Third Shift: Pact (Silo #2C)(49)

“Here we go,” he told Shadow. He lowered the fish to the metal and got a boot on its tail. He hated this part. The fish looked so upset. This was when he would change his mind and wish he could throw the thing back, but Shadow was already swirling around his legs and swishing his tail. Jimmy held the fish still with his boot and dug the homemade hook out of its lip. The little barb he’d made by bending the needle back before pounding a new point made it hard to get free, but Jimmy had learned that this was the point.

“The point,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

Shadow told him to hurry up.

Jimmy tossed the hook and line over the top of the rail to get it out of the way. The fish threw itself against the grating a few times. It peered up at him with its wide eye, its mouth panting frantically. Jimmy reached for his knife.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “So, so sorry.”

He stuck the knife in the fish’s head to stop its pain. He looked away while he did this. So much death. Lifetimes of death. But Shadow was already acting so happy. The life dribbled out of the fish and into the water below. The handful of fish that remained darted up to gobble at the places the blood hit the water, and Jimmy wondered why they did that. There was none of this that he enjoyed, not the digging for worms, or the long hike, or the setting of hooks, or the killing, or the cleaning—but he did it anyway.

He cleaned the fish the way the Legacy showed, a slice behind the gills, and then a swipe along the bone toward the tail. Two runs of the knife like this, and he had two pieces of meat. He left the scales on, since Shadow never touched that part. Both fillets went onto a chipped plate near the stairwell.

Shadow spun in circles a few times, his belly making that thrumming noise, then began tearing at the flesh with his teeth.

Jimmy retired to the other end of the railing. He had a towel there. He wiped his hands of the foul slickness and sat down, his back against the closed doors of level one-thirty-one, and watched the cat eat. Silvery shapes darted below. The landing and all else seemed calm in the pale green glow of the emergency stairwell lights.

Before long, there wouldn’t be any fish left. Another year at this rate, and Jimmy figured he’d catch them all.

“But not the last one,” he told himself as he watched Shadow eat. Jimmy hadn’t tasted a fish yet and didn’t think he ever would. The catching of them was too much work, little of it fun, much of it disgusting. But he thought, when he came down one day with his rod and his jar of dirt and worms and saw only one fish remained, that he would leave it alone. Just the one, he thought, as he watched Shadow eat. It would be scared enough down there. No need to go yanking it out into the frightful air. Just let the poor thing be.





Silo 1





38


Donald set his alarm for three in the morning, but there was little chance of him falling asleep. He’d waited weeks for this. A chance to give a life rather than take one. A chance at redemption and a chance for the truth, a chance to satisfy his growing suspicions.

He stared at the ceiling and considered what he was about to do. It wasn’t what Erskine or Victor had hoped he would do if someone like him was ever in charge, but those men had gotten a lot wrong, least of all who he was. This wasn’t the end of the end of the world. This was the beginning of something else. An end to the not knowing what was out there.

He studied his hand in the dim light spilling from the bathroom and thought of the outside. At two-thirty, he decided he’d waited long enough. He got up, showered and shaved, put on a fresh pair of coveralls, tugged on his boots. He grabbed his badge and clipped it to his collar. He had a mind to sneak out, to slink down the hallway, but that was the wrong way. He left his apartment with his head up and shoulders back, instead. Long strides took him down a hall with a few lights still on and the distant clatter of a keyboard, someone working late. The door to Eren’s office was closed. Donald called for the elevator and waited.

Before heading all the way down, he checked to see if it would be all for naught by scanning his badge and pressing the shiny button marked fifty-four. The light flashed, and the lift lurched into motion. So far, so good. The elevator didn’t stop until it reached the armory. The doors opened on a familiar darkness studded with tall shadows—black cliffs of shelves and bins. Donald held his hand on the edge of the door to keep it from shutting and stepped out into the room. The vastness of the space could somehow be felt, like the echoes of his racing pulse were being swallowed by the distance. He waited for a light to flick on at the far end, for Anna to walk out brushing her hair or with a bottle of scotch in her hand. But nothing in that room moved. Everything was quiet and still. The pilots and the temporary activity were gone.

He returned to the lift and pressed another button. The elevator sank. It drifted past more storage levels, past the reactor. The doors cracked on the medical wing. Donald could feel the tens of thousands of bodies arranged all around him, all facing the ceiling, eyelids closed. Some of them were well and truly dead, he thought. One was about to be woken.

He went straight to the doctor’s office and knocked on the jamb. The assistant on duty lifted his head from behind the monitor. He wiped his eyes behind his glasses, adjusted them on his nose, and blinked at Donald.

“How’s it going?” Donald asked.

“Hmm? Good. Good.” The young man shook his wrist and checked his watch, an ancient thing. “We got someone going into deep freeze? I didn’t get a call. Is Wilson up?”