7

　　Holston was a dozen paces up the hill, still marveling at the bright grass at his feet and the brilliantsky above, when the first pang lurched in his stomach. It was a writhing cramp, something likeintense hunger. At first, he worried he was going too fast, first with the cleaning and now with hisimpatient shuffling in that cumbersome suit. He didn’t want to take it off until he was over the hill,out of sight, maintaining whatever illusion the walls in the cafeteria held. He focused on the tops ofthe skyscrapers and resigned himself to slowing down, to calming down. One step at a time. Yearsand years of running up and down thirty flights of stairs should have made this nothing.

　　Another cramp, stronger this time. Holston winced and stopped walking, waiting for it to pass.

　　When did he eat last? Not at all yesterday. Stupid. When did he last use the bathroom? Again, hecouldn’t remember. He might need to get the suit off earlier than he’d hoped. Once the wave ofnausea passed, he took a few more steps, hoping to reach the top of the hill before the next bout ofpain. He only got another dozen steps in before it hit him, more severe this time, worse than anythinghe’d ever felt. Holston retched from the intensity of it, and now his dry stomach was a blessing. Heclutched his abdomen as his knees gave out in a shiver of weakness. He crashed to the ground andgroaned. His stomach was burning, his chest on fire. He managed to crawl forward a few feet, sweatdripping from his forehead and splashing on the inside of his helmet. He saw sparks in his vision; theentire world went bright white, several times, like lightning strikes. Confused and senseless, hecrawled ever upward, moving laboriously, his startled mind still focused on his last clear goal:

　　cresting that hill.

　　Again and again, his view shimmered, his visor letting in a solid bright light before it flickeredaway. It became difficult to see. Holston ran into something before him, and his arm folded, hisshoulder crashing to the ground. He blinked and gazed forward, up the hill, waiting for a clear sightof what lay ahead, but saw only infrequent strobes of green grass.

　　And then his vision completely disappeared. All was black. Holston clawed at his face, even as hisstomach tangled in a new torturous knot. There was a glow, a blinking in his vision, so he knew hewasn’t blind. But the blinking seemed to be coming from inside his helmet. It was his visor that hadbecome suddenly blind, not him.

　　Holston felt for the latches on the back of the helmet. He wondered if he’d used up all his air. Washe asphyxiating? Being poisoned by his own exhalations? Of course! Why would they give him moreair than he needed for the cleaning? He fumbled for the latches with his bulky gloves. They weren’tmeant for this. The gloves were part of his suit, his suit a single piece zipped up twice at the back andVelcroed over. It wasn’t meant to come off, not without help. Holston was going to die in it, poisonhimself, choke on his own gases, and now he knew true fear of containment, a true sense of beingclosed in. The silo was nothing to this as he scrambled for release, as he writhed in pain inside histailored coffin. He squirmed and pounded at the latches, but his padded fingers were too big. And theblindness made it worse, made him feel smothered and trapped. Holston retched again in pain. Hebent at the waist, hands spread in the dirt, and felt something sharp through his glove.

　　He fumbled for the object and found it: a jagged rock. A tool. Holston tried to calm himself. Hisyears of enforcing calm, of soothing others, of bringing stability to chaos, came back to him. Hegripped the rock carefully, terrified of losing it to his blindness, and brought it up to his helmet. Therewas a brief thought of cutting away his gloves with the rock, but he wasn’t sure his sanity or airwould last that long. He jabbed the point of the rock at his armored neck, right where the latch shouldhave been. He heard the crack as it landed. Crack. Crack. Pausing to probe with his padded finger,retching again, Holston took more careful aim. There was a click instead of a crack. A sliver of lightintruded as one side of the helmet came free. Holston was choking on his exhalations, on the staleand used air around him. He moved the rock to his other hand and aimed for the second latch. Twomore cracks before it landed, and the helmet popped free.

　　Holston could see. His eyes burned from the effort, from not being able to breathe, but he couldsee. He blinked the tears away and tried to suck in a deep, crisp, revitalizing lungful of blue air.

　　What he got instead was like a punch to the chest. Holston gagged. He threw up spittle andstomach acid, the very lining of him trying to flee. The world around him had gone brown. Browngrass and gray skies. No green. No blue. No life.

　　He collapsed to one side, landing on his shoulder. His helmet lay open before him, the visor blackand lifeless. There was no looking through the visor. Holston reached for it, confused. The outside ofthe visor was coated silver, the other side was nothing. No glass. A rough surface. Wires leading inand out of it. A display gone dark. Dead pixels.

　　He threw up again. Wiping his mouth feebly, looking down the hill, he saw the world with hisnaked eyes as it was, as he’d always known it to be. Desolate and bleak. He let go of the helmet,dropping the lie he had carried out of the silo with him. He was dying. The toxins were eating himfrom the inside. He blinked up at the black clouds overhead, roaming like beasts. He turned to seehow far he had gotten, how far it was to the crest of the hill, and he saw the thing he had stumbledinto while crawling. A boulder, sleeping. It hadn’t been there in his visor, hadn’t been a part of the lieon that little screen, running one of the programs Allison had discovered.

　　Holston reached out and touched the object before him, the white suit flaking away like brittlerock, and he could no longer support his head. He curled up in pain from the slow death overtakinghim, holding what remained of his wife, and thought, with his last agonizing breath, what this deathof his must look like to those who could see, this curling and dying in the black crack of a lifelessbrown hill, a rotting city standing silent and forlorn over him.

　　What would they see, anyone who had chosen to watch?