Third Shift - Pact

There were murmurs from the back of the room.

“Yeah, okay.” The operator settled back into his seat. “It’s just … he’s the Shepherd, you know? I pictured him waking up chewing nails and farting tacks.”

Someone just behind Donald’s chair chuckled.

“So what’re we supposed to do about the cleaner?” a voice asked. “We need permission before we can send anyone out after her.”

“She can’t have gotten far,” someone said.

The comm engineer on the other side of Donald spoke up. He had one side of his headphones still on, the other side pulled off so he could follow the conversation. A sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead. “Eighteen is reporting that her suit was modified,” he said. “There’s no telling how long it’ll last. She could still be out there, Sirs.”

This caused a chorus of whispers. It sounded like wind striking a visor, peppering it with sand. Donald stared at the screen, at a lifeless hill as seen from Silo 18. The dust came in dark waves. He remembered what it had felt like out there on that landscape, the difficulty moving in one of those suits, the hard slog up that gentle rise. Who was this cleaner, and where did she think she was going?

“Get me the file on this cleaner as soon as you can,” he said. The others fell still and stopped their whispering arguments. Donald’s voice was commanding because of its quietude, because of who they thought he was. “And I want whatever we have on seventeen.” He glanced at the operator, whose brow was furrowed in either worry or suspicion. “To refresh my memory,” he added.

Eren rested a hand on the back of Donald’s chair. “What about the protocols?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we scramble a drone or send someone after her? Or shut down eighteen? There’s going to be violence over there. We’ve never had a cleaning not go through before.”

Donald shook his head, which was beginning to clear. He looked down at his hand and remembered tearing off a glove once, there on the outside. He shouldn’t be alive. How was he alive? He wondered what Thurman would do, what the old man would order. But he wasn’t Thurman. Someone had told him once that people like Donald should be in charge. And now he was.

“We don’t do anything just yet,” he said, coughing and clearing his throat. “She won’t get far.”

The others stared at him with a mixture of shock and acceptance. There finally came a handful of nods. They assumed he knew best. He had been woken up, after all. It was all according to protocol. The system could be trusted—it was designed to just go. All anyone needed to do was their own job and let others handle the rest.

•5•

It was a short walk from his apartment to the central offices, which Donald assumed was the point. It reminded him of a CEO’s office he’d once seen with an adjoining bedroom. What had seemed impressive at first became sad after realizing why it was there.

He rapped his knuckles on the open door marked Office of Psychological Services. He used to think of these people as shrinks, that they were here to keep others sane. Now he knew that they were in charge of the insanity. All he saw on the door anymore was “OPS.” Operations. The Head of the Head of the Heads. The office across the hall was where the busywork landed. Donald was reminded how each silo had a mayor for shaking hands and keeping up appearances, just as the world of yore had Presidents who came and went. Meanwhile, it was the men in shadows whose term limits were bounded by gravestones who wielded true power. That this silo operated by the same deceit should not be surprising; it was the only way such men knew to run anything.

He kept his back to his former office and knocked a little louder. Eren looked up from his computer and a hard mask of concentration melted into a wan smile. “Come in,” he said as he rose from his seat. “You need the desk?”

“Yes, but stay.” Donald crossed the room gingerly, his legs still half asleep, and noticed that while his own whites were crisp, Eren’s were crumpled with the wear of a man well into his six-month shift. Even so, the Ops Head appeared vigorous and alert. His beard was neatly trimmed by his neck and only peppered with gray. He helped Donald into the plush chair behind the desk.

“We’re still waiting for the full report on this cleaner,” Eren said. “The Head of eighteen warned that it’s a thick one.”

“Priors?” Donald imagined anyone sent to clean would have priors.

“Oh, yeah. The word is that she was a sheriff, but I only heard that from Gable across the hall. Not sure if I’m buying it. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first lawman to want out.”

“But it would be the first time anyone’s gotten out of sight,” Donald said.

“From what I understand, yeah.” Eren crossed his arms and leaned against the desk. “Nearest anyone got before now was that gentleman you stopped. I reckon that’s why protocol says to wake you. I’ve heard some of the boys refer to you as the Shepherd.” Eren laughed.

Donald cleared his throat into his fist. He was loath to admit that he had been more the loose sheep than the shepherd. “Tell me about seventeen,” he said, changing the subject. “Who was on shift when that silo went down?”

“We can look it up.” Eren waved a hand at the keyboard.

“My, uh, fingers are still a little tingly,” Donald said. He slid the keyboard toward Eren, who hesitated before getting off the desk. The Ops Head bent over the keys and pulled up the shift list with a shortcut. Donald tried to follow along with what he was doing on the screen. These were files he didn’t have access to, menus he was unfamiliar with.

“Looks like it was Cooper. I think I came off a shift once as he was coming on. Name sounds familiar. I sent someone down to get those files as well.”

“Good, good.”

Eren raised his eyebrows. “You went over the seventeen reports on your last shift, right?”

Donald had no clue if Thurman had been up since then. For all he knew, the old man had been awake when it happened. “It’s hard to keep everything straight,” he said, which was solid truth. “How many years has it been?”

“That’s right. You were in the deep freeze, weren’t you?”

Donald supposed he was. Eren tapped the desk with his finger, and Donald’s gaze drifted to the man across the hall, sitting behind his computer. He remembered what it had been like to be that person over there, wondering what the doctors in white were discussing across the way. Now he was one of those in white.

“Yes, I was in the deep freeze,” Donald said. They wouldn’t have moved his body, would they? Erskine or someone could’ve simply changed entries in a database. Maybe it was that simple. Just a quick hack, two reference numbers transposed, and one man lives the life of another. “I like to be near my daughter,” he explained.

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” The wrinkles in Eren’s brow smoothed. “I’ve got a wife down there. I still make the mistake of visiting her first thing every shift.” He took a deep breath, then pointed at the screen. “Seventeen was lost over thirty years ago. I’d have to look it up to be exact. The cause is still unclear. There wasn’t any sign of unrest leading up to it, so we didn’t have much time to react. There was a cleaning scheduled, but the airlock opened a day early and out of sequence. Could’ve been a glitch or tampering. We just don’t know. Sensors reported a gas purge in the lower levels and then a riot surging up. We pulled the plug as they were scrambling out of the airlock. Barely had time.”

Donald recalled Silo 12. That facility had ended in similar fashion. He remembered people scattering on the hillside, a plume of white mist, some of them turning and fighting to get back inside. “No survivors?” he asked.

“There were a few stragglers. We lost the radio feed and the cameras but continued to put in a routine call over there, just in case anyone was in the safe room.”

Donald nodded. By the book. He remembered the calls to 12 after it went down. He remembered nobody answering.

“Someone did pick up the day the silo fell,” Eren said. “I think it was some young shadow or tech. I haven’t