Third Shift - Pact

•20•

A row of familiar clipboards hung on the wall in Dr. Wilson’s office. Donald remembered scratching his name on them with mock ceremony. He remembered signing off on himself once, authorizing his own deep freeze. There was a twinge of unease at the thought of signing those forms right then. What would he write? His hand would shake as he scribbled someone else’s name, and it would strike midnight at the masquerade ball.

In the middle of the office, an empty gurney brought back bad memories. A fresh sheet had been tucked military crisp on top of it, ready for the next body. Dr. Wilson checked his computer to find that next body while his two assistants prepped. One of them stirred two scoops of green powder into a container of warm water. Donald could smell the concoction across the room. It made his cheeks pucker, but he took careful note of which cabinet the powder came from, how much was spooned in, and asked any question that came to mind.

The other assistant folded a clean blanket and draped it over the back of a wheelchair. There was a paper gown. An emergency medical kit was unpacked and repacked. Gloves, meds, gauze, bandages, tape. It was all done with a quiet efficiency. Donald was reminded of the men behind the serving counter who laid out breakfast with the same habitual care.

A number was read aloud to confirm who they were waking. This reactor tech, like Donald’s sister, had been reduced to a number, a place within a grid, a cell in a spreadsheet. As if made-up names were any better. Suddenly, Donald saw how easily his switch could’ve taken place. He watched as paperwork was filled out—his signature not needed—and dropped into a box. This was a part of the process he could ignore. There would be no trace of what he had planned.

Dr. Wilson led them out the door. The wheelchair full of supplies followed, with Donald trailing behind.

The tech they were waking was two levels down, which meant taking the lift. One of the assistants idly remarked that he had only three days left on his shift.

“Lucky you,” the other assistant said.

“Yeah, so be easy with my catheter,” he joked, and even Dr. Wilson laughed.

Donald didn’t. He was busy wondering what the final shift would be like. Nobody seemed to think much past the next shift. They looked forward to one ending and dreaded seeing another. It reminded him of Washington, where everyone he worked alongside hoped to make it to the next term even as they loathed running for another. Donald had fallen into that same trap.

The lift doors opened on another chilled hall. Here were rooms full of shift workers, the majority of the silo’s population-in-waiting spread out across two identical levels. Dr. Wilson led them down the hall and coded them through the third door on the right. A hall of sleeping bodies angled off into the distance until it met the concrete skin of the silo. “Twenty down and four over,” he said, pointing.

They made their way to the pod. It was the first time Donald had seen this part of the procedure. He had helped put others under, but had never helped wake anyone up. Storing Victor’s body away was something altogether different. That had been a funeral.

The assistants busied themselves around the pod. Dr. Wilson knelt by the control panel, paused, glanced up at Donald, waiting.

“Right,” Donald said. He knelt and watched over the doctor’s shoulder.

“Most of the process is automated,” the doctor admitted sheepishly. “Frankly, they could replace me with a trained monkey and nobody would know the difference.” He glanced back at Donald as he keyed in his code and pressed a red button. “I’m like you, Shepherd. Only here in case something goes wrong.”

The doctor smiled. Donald didn’t.

“It’ll be a few minutes before the hatch pops.” He tapped the display. “The temperature here will get up to thirty-one Celsius. The bloodstream is getting an injection when this light is flashing.”

The light was flashing.

“An injection of what?” Donald asked.

“The good little doctors. This procedure would kill a normal human being, which I suppose is why it was outlawed.”

A normal human being. Donald wondered what the hell that made him. He lifted his palm and studied the red splotchiness. He remembered a glove tumbling down a hill.

“Twenty-eight,” Dr. Wilson said. “When it hits thirty, the lid will release. Now’s when I like to go ahead and dial the pod back down, rather than wait until the end. Just so I don’t forget.” He twisted the dial below the temp readout. “It doesn’t stop the process. It only runs one direction once it starts.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Donald asked.

