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

“The ratshit bastards,” someone muttered, which got more than a few of them bobbing their heads.

“So I told Supply to return the favor. Soon as I heard they took her—” Walker paused and swiped at his eyes. “Soon as I heard, I wired in those favors, said to replace anything them bastards asked for with some of our own. Best of the best. And don’t let ‘em be the wiser.”

“You did what ?” Knox asked.

Walker dipped his head over and over, feeling good to let out the truth. “They’ve been making those suits to fail. Not ‘cause it ain’t bad out there, that’s not what I figure. But they don’t want your body wandering out of sight, no sir.” He stirred his oats. “They want us all right here where they can see us.”

“So she’s okay?” Shirly asked.

Walker frowned and slowly shook his head.

“I told you guys,” someone said. “She’d run out of air by now.”

“She was dead anyway ,” someone else countered, and the argument began to build again. “This just proves they’re full of shit!”

Walker had to agree with that.

“Everybody, hey, let’s stay calm,” Knox roared. But he appeared the least calm of them all. More workers filed in now that the moment of silence appeared to be over. They gathered around the table, faces full of worry.

“This is it,” Walker said to himself, seeing what was happening, what he had started. He watched his friends and coworkers get all riled up, barking at the empty air for answers, their passions stirred. “This is it,” he said again, and he could feel it brewing, ready to burst out. “Thisisit thisisit—”

Courtnee, still hovering over him, tending to him like he was an invalid, held his wrist with those delicate hands of hers.

“What is it?” she asked. She waved down the others so she could hear. She leaned close to Walker.

“Walk, tell me, what is it? What is this? What’re you trying to say?”

“This is how it starts,” he whispered, the room quiet once more. He looked up at all the faces, scanned them, seeing in their fury, in all the exploded taboos, that he was right to worry.

“This is how the uprising begins—”

Lukas arrived at thirty-four breathless and clutching the small box, more exhausted from the laws he had broken than this habitual climb to work. He could still taste the metallic tang of adrenaline in his mouth from hiding behind the servers and rummaging through Juliette’s things. He patted his chest, feeling the items there, and also his racing heart.

Once he was better composed, he reached for the doors to IT and nearly cracked a knuckle as they flew outward toward him. Sammi, a tech he knew, burst out in a hurry and stormed past. Lukas called his name, but the older tech was already gone, storming up the stairs and out of sight.

There was more commotion in the entrance hall. Voices yelling over one another. Lukas entered warily, wondering what the fