20
“This day’s black fate on more days doth depend:
This but begins the woe others must end.”
The waiting was interminable. It was the long silence of itchy scalps and trickling sweat, the discomfort of weight on elbows, of backs bent, of bellies flat against an unforgiving conference table. Lukas peered down the length of his fearsome rifle and through the conference room’s shattered glass window. Little fragment jewels remained in the side of the jamb like transparent teeth. Lukas could still hear, ringing in his ears, the incredible bang from Sims’s gun that had taken out the glass. He could still smell the acrid scent of gunpowder in the air, the looks of worry on the faces of the other techs. The destruction had seemed so unnecessary. All this preparation, the toting of massive black guns out of storage, the interruption of his talk with Bernard, news of people coming from the down deep, it all made little sense.
He checked the slide on the side of the rifle and tried to remember the five minutes of instruction he’d been given hours earlier. There was a round in the chamber. The gun was cocked. More bullets waited patiently in the clip.
And the boys in security gave him a hard time for his tech jargon. Lukas’s vocabulary had exploded with new terms. He thought about the rooms beneath the servers, the pages and pages of the Order, the rows of books he’d only gotten a glimpse of. His mind sagged under the weight of it all.
He spent another minute practicing his sighting, looking down the barrel and lining up the small cross in the tiny circle. He aimed at the cluster of conference chairs that had been rolled into an obstructing jumble by the door. For all he knew, they would be waiting like this for days and nothing would ever happen. It had been a while since any porter had brought an update on what was going on below.
For practice, he gently slid his finger into the guard and against the trigger. He tried to get comfortable with the idea of pulling that lever, of fighting the upward kick Sims had told them to expect.
Bobbie Milner—a shadow no more than sixteen—made a joke beside him, and Sims told them both to shut the fuck up. Lukas didn’t protest being included in the admonishment. He glanced over at the security gate where a bristle of black barrels poked through the stanchions and over the metal duty desk. Peter Billings, the new silo sheriff, was over there fiddling with his small gun. Bernard stood behind the sheriff, doling out instructions to his men. Bobbie Milner shifted his weight beside Lukas and grunted, trying to get more comfortable.
Waiting. More waiting. They were all waiting.
Of course, had Lukas known what was coming, he wouldn’t have minded.
He would’ve begged to wait there forever.
• • • •
Knox led his group through the sixties with just a few stops for water, a pause to secure their packs and tighten their laces. They passed several curious porters with overnight deliveries who prodded for details about where they were heading, about the blackouts. Each porter left unhappy. And hopefully, empty headed.
Pieter had been right: The stairwell was singing. It vibrated with the march of too many feet. Those who lived above were generally moving upward, away from the blackouts and toward the promise of power, of warm food and hot showers. Meanwhile, Knox and his people mobilized behind them to squelch a different kind of power.
At fifty-six, they had their first spot of trouble. A group of farmers stood outside the hydroponic farm lowering a cluster of power cables over the railing, presumably toward the small group they had seen the last landing down. When they spotted the blue coveralls of Mechanical, one of the farmers called out, “Hey, we keep you fed, why can’t you keep the juice on?”
“Talk to IT,” Marck replied from the front of the queue. “They’re the ones blowing fuses. We’re doing what we can.”
“Well, do it faster,” the farmer said. “I thought we just had a ratdamned power holiday to prevent this nonsense.”
“We’ll have it by lunchtime,” Shirly told them.
Knox and the others caught up with the head of the group, creating a jam by the landing.
“The faster we get up there the faster you’ll get your juice,” Knox explained. He tried to hold his concealed gun casually, like it was any other tool.
“Well how about giving us a hand with this tap, then? They’ve had power on fifty-seven for most of the morning. We’d like enough to get our pumps cranking.” He indicated the trunk of wires coiling over the railing.
Knox considered this. What the man was asking was technically illegal. Calling him out on it would mean delays, but telling him to go ahead might look suspicious. He could sense McLain’s group several levels up, waiting on them. Pace and timing were everything.
“I can spare two of my men to help out. Just as a favor. As long as it doesn’t get back to me that Mechanical had shit to do with this.”
“Like I care,” the farmer said. “I just want water moving.”
“Shirly, you and Courtnee give them a hand. Catch up when you can.”
Shirly’s mouth dropped open. She begged with her eyes for him to reconsider.
“Get going,” he told her.
Marck came to her side. He lifted his wife’s pack and handed her his multi-tool. She begrudgingly accepted it, glowered at Knox a moment longer, then turned to go, not saying a word to him or her husband.
The farmer let go of the cables and took a step toward Knox. “Hey, I thought you said you’d lend me two of—”
Knox leveled a glare harsh enough to make the man pause. “Do you want the best I got?” he asked. “Because you’ve got it.”
The farmer lifted his palms and backed away. Courtnee and Shirly could already be heard stomping their way below to coordinate with the men on the lower landing.
“Let’s go,” Knox said, hitching up his pack.
The men and women of Mechanical and Supply lurched forward once more. They left behind a group of farmers on landing fifty-six, who watched the long column wind its way upward.
Whispers rose as the power cables were lowered. Powerful forces were merging over these people’s heads, bad intentions coming together and heading for something truly awful.
And anyone with eyes and ears could tell: some kind of reckoning was coming.
• • • •
There was no warning for Lukas, no countdown. Hours of quiet anticipation, of insufferable nothingness, simply erupted into violence. Even though he had been told to expect the worst, Lukas felt like the waiting so long for something to happen just made it a fiercer surprise when it finally did.
The double doors of landing thirty-four blew open. Solid steel peeled back like curls of paper. The sharp ring made Lukas jump, his hand slip off the stock of his rifle. Gunfire erupted beside him, Bobbie Milner shooting at nothing and screaming in fear. Maybe excitement. Sims was yelling impossibly over the roar. When it died down, something flew through the smoke, a canister, bouncing toward the security gate.
There was a terrible pause—and then another explosion like a blow to the ears. Lukas nearly dropped his gun. The smoke by the security gate couldn’t quite fog the carnage. Pieces of people Lukas had known came to a sick rest in the entrance hall of IT. The people responsible began to surge through before he could take stock, before he could become fearful of another explosion occurring right in front of him.
The rifle beside him barked again, and this time Sims didn’t yell. This time, several other barrels partook. The people trying to push through the chairs tumbled into them instead, their bodies shaking as if pulled by invisible strings, arcs of red like hurled paint flying from their bodies.
More came. A large man with a throaty roar. Everything moved so slowly. Lukas could see his mouth part, a yell in the center of a burly beard, a chest as wide as two men. He held a rifle at his waist. He fired at the ruined security station. Lukas watched Peter Billings spin to the floor, clutching his shoulder. Bits of glass shivered from the window frame in front of Lukas as barrel after barrel erupted across the conference table, the shattered window seeming insignificant now. A prudent move.
The hail of bullets hit the man unseen. The conference room was an ambush, a side-on attack. The large man shook as some of the wild fire got lucky. His beard sagged open. His rifle was cracked in half, a shiny bullet between his fingers. He tried to reload.
The guns of IT loosed their own bullets too fast to count. Levers were held, and springs and gunpowder did the rest. The giant man fumbled with his rifle, but never got it reloaded. He tumbled into the chairs, sending them crashing across the floor. Another figure appeared through the door, a tiny woman. Lukas watched her down the length of his barrel, saw her turn and look right at him, the smoke from the explosion drifting toward her, her gray hair flowing like more of it wrapped in a halo around her.
He could see her eyes. He had yet to shoot his gun, had watched, jaw slack, as the fighting took place.
The woman bent her arm back and made to throw something his way.
Lukas pulled the trigger. His rifle flashed and lurched. In the time it took, the long and terrible time it took for the bullet to cross the room, he realized it was just an old woman. Holding something. A bomb.
Her torso spun and her chest blossomed red. The object fell. There was another awful wait, more attackers appearing, screaming in anger, until an explosion blew the chairs and the people among them apart.
Lukas wept while a second surge made a futile attempt. He wept until his clip was empty, wept as he fumbled for the clasp, shoved a spare into the butt, the salt bitter on his lips as he drew back that bolt and let loose with another menacing hail of metal—so much stouter and quicker than the flesh it met.