and tucked it into her pocket. She almost left the Memoriam then, but knew that an immediate absence might cause alarm. She went to Taylor’s room and knocked on the door. No one answered and she was about to turn away when the door opened a crack.

A single eye, recognizable as Taylor’s though it was rimmed in red and swollen, showed through the crack. “Hey,” Marina said, quietly and without expectation. She thought he probably needed someone right then. If he was there when that happened then all that he had heard would still be sounding in his ears. It was almost good that he was spared the sight, that it had been dark.

His breath hitched and he opened the door wide. Marina stepped in and hugged him. He felt broken. He sounded like he had become hollow and the sounds he made were heartbreaking. He practically gurgled his words, he was so filled with tears and grief. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Taylor. Don’t be sorry. No one blames you. No one!” Marina assured him, guiding him to his chair and getting him down into it. He was like a puppet. He bent and moved but only in response to another. He was a wreck. Blood speckled his coveralls from shallow gouges on one cheek. She saw more gouges, deeper ones, on his wrists and hands. He must have tried so hard to hold onto Piotr when he fell to be so wounded.

She poured him a cup of water from the pitcher on his table and pressed it into his hands. “Drink,” she said and guided the cup to his mouth until he drank.

He swallowed once dutifully but a sob came and he spluttered water in the doing. She put that aside and washed his face with a cool cloth, re-wetting and wringing by turns at the small sink in the room. She kept her eyes on him at every moment. Eventually, he calmed and the sobs died down. It was a horrible replay of what she had just gone through with Greta. The difference was that Taylor wasn’t just sad and in shock from the loss, he appeared shattered.

Soon enough, he was calm but it was an eerie, absent calm. It was more like the collapse of someone who just can’t process one thing more. Greta came a bit later and assured Marina that she had gotten a little rest. She would stay with Taylor for the time being.

Marina hated to be an opportunist, but this was just too much of an opening to miss. She was upset about Piotr too, certainly, but there was something that needed doing. Piotr would probably have done the same thing had their positions been reversed.

As she opened the door, she turned and said, “We won’t be working so I’m going to take care of some things I’ve been putting off. I’d just rather not think about…this. I’ll be back tonight. Is that okay?”

She saw Taylor wince on the bed at her oblique mention of what had happened and Greta’s eyes grew shiny, but she only nodded. As Marina closed the door behind her, she saw Greta sit on the bed and stroke Taylor’s hair back just like a mother would for an upset child. It made her feel like less of a shit for sneaking away knowing they would comfort each other.

She gathered her things and pressed her hand to the book again. The only comfort Marina wanted was to see if she was right. She told her husband she was going to do so some work elsewhere for the day and earned a confused look that she ignored. She took to the stairs.

Her exercise had made a difference and the levels slipped past as she focused ever upward. She took breaks and did stretches, garnering a few curious looks as she crouched right on the landing to do them. She drank plenty of fluids and took a dose of the pills she had remaining just to be sure. This was a trip further than the one that had done her in not so long ago but she was going to get it done fast even if it killed her.

When she crested the landing on Level 34 she was exhausted and she knew she was at her limit. They were used to seeing her now and knew she was engaged in some special, possibly IT related project, and so they simply let her go where she wanted. Piotr’s office was off limits and that would be in poor taste anyway, but she borrowed an empty room and lay down for a nap. Her pack served as her pillow and she drew her knees up to her chest against the chill, but the short sleep was deep and satisfying. Her legs felt good so she took another dose of pills and spent time preparing for the next part of the climb.

She was hungry, but wouldn’t stop further. Her task was simply too urgent. Despite the fact that whatever was there, if anything was there, had been there for a very long time, she had the irrational feeling that she needed to hurry or it would be gone when she arrived.

At Level 5 she took a moment before entering the double doors. Marina wanted to look exactly like she belonged and raise no curiosity from passersby. She squared her shoulders and swung the entry door wide. Her eyes went directly to the drop ceiling. Yes, it was exactly the same as the one on her level. Above those ragged tiles would be a busy runway of pipes and conduits, air ducts and electrical wire. And there would be relay boxes. Numbered relay boxes.

