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The voices in the radio argued They said forbidden things They were sloppy with secrets, thinking other ears were off

Lukas watched his death play out over and over His fate awaited him over that rail The visual was so powerful, it wrecked his cli with hian to falter, to waver in their convictions The strength in Lukas drained away, and he decided not to juhts

27

• Silo 17 •

Juliette woke up on a floor, so her A man with a beard It was Solo, and she was passed out in his roo his yellow teeth He looked better than she reh she were dead

Dead

"What time is it?" she asked "What day?"

She tried to sit up Everybeneath her skin

Solo went to the co out roo to the upper farms" He turned to look at her Juliette rubbed her temples "There are others," he said solemnly, like this was still news

Juliette nodded There was only one other that she could think of right then Dreams ca cells, a roo prepped for them, no care for whether they cleaned or not It would be a ht of all the bodies outside of this silo, silo 17 It was easy to i at the co on how you like it Two in the er than that"

"What day was it yesterday?" She shook her head That didn’t make sense "What day did I dive down? With the co

Solo looked at her like he was having sihts "The dive was Thursday Today is tomorrow" He rubbed his head "Let’s start over--"

"No tiroaned and tried to stand up Solo rushed to her and put his hands under her arms, helped lift her "Suit Lab," she said He nodded She could tell he was exhausted,to do anything for her Itthis loyal to her

She led hiht back a legion of aches Juliette crawled out to the server room floor; Solo followed up the ladder and helped her to her feet They ether

"I need all the heat tape we’ve got," she told hih the servers, bumped into one of them "It needs to be the kind on the yellow spool, the stuff froood kind Like we used on the coht"

They left the server room and shuffled down the hallway Juliette could hear the kids squealing around the bend, the patter of their feet It was a strange sound, like the echoes of ghosts But so norot Solo busy with the tape He stretched out long strips on one of the workbenches, overlapping the edges, using the torch to cauterize and seal the joints

"At least an inch of overlap," she told hi shy with the stuff He nodded Juliette glanced at her cot and considered collapsing into it But there was no tirabbed the sht be a tight fit She reet into silo 17 and didn’t want to repeat it

"I’onna have time to make another switch for the suit, so I won’t have a radio" She went through the cleaning outfit, piece by piece, pulling out the parts engineered to fail and hunting through her hauls from Supply for a better version of each Soood tape It wouldn’t be as nice as the one Walker had helped arrange, but it would be a world different than what Lukas was getting She grabbed all the parts she’d spent weeks puzzling over,weaker than it appeared She tested a gasket froether The gasket parted easily She dug for another

"How long?" Solo asked, noisily stretching another piece of tape out "You’ll be gone a day? A week?"

Juliette looked up fro over She didn’t want to tell hiht she would keep to herself "We’ll figure out a way to come for you," she said "First, I have to try and save soht be gone for good

"With this?" Solo rustled the blanket of heat tape

She nodded "The doors to my ho someone to clean--"

Solo nodded "It was the same here, back when this place was crazy"

Juliette looked up at hi Solo had told a joke She laughed, even though she didn’t feel like it, and then found that it helped

"We’ve got six or seven hours until those doors open," she told him "And when they do, I want to be there"

"And then what?" Solo shut down the torch and inspected his work He looked up at her

"Then I want to see how they explain ed out a seal and flipped the suit around to get to the other sleeve "I thinkon one side of this fence, and the people who sent , the vast majority of my people They are too scared to take sides, which basically means they’ve checked out"

She paused while she used one of the small extractors to relove Once she had it out, she reached for a good one

"You think this will change that? Saving your friend?"