Dr. Wilson frowned. “I told you. That’s why I’m here.”

“But what if something happened to you? Or you got called away?”

Dr. Wilson tugged his earlobe, thinking. “I would advise putting them back under until I could get to them.” He laughed. “Of course, the little doctors might just fix what’s wrong before I could. As long as you dial it back down, all you have to do is close the lid. But I don’t see how that could come up.”

Donald did. He watched the temperature tick up to twenty-nine. The two assistants prepped while they waited for the pod to open. One had a towel set aside along with the blanket and the paper gown. The medical kit sat in the wheelchair, the top open. Both men wore blue rubber gloves. One of them peeled off strips of tape and hung them from the handle of the wheelchair. A packet of gauze was preemptively torn open, the bitter drink given a vigorous shake.

“And my code will start the procedure?” Donald asked, thinking of anything he might be missing.

Dr. Wilson chuckled. He placed his hands on his knees and was slow to stand. “I imagine your code would open the airlock. Is there anything you don’t have access to?”

A glove was snapped. The hatch hissed as the lock disengaged.

The truth, Donald wanted to say. That was what he didn’t have access to. But he was planning on getting it soon.

The lid opened a crack on its own, and one of the assistants lifted it the rest of the way. A handsome young man lay inside, his cheeks twitching as he came to. The assistants went to work, and Donald tried to make note of every little part of the procedure. He thought of his sister in a hall above him, lying asleep, waiting.

“Once we get him up to the office, we’ll check his vitals and take our samples for analysis. If they have any items in their locker, I send one of the boys to retrieve them.”

“Locker?” Donald asked. He watched as a catheter was removed, a needle extracted from an arm. The tape and gauze were applied while the man in the pod sucked from a straw, wincing from the bitterness as he did so.

“Personal effects. Anything set aside from their previous shift. We retrieve those for them.”

The assistants helped the man into a paper gown, then grunted as they lifted him from the steaming pod. Donald moved the medical kit and steadied the wheelchair for them. The blanket was already laid out across the seat. While they settled the man into place, Donald thought of the bag marked Shift left on his bed, the one with Thurman’s things in them. There had been a small number marked on the bag similar to the one in Anna’s note. That number in the note wasn’t a date at all.

And then it hit him. It hit with such surety that he didn’t trust the conclusion at all. Locket was a typo. He tried to picture where the R and T were on a keyboard, if this was a likely mistake. Had she meant to say locker, instead?

The confluence of clues cut through the chill in the room, and for a moment, the idea of waking his sister was forgotten. Other sleeping ghosts were whispering to him, clouding his mind.

•21•

Donald helped escort the groggy man up to the medical offices while one of the assistants stayed behind to scrub the pod. Not caring to see Dr. Wilson take his samples, he volunteered to go grab the tech’s personal items. The assistant gave him directions to one of the storage levels in the heart of the silo.

There were sixteen levels of stores in all, not counting the armory. Donald entered the lift and pressed the worn out button for the storeroom on fifty-seven. The reactor tech’s ID number had been scribbled on a piece of paper. The number from Anna’s note to Thurman was vivid in his mind. He had assumed it was a date: November 2^nd, 2039. It made the number easy to recall.

The lift slowed to a stop, and Donald stepped through the doors and into darkness. He ran his hand down the bank of light switches along the wall. The bulbs overhead sparked to life with the distant and muted thunks of ancient transformers and relays jolting into action. A maze of tall shelves revealed itself in stages as the lights popped on first in the distance, then close, then off to the right, like some mosaic unmasked one random piece at a time. The lockers were in the very back, past the shelves. Donald began the long walk while the last of the tremulous bulbs flickered on.