Marina tore her eyes from the ceiling and pushed back her desire to loudly proclaim victory at being this close. She hurried to the section of Level 5 she needed. From the maintenance closet she extracted one ladder and one tool kit, not signing the log but hoping she’d have it back in place before anyone needed it. The next problem was that she had absolutely no idea where in all these ceilings it would be.

Each section of the level was numbered, like a slice of pie. She was in fourteen like the clue in the book indicated. That was easy. But even in the correct section, there was a whole lot of hallway space and how they were numbered wasn’t something Marina had ever picked up. Joseph probably knew but she hadn’t seen any way to bring that up when she dashed away with barely a word. Oh, hey honey, I’m off to do something entirely legitimate but mysterious so can you tell me exactly how the relay boxes in the ceilings are numbered before I do? She gave a quiet little laugh. Yeah, that would have gone over like a dropped lift bag. Then she remembered Piotr and all the humor fell away.

There was only one thing to do so she started right where she was and climbed up to peek in the ceiling. It was extraordinarily dusty and dirty up there. As she kept the foamy tile tilted up with her head, she was faced with at least an inch, maybe more, of dense grayish brown dust. It was even piled in little ridges all along the pipes. She immediately regretted letting out a deep sigh when it disturbed the surface and sent a cloud into the air. She popped her head back down to let it settle for a moment and gave an all-business nod to a resident that walked by eyeballing her. The gray coveralls with a patch that bespoke something to do with electronics and mechanical apparently gave her a pass.

When she thought it was probably safe, she poked her head back up and flicked her light around in the dim space. She could see boxes set at regular intervals along the walls on both sides. Peeking back down and then up to try to marry their locations, she decided that each box marked the change from main lines to the compartments. There were more doors than boxes so the ratio looked to be about two to one. It made sense.

There was no box near her, perched as she was at the start of the hallway near a closet, so she reset the tile and moved the ladder. It was perfect. Her head was no more than a foot from the box. It was much bigger than it had looked to be from her initial position. She thought about how much she could stuff into one of those and her excitement rose.

This box was covered with a thick layer of obscuring dust like everything else and she couldn’t even make out the engraving on it. She smoothed it away and read the designation. She had no idea if that meant she was close or not. She was in the right area, though, and that was something.

She repeated the procedure about halfway up this main rear hallway. Ahead of her, the curve of the silo wall obscured what lay beyond. She considered and counted the number of boxes she must have passed in her head. The numbers were decreasing and if she was right about the pervasive logic of the silo, the smallest ones should be where the next lower numbered section met this one.

At the last hallway junction to this section, the dividing line was denoted by a strip of very old black paint with a 14 on one side and a 13 on the other. She turned down the hallway and selected a spot. One more peek and she realized she was very close. Shining the flashlight, she tried to count down the boxes and saw there was an extra. After seeing them in their ordered lines, an extra stood out. It was like a banner hanging up to proclaim a winner. She grinned into the dim space, leaving cracks in the dust that covered her face.

It was the end of a shift and the hallways had more traffic, this one a lot more. Given that almost this entire level was residences, it made sense but it also made her work awkward. Anyone might decide to stop and see what she was doing. If there was a lot in the box, then it would be obvious. She shook her head and decided there was nothing to be done about it as she resettled the ladder at the spot she would need. A few more nods to residents and one explanation that there was a short that needed tracking down and she was ready.

The box was sealed with a loop of wire and a plastic tab like all the others. It was covered in the same thick layer of dust and bore the same engraved plate. The difference was that it was marked, ‘Spare’, in bold letters on a second plate and there was no tube of metal containing wires coming in or going out of it. It was on its own. She wondered that no one had ever noticed before. Perhaps such spares were common. Based on the dust, she thought it was just that nothing had broken up here in a very long time.

She positioned her pack on the ladder’s hook, close to hand but not obviously so, and propped up her tool bag on the ladder’s shelf. When she clipped the wire she felt like she was entering a new territory. It was like she has found some unseen and untrodden new level that suddenly appeared in front of her. It was equal parts thrill and anticipation and fear. She hoped it wasn’t empty and feared it might be full.

The lid opened with the loud creak of unused hinges. Particles of rust broke free and rained down, creating little divots in the blanket of dust. Marina closed her eyes and opened the lid wide. One small breath later she opened her eyes.

It was full. Oh, so very full.