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On thirteen, she stopped and checked inside the doors There was always the chance that this silo was laid out completely differently, floor to floor, so it made little sense to plan ahead if she didn’t knohat to expect There were only a handful of areas in the up-top that she was intimately familiar with, and every bit of overlap so far had seemed a perfect copy Thirteen, she would definitely know There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind These would be the parts of her that rotted last, the bits left over once the rest skittered off on the wind or was drunk deep by the roots In her mind, as she pushed the door open a crack, she wasn’t in a different silo, an abandoned husk of a silo, but in her past, pushing open a door on her youth

It was dark inside, none of the security or ehts on There was a different se of decay

Juliette shouted down the hallway

"Hello?"

She listened to her voice echo back from the empty walls The voice that returned sounded distant, weaker, higher than her own She ih these very halls, crying out to her older self across the years She tried to picture herto scoop her up and force her to be still, but the ghosts evaporated in the darkness The last of the echoes faded, leaving her alone and naked in the doorway

As her eyes adjusted, she could just barely ht reflected off glass s just where they should be It was the exact same layout as her father’s nursery in the mids, the place where she had been not just born, but raised It was hard to believe that this was some place different That other people had lived here, other children had been born, had played and had been raised just over a hill and down a dip, had given chase or challenged each other to Hop or whatever games they had invented, all of the in the doorway of a nursery, but she couldn’t help but think of all the lives this place had contained People growing up, falling in love, burying their dead

All those people outside People she had desecrated with her boots, scattering their bones and ashes as she kicked her way into the very place they had fled Juliette wondered how long ago it had happened, how long since the silo had been abandoned What had happened here? The stairas still lit, which meant the battery rooure how recently or how long ago all this life had turned to death There were practical reasons for wanting to know, beyond the mere itch of curiosity

With one last look inside, one final shudder of regret for not stopping to see her father the last few times she’d passed his nursery, Juliette shut the door on the darkness and the ghosts and considered her predica silo The thrill of being alive at all was quickly draining away, replaced with the reality of her solitude and the tenuousness of her survival Her storeement She could somehow still smell the fetid soup on her, could taste the sto She needed water She needed clothes These pri out the severity of her situation, the daunting tasks before her, leaving the regrets of the past behind

If the layout was the same, the first hydroponic farer of the two upper dirt farms would lie just below that Juliette shivered fro its own thermal cycle, and it would only be colder the further down she went But she went anyway--loas better At the next level, she tried the door It was too dark to see past the first interior hallway, but it seemed like offices or workrooms She tried to remember ould be on the fourteenth in her own silo, but didn’t know Was it incredible to not know? The up-top of her own hoe to her Thatcompletely alien

She held the door to fourteen open and stuck the blade of her knife between the slits ofThe handle was left sticking up to fores until it rested on the handle, holding it open This let in enough light for her to steal inside and grope around the first handful of roo on the backs of the doors, but one room was set up for conferences The water in the pitchers had long evaporated out, but the purple tablecloth looked war naked Juliette rabbed the cloth She wrapped it around her shoulders, but it was going to slip off when shethe corners in front of her Giving up on this, she ran back to the landing, out into the welco the knife--the door squealing eerily shut behind her--she pushed the blade through the center of the tablecloth and cut a long gash Her head went through this, the cloth falling past her feet in front and behind her A fewa belt out of a long strip and froh to tie over her head and keep it war her way through one particular problem She had a tool, a weapon if need be, and clothes The is She descended further, her feet cold on the stairs, drea of boots, thirsty for water, very much aware of all that remained for her to do

On fifteen, she was reave way Her knees buckled, she grabbed the railing, and she realized, as the adrenaline evaporated from her veins, that she was deathly tired She paused on the landing, hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths How long had she been going? How much further could she push herself? She checked her reflection in the blade of the knife, sa horrible she looked, and decided she needed rest before she went any further Rest nohile it was still war to explore that level for a bed, but she decided against it--there would be little comfort in the pitch black behind those doors So she curled up on the steel grating of landing fifteen, tucked her arms under her head, and adjusted the tablecloth so every patch of bare skin was covered And before she could go over the long list for in her head, exhaustion took over She drifted off to sleep with only a ht be the sort of nap one never woke up froe place, curled up and un away--

12

"But old folks -- n as they were dead;

Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead"

"Do you understand what you’re proposing we do?"

Knox looked up at McLain, met her wrinkled and wizened eyes with as much confidence as he could muster The tiny woman who controlled all the silo’s spares and fabrication cast an oddly iure She didn’t have Knox’s barrel chest or thick beard, had wrists barely bigger than two of his fingers, but she possessed a wizened gray gaze and the weight of hard years that made hi," he said, the forbidden words rease of habit and tiht"

McLain sniffed "I’randparents said" She pushed back loose strands of silver hair and peered down at the blueprint spread out between thened herself to helping rather than hinder it Maybe it was her age, Knox thought, peering at her pink scalp through hair so thin and white as to be like filah tietting better, or even changing all that much Orworth preserving at all

He looked down at the blueprint and smoothed the sharp creases in the fine paper He was suddenly aware of his hands, how thick and grease-liers appeared He wondered if McLain saw hi up here with delusions of justice She was old enough to see hi and hot te old and wise

One of the dozens of dogs that lived arunted discontentedly under the table as if all this war planning were spoiling its nap

"I think it’s safe to assu her small hands across the many floors between them and thirty-four

"Why? You don’t think ere discreet co up?"

She smiled up at him "I’m sure you were, but it’s safe to assuerous to assume otherwise"