Cliffs of steel shelves laden with sealed plastic tubs swallowed him. The containers seemed to lean in over his head. If he glanced up, he almost expected the shelves to touch high above, to meet like train tracks. Huge swaths of tubs were empty and unlabeled, he saw, waiting for future shifts to fill them. All the notes he and Anna had generated on his last shift would be in tubs like these. They would preserve the tale of Silo 40 and all those unfortunate facilities around them. They would tell of the people of Silo 18 and Donald’s efforts to save them. And maybe he shouldn’t have. What if this current debacle, this vagabond cleaner, was his fault in some way?

He passed crates sorted by date, by silo, by name. There were cross-cuts between the shelves, narrow aisles wide enough for the carts used to haul blank paper and notebooks out and then bring them back in weighing just a little more from the ink. With relief from his claustrophobia, Donald left the shelves and found the far wall of the facility. He glanced back over his shoulder at how far he’d come, could imagine all the lights going out at once and him not being able to pick his way back to the elevator. Maybe he would stagger in circles until he thirsted to death. He glanced up at the lights and realized how fragile he was, how reliant on power and light. A familiar wave of fear washed over him, the panic of being buried in the dark. Donald leaned against one of the lockers for a moment and caught his breath. He coughed into his handkerchief and reminded himself that dying wouldn’t be the worst of things.

Once the panic faded and he’d fought off the urge to sprint back to the lift, Donald entered the rows of lockers. There must’ve been thousands of them. Many were small, like post office boxes, six or so inches to a side and probably as deep as his arm judging by the width of the units. He mumbled the number from Anna’s note to himself. Erskine’s would be down here as well, and Victor’s. He wondered if those men had any secrets squirreled away and reminded himself to come back and check.

The numbers on the lockers ascended as he walked down one of the rows. The first two digits were far away from Anna’s number. He turned down one of the connecting aisles to search for the correct row and saw a group that started with 43. His ID number started with 44. Perhaps his locker was near here.

Donald imagined it would be empty, even as he found himself honing in on his ID number. He had never carried anything from shift to shift. The numbers marched in a predictable series until he found himself standing before a small metal door with his ID number on it, Troy’s ID number. There was no latch, only a button. He pressed it with his knuckle, worried it might have a fingerprint scanner or something equally deserving of his paranoia. What would someone think if they saw Thurman looking in this man’s locker? It was easy to forget the ruse. It was similar to the delay between hearing the senator’s name and realizing Donald was the one being spoken to.

There was a soft sigh as the locker cracked open, and then the squeak of old and unused hinges. The sigh reminded Donald that everything down there—the bins and tubs and lockers—was protected from the air. The good, normal air. Even the air they breathed was caustic and full of invisible things, like corrosive oxygen and other hungry molecules. The only difference between the good air and the bad air was the speed at which they worked. People lived and died too quickly to see the difference.

At least they used to, Donald thought as he reached inside his locker.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t empty. There was a plastic bag inside, crinkled and vacuum-packed like Thurman’s. Only, this bag read Legacy across the top rather than Shift. Inside, he could see a familiar pair of tan slacks and a red shirt. The clothes hammered him with memories. They reminded him of a man he used to be, a world he used to live in. Donald squeezed the bag, which was dense from the absence of air, and glanced up and down the empty aisle.

Why would they keep these things? Was it so he could emerge from deep underground dressed just as he had been when he arrived? Like an inmate staggering out, blinking and shielding his eyes, having served his penance and now dressed in outdated fashion. Or was it because storage was the same thing as disposal? There were two entire levels above this one where unrecyclable trash was compacted into cubes as dense as iron and stacked to the ceiling. Where else were they supposed to put their garbage? In a hole in the ground? They lived in a hole in the ground.

Donald puzzled over this as he fumbled with the plastic zipper at the top and slid the bag open. A faint odor of mud and grass escaped, a whiff of bygone days. Donald vividly remembered a slick hill, falling down, and then his nostalgia was pierced by the dropping of bombs, by screams, by the image of a dog staked out to a tent pole, barking and left behind. He opened the bag further, and his clothes blossomed to life as air seeped inside. There was an impulse to change into this costume of normalcy, to pretend, to fake like his world wasn’t dead. Instead, he began to shove the bag back into the locker—and then a glimmer caught his eye, a flash of yellow.

