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And if her only reason for getting back hoht have chosen to wait, to take that safe route She could feel the tehts off her boots and float up through the stairwell, to fly past the levels like she used to dream she could, arms out, buoyant and free--

But Lukas had kept her apprised of the horriblehad caused There was a radio mounted to his wall below the servers that leaked violence day and night Solo’s underground apartment was equipped with an identical radio, but it could only coiven up fiddling with it

A part of her was glad she couldn’t hear She didn’t want to have to listen to the fighting--she just wanted to get home and make it stop This had beco to her silo It wasto think that she was only a short walk away, but those doors were only ever opened to kill people And what good would her return do, anyway? Would her surviving a cleaning and revealing the truth be enough to expose Bernard and all of IT?

As it happened, she had other, less sane plans It was a fantasy,up one of the diggers that built this place, aend of its vertical toil, and driving it through the earth itself to 18‘s down deep She drea her people back to these dry corridors and getting this dead place working again She drea a silo without all the lies and deceptions

Juliette waded through the heavy water toward the security gate, drea that they somehow steeled her resolve She approached the security turnstile, and saw that the lifeless and unguarded gate would pose the first true obstacle of her descent Getting over it wouldn’t be easy Turning her back to the machine, she placed her hands on either side and pushed, squirainst the loall, until she was just barely sitting on the control box

Her legs were too heavy to lift…not high enough to swing over, anyway The weights had ended up being gled backwards until her butt was love under her knee, she strained and leaned back until her boot was on the edge of the wall She rested aher helhter It felt ridiculous, all this effort to do son With one boot already up, the other was easier to lift She felt the hs, muscles sore from weeks of a porter’s hustle, finally help her lift her own da down the back of her neck, already dreading repeating theto the other side was easy: the weights did all the work She took a moment to make sure the wires knotted around her wrist and the air hose attached to her collar weren’t getting tangled, and then started down the ht on the top of her helmet her only illuain

"I’ainst her chest, leaving the contact open "I’ll check in if I need you The voluh down here Scares the hell out of me"

She released the contact and turned to see how her lifeline was doing All along the ceiling, her overflow bubbles danced in the glow of her flashlight like tiny jewels--

"OKAY GOTCHA"

"Godda she could reach inside her heler in her ear It felt like his voice was still lodged in there, tickling her

With her boots hardly leaving the floor, pushing forward on them one at a time, she slowly made her way across the main intersection and past the mess hall To her left, if she made her way down the hallway and took two turns, she could reach Walker’s workshop Had it always been a workshop? She had no idea In this place, it ht be a storeroom Or an apartment

Her small apartment would be in the opposite direction She turned to peer down that hallway, her cone of light brushing away the darkness to reveal a body pressed up against the ceiling, tangled in the runs of pipe and conduit She looked away It was easy to ie or Scottie or soine it being herself

She shuffled toward the access stairs, her body wavering in the thick but crystal clear water, the weight of her boots and the buoyancy of her torso keeping her upright even though she felt on the verge of toppling She paused at the top of the square steps leading down

"I’m about to descend," she said, chin down "Make sure you keep everything feeding And please don’t respond unless there’s a proble from the last time"

Juliette lifted her chin fro for Solo to blare sorip on the wire and hose, dragging it around the sharp corners of the square stairwell as she descended into the darkness The black water all around was disturbed only by her rising bubbles and the feeble cone of her sweeping, flash-lit gaze

Six floors down, the hose and wire became difficult to pull, too atheredthe slack coil and drift in the weightlessness of the water Several of her careful splices in both the wire and tubing slid through her gloves She paused and checked the taped and adhesed joints of the latter to see how they were holding up Minuscule bubbles were trailing out of one joint--they left a perforated and wavy line of tiny dots in the dark water It was hardly anything

Once she had enough slack at the bottom of the stairs to reach the sump basin, she turned and marched purposefully toward her work The hardest part was over The air was flowing in, cool and fresh and hissing by her ear The excess strea up in a curtain whenever she turned her head She had enough wire and hose to reach her goal, and all of her tools intact It felt like she could finally relax now that she knew she wouldn’t be going any deeper All she had to do was hook up the power lines, two easy connections, and etting free, of rescuing this silo’s Mechanical spaces, resuscitating one of its generators and then one of its hidden and buried diggers They wereher friends It all seerasp, after weeks of frustrating setbacks

Juliette found the sump room just where it was supposed to be She slid her boots to the edge of the pit in the center Leaning forward, her flashlight shone down on the nu how deep the waters had risen They seemed comical under so many hundreds of feet of water Comical and sad This silo had failed its people

But then Juliette corrected herself: These people had failed their silo

"Solo, I’m at the pump Gonna hook up the power"

She peered down at the bottom of the pit to make sure the pump’s pickup was clear of debris The water down there was arime she’d worked hip-deep in at the bottom of her own basin had been roundwater seepage The result was crystal clear stuff she could probably drink

She shivered, suddenly aware that the chill of the deep water wasaway her body heat Halfway there, she told herself She moved toward the massive pump round and snaked over the edge of the pit The outflow ran up the wall in a similarly sized pipe and joined the jue pump and worked the knotted wires off her wrist, she remembered the last job she’d ever performed as a mechanic She had pulled the shaft on an identical pump and had discovered a worn and broken impeller As she selected a Phillips driver fro the positive power terminal, she took the time to pray that this pump had not been in a similar condition when the power had blown She didn’t want to have to coain Not until she could do it while keeping her boots dry