Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

“What the hell’s going on around here?” he asked.

She pulled the message up on her screen and read it quickly, disbelieving. Surely this wasn’t the way of the job. Surely people didn’t die this often, her just not hearing about it because her nose was always in some crankcase or under an oil pan.

The blinking number code above the message was one she recognized without even needing her cheat sheet. It was becoming sadly familiar. Another suicide. They didn’t give the victim’s name, but there was an office number. And she knew the floor and address. Her legs were still sore from her trip down there.

“No—” she said, gripping the edge of her desk.

“You want me to—?” Peter reached for his radio.

“No, damnit, no.” Juliette shook her head. She pushed away from her desk, knocking over the recycling bin, which spilled out all the pardoned folders across the floor. The scroll from her lap rolled into them.

“I can—” Peter began.

“I got this,” she said, waving him away. “Damnit.” She shook her head. The office was spinning around her head, the world getting blurry. She staggered for the door, arms wide for balance, when Peter snapped back to his computer screen, dragging his mouse with its little cord behind, clicking something.

“Uh, Juliette—?”

But she was already stumbling out the door, bracing herself for the long and painful descent—

“Juliette!”

She turned to find Peter running behind her, his hand steadying the radio attached to his hip.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m sorry— It’s— I don’t know how to do this—”

“Spit it out,” she said impatiently. All she could think of was little Scottie, hanging by his neck. It was electrical ties in her imagination. That’s how her waking nightmare, her morbid thoughts, crafted the scene of his death in her head.

“It’s just that, I got a private wire and—”

“Keep up if you want, but I’ve got to get down there.” She spun toward the stairwell.

Peter grabbed her arm. Roughly. A forceful grip.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I’m supposed to take you into custody—”

She whirled on him and saw how unsure of himself he looked.

“What did you say?”

“I’m just doing my duty, Sheriff, I swear.” Peter reached for his metal cuffs. Juliette stared at him, disbelieving, as he snapped one link around her wrist and fumbled for the other.

“Peter, what’s going on? I’ve got a friend I need to see to—”

He shook his head. “The computer says you’re a suspect, Ma’am. I’m just doing what it tells me to do—”

And with that, the second link clicked around her other wrist, and Juliette looked down at her predicament, dumbfounded, the image of her young friend hanging by his neck unable to be shaken loose from her mind.

She was allowed a visitor, but who would Juliette want to see her like this? No one. So she sat with her back against the bars, the bleak view outside brightening with the rising of an unseen sun, the floor around her bare of folders and ghosts. She was alone, stripped of a job she wasn’t sure she ever wanted, a pile of bodies in her wake, her simple and easily understood life having come unraveled.

“I’m sure this will pass,” a voice behind her said. Juliette leaned away from the steel rods and looked around to find Bernard standing behind her, his hands wrapped around the bars.

Juliette moved away from him and sat on the cot, turning her back to the gray view.

“You know I didn’t do this,” she said. “He was my friend.”

Bernard frowned. “What do you think you’re being held for? The boy committed suicide. He seems to have been distraught from recent tragedies. This is not unheard of when people move to a new section of the silo, away from friends and family, to take a job they’re not entirely suited for—”

“Then why am I being held here?” Juliette asked. She realized suddenly that there may be no double cleaning after all. Off to the side, down the hallway, she could see Peter shuffling back and forth like some physical barrier prevented him from coming any closer.

“Unauthorized entry on the thirty-fourth,” Bernard said. “Threatening a member of the silo, tampering with IT affairs, removing IT property from secured quarters—”

“That’s ratshit,” Juliette said. “I was summoned by one of your workers. I had every right to be there!”

“We will look into that,” Bernard said. “Well, Peter here will. I’m afraid he’s had to remove your computer for evidence. My people down below are best qualified to see if—”

“ Your people? Are you trying to be Mayor or IT Head? Because I looked into it, and the Pact clearly states you can’t be both—”

“That will be put to a vote soon enough. The Pact has changed before. It’s designed to change when events call for it.”

“And so you want me out of the way.” Juliette stepped closer to the bars so she could see Peter Billings, and have him see her. “I suppose you were to have this job all along? Is that right?”

Peter slunk out of sight.

“Juliette. Jules.” Bernard shook his head and clicked his tongue at her. “I don’t want you out of the way. I wouldn’t want that for any member of the silo. I want people to be in their place . Where they fit in. Scottie wasn’t cut out for IT, I see that now. And I don’t think you were meant for the up-top.”

“So, what, I’m banished back to Mechanical? Is that what’s going on? Over some ratshit charges?”

“Banished is such a horrible word. I’m sure you didn’t mean that. And don’t you want your old job back? Weren’t you happier then? There’s so much to learn up here that you’ve never shadowed for. And the people who thought you best fit for this job, who I’m sure hoped to ease you into it…”

He stopped right there, and it was somehow worse that he left the sentence open like that, forcing Jules to complete the image rather than just hear it. She pictured two mounds of freshly turned soil in the gardens, a few mourning rinds tossed on top of them.

“I’m going to let you gather your things, what isn’t needed for evidence, and then allow you to see yourself back down. As long as you check in with my deputies on the way and report your progress, we’ll drop these charges. Consider it an extension of my little… forgiveness holiday.”

Bernard smiled and straightened his glasses.

Juliette gritted her teeth. It occurred to her that she had never, in her entire life, punched someone in the face.

And it was only her fear of missing, of not doing it correctly and cracking her knuckles on one of the steel bars, that she didn’t put an end to that streak.

It was just about a week since she had arrived at the up-top, and Juliette was leaving with fewer belongings than she’d brought. A blue Mechanical coverall had been provided, one much too big for her. Peter didn’t even say goodbye. Juliette thought it was more out of shame than anger or blame. He walked her through the cafeteria to the top of the stairs, and as she turned to shake his hand, she found him staring down at his toes, his thumbs caught in his coveralls, her sheriff’s badge pinned at an angle over his left breast.

Juliette began her long walk down through the length of the silo. It would be less physically taxing than her walk up had been, but more draining in other ways. What exactly had happened to the silo, and why? She couldn’t help but feel in the middle of it all, to shoulder some of the blame. None of this would have happened had they left her in Mechanical, had they never come to see her in the first place. She would still be bitching about the alignment of the generator, not sleeping at night as she waited for the inevitable failure and a descent into chaos as they learned to survive on backup power for the decades it would take to rebuild the thing. Instead, she had been witness to a different type of failure: a throwing not of rods but of bodies. She felt most horrible for poor Scottie, a boy with so much promise, so many talents, taken before his prime.