Donald dug down past his clothes and reached for the wedding ring. As he was pulling it out, he felt a hard object inside the slacks. He palmed the ring and reached inside again, felt around, squeezed the folds of his clothes. What had he been carrying that day? Not his pills. He’d lost those in a fall. Not the keys to the quad, Anna had taken those from him. His own keys and wallet had been in his jacket, had never even made it beneath the earth to orientation—

His cell phone. Donald found it in the pocket of his slacks. The heft of the thing, the curve of the plastic shell, felt right at home in his hand. He returned the bag to the locker, tucked the wedding ring into the pocket of his coveralls, and pressed the power button on the old phone. But of course it was dead. Long-dead. It hadn’t even been working the day he’d lost Helen.

Donald placed the phone in his pocket out of habit, the sort of habit that time could not touch. He felt the ring in his pocket and pulled it out, made sure it still fit, and thought of his wife. Thoughts of her led to thoughts of she and Mick having children together. Sadness and sickness intermingled. He stuffed his clothes deep into the locker and shut the door, took the ring off and slipped it into his pocket with the old phone. Donald turned and headed off in search of Anna’s locker. He still had to get the tech’s personal items as well—

As he tracked down their lockers, something nagged at him, some connection, but he couldn’t sort out what.

Off to one side, there was a patch of the storeroom still in darkness, a lightbulb out, and Donald thought of Silo 40 and the spread of darkness on a previous shift. Eren had brought an end to whatever was going on over there. A bomb had caused dust to shiver from overhead pipes. And now his deep mind whirred and made deeper connections. He could feel some thought attempting to notify his consciousness. Something about Anna. Some reason he’d been drawn to his locker. He wrapped his hand around the phone in his pocket and remembered why she’d been woken the last time. He remembered her expertise with wireless systems, with hacking.

In the distance, a light went out with a pop, and Donald felt the darkness closing in on him. There was nothing down here for him, nothing but awful memories and horrible realizations. His heart pounded as it began to come together, something he dearly wanted to disbelieve. His cell phone hadn’t worked the day the bombs fell; he hadn’t been able to contact Helen. And then there were all the times before when he couldn’t reach Mick, the nights he and Anna had found themselves alone.

And now they’d been left alone again, in this silo. Mick had changed places with him at the last moment. Donald remembered a conversation in a small apartment. Mick had given him a tour, had taken him down into a room and said to remember him down there, that this was what he wanted.

Donald slapped one of the lockers with his palm; the loud bang drowned out his curse. This should’ve been Mick over here, freezing and thawing, going mad. Instead, Mick had stolen the domestic life he often teased Donald for living. And he’d had help doing it.

Donald sagged against the lockers. He reached for his handkerchief, coughed into it. He imagined his friend consoling Helen. He thought of the kids and grandkids they’d had together. A murderous rage boiled up. All this time, blaming himself for not getting to Helen. All this time, blaming Helen and Mick for the life he’d missed out on. And it was Anna, the engineer. Anna who had hacked his life. She did this to him. She brought him here.

•22•

The haze of new awareness was similar to the haze of more literal awakenings. Donald retrieved the items from the other two lockers as if in a dream. Numb, he rode the lift back down to Dr. Wilson’s office, dropped off the reactor tech’s personal effects. He asked Dr. Wilson for something to help him sleep that night, remembered where the pill came from. When Wilson left with his samples to go to the lab, Donald helped himself to more of the pills. Crushing them up, he added two scoops of the powder and made a most bitter drink. He had no plan. The actions followed one after the other. There was a cruelness in his life that he wished to end.

Down to the deep freeze. He found her pod effortlessly. Donald traced a finger down the skin of the machine. He touched its smooth surface warily, as if it might cut him. He remembered touching her body like this, always afraid, never quite able to give in or let go. The better it felt, the more it hurt. Each caress was a blow to himself and an affront to Helen.

He pulled his finger back and held it in his other hand to stop some imaginary bleeding. There was danger in being near her. Anna’s nakedness was on the other side of that armored shell, and he was about to open it. He glanced around the vast halls of the deep freeze. Crowded, and yet all alone. Dr. Wilson would be in his lab for some while.

Donald knelt by the end of the pod and entered his keycode. Some small part of him hoped it wouldn’t work. This was too great a power, the ability to give a life or take it. But the panel beeped. Donald steadied his hand and turned the dial just as he’d been shown.

The rest was waiting. Temperatures rose; doubts simmered; anger faded. Donald retrieved the drink and gave it a stir. He made sure everything else was in place.

When the lid sighed open, Donald slid his fingers into the crack and lifted it the rest of the way. Sleep looked so much like death, he saw. Every night people perished, if but for a moment. The cryopods and this hopping through the centuries suddenly seemed less strange. It was no more crazy than dying each evening, a head filled with nightmares and dreams, and trying to remember who he was in the morning.

He reached inside and carefully removed the tubing from the needle in Anna’s arm. A thick fluid leaked out of the needle. He saw how the plastic valve on the end worked and turned it until the dripping stopped. Unfolding the blanket from the back of the wheelchair, he tucked it around her. Her body was already warm. Frost dripped down the inner surface of the pod and collected in little channels that served as gutters. The blanket, he realized, was mostly for him.

Anna stirred. Donald brushed the hair off her forehead as her eyes fluttered. Her lips parted and a groan decades old leaked out. Donald knew what that stiffness felt like, that deep cold frozen in one’s joints. He hated doing this to her. He hated what had been done to him.

“Easy,” he said, as she began to grope the air with shivering limbs. Her head lolled feebly from side to side, murmuring something. Donald helped her into a sitting position and rearranged the blanket to keep her covered. The wheelchair sat quietly beside him with a medical bag and a thermos. Donald made no move to lift her out and help her into the chair.

Blinking and darting eyes finally settled on Donald. They narrowed in recognition.

“Donny—”

He read his name on her lips as much as heard her.

“You came for me,” she whispered.

Donald watched as she trembled; he fought the urge to rub her back or wrap her in his arms. He longed to put an end to all this torture in everyone.

“What year?” she asked, licking her lips. “Is it time?” Her eyes were now wide and wet with fear. Melting frost slid down her cheeks in pretend tears.

Donald remembered waking like this with his most recent dreams still clouding his thoughts. “It’s time for the truth,” he said. “You’re the reason I’m here, aren’t you?”

Anna stared at him blankly, her mind in a fog. He could see it in the twitch of her eyes, the way her dry lips remained parted, the processing delay he well knew from the times they did this to him, from the times they had woken him.

“Yes.” She nodded ever so slightly. “Father was never going to wake us. The deep freeze—” Her voice was a whisper. “I’m glad you came. I knew you would.”

A hand escaped from the blanket and gripped the edge of the pod as if to pull herself out. Donald placed a hand on her shoulder. She was in a weakened state. He turned and grabbed the thermos from the wheelchair. Peeling her hand from the lip of the pod, he pressed the drink into her palm. She wiggled her other arm free and held the thermos against her knees.

“I want to know why,” he said. “Why did you bring me here. To this place.” He looked around at the pods, these unnatural graves that kept death at bay.

Anna gazed at him. She studied the thermos and the straw. Donald let go of her arm and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the cell phone. Anna shifted her attention to that.

“What did you do that day?” he asked. “You kept me from her, didn’t you? And the night we met to finalize the plans—all the times Mick missed a meeting—that was you as well.”

A shadow slid across Anna’s face. Something deep and dark registered. Donald had expected a harsh defiance, a steel resolve, denials. Anna looked sad, instead. It was as though the conversation had taken a turn she didn’t expect.

“So long ago,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Donny, but it was so long ago.” Her eyes flitted beyond him toward the door as if she were expecting danger. Donald glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing. “We have to get out of here,” she croaked, her voice feeble and distant. “Donny, my father, they made a pact—”

“I want to know what you did,” he said. “Tell me.”

She shook her head. “I need to tell you something else.” Her voice was small and quiet. She licked her lips and glanced at the straw, but Donald kept a hand on her arm. “Dad woke me for another shift.” She lifted her head and fixed her eyes on him. Her teeth chattered together while she collected her thoughts. “And I found something—”

“Stop,” Donald said. “No more stories. No lies. Just the truth.”

Anna looked away. A spasm surged through her body, a great shiver. Steam rose from her hair, and condensation raced down the skin of the pod in sudden bursts of speed.

“It was meant to be this way,” she said. The admission was in the way she said it, her refusal to look at him. “It was meant to be. You and me together. We built this.”

Donald seethed with renewed rage. Confirmation was like a second discovery of an awful truth. His hands trembled more than hers.

Anna leaned forward. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you dying over there, alone.”

“I wouldn’t have been alone,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “And you don’t get to decide such things.” He gripped the edge of the pod with both hands and squeezed until his knuckles turned white.

Anna nodded. It was hard to tell if she agreed with him or if she meant to say, “It’s always up to people like me.”

“You need to hear what I have to say,” she said.

Donald waited. What explanation or apology was there? She had taken from him what little Thurman had left behind. Her father had destroyed the world. Anna had destroyed Donald’s. He waited to hear what she had to say.

“My father made a pact,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “We were never to be woken. We need to get out of here—”

This again. She didn’t care that she had destroyed him. Donald felt his rage subside. It dissipated throughout his body, a part of him, a powerful surge that came and went like an ocean wave, not strong enough to hold itself up, crashing down with a hiss and a sigh.

“Drink,” he told her, lifting her arm gently. “Then you can tell me. You can tell me whatever you like.”

Anna blinked. Donald reached for the straw and steered it toward her lips. Such dangerous lips. They would tell him anything, keep him confused, use him so that she might feel less hollow, less alone. He had heard enough of her lies, her brand of poison. To give her an ear was to give her a vein.

Anna’s lips closed around the straw, and her cheeks dented as she sucked. A column of foul green surged up the straw.

“So bitter,” she whispered after her first swallow.

“Shhh,” Donald told her. “Drink. You need this.”

She did, and Donald held the thermos for her. Anna paused between sips to tell him they needed to get out of there, that it wasn’t safe. He agreed and guided the straw back to her lips. The danger was her.

There was still some of the drink left when she gazed up at him, confused. “Why am I … feeling sleepy?” she asked. Anna blinked slowly, fighting to keep her eyes open.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here,” Donald said. “We weren’t meant to live like this.”

Anna lifted an arm, reached out, and seized Donald’s shoulder. Awareness seemed to grip her. Donald sat on the edge of the pod and put an arm around her. As she slumped against him, he flashed back to the night of their first kiss. Back in college, her with too much to drink, falling asleep on his frat house sofa, her head on his shoulder. And Donald had stayed like that for the rest of the night, his arm trapped and growing numb while a party thrummed and finally faded. They had woken the next morning, Anna stirring before he did. She had smiled and thanked him, called him her guardian angel, and gave him a kiss.

That seemed several ages ago. Eons. Lives weren’t supposed to drag on so long. But Donald remembered like it was yesterday the sound of Anna breathing that night. He remembered from their last shift, sharing a cot, her head on his chest as she slept. And then he heard her, right then in that moment as she took in one last sudden, trembling lungful. A gasp. Her body stiffened for a moment, and then cold and trembling fingernails sank into his shoulder. And Donald held her as that grip slowly relaxed, as Anna Thurman breathed her very last.