ust (Silo, #3)(33)

She let go of her thumb. There was no reply.

“Lukas? Do you read me? I want you to get everyone down to at least level four. Clear out anyone not working on this, okay?”

She waited.

“Yeah,” Lukas said. There was a lot of noise in the background. “We’re doing that right now. Trying to keep everyone calm.”

“Tell them it’s just a precaution. Because of the readings in the airlock.”

“Doing that.”

He sounded winded. Juliette hoped she wasn’t causing a panic for no reason.

“I’m going to get the last sample,” she said, focusing on the task at hand. They had prepared for the worst. Everything was going to be okay. She was thankful for the crude sensors they’d installed in the airlock. The next time out, she hoped to install a permanent array on the tower. But she couldn’t get too far ahead of herself. She approached one of the cleaners at the base of the hill.

The body they’d chosen belonged to Jack Brent. It had been nine years since he’d been sent to clean, having gone mad after his wife’s second miscarriage. Juliette knew very little else about him. And that had been her main criterion for the final sample.

She made her way to what was left of the body. The old suit had long turned a dull gray like the soil. What once was a metallic coating flaked away like old paint. The boots were eaten thin, the visor chipped. Jack lay with his arms folded across his chest, legs straight and parallel, almost as if he had taken a nap and had never gotten up. More like he had lain down to gaze at the clear blue sky in his visor.

Juliette pulled the last box out, the one marked “3”, and knelt beside the dead cleaner. It spooked her to think that this would’ve been her fate were it not for Scottie and Walker and the people of Supply who had risked so much. She lifted the sharp blade out of the sample box and cut a square patch from the suit. Setting the blade on the cleaner’s chest, she picked up the sample and dropped it into the container. Holding her breath, she grabbed the blade, careful not to nick her own suit, and sliced into the rotted undersuit where it had been exposed across the cleaner’s belly.

This last sample had to be prised out with the blade. If there was any flesh inside or gathered with it, she couldn’t tell. Everything was thankfully dark beneath the torn and dilapidated suit. But it seemed like nothing but soil in there, blown in amongst the dry bones.

She put the sample in the container and left the blade by the cleaner, no longer needing it and not wanting to risk handling it any further with the bulky gloves. She stood and turned toward the tower.

“You okay?”

Lukas’s voice sounded different. Muffled. Juliette exhaled, felt a little dizzy from holding her breath so long.

“I’m fine.”

“We’re almost ready for you. I’d start heading back.”

She nodded, even though he probably couldn’t see her at that distance, not even with the tall wallscreens magnifying the world.

“Hey, you know what we forgot?”

She froze and studied the tower.

“What is it?” she asked. “Forgot what?” Sweat trickled down her cheek, tickling her skin. She could feel the lace of scars at the back of her neck where her last suit had melted against her.

“We forgot to send you out with a pad or two,” Lukas said. “There’s already some build-up visible in here. And you know, while you’re out there …”

Juliette glared at the tower.

“I’m just saying,” Lukas said. “You maybe could have, you know, given it a bit of a cleaning—”





20



Juliette waited at the bottom of the ramp. She remembered the last time she’d done this, standing in the same place with a blanket of heat tape Solo had made, wondering if she’d run out of air before the doors opened, wondering if she’d survive what awaited her inside. She remembered thinking Lukas was in there, and then struggling with Bernard instead.

She tried to shake those memories free. Glancing down at her pockets, she made sure the flaps on all the pouches were tightly sealed. Every step of the upcoming decontamination flitted through her mind. She trusted that everything would be in place.

“Here we go,” Lukas radioed. Again, his voice was hollow and distant.

On cue, the gears in the airlock door squealed, and a plume of pressurized argon spilled through the gap. Juliette threw herself into the mist, an intense sensation of relief accompanying the move indoors.

“I’m in. I’m in,” she said.

The doors thumped shut behind her. Juliette glanced at the inner airlock door, saw a helmet on the other side of the glass porthole, someone peering in, watching. Moving to the ready bench, she opened the airtight box Nelson had installed in her absence. Needed to be quick. The gas chambers and the flames were all automated.

Ripping the sealed pouches off her thighs, she placed them inside. She unslung the borer with its sample and added that as well, then pushed the lid shut and engaged the locks. The practice run-through had helped. Moving in the suit felt comfortable. She had lain in bed at night thinking through each step until they were habit.

Shuffling across the small airlock, she gripped the edge of the immense metal tub she’d welded together. It was still warm from the last bout of flames, but the water Nelson had topped it up with had sapped much of the heat. With a deep and pointless breath, she lowered herself over the edge.