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When he could no longer look at the notes and see anything but blood, Donald went for what had beco drones This was his escape from the hiss of Anna’s work and the cra these laps through the darkened storehouse that he ca his head froht’s bottle of scotch, and fro to feel for Anna

Most of all, he walked those laps and tried to make sense of this neorld He puzzled over what Thurman and Victor had planned for the silos Five hundred years below ground, and then what? Donald desperately wanted to know And here hen he felt truly alive: when he was taking action, when he was digging for answers It was the sa their pills, fro the ulcers that for of chains Chains he could not hope to shake loose, but that he could shake nonetheless

He passed the two lifts, feeling such courage, and tried both call buttons He tried thee He was beginning to know the rules and secrets of that darkened place In his explorations, he had discovered the plastic crate with thefirearht seal was broken, and the other guns inside reeked of grease It seee at first that he was a prisoner locked aith instruments of war, but then he realized that he and Anna had sis They had been tucked ahere they wouldn’t be discovered

It hadn’t kept hi open other crates to see as inside Some contained folded uniforms and suits like astronauts wore, all vacuue dohts with red lenses, food and medical kits, backpacks, rounds and rounds of auess at The day before, he had found a laminated map in one crate, a chart of the fifty silos There were red lines that radiated frole point in the distance Donald had traced the lines with his finger, holding thefros were puzzled over and put back in their place, clues to ahis lap to perfor jacks in the wide aisles between the sleeping drones The exercise had been a struggle just two days ago, but the chill see from his veins And the more he pushed himself, the more awake and alert he seemed to become He did seventy-five, which was tenhis breath, he dropped down to see how many pushups he could do on his atrophied muscles And it was here, on the third day of his captivity, that he discovered the launch lift, a garage door that barely cas that lurked beneath the tarps

Donald rose from his pushup and approached the low door The entire storehouse was kept incredibly di for one of the flashlights when he saw the red handle A tug, and the door slid up into the wall On his hands and knees, Donald explored the cavity beyond, which went back over a dozen feet There were no buttons or levers that he could feel along the walls, nothe lift

Curious, he crawled out and decided to grab a flashlight Before he turned, however, he saw another door along the darkened wall, a door he’d never noticed before, one he assumed led to a closet or a mechanical space Donald tried the handle and found it unlocked, a diht in the direction of the offices, a barely audible hiss e inside the hall, he fuht switch, and the overhead bulbs flickered hesitantly Shielding his eyes--having grown used to the darkness in the warehouse--he crept inside He pulled the door shut behind hi drones

The hallway beyond possessed the eerie calm of a place haunted It ran fifty paces to a door at the far end, with a pair of doors on either side More offices, he assumed, similar to the small home Anna had carved out in the back of the warehouse He tried the first door, and the odor ofchemical wafted out Inside, he discovered where his cot had come from There were rows of bunks, the shuffle of recent footsteps in a layer of dust, and a place where two small beds formerly lay There were dressers built into the walls and a trunk at the foot of each bed The absence of people could be felt This was a place , and Donald wondered briefly why the two cots had been reer as he peeked into the door across the hall and found bathroom stalls and a cluster of showers

The next two doors were more of the saht of these o He crept inside and tested one, was mildly surprised when it flushed and was startled by how loud it was While he went, he had a fear that Anna was looking for hih the pipes and barge in

He finished and flushed, then noted the layer of dust on the handle of the neighboring urinal Perhaps this place had been taken off the maintenance rounds while Anna ake Maybe people had lived down here and kept up with the munitions once but had relocated to make room for her secret presence But Donald didn’t re his first shift No, these were quarters kept for another time, much like the machines beneath the tarps And rather than put Donald where it made the most sense, where there was plenty of room and a second shower, Anna had kept hio made for herself To keep him near, perhaps And Donald wondered for the first time if he ake not because he held the answer to any mystery, but simply because she wanted him to be

He washed his hands and studied himself in the mirror His eyes were red and puffy, his hair disheveled, his cheeks gaunt and bearing three days of growth He was turning gray, he saw The centuries spent asleep were aging hihed at the idea that the man in the one, that any of this were ht, he left the bathroohosts and checked the door at the end of the hall

Inside, he found furniture locked in ice, the light froht what looked like massive cubes of frozen water The illusion was dispelled as he fumbled for the switch It was sheets of plastic thrown over tables and chairs, a fine mist of dust settled on top Donald approached one of the tables and saw the computer display beneath the sheet The chairs were attached to the desks, and there was so familiar about the knobs and levers He knelt and fue of the plastic and peeled it up noisily He turned and checked the e present

The flight controls he revealed took him back to another life Here was the stick his sister had called a yoke, the pedals beneath the seat she had called so else, the throttle and all the other dials and indicators Donald reraduated flight school They had flown to Colorado for her cere a screen just like this as her drone took to the air and joined a formation of others He reraceful lanced around the room at the dozen or so stations The obvious need for the place slained voices in the hallway,snapped at asses, so at these desks where coffee could lie perfectly still in steas as death was rained down from above

Donald returned the plastic sheet Dust shivered off and ran down the gleaht of his sister, asleep and hidden some levels belohere he couldn’t find her, and he wondered if she hadn’t been brought there as a surprise for hiht as a surprise for so of a time lost to drea his pockets in search of so Pills An old prescription with her name on it Helen had forced him to see a doctor, hadn’t she? And Donald suddenly knehy he couldn’t forget, why their drugs didn’t work on hi to see his sister Charlotte was the why She was the answer to one of Thurman’s riddles

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"I want to see her first," Donald demanded "Let me see her, and then I’ll tell you"

He waited for Thurman or Dr Henson to reply The three of the Donald had bargained his way down the lift with Thurained further His sister was the answer to why he couldn’t forget He would exchange that answer for another He wanted to knohere she was, to see her