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And it was here that Juliette began to find clues almost eerie in their connection Allison, Holston’s wife, seemed to be the one who had unlocked the mysteries of the old servers The very method that had made Holston’s data available to Juliette had at soht so on deleted e the explosion of communication around the ti some un-deletion method, Juliette stumbled onto what she felt was a valid trail She beca on the servers The trouble was deternize it herself even if she found it

She toyed with several ideas, even the chance that Allison had been driven to rage by infidelity, but Juliette had enough of a feel for Holston to know that this wasn’t the case And then she noticed each trail of activity seeibberish, an answer Juliette kept looking for any excuse to reject because she couldn’t make sense of it Why would Holston, and Allison especially, spend so s showed her keeping them open for hours at a time, as if the scrambled letters and symbols could be read To Juliette, it looked like a wholly new language

So as it that sent Holston and his wife to cleaning? The cootten the stirs, had gone crazy for the out-of-doors, and that Holston eventually succuht that She didn’t like coincidences When she tore a machine down to repair it, and a new probleo back through the steps from the last repair The ansas always there She saw this riddle the sanosis if both of the

She just couldn’t see what itit could drive her crazy as well

Juliette rubbed her eyes When she looked at her desk again, Jahns’ folder caught her attention On top of her folder sat the doctor’s report for Marnes She moved the report aside and reached for the note underneath, the one Marnes had written and left on his small bedside table:

It should have been ht But then, who remained in the silo for him to speak to? She studied the handful of words, but there was little to squeeze from them It was his canteen that had been poisoned, not Jahns’ It actually hter, a new ter else about the law: the worst offense they could hope to pin on anyone was the attempted and unsuccessful murder on him rather than the botched accident that had claiuilty party, that person could be put to cleaning for what they had failed to acco five years probation and silo service for what had accidentally happened to Jahns Juliette thought it was this crooked sense of fairness aselse that had worn down poor Marnes There was never any hope for true justice, a life for a life These strange laws, coupled with the agonizing knowledge that he had carried the poison on his own body, had gravely wounded hi the poison’s porter, with the hurtful knowledge that a good deed, a shared walk, had been his love’s death

Juliette held the suicide note and cursed herself for not seeing it co It should have been a foreseeable breakdown, a problem solved by a little preventative maintenance She could have saidto stay afloat those first few days to see that theright before her eyes

The flash of her inbox icon interrupted these disturbing thoughts She reached for the e chunk of data she had sent down to Mechanical some hours earlier must’ve been rejected Maybe it was too e from Scottie, her friend in IT who had supplied the data drive

"Coue and yet dire, especially for the late hour Juliette powered down her rabbed the drive from the computer in case she hadMarnes’s ancient gun around her waist She stood, went to the key locker, and ran her hand down the soft belt, feeling the indention where the buckle had, for decades, worn into the saain of Marnes’s terse note and looked to his e where it was She nodded to his desk, made sure she had her keys, and hurried out the door

7

It was thirty four levels down to IT Juliette skipped across the steps so swiftly, she had to keep a hand on the inner railing to keep fro outward into the occasional upbound traffic She overtook a porter near six, as startled fro to feel dizzy from the round and round She wondered how Holston and Marnes had ever responded to trouble with any degree of urgency The other two deputy stations, the one in the mids and the one in the down-deep, were nicely situated near the dead center of their forty-eight floors, a far superior arrange about this: that her office was not ideally positioned to respond to the far edge of her precinct Instead, it had been located by the airlock and the holding cell, close to the highest fors cursed this decision as she considered the long slog back up

In the high twenties, she practically bowled aShe wrapped one ar theized while she sed a curse And then she saas Lukas, his lapboard strapped to his back, nubs of charcoal sticking out of his coveralls

"Oh," he said "Hello"

He s her, but his lips drooped into a frohen he realized she’d been hurrying the opposite direction

"I’o"

"Of course"

He stood out of the way, and Juliette finally took her hand off his ribs She nodded, not sure what to say, her thoughts only on Scottie, and then she continued her run down, ot to thirty-four, she paused on the landing to catch her breath and let the dizziness fade Checking her coveralls--that her star was in place and the flash drive still in her pocket--she pulled open the ed there

She sized up the entrance roolasslooked into a conference rooh it was now the h the glass, a ht she heard Bernard’s voice, loud and nasally, leeching through the door

Ahead of her stood the low security gates leading back to IT’s labyrinth of apartine the floor plan; she’d heard the three levels shared much in common with Mechanical, only without the fun

"Can I help you?" a young ates

She approached

"Sheriff Nichols," she said She waved her ID at hiht turned red and the gate let out an angry buzz It did not open "I’m here to see Scottie, one of your techs" She tried the card again, with the same result

"Do you have an appointment?" the man asked

Juliette narrowed her eyes at the man

"I’ain with the card, and again the gate buzzed at her The young man did not move to help

"Please do not do that," he said

"Look, son, I’ ress"

He smiled at her "I’m sure you’re familiar with the unique position we maintain here and that your powers are--"

Juliette put her ID away and reached over the gate to grab the straps of his coveralls with both hands She pulled hi with the sinewy muscles that had freed countless bolts

"Listen here you blasted runt, I’ over theh you I’ll have you know that I report directly to Bernard Holland, acting Mayor, and your goddamned boss Do I make myself clear?"

The kid’s eyes ide and all-pupil He jerked his chin up and down