“Peter, what’s going on? I’ve got a friend I need to see to—”
He shook his head. “The computer says you’re a suspect, Ma’am. I’m just doing what it tells me to do —”
And with that, the second link clicked around her other wrist, and Juliette looked down at her predicament, dumbfounded, the image of her young friend hanging by his neck unable to be shaken loose from her mind.
9
She was allowed a visitor, but who would Juliette want to see her like this? No one. So she sat with her back against the bars, the bleak view outside brightening with the rising of an unseen sun, the floor around her bare of folders and ghosts. She was alone, stripped of a job she wasn’t sure she ever wanted, a pile of bodies in her wake, her simple and easily understood life having come unraveled.
“I’m sure this will pass,” a voice behind her said. Juliette leaned away from the steel rods and looked around to find Bernard standing behind her, his hands wrapped around the bars.
Juliette moved away from him and sat on the cot, turning her back to the gray view.
“You know I didn’t do this,” she said. “He was my friend.”
Bernard frowned. “What do you think you’re being held for? The boy committed suicide. He seems to have been distraught from recent tragedies. This is not unheard of when people move to a new section of the silo, away from friends and family, to take a job they’re not entirely suited for—”
“Then why am I being held here?” Juliette asked. She realized suddenly that there may be no double cleaning after all. Off to the side, down the hallway, she could see Peter shuffling back and forth like some physical barrier prevented him from coming any closer.
“Unauthorized entry on the thirty-fourth,” Bernard said. “Threatening a member of the silo, tampering with IT affairs, removing IT property from secured quarters—”
“That’s ratshit,” Juliette said. “I was summoned by one of your workers. I had every right to be there!”
“We will look into that,” Bernard said. “Well, Peter here will. I’m afraid he’s had to remove your computer for evidence. My people down below are best qualified to see if—”
“
“That will be put to a vote soon enough. The Pact has changed before. It’s designed to change when events call for it.”
“And so you want me out of the way.” Juliette stepped closer to the bars so she could see Peter Billings, and have him see her. “I suppose you were to have this job all along? Is that right?”
Peter slunk out of sight.
“Juliette. Jules.” Bernard shook his head and clicked his tongue at her. “I don’t want you out of the way. I wouldn’t want that for any member of the silo. I want people to be in their
“So, what, I’m banished back to Mechanical? Is that what’s going on? Over some ratshit charges?”
“Banished is such a horrible word. I’m sure you didn’t mean that. And don’t you want your old job back? Weren’t you happier then? There’s so much to learn up here that you’ve never shadowed for. And the people who thought you best fit for this job, who I’m sure hoped to ease you into it…”
He stopped right there, and it was somehow worse that he left the sentence open like that, forcing Jules to complete the image rather than just hear it. She pictured two mounds of freshly turned soil in the gardens, a few mourning rinds tossed on top of them.
“I’m going to let you gather your things, what isn’t needed for evidence, and then allow you to see yourself back down. As long as you check in with my deputies on the way and report your progress, we’ll drop these charges. Consider it an extension of my little…
Bernard smiled and straightened his glasses.
Juliette gritted her teeth. It occurred to her that she had never, in her entire life, punched someone in the face.
And it was only her fear of missing, of not doing it correctly and cracking her knuckles on one of the steel bars, that she didn’t put an end to that streak.
It was just about a week since she had arrived at the up-top, and Juliette was leaving with fewer belongings than she’d brought. A blue Mechanical coverall had been provided, one much too big for her. Peter didn’t even say goodbye. Juliette thought it was more out of shame than anger or blame. He walked her through the cafeteria to the top of the stairs, and as she turned to shake his hand, she found him staring down at his toes, his thumbs caught in his coveralls, her sheriff’s badge pinned at an angle over his left breast.
Juliette began her long walk down through the length of the silo. It would be less physically taxing than her walk up had been, but more draining in other ways. What exactly had happened to the silo, and why? She couldn’t help but feel in the middle of it all, to shoulder some of the blame. None of this would have happened had they left her in Mechanical, had they never come to see her in the first place. She would still be bitching about the alignment of the generator, not sleeping at night as she waited for the inevitable failure and a descent into chaos as they learned to survive on backup power for the decades it would take to rebuild the thing. Instead, she had been witness to a different type of failure: a throwing not of rods but of bodies. She felt most horrible for poor Scottie, a boy with so much promise, so many talents, taken before his prime.
She had been sheriff for a short time, a star appearing on her breast for but a wink, and yet she felt an incredible urge to investigate. There was something not right about Scottie killing himself. The signs were there, sure. He had been afraid to leave his office—but then, he’d also shadowed under Walker and had maybe picked up the habit of reclusiveness from the old man. Scottie had also been harboring secrets too big for his young mind, had been fearful enough to wire her to come quickly—but she knew the boy like her own shadow, and knew he didn’t have it in him. She suddenly wondered if Marnes had ever had it in him as well. If Jahns were here beside her, would the old Mayor be screaming for Jules to investigate both their deaths? Telling her that none of this fit?
“I can’t,” Juliette whispered to the ghost, causing an upbound porter to turn his head as he passed.
She kept further thoughts to herself. As she descended toward her father’s nursery, she paused at the landing, contemplating longer and harder about going in to see him than she had on her way up. Pride had prevented her the first time. And now shame set her feet into motion once again, spiraling down away from him, chastising herself for thinking on the ghosts from her past that had long ago been banished from memory.
At the thirty-fourth, the entrance to IT, she again considered stopping. There would be clues in Scottie’s office, maybe even some they hadn’t managed to scrub away. She shook her head. The conspiracies were already forming in her mind. And as hard as it was to leave the scene of the crime behind, she knew she wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near his office.
She continued down the staircase and thought, as she considered IT’s location in the silo, that this couldn’t be an accident either. She had another thirty-two floors to go before she checked in with the first deputy, who was located near the center of the mids. The sheriff’s office was thirty-three floors above her head. IT, then, was as far as it could get from any deputy station in the silo.
She shook her head at this paranoid thinking. It wasn’t how diagnoses were made. Her father would have told her so.
After meeting with the first deputy around noon, and accepting a piece of bread and fruit, along with a reminder to eat, she made good time down through the mids, wondering as she passed the upper apartments which level Lukas lived on, or if he even knew of her arrest.
The weight of the past week seemed to pull her down the stairwell, gravity sucking at her boots, the pressures of being sheriff dissipating as she left that office far behind. Those pressures were slowly replaced with an eagerness to return to her friends, even in shame, as she got closer and closer to Mechanical.
She stopped to see Hank, the down deep deputy, on level one-twenty. She had known him for a long time, was becoming more and more surrounded with familiar faces, people who waved hello, their moods somber as if they knew every detail of her time away. Hank tried to get her to stay and rest a while, but she only paused long
