ust (Silo, #3)(64)

She pressed her ID card to the reader and watched its eye blink green, then pressed the button for level thirty-four. Admin and comms. The lion’s den. The doors seemed to sigh gratefully as they finally met. The floors began to flash by.

Charlotte checked the back of her neck and felt a few loose strands of hair. She tucked them into her cap. Admin was a risk – she would stand out in red coveralls meant for the reactor level – but it would be even more awkward to show up where she seemed to belong while not knowing her way around or what she was supposed to do. She patted her pockets to make sure she had her tools, made sure they were visible. They were her cover. Hidden inside a large pouch on her hip, a pistol from one of the storage bins sagged conspicuously. Charlotte’s heart raced as the levels flew past. She tried to imagine the world outside that Donald had described, the dry and lifeless wasteland. She imagined the elevator going all the way up and opening on those barren hills, the wind howling inside the lift. It might be a relief.

No passengers joined her on the way up. It was a good decision, going this time of night. Thirty-six, thirty-five, and then the lift slowed. The doors opened on a hallway, the lights beyond harsh and bright. She doubted her disguise immediately. A man looked up from a gate a dozen paces distant. There was nothing familiar about this world, nothing like her home of the past few weeks. She tugged the brim of her hat down, aware that it didn’t match her coveralls. The important thing was confidence, which she felt none of. Be brash. Direct. She told herself that the days here were full of sameness. Everyone would see what they expected to see. She approached the man and his gate and held out her ID.

“You expected?” the man asked. He pointed to the scanner on her side of the gate. Charlotte swiped the card, not knowing what might happen, fully prepared to run, to pull out the pistol, to surrender, or some confusing mix of all three.

“We’re showing a, uh … power drain on this level.” Her pretend-sick voice sounded ludicrous to her own ears. But then, she knew her voice better than anyone – she told herself that was why it sounded funny. It might sound normal to someone else. She also hoped a power drain made as little sense to this man as it did to her. “I was sent up to check the comm room. You know where it is?”

A question for him. Tickle his male ego for directions. Charlotte felt a rivulet of sweat run down the nape of her neck and wondered if there were anymore loose strands of hair. She fought the urge to check. Lifting her arm might tighten her coveralls across her chest. Sizing up the large man, she pictured him grabbing her and slamming her to the ground, hands the size of small plates pummeling her.

“Comms? Of course. Yeah. Down the hall to the end, turn left. Second door on your right.”

“Thanks.” Tipping her hat allowed her to keep her head down. She pushed through the bars with a clack and the tick of some invisible counter.

“Forgetting something?”

She turned. Her hand fell to the pouch by her leg.

“Need you to sign the work log.” The guard held out a worn digital tablet, its screen a haze of curling scratches.

“Right.” Charlotte took the plastic stylus hanging from a cord of wire repaired with tape. She studied the entry box in the center of the screen. There was a place to write the time and a place to sign her name. She filled in the time and glanced at her chest, already forgetting. Stan. Her name was Stan. She scrawled this messily, tried to make it look casual, handed him the tablet and stylus.

“See you on your way out,” the guard said.

Charlotte nodded and hoped her way out would prove just as uneventful.

She followed his directions down the main hall. There was more activity, more sounds than she expected at that time of night. There were lights on in a few of the offices, the squeak of chairs and filing cabinets and keyboards clattering. A door opened down the hall, and a man stepped out, pulled the door shut behind him. Charlotte saw his face, and her legs went numb. She staggered a few steps on stalks of bone and meat, wobbly. Dizzy. Nearly fell.

She lowered her head and scratched the back of her neck, disbelieving. But it was Thurman. Slimmer and older-looking. And then images of Donny curled in a ball and being beaten half to death flooded back. The hallway blurred behind a coat of tears. The white hair, the tall frame. How had she not recognized him then?

“You’re a ways from home, aren’t you?” Thurman asked.

His voice was sandpaper. It was a familiar scratch. As familiar as her mother’s or her father’s voice would’ve been.

“Checking a power drain,” Charlotte said, not stopping or turning, hoping he meant her coveralls and not her gender. How could he not hear that it was her voice? How could he not recognize her gait, her frame, the bare patch of skin on the back of her neck, that few square inches of exposed flesh, anything to betray her?

“See to it,” he said.

She walked a dozen paces. Two dozen. Sweating. Feeling drunk. She waited until she was at the end of the hall, just starting to make the turn, before glancing back toward the security station. Thurman was there in the distance, speaking with the guard, his white hair like the bare sun. Second door on the right, she reminded herself. She was in danger of forgetting the guard’s directions to the comm room, such was the pounding of her heart and the racing of her mind. She took a deep breath and reminded herself why she was there. Seeing Thurman and realizing it was he who had laid into Donny had stunned her. But there was no time for processing that. A door stood before her. She tested the knob, then stepped inside.