Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

and bury them there, so this stolen kiss can grow
on the quiet love that no other shall know.

Lukas felt a cold rod pierce his chest. He felt his longing replaced by a flash of temper. Who was this George? A childhood fling? Juliette was never in a sanctioned relationship; he had checked the official records the day after they’d met. Access to the servers afforded certain guilty powers. A crush, perhaps? Some man in Mechanical who was already in love with another? To Lukas, this would be even worse. A man she longed for in a way she never would feel for him. Was that why she’d taken a job so far from home? To get away from the sight of this George she couldn’t have, these feelings she’d hidden in the margins of a play about forbidden love?

He turned and plopped down in front of Bernard’s computer. Shaking the mouse, he logged into the upstairs servers remotely, his cheeks feeling flush with this sick feeling, this new feeling, knowing it was called jealousy but unfamiliar with the heady rush that came with it. He navigated to the personnel files and searched the down deep for “George.” There were four hits. He copied the ID numbers of each and put them in a text file, then fed them to the ID department. While the pictures of each popped up, he skimmed their records, feeling a little guilty for the abuse of power, a little worried about this discovery, and a lot less agonizingly bored having found something to do.

Only one of the Georges worked in Mechanical. Older guy. As the radio crackled behind him, Lukas wondered what would become of this man if he was still down there. There was a chance that he was no longer alive, that the records were a few weeks out of date, the blockade a barrier to the truth.

A couple of the hits were too young. One wasn’t even a year old yet. The other was shadowing with a porter. It left one man, thirty two years old. He worked in the bazaar, occupation listed as “other,” married with two kids. Lukas studied the blurry image of him from the ID office. Mustache. Receding hair. A sideways smirk. His eyes were too far apart, Lukas decided, his brows too dark and much too bushy.

Lukas held up the manual and read the poem again.

The man was dead, he decided. Bury these words.

He did another search, this time a global one that included the closed records. Hundreds of hits throughout the silo popped up, names from all the way back to the uprising. This did not dissuade Lukas. He knew Juliette was thirty six, and so he gave her a twenty year window, figured if she were younger than sixteen when she’d had this crush, he wouldn’t stress, he would let the envious and shameful burn inside him go.

From the list of Georges, there were only three deaths in the down deep for the twenty year period. One was in his fifties, the other in his sixties. Both died of natural causes. Lukas thought to cross reference them with Juliette, see if there had been any work relations, if they shared a family tree perhaps.

And then he saw the third file. This was his George. Her George. Lukas knew it. Doing the math, Lukas saw he would be thirty eight if he were still alive. He had died just over three years earlier, had worked in Mechanical, had never married.

He ran the ID search, and the picture confirmed his fears. He was a handsome man, a square jaw, a wide nose, dark eyes. He was smiling at the camera, calm, relaxed. It was hard to hate the man. Difficult, especially, since he was dead.

Lukas checked the cause and saw that it was investigated and then listed as an industrial accident. Investigated. He remembered hearing something about Jules when the up top got its new sheriff. Her qualifications had been a source of debate and tension, a wind of whispers. Especially around IT. But there had been chatter that she’d helped out on a case a long time ago, that this was why she’d been chosen.

This was the case. Was she in love with him before he died? Or did she fall for the memory of the man after? He decided it had to be the former. Lukas searched the desk for a charcoal, found one, and jotted down the man’s ID and case number. Here was something to occupy his time, some way of getting to know her better. It would distract him, at least, until she finally got around to calling him back. He relaxed, pulled the keyboard into his lap, and started digging.

22

• Silo 17 •

Juliette shivered from the cold as she helped Solo to his feet. He wobbled and steadied himself, both hands on the railing.

“Do you think you can walk?” she asked. She kept an eye on the empty stairs spiraling down toward them, wary of whoever else was out there, whoever had attacked him and nearly gotten her killed.

“I think so,” he said. He dabbed at his forehead with his palm, studied the smear of blood he came away with. “Don’t know how far.”

She guided him toward the stairs, the smell of melted rubber and gasoline stinging her nose. The black undersuit was still damp against her skin; her breath billowed out before her; and whenever she stopped talking, her teeth chattered uncontrollably. She bent to retrieve her knife while Solo clutched the curved outer railing. Looking up, she considered the task before them. A straight run to IT seemed impossible. Her lungs were exhausted from the swim, her muscles cramped from the shivering and cold. And Solo looked even worse. His mouth was slack, his eyes drifting to and fro. He seemed barely cognizant of where he was.

“Can you make it to the deputy station?” she asked. Juliette had spent nights there on supply runs. The holding cell made for an oddly comfortable place to sleep. The keys were still in the box—maybe they could rest easy if they locked themselves inside and kept the key with them.

“That’s how many levels?” Solo asked.

He didn’t know the down deep of his own silo as well as Jules. He rarely risked venturing so far.

“A dozen or so. Can you make it?”

He lifted his boot to the first step, leaned into it. “I can try.”

They set off with only a knife between them, which Juliette was lucky to have at all. How it had survived her dark pull through Mechanical was a mystery. She held it tightly, the handle cold, her hand colder. The simple cooking utensil had become her security totem, had replaced her watch as a necessary thing she must always have with her. As they made their way up the stairs, its handle clinked against the inner railing each time she reached over to steady herself. She kept her other arm around Solo, who struggled up each step with grunts and groans.

“How many of them do you think there are?” she asked, watching his footing and then glancing nervously up the stairway.

Solo grunted. “Shouldn’t be any.” He wobbled a little, but Juliette steadied him. “All dead. Everyone.”

They stopped to rest at the next landing. “You made it,” she pointed out. “All these years, and you survived.”

He frowned, wiped his beard with the back of his hand. He was breathing hard. “But I’m Solo,” he said. He shook his head sadly. “They were all gone. All of them.”

Juliette peered up the shaft, up the gap between the stairs and the concrete. The dim green straw of the stairwell rose into a tight darkness. She pinned her teeth together to keep them from chattering while she listened for a sound, for any sign of life. Solo staggered ahead for the next flight of stairs. Juliette hurried beside him.

“How well did you see him? What do you remember?”

“I remember— I remember thinking he was just like me.”

Juliette thought she heard him sob, but maybe it was the exertion from tackling more of the steps. She looked back at the door they were passing, the interior dark, no power being leached from IT. Were they passing Solo’s assailant? Were they leaving some living ghost behind?

She powerfully hoped so. They had so much further to go, even to the deputy station, much less to anyplace she might call home.

They trudged in silence for a level and a half, Juliette shivering and Solo grunting and wincing. She rubbed her arms now and then, could feel the sweat from the climb and from helping to steady Solo. It was nearly enough to warm her but for the damp undersuit, and she was so hungry by the time they cleared three levels that she