last one is going under right now. They’re just straightening up down there.”
Donald perked up at this. Finally. What he’d been waiting for. “So the armory’s empty?” he asked, unable to hide his delight.
“Yessir. No more flight requisitions. I know you didn’t like chancing them to begin with.”
“Right, right.” Donald waved his hand as they turned the corner. “Restrict access to the armory once they’re done. Nobody should be able to get in there but me.”
Eren slowed his pace. “Just you, sir?”
“For as long as I’m on shift,” Donald said.
They passed Raymond in the hall, who had three cups of coffee nestled in a web of fingers. Raymond smiled and nodded. Donald remembered fetching coffee for people when he was Head of the silo. Now, that was about all the Head did. Donald couldn’t help but think his first shift was partly to blame.
Eren lowered his voice. “You know the story behind him, right?” He took another bite of something and chewed.
Donald glanced over his shoulder. “Who, Raymond?”
“Yeah. He was in Ops until a few shifts back. Broke down. Tried to get himself into deep freeze. The duty doc at the time talked him into a demotion. We were losing too many people, and the shifts were starting to get some overlap.” Eren paused and took another bite. There was a familiar scent. Eren caught him watching and held out something. “Bagel?” he asked. “They’re fresh baked.”
Donald could smell it. Eren tore off a piece. The feeling of having become a stray animal or a homeless man was complete as he accepted the offering. It was still warm. “I didn’t know they could make these,” he said, popping the morsel into his mouth.
“New chef just came on shift. He’s been experimenting with all kinds of stuff. He—”
Donald didn’t hear the rest. He chewed on memories. A cool day in D.C., Helen up to visit, had the dog with her, drove all the way from Savannah. They walked around the Lincoln Memorial a week too early for the cherry blossoms, but still a spot of color here and there. Stopped for fresh bagels, still warm, the smell of coffee—
“Put an end to this,” Donald said, indicating the rest of Eren’s bagel.
“Sir?”
They were nearly to the bend in the hall that led to the comm room. “I don’t want this chef experimenting anymore. Have him stick to the usual.”
Eren seemed confused. After some hesitation, he nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Nothing good can come of this,” Donald explained. And while Eren agreed more strenuously this time, Donald realized he had begun to think like the people he loathed. A veil of disappointment fell over his face, this Ops Head, who in truth outranked him, who should by all rights be in charge, and Donald felt a sudden urge to take it back, to grab the man by the shoulders and ask him what the hell they thought they were doing, all this misery and heartache. They should eat memory foods, of course, and talk about the days they’d left behind.
Instead, he said nothing, and they continued down the hall in quiet and discomfort.
“Quite a few of our silo Heads came from Ops,” Eren said after a while, steering the conversation back to Raymond. “I was a comms officer for my first two shifts, you know. The guy I took over for, the Ops Head from the last shift, was from medical.”
“So you’re not a shrink?” Donald asked.
Eren laughed, and Donald thought of Victor, blowing his brains out. This wasn’t going to last, this place. There were cracked tiles in the center of the hall. Tiles that had no replacement. The ones at the edge were in much better shape, and Donald had an epiphany. He stopped outside the comm room and surveyed the wear on this centuries-old place. There were scuff marks low on the walls, hand-high, shoulder-high, fewer anywhere else. The traffic patterns on the floors throughout the facility showed where people walked. It wasn’t evenly distributed.
“Are you okay, sir?” Eren asked.
Donald held up his hand. He could sense those in the comm room were waiting on him. But he was thinking on how an architect designs a structure to last. A certain calculus was used, an averaging of forces and wear across an entire structure, letting every beam and rivet shoulder its share of the load. All together, the resulting building could take the force of a hurricane, an earthquake, with plenty of redundancies to boot. But real stress and strain weren’t as kind as the hurricanes computers simulated. Hidden in those calculus winds were hurtling rods of steel and two by fours. And where they slammed it was like bombs going off. Just as the center of a hall bore an unfortunate share of strain, some people would be on shift for the worst of it.
“I believe they’re waiting on us, sir.”
Donald looked away from the scuff marks to Eren, this young man with bright eyes and bagel on his breath. He was like a corner of the hall lightly touched, his hair full of color, an uptick at the corners of his mouth, a wan smile like a scar of hope.
“Right,” Donald said. He waved Eren inside the comm room before following behind, stepping dead center like everyone else.
•34•
Donald familiarized himself with the script while Eren plopped into the chair beside him and pulled a headset on. The software would mask their voices, make them featureless and the same. The silo Heads need not know when one man went off shift and another replaced him. It was always the same voice, the same person, as far as they were concerned.
The shift operator lifted a mug and took a sip. Donald could see something written on the mug with a marker. It said:
Donald covered his mic and cleared his throat. He could hear someone talking on the other line as a distant headset was pulled on. There was a script to follow for the first half. Donald remembered most of it. Eren turned to the side and polished off the bagel guiltily. When the operator gave them the thumbs up, Eren gestured to Donald to do the honors, and all Donald could think about was getting this over with and getting down to that empty armory.
“Name,” he said into his mic.
“Lukas Kyle,” came the reply.
Donald watched the graphs jump with readings taken from the headset. He felt sorry for this person, signing on to head a silo rated near the bottom. It all seemed hopeless, and here Donald was going through the motions. “You shadowed in IT,” he said.
There was a pause. “Yessir.”
The boy’s temperature was up. Donald could read it on the display. The operator and Eren were comparing notes and pointing to something. Donald checked the script. It listed easy questions everyone knew the answers to.
“What is your primary duty to the silo?” he asked, reading the line.
“To maintain the Order.”
Eren raised a hand as the readouts spiked. When they settled, he gave Donald the sign to continue.
“What do you protect above all?” Even with the software helping, Donald tried to keep his voice flat. There was a jump on one of the graphs. Donald’s thoughts drifted to the news of the pilots gone from his space, a space that he felt belonged to him. He would get through this and set his alarm clock. Tonight. Tonight.
“Life and Legacy,” the shadow recited.
Donald lost his place. It took a moment to find the next line. “What does it take to protect these things we hold so dear?”
“It takes sacrifice,” the shadow said after a brief pause.
The comm head gave Donald and Eren an OK signal. The formal readings were over. Now to the baseline, to get off-script. Donald wasn’t sure what to say. He nodded to Eren, hoping he’d take over.
Eren covered his mic for a second as if he was about to argue, but shrugged. “How much time have you had
