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She fuloves Her gloves were too thick They were going to kill her
She rolled to her belly and crawled through the soup, her hands and knees slipping She reached the door, gasping, and fumbled for the handle, found it, threw the door open There was a rack of knives glearabbed one, held the blade in her thick mitts, and slu the blade toward her own neck, Juliette groped for the latch She slid the point along her collar until it caught in the crack of the button Steadying herself, her ar it toward her body against all physical revulsion at the act
There was a faint click Juliette gasped and groped along the rim with the blade for the other button until she found it She repeated the maneuver
Another click, and her hel deep gulps of foul air The stench was unbearable, but she couldn’t stop gasping for ical decay, a tepid filth of stenches invaded her ue, nose
She turned to the side and wretched, but nothing ca was painful; she i sensation on her skin, but it could’ve been her fevered state She crawled away fro soup before she ful, the odor still overpowering, the soup coating her But beyond the stench, so breathable that began to force away the dizziness and the panic It was oxygen Life
Juliette was still alive
She laughed a reen glow of light, breathing deeply and too exhausted to appreciate this, the impossible life still in her
9
"For you and I are past our dancing days"
Knox saw the uproar in Mechanical as just another eency to overco a leak, or when the oil rig hit that pocket of ht levels until the air handlers ainst the inevitable flow of con tasks He had to break a huge undertaking down to discrete bits and ht hands Only this ti out to repair soood people of Mechanical meant to break
"Supply is the key," he told his fore on the wall He traced the stairwell up the thirty flights to Supply’s e is that IT doesn’t knoe’re co" He turned to his shift leaders "Shirly, Marck, and Courtnee, you’ll come with me We’ll load up with supplies and take your shadoith us Walker, you can wire ahead to let ‘eh Assume IT has ears Say we have a load of your repairs to deliver"
He turned to Jenkins, who had shadowed under Knox for six years before he grew his own beard and moved to third shift The assu "Jinks, I want you to take over down here There are no days off for a while Keep the place running, but get ready for the worst I want as much food stockpiled as possible And water Make sure the cistern is topped up Divert from the hydroponics feed if you have to, but be discreet Think of an excuse, like a leak or so, in case they notice Meanwhile, have soe, just in case the fighting comes to us And stockpile whatever weapons you can make up Pipes, hammers, whatever"
Some eyebroere lifted at this, but Jenkins nodded at the list as if it all made sense and was doable Knox turned to his foreht?"
"But what’s the larger picture?" Courtnee asked, glancing at the tall blueprint of their buried ho this place?"
"We already run this place," Knox growled He slapped his hand across the floors of the mid-thirties "We just do it in the dark Like these levels here are dark to us But now I ht in their rat hole and scare the"
"You understand what they’ve been doing, right?" Marck turned to Courtnee "They’ve been sending people out to die On purpose Not because it had to happen, but because they wanted it to!"
Courtnee bit her lip and didn’t say anything, just stared at the blueprint
"We need to get going," Knox said "Walker, get that wire out Let’s load up And think of soru about this where so us out"
They nodded Knox slapped Jenkins on the back and dipped his chin at the younger man "I’ll send e need everyone Keep the bare bones you think you’ve gotta have down here and send the rest Ti, okay?"
"I knohat to do," Jenkins said He wasn’t trying to be uppity, just reassuring his elder
"All right," Knox said "Then let’s get to it"
• • • •
They hts with little cos fro smocks on his wide shoulders, plus a bundle of helh their chin straps, and they clattered down his wide back Marck struggled with his load of pipe stock as they kept trying to slide against one another and slip out of his arht up the rear, behind the woether so they hung around their necks Professional porters with similarly full loads breezed past the a er When one porter--a wonized from deliveries to the down deep--stopped and offered to help, he gruffly sent her on her way She hurried up the steps, looking back over her shoulder before spiraling out of view, and Knox regretted taking his exhaustion out on her
"Keep it up," he told the others Even with the s ever ues as news of Juliette’s ayred all around theer people, stood around and gossiped about what it all ht to whisper Forbidden notions were birthed on tongues and swanored the pain in his back and lu the et there in a hurry
As they left the one-thirties, the gru the upper half of the down deep, where people orked, shopped, and ate in the led with those ould rather they didn’t Deputy Hank was on the stairwell of one-twenty-eight, trying tothe officer wouldn’t turn and see his heavily loaded train and ask the up this far As he ascended past the ruckus, Knox glanced back to watch the shadows slink past, hugging the inner rail Deputy Hank was still asking a woht