ust (Silo, #3)(32)

Lukas’s voice crackled through the radio: “We’ve got a full burn in the airlock. Nelson is letting it cool down before he goes in.”

Juliette turned and faced the sensor tower. She fought the urge to lift her hand, to acknowledge the dozens of men and women who were watching on the cafeteria’s wallscreen. She looked down at her chest and tried to clear her mind, to remember what she was supposed to do next.

Soil sample. She shuffled away from the ramp and the tower toward a patch of dirt that maybe hadn’t seen footsteps in centuries. Kneeling down – the undersuit pinching the back of her knee – she scooped dirt using the shallow container. The soil was packed hard and difficult to dig up, so she brushed more of the surface soil onto the top, filling the dish.

“Surface sample complete,” she said, pinching her glove. She screwed the lid on carefully and pressed the ring of wax before sliding it into a pouch on her other thigh.

“Good going,” Lukas said. He was probably aiming for encouragement. All she could hear was his intense worry.

“Taking the deep sample next.”

She grabbed the tool with both hands. She had built the large T on the top while wearing bulky suit gloves to make sure the grip would be right. With the corkscrew end pressed against the earth, she twisted the handle around and around, leaning her weight into her arms to force the blades through the dense soil.

Sweat formed on her brow. A drop of perspiration smacked her visor and trembled into a little puddle as her arms jerked with effort. A caustic and stiff breeze buffeted her suit, pushing her to the side. When the tool penetrated all the way to the tape mark on the handle, she stood and pulled the T-bar, using her legs.

The plug came free, an avalanche of deep soil spilling off and crumbling into the dry hole. She slid the case over the plug and locked it into place. Everything had the fit and polish of Supply’s best. She stowed the tool back in its pouch, slung it around onto her back, and took a deep breath.

“Good?” Lukas asked.

She waved at the tower. “I’m good. Two more samples left. How far along is the airlock?”

“Lemme check.”

While Lukas saw how the preparations for her return were going, Juliette trudged toward the nearest hill. Her old footsteps had been worn away by a light rain, but she remembered the path well. The crease in the hill stood like an inviting stairway, a ramp on which two forms still nestled.

She stopped at the base of the hill and pulled out another container with gaskets and heat tape inside. The cap came off easily. She held it up to the wind, allowing whatever blew inside to become trapped. For all they knew, these were the first tests made of the outside air. Reams and reams of bogus reports from previous cleanings had been nothing but numbers used to uphold and justify fears. It was a charade of progress, of efforts being made to right the world, when all they ever cared about was selling the story of how wrong it was.

The only thing more impressive to Juliette than the depths of the conspiracy had been the speed and relief with which its mechanisms had crumbled within IT. The men and women of level thirty-four reminded her of the children of Silo 17, frightened and wide-eyed and desperate for some adult they could cling to and trust. This foray of hers to test the outside air was looked upon with suspicion and fear elsewhere in the silo, but in IT, where they had pretended to do this work for generations, the chance to truly investigate had been seized by many with wild abandon.

Damn!

Juliette slapped the cover on the container. Her mind had wandered; she had forgotten to count to ten, had probably gone twice that.

“Hey, Jules?”

She squeezed her fingers together. “Yeah?” Releasing the mic, she locked the lid tight, made sure it said “2” on the top, and sealed the edges. She put it away with the other container, cursing her inattention.

“The airlock burn is complete. Nelson went in afterward to get things ready for you, but they’re saying it’s gonna be a while to charge the argon again. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

She took a moment to survey herself and give an honest answer. A few deep breaths. Wiggled her joints. Looked up at the dark clouds to make sure her vision and balance were normal.

“Yeah. I feel fine.”

“Okay. And they are going to go with the flames when you come back. It looks like they really might’ve been necessary. We were getting some strange readings in the airlock before you left. As a precaution, Nelson is getting a scrub-down in the inner lock right now. We’ll have everything prepped for you as fast as we can.”

Juliette didn’t like the sound of any of that. Her passage through the Silo 17 airlock had been terrifying, but with no lasting consequences. Dumping soup on herself had been enough to survive. The theory they had been working under was that conditions outside weren’t as bad as they’d been led to believe, and that the flames were more a deterrent against not leaving the airlock than an actual necessity for cleansing the air. The challenge with this mission of hers was getting back inside without enduring another burn or another stint in the hospital. But she couldn’t put the silo at risk, either.

She squeezed her fingers together, thinking suddenly of all that was at stake. “Is there still a crowd up there watching?” she asked Lukas.

“Yeah. There’s a lot of excitement in the air. People can’t believe this is happening.”

“I want you to clear them out,” she said.