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Solo bobbed his head He looked up at her, wet tracks running fro into his beard "None of us should," he said "Not a one"

16

"Give leave awhile,

we must talk in secret"

"That is this place?" Lukas asked Bernard The two of the on the wall like a tapestry The diagrarid of circles evenly spaced with lines between them and intricacies inside each Several of the circles were crossed out with thick redhe hoped to one day achieve with his star charts

"This is our legacy," Bernard said simply

Lukas had often heard him speak similarly of the mainframes upstairs

"Are these supposed to be the servers?" he asked, daring to rub his hands across a continuous piece of paper the size of a small bed sheet "They’re laid out like the servers"

Bernard stepped beside hi So they are I never noticed that before"

"What are they?" Lukas looked closer and saw each was nules in one corner with parallel lines spaced between theures contained no detail within thee beneath

"We’ll get to that Co"

At the end of the roo on hts as he went

"Who else colanced back over his shoulder "No one"

Lukas didn’t like that answer He glanced back over his own shoulder, feeling like he was descending into so people didn’t return from

"I know this must seem sudden," Bernard said He waited on Lukas to join his changed thisAnd she rarely does it pleasantly"

"Is this about…the cleaning?" He nearly said "Juliette" The picture of her felt hot against his breastbone

Bernard’s face grew stern "There was no cleaning," he said abruptly "And now all hell will break loose, and people will die And the silos, you see, were designed froned--" Lukas repeated His heart beat once, twice His brain whirred its old circuits and finally co Bernard had said that had made no sense

"I’m sorry," he said "Did you say silos?"

"You’ll want to faestured toward a s wooden chair tucked up against it There was a book on the desk unlike any Lukas had ever seen, or even heard of It stood nearly as high as it ide Bernard patted the cover, then inspected his palive you the spare key, which you are to never remove from your neck Come dohen you can and read Our history is in here, as well as every action you are to take in any eency"

Lukas approached the book, a lifetied open the cover The contents were h a dozen pages of listed contents until he found the first page of the body Oddly, he recognized the opening lines i up at Bernard "I already know quite a bit of--"

"This is the Pact," Bernard told hi the first half inch of the thick book "The rest is the Order"

He stepped back

Lukas hesitated, digesting this, then reached forward and flopped the tome open near its middle

In the event of an earthquake:

For casee, turn to AIRLOCK BREACH (p2180)

For collapse of one or more levels, see SUPPORT COLUMNS under SABOTAGE (p751)

For fire outbreak, see--

"Sabotage?" Lukas flipped a few pages and read so and asphyxiation "Who came up with all this stuff?"

"People who have experienced s"

"Like…?" He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to say this, but it felt like taboos weren’t allowed down there "Like the people before the uprising?"

"The people before those people," Bernard said "The one people"

Lukas closed the book He shook his head, wondering if this was all a gag, some kind of initiation The priests usually made more sense than this The children’s books, too

"I’hed His countenance had fully transformed from earlier "You just need to knohat’s in there so you can access it when you need to"

"What does it say about this ?" He turned to Bernard, and it dawned on him suddenly that no one knew of his fascination, his enchantment, with Juliette The tears had evaporated fros had overpowered his sha so hard for someone he hardly knew And now this secret had wandered out of sight It could only be betrayed by the flush he felt on his cheeks as Bernard studied hie seventy-two," Bernard said, the hu from his face and replaced with the frustration from earlier

Lukas turned back to the book This was a test A shadowing rite It had been a long tian flipping through the pages and saw at once that the section he was looking for ca of this new Order

He found the page At the very top, in bold print, it said:

In Case of a Failed Cleaning:

And below this rested terrible words strung into awfulLukas read the instructions several tilanced over at Bernard, who nodded sadly, before Lukas turned back to the print