Hugh Howey - Shift

He fumbled in his pocket for the report. ‘Something I wrote during my last… during my shift. Thurman has a boss? I thought he was in charge.’

Anna laughed humourlessly. ‘Nobody’s in charge,’ she told him. ‘The system’s in charge. It just runs. We built it to just go .’ She got up from her desk and walked over to join him on the cot. Donald slid over to give her more room.

‘Dad was in charge of digging the holes, that was his job. There were three of them who planned most of this. The other two had ideas for how to hide this place. Dad convinced them they should just build it in plain sight. The nuclear containment facility was his idea, and he was in a position to make it happen.’

‘You said three. Who were the others?’

‘Victor and Erskine.’ Anna adjusted a pillow and leaned back against the wall. ‘Not their real names, of course. But what does it matter? A name is a name. You can be anyone down here. Erskine was the one who discovered the original threat, who told Victor and Dad about the nanos. You’ll meet him. He’s been on a double shift with me, working on the loss of these silos, but it’s not his area of expertise. Do you need more?’ She nodded at his cup.

‘No. I’m already feeling dizzy.’ He didn’t add that it wasn’t from the alcohol. ‘I remember a Victor from my shift. He worked across the hall from me.’

‘The same.’ She looked away for a moment. ‘Dad refers to him as the boss, but I’ve been working with Victor for a while, and he never thought of himself that way. He thought of himself as a steward, joked once about feeling like Noah. He wanted to wake you months ago because of what’s happening in silo eighteen, but Dad vetoed the idea. I think Victor was fond of you. He talked about you a lot.’

‘Victor talked about me ?’ Donald remembered the man across the hall from him, the shrink. Anna reached up and wiped underneath her eyes.

‘Yes. He was a brilliant man, could tell what you were thinking, what anyone was thinking. He planned most of this. Wrote the Order, the original Pact. It was all his design.’

‘What do you mean was ?’

Her lip trembled. She tipped her cup, but there was little left in the bottom.

‘Victor’s dead,’ she said. ‘He shot himself at his desk two days ago.’

‘VICTOR? SHOT HIMSELF?’ Donald tried to imagine the composed man who had worked across the hall from him doing such a thing. ‘Why?’

Anna sniffed and slid closer to Donald. She twisted the empty cup in her hands. ‘We don’t know. He was obsessed with that first silo we lost. Obsessed. It broke my heart to see how he blamed himself. He used to say that he could see certain things coming, that there were… probabilistic certainties.’ She said these two words in a mimic of his voice, which brought the old man’s face even more vividly to Donald’s mind.

‘But it killed him not to know the precise when and where.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘He would’ve been better off if it’d happened on someone else’s shift. Not his. Not where he’d feel guilty.’

‘He blamed me,’ Donald said, staring at the floor. ‘It was on my shift. I was such a mess. I couldn’t think straight.’

‘What? No. Donny, no.’ She rested a hand on his knee. ‘There’s no one to blame.’

‘But my report—’ He still had it in his hand, folded up and dotted here and there with pale blue.

Anna’s eyes fell to the piece of paper. ‘Is that a copy?’ She reached for it, brushed the loose strands of hair off her face. ‘Dad had the courage to tell you about this but not about what Vic did.’ She shook her head. ‘Victor was strong in some ways, so weak in others.’ She turned to Donald. ‘He was found at his desk, surrounded by notes, everything he had on this silo, and your report was on top.’

She unfolded the page and studied the words. ‘Just a copy,’ she whispered.

‘Maybe it was—’ Donald began.

‘He wrote notes all over the original.’ She slid her finger across the page. ‘Right about here, he wrote: “This is why.”’

‘This is why? As in why he did it?’ Donald waved his hand at the room. ‘Shouldn’t this be why? Maybe he realised he’d made a mistake.’ He held Anna’s arm. ‘Think about what we’ve done. What if we followed a crazy man down here? Maybe Victor had a sudden bout of sanity . What if he woke up for a second and saw what we’d done?’

‘No.’ Anna shook her head. ‘We had to do this.’

He slapped the wall behind the cot. ‘That’s what everyone keeps saying.’

‘Listen to me.’ She placed a hand on his knee, tried to soothe him. ‘You need to keep it together, okay?’ She glanced at the door, a fearful look in her eyes. ‘I asked him to wake you because I need your help. I can’t do this alone. Vic was working on the situation in silo eighteen. If Dad has his way, he’ll just terminate the place not to have to deal with it. Victor didn’t want that. I don’t want that.’

Donald thought of silo twelve, which he’d terminated. But it was already falling, wasn’t it? It was already too late. They had opened the airlock. He looked at the schematic on the wall and wondered if it was too late for silo eighteen as well.

‘What did he see in my report?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. But he wanted to wake you weeks ago. He thought you had touched on something.’

‘Or maybe it was just because I was around at the time.’

Donald looked at the room of clues. Anna had been digging, tearing into a different problem. So many questions and answers. His mind was clear, not like last time. He had questions of his own. He wanted to find his sister, find out what had happened to Helen, dispel this crazy thought that she was still out there somewhere. He wanted to know more about this damnable place he’d helped build.

‘You’ll help us?’ Anna asked. She rested her hand on his back, and her comforting touch brought back the memory of his wife, of the moments she would soothe and care for him. He started as if bitten, some part of him thinking for a moment that he was still married, that she was alive out there, maybe frozen and waiting for him to wake her.

‘I need…’ He jumped up and glanced around the room. His eyes fell to the computer on the desk. ‘I need to look some things up.’

Anna rose beside him. ‘Of course. I can fill you in with what we know so far. Victor left a series of notes. He wrote all over your report. I can show you. And maybe you can convince Dad that he was on to something, that this silo is worth saving—’

‘Yes,’ Donald said. He would do it. But only so he could stay awake. And he wondered for a moment if that was Anna’s intention as well. To keep him around, near to her.

An hour earlier, all he had wanted was to go back to sleep, to escape the world he had helped create. But now he wanted answers. He would look into silo eighteen, but he would find Helen as well. Find out what had happened to her, where she was. He thought of Mick, and Tennessee flashed in his mind. He turned to the wall schematic with all the silos and tried to remember which state went with which number.

‘What can we access from here?’ he asked. His skin flushed with heat as he thought of the answers at his disposal.

Anna turned towards the door. There were footsteps out there in the darkness.

‘Dad. He’s the only one with access to this level any more.’

‘Any more?’ He turned back to Anna.

‘Yeah. Where do you think Victor got the gun?’ She lowered her voice. ‘I was in here when he came down and cracked open one of the crates. I never heard him. Look, my father blames himself for what happened to Victor, and he still doesn’t believe this has anything to do with you or your report. But I knew Vic. He wasn’t crazy. If there’s anything you can do, please. For me.’