First Shift: Legacy (Shift, #1)(34)

“Would you like me to fetch you some water?”

Troy shook his head. He hesitated. Looking up from the twin pills, he asked Victor a question.

“How long do you think it’ll take? Silo 12, I mean. Before all of those people are gone.”

Victor shrugged. “Not long, I imagine. Days.”

Troy nodded. Victor watched him carefully. Troy tilted his head back and rattled the pills past trembling lips. There was the bitter taste of forgetting on his tongue, and then he made a show of swallowing.

“I’m sorry that it was your shift,” Victor said. “I know this wasn’t the job you signed up for.”

Troy nodded.

“I’m actually glad it was mine,” he said after a moment. “I’d hate for it to have been anyone else’s.”

Victor rubbed the folder with one hand. “You’ll be given a commendation in my report.”

“Thank you,” Troy said. He didn’t know what the f*ck for.

With a wave of the folder, Victor finally turned to leave and go back to his desk across the hall where he could sit and glance up occasionally at Troy.

But he had to walk to get there. And in that brief interval, when no one was looking, like a young shadow sawing into his arm because the pain was better than the numbness, Troy spat the two blue blurs into the palm of his hand.

Shaking his mouse with one hand, waking up his monitor so he could boot a game of solitaire, Troy smiled across the hallway at Victor, who smiled back. And in his other hand, still sticky from the outer coating dissolved by his saliva, two pills nestled in a palm dyed pink. The blood red stain from the day before was already beginning to fade. But Troy was tired of fading. He had decided to remember.

15


2049 ? Savannah, Georgia

Donald sped down highway 17, driving manually, a flashing red light on his dash warning him as he exceeded the local speed limit. He didn’t care about being pulled over, didn’t care about being wired a ticket or his insurance rates creeping up. It all seemed trivial. The fact that there were circuits riding along in his car keeping track of everything he did paled in comparison to the suspicion that machines in his blood were doing the same.

The tires squealed as he spiraled down his exit ramp too fast. He merged onto Berwick Boulevard, the overhead lights strobing through the windshield as he flew beneath them. Glancing down at his lap, he watched the gold inlay text on the book throb with the rhythm of the passing streetlights.

Order. Order. Order.

He had read enough to worry, to wonder what he’d gotten himself mixed up in. Helen had been right to warn him, had been wrong about the scale of the danger.

Turning into their neighborhood, Donald remembered an ancient conversation—he remembered her begging him not to run for office, that it would change him, that he couldn’t fix anything up there, but that he could sure as hell come home broken.

How right had she been?

He pulled up to the house and had to leave the car by the curb. Her Jeep was in the middle of the driveway. One more habit formed in his absence, a reminder that he didn’t live there anymore, didn’t have a real home.

Leaving his bags in the trunk, he took just the book and his keys. It was enough of a load, that book.

The motion light came on as he neared the stoop. He saw a form by the door, heard frantic scratching on the other side. Helen opened the door, and Karma rushed out, tail whacking the side of the jamb, tongue lolling, so much bigger in just the few weeks that he’d been away.

Donald crouched down and rubbed her head, let the dog lick his cheek.

“Good girl,” he said. He tried to sound happy. The cool emptiness in his chest intensified from being home, from lying to their dog about his mood. The things that should’ve felt comforting just made him feel worse.

“Hey, honey.” He smiled up at his wife.

“You’re early.”

Helen wrapped her arms around his neck as he stood. Karma sat down and whined at them, tail swishing on the concrete. Helen’s kiss tasted like coffee.

“I took an earlier flight.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the dark streets of his neighborhood. As if anyone needed to follow him.

“Where’re your bags?”

“I’ll get ’em in the morning. C’mon, Karma. Let’s go inside.” He steered his dog through the door.

“Is everything okay?” Helen asked.

Donald went to the kitchen. He set the book down on the island and fished in the cabinet for a glass. Helen watched him with concern as he pulled a bottle of brandy out of the cabinet.

“Baby. What’s going on?”

“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Lunatics—” He poured three fingers of brandy, looked to Helen and raised the bottle to see if she wanted any. She shook her head. “Then again,” he continued, “maybe there’s something to it—” He took more than a sip. His other hand hadn’t left the neck of the bottle.

“Baby, you’re acting strange. Come sit down. Take off your coat.”

He nodded and let her help him remove his jacket. He slid his tie off, saw the worry on her face, knew it was a reflection of his own. He tried to relax the knot he could feel above his nose, the scrunched brow that was frozen on his forehead—it was the emotional and physical antithesis of sore cheeks from smiling too much.