42

　　I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave; A grave?

　　O no! a lantern, slaughter’d youth, For here lies Juliet,and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light.

　　Juliette left her soup-slathered helmet on the floor and moved toward the pale-green glow of light. Itseemed brighter than before. She wondered how much of the darkness had been because of herhelmet. As her senses returned, she remembered that it wasn’t a piece of glass she’d been lookingthrough, but some infernal screen that took the world as she saw it and overlaid it with half a lie.

　　Maybe it had dimmed her view in the process.

　　She noticed the stench from her drenched suit followed her, the smell of rotten vegetables andmold—or possibly the toxic fumes from the outside world. Her throat burned a little as she crossedthe cafeteria toward the stairwell. Her skin began to itch, and she couldn’t tell if it was from fear, herimagination, or truly something in the air. She didn’t dare risk finding out, so she held her breath andhurried as fast as her weary legs would take her, around the corner to where she knew the stairswould be.

　　This world is the same as my world, she thought to herself, stumbling down the first flight of stairsin the wan glow of emergency-light strips. God built more than one.

　　Her heavy boots, still dripping with soup, felt unsteady on the metal treads. At the landing on two,she paused and took in a few big gulps of air, less painful gulps, and considered how best to removethe infernal and bulky outfit that made every movement awkward, that reeked of the fetid smell of rotand outside air. She looked down at her arms. The thing had required help to put on. There weredouble zippers in the back, layers of Velcro, miles of heat tape. She looked at the knife in her hand,suddenly grateful that she hadn’t dropped it after using it to remove her helmet.

　　Gripping the knife with one clumsy glove, she carefully inserted the tip through the other sleeve,right above the top of her wrist. She forced the point through, pushing the blade over the top of herarm so it wouldn’t jab her even if it pierced all the way. The fabric was difficult to cut, but a tearfinally formed as she worked the handle in small circles. She slid the knife into this tiny rip, the dullside of the blade facing her skin, and slid it down her arm and toward her knuckles. When the tip ofthe blade ripped through the fabric between her fingers, she was able to free her hand from the longgash she’d made, the sleeve flopping from her elbow.

　　Juliette sat down on the grating, moved the knife to her newly freed hand, and worked on theother side. She freed it as well while soup dripped from her shoulders and down her arms. She nextstarted a tear at her chest, having better control of the knife now without the thick gloves on. Sheripped the metal foil exterior away, peeling herself like an orange. The solid collar for her helmet hadto stay—it was attached to her charcoal fabric undersuit as well as the reinforced zippers up her back—but piece by piece she removed the shiny outer coat, which was slathered with a nastiness sheattributed partly to the soup and partly to her trek over the hills.

　　Next came her boots, which were cut free around the ankles until she was able to work them off,sawing a slit down the outside edge and popping one foot free, then the other.

　　Before she cleaned up the hanging tatters of fabric any further, or worried about the material stillattached to the zipper at her back, she got up from the landing and hurried down the steps, puttingmore distance between herself and the air above, which seemed to scratch at her throat. She wasanother two flights down, swimming through the green glow of the stairwell, before she appreciatedthe fact that she was alive.

　　She was alive.

　　For however much longer, this was a brutal, beautiful, and brand-new fact for Juliette. She hadspent three days climbing long stairs similar to these as she came to grips with her fate. Another dayand night had been spent in a cell made for the future corpses who dotted the landscape. And then—this. An impossible trek through the wilderness of the forbidden, breaking into the impenetrable andthe unknown. Surviving.

　　Whatever happened next, for this moment, Juliette flew down foreign steps in bare feet, the steelcool against her tingling skin, the air burning her throat less and less with each gulp of new air, theraw stench and memory of death receding further and further above her. Soon, it was just the patterof her joyous descent ringing out and drifting down a lonely and empty darkness like a muffled bellthat rang not for the dead, but for the living.

　　????

　　She stopped on six and rested while she worked on what remained of her protective suit. Withcare, she sliced her black undersuit by her shoulders and collarbone, working the tear all the wayaround and clawing at her back as it ripped free, strips of heat tape still attached. Once the helmetcollar was detached from the fabric—just the zipper hanging like a second spine along her back—shecould finally remove it from her neck. She pulled it off and dropped it to the ground, then stripped offthe rest of the black carbon fabric, peeling away the arms and legs and leaving all the material in arough pile outside the double doors to level six.

　　Six should be an apartment level, she thought. She considered going inside and yelling out forhelp or looking for clothes and supplies in the many rooms, but her greater impulse was to descend.

　　The up top felt poisoned and too close. It didn’t matter if it was all in her imagination or from hermiserable experiences living in the up top of her own silo—her body felt a revulsion for the place.

　　Safe was the down deep. It had always felt this way.

　　One hopeful image did linger from the upper kitchen: the rows and rows of canned and jarredfood for the lean harvests. Juliette figured there would be more in the lower mess halls as well. Andthe air in the silo seemed decent as she regained her breath; the sting in her lungs and on her tonguehad faded. Either the vast silo held a lot of air that was now being consumed by no one, or there wasstill a source. All these thoughts gave her hope, these tallies of resources. So she left her spoiled andtattered clothing behind, and armed with only a large chef’s knife, she stole down the curved stairsnaked, her body becoming more and more alive with every step taken, her mind becoming moredetermined to keep the rest of her that way.

　　????

　　On thirteen, she stopped and checked inside the doors. There was always the chance that this silowas laid out completely differently, floor to floor, so it made little sense to plan ahead if she didn’tknow what to expect. There were only a handful of areas in the up top that she was intimatelyfamiliar with, and every bit of overlap so far had seemed a perfect copy. Thirteen she woulddefinitely know. There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they feltlike little stones in the center of her mind. These would be the parts of her that rotted last, the bits leftover once the rest skittered off on the wind or was drunk deep by the roots. In her mind, as shepushed the door open a crack, she wasn’t in a different silo, an abandoned husk of a silo, but in herpast, pushing open a door on her youth.

　　It was dark inside, none of the security or emergency lights on. There was a different smell. Theair was stagnant and had a tinge of decay.

　　Juliette shouted down the hallway: “Hello?”

　　She listened to her voice echo back from the empty walls. The voice that returned sounded distant,weaker, higher than her own. She imagined herself at age nine, running through these very halls,crying out to her older self across the years. She tried to picture her mother chasing behind that girl,attempting to scoop her up and force her to be still, but the ghosts evaporated in the darkness. Thelast of the echoes faded, leaving her alone and naked in the doorway.

　　As her eyes adjusted, she could just barely make out a reception desk at the end of the hall. Lightreflected off glass windows just where they should have been. It was the exact same layout as herfather’s nursery in the mids, the place where she had been not just born but raised. It was hard tobelieve that this was someplace different. That other people had lived here, other children had beenborn, had played and had been raised just over a hill and down a dip, had given chase or challengedeach other to Hop or whatever games they had invented, all of them unaware of the others. Maybe itwas from standing in the doorway of a nursery, but she couldn’t help but think of all the lives thisplace had contained. People growing up, falling in love, burying their dead.

　　All those people outside. People she had desecrated with her boots, scattering their bones andashes as she kicked her way into the very place they had fled. Juliette wondered how long ago it hadhappened, how long since the silo had been abandoned. What had happened here? The stairwell wasstill lit, which meant the battery room still held juice. She needed paper to do the math, to figure howrecently or how long ago all this life had turned to death. There were practical reasons for wanting toknow, beyond the mere itch of curiosity.

　　With one last look inside, one final shudder of regret for not stopping to see her father the last fewtimes she’d passed his nursery, Juliette shut the door on the darkness and the ghosts and consideredher predicament. She could very well be perfectly alone in a dying silo. The thrill of being alive at allwas quickly draining away, replaced with the reality of her solitude and the tenuousness of hersurvival. Her stomach grumbled its agreement. She could somehow still smell the fetid soup on her,could taste the stomach acid from her retching. She needed water. She needed clothes. These primalurges were pushed to the forefront, drowning out the severity of her situation, the daunting tasksbefore her, leaving the regrets of the past behind.

　　If the layout was the same, the first hydroponic farm would be four floors below and the larger ofthe two upper dirt farms would lie just below that. Juliette shivered from an updraft of cold air. Thestairwell was creating its own thermal cycle, and it would only be colder the further down she went.

　　But she went anyway—lower was better. At the next level, she tried the door. It was too dark to seepast the first interior hallway, but it seemed like offices or workrooms. She tried to remember whatwould be on the fourteenth in her own silo but didn’t know. Was it incredible not to know? The uptop of her own home had somehow been strange to her. That made this silo something completelyalien.

　　She held the door to fourteen open and stuck the blade of her knife between the slits of metal thatformed every landing’s grating. The handle was left sticking up to form a stop. She allowed the doorto close on its sprung hinges until it rested on the handle, holding it open. This let in enough light forher to steal inside and grope around the first handful of rooms.

　　There were no overalls hanging on the backs of the doors, but one room was set up forconferences. The water in the pitchers had long evaporated, but the purple tablecloth looked warmenough. Warmer than being naked. Juliette moved the assortment of cups, plates, and pitchers andgrabbed the cloth. She wrapped it around her shoulders, but it was going to slip off when she moved,so she tried knotting the corners in front of her. Giving up on this, she ran back to the landing, outinto the welcomed light, and removed the fabric completely. Grabbing the knife—the door squealingeerily shut behind her—she pushed the blade through the center of the tablecloth and cut a long gash.

　　Her head went through this, the cloth falling past her feet in front of and behind her. A few minuteswith the blade and she’d cut away the excess, forming a belt out of one long strip and tying anothershock of fabric over her head to keep it warm.

　　It felt good to be making something, to be engineering her way through one particular problem.

　　She had a tool, a weapon if need be, and clothes. The impossible list of tasks had been whittled downa few shavings. She descended further, her feet cold on the stairs, dreaming of boots, thirsty forwater, very much aware of all that remained for her to do.

　　On fifteen, she was reminded of another necessity as her weary legs nearly gave way. Her kneesbuckled, she grabbed the railing, and she realized, as the adrenaline left her veins, that she wasdeathly tired. She paused on the landing, hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths. How longhad she been going? How much further could she push herself? She checked her reflection in theblade of the knife, saw how horrible she looked, and decided she needed rest before she went anyfurther. Rest now, while it was still warm enough not to shiver to pieces.

　　It was tempting to explore that level for a bed, but she decided against it—there would be littlecomfort in the pitch black behind those doors. So she curled up on the steel grating of landing fifteen,tucked her arms under her head, and adjusted the tablecloth so every patch of bare skin was covered.

　　And before she could go over the long list forming in her head, exhaustion took over. She drifted offto sleep with only a moment’s panic that she shouldn’t be so tired, that this might be the sort of napone never woke up from, that she was destined to join the residents of this strange place, curled upand unmoving, frozen and lifeless, rotting and wasting away …