First Shift: Legacy (Shift, #1)(41)

Donald watched as the driver hurried around the car to get out of the rain. That sheet of gleaming black trembled, the jewels scattering as her window lowered a crack. One last wave, a disembodied hand braving the wet and cold, fingers fluttering.

“Yeah, well, those days are long gone, my friend.” Donald waved back as the car pulled out into the light traffic. Thunder grumbled in the distance. An umbrella opened with a pop as a gentleman prepared to brave the storm. “Besides,” Donald told Mick, “some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong.”

18


2110 ? Silo 1

The exercise room on level twelve smelled of sweat, of having been recently used. A line of iron weights sat in a jumble in one corner, and someone had forgotten their towel. They had left it draped over the bar of the bench press, over a hundred pounds of iron discs still in place.

Troy eyed the mess as he worked the last bolt free from the side of the exercise bike. When the cover plate came off, washers and nuts rained down from recessed holes and bounced across the tile. Troy scrambled for them and pushed the hardware into a tidy pile. He peered inside the bike’s innards and saw a large cog, its jagged teeth conspicuously empty.

The chain that did all the work hung slack around the cog’s axle. Troy was surprised to see it there, would think the thing ran on belts or...well, he didn’t know how he expected the bike to work. But this seemed too fragile. Not a good choice for the length of time it would be expected to serve. It was strange, in fact, to think that this machine was already fifty years old—or that it needed to last centuries more.

He wiped his forehead. Sweat was still beading up from the handful of miles he’d gotten in before the machine broke. Fishing around in the toolbox Jones had loaned him, he found the flathead screwdriver and began levering the chain back onto the cog.

Chains on cogs. Chains on cogs. He laughed to himself. Wasn’t that the way?

“Excuse me, sir?”

Troy turned to find Jones, his chief mechanic for another week, standing in the gym’s doorway.

“Almost done,” Troy said. “You need your tools back?”

“Nossir. Dr. Henson is looking for you.” He raised his hand, had one of those clunky radios in it.

Troy grabbed an old rag out of the toolbox and wiped the grease from his fingers. This felt good, working on something, getting dirty. It was a welcome distraction, something to do besides checking the blisters in his mouth with a mirror or hanging out in his office or apartment waiting to cry again for no reason.

This was what he was supposed to be doing, not leading or being in charge. He was supposed to be the guy coiling the ropes, not the captain.

He left the bike and crossed to his shift mechanic to accept the radio. Troy felt a wave of envy for the older man. He would love to wake up in the morning, put on those blue denim coveralls with the patches on the knees, grab his trusty toolbox, and work down a list of repairs. Anything other than sitting around while he waited on far worse things to break.

Squeezing the button on the side of the radio, he held it up to his mouth.

“This is Troy,” he said.

The name sounded weird coming out of his own mouth. He didn’t like saying his own name, didn’t like hearing it. He wondered what Dr. Henson and the shrinks would say about that.

The radio crackled. “Sir? I hate to disturb you—”

“No, that’s fine. What is it?” Troy walked back to the exercise bike and grabbed his towel from the handlebars. He wiped his forehead and saw Jones eyeing the disassembled bike and scattering of tools. The mechanic looked like a starving man gaping at a buffet. When he lifted his brows questioningly, Troy waved his consent.

“We’ve got a gentleman in our office who’s not responding to treatment,” Dr. Henson said.

Jones knelt by the bike. He slid his hands inside the machine’s cavity like a surgeon reaching into an open abdomen.

A blast of static, and then Dr. Henson continued: “It looks like another deep-freeze. I’ll need you to sign the waiver.”

Jones glanced up from the bike and frowned at this. Troy rubbed the back of his neck with the towel. He remembered Merriman saying to be careful handing these out. There were plenty of good men who would just as soon sleep through all this mess than serve their shifts.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“We’ve tried everything. He’s been restrained. Security is taking him down the express right now. Can you meet us down here? You’ll have to sign off before he can be put away.”

“Sure, sure.” Troy rubbed his face with his towel, could smell the detergent in the clean cloth cut through the odor of sweat in the room and the tinge of grease from the open bike. Jones grabbed one of the pedals with his thick hands and gave it a turn. The chain was back on the cog, the machine operational again.

“I’ll be right down,” Troy said before releasing the mic. He handed the radio back to Jones, and the two men exchanged frowns. Some things were a pleasure to fix. Others weren’t.

????

The express had already passed when Troy reached the lifts; he could see the floor display racing down. He pressed the call button for the other one and tried to imagine the sad scene playing out below. Whoever it was had his sympathies.

He shook violently, blamed it on the cool air in the hallway and his damp skin. A ping-pong ball clocked back and forth in the rec room around the corner, sneakers squeaking as players chased the next shot. From the same room, a television was playing a movie, the sound of a woman’s voice. When the ball stopped, the score was called out.