First Shift: Legacy (Shift, #1)(26)

This was something else. Donald thought about the phone calls and emails he’d been getting from the district, all the headlines and fear mongering over the route the spent rods would take from the port as the trucks skirted Atlanta. Every time Helen heard a peep about the project, all she could likely think of was him wasting his time on it rather than doing his real job. Or the fact that he could’ve stayed in Savannah and done the same work. But wasn’t this all part of his elected duties? It had all begun to blend together.

Helen cleared her throat. “So—” She hesitated. “Was Anna at the job site today?”

She peered over the lip of her sweating glass, and Donald realized, in that moment, what his wife was really thinking when the CAD-FAC project and the fuel rods came up. It was the insecurity of him working with her, of being so far away from home. And he completely understood and sympathized with his wife’s discomfort.

“No.” He shook his head. “No, we don’t really see each other. We send plans back and forth. Mick and I went, just the two of us. He’s coordinating a lot of the materials and crews—”

The waiter arrived, pulled his black folio from his apron, and clicked his pen. “Can I start you off with drinks?”

Donald ordered two glasses of the house Merlot. Helen declined the offer of an appetizer.

“Every time I bring her up,” she said, once their waiter had angled off toward the bar, “you mention Mick. It’s like you’re trying to change the subject.”

“Can we not talk about her?” Donald folded his hands together on the table. “I’ve seen her once since we started working on this. I set it up so that we didn’t have to meet, because I knew you wouldn’t approve. I have zero feelings for her, honey. Zilch. Please. This is our night.”

“Is working with her giving you second thoughts?”

“Second thoughts about what? About taking on this job? Or about being an architect?”

“About...anything.” She glanced at the other booth, the booth he should’ve reserved.

“No. God, no. Honey, why would you even say something like that?”

The waiter came back with their wine. He flipped open his black notebook and eyed the two of them. “Have we decided?”

Helen opened her menu and looked from the waiter to Donald. “I’m going to get my usual,” she said. She pointed to what had once been a simple grilled cheese sandwich with fries that now involved fried green heirloom tomatoes, Gruyère cheese, a honey-maple glaze, and matchstick frites with tartar.

“And for you, sir?”

Donald allowed his eyes to roam the menu. The conversation had him flustered, but he felt the pressure to choose and to choose swiftly.

“I think I’m going to try something different,” he said, picking his words poorly.

12


2110 ? Silo 1

Silo 12 was collapsing, and by the time Troy and the others arrived, the communication room was awash in overlapping radio chatter and the smell of sweat. Four men crowded around a comm station normally manned by a single operator. The men looked precisely how Troy felt: panicked, out of their depth, ready to curl up and hide somewhere. And for whatever reason, it had a calming effect on him. Their panic was his strength. He could fake this. He could hold it together.

Two of the men wore sleepshirts, suggesting that the late shift had been woken up and called in. Troy wondered how long Silo 12 had been in trouble before they finally came and got him.

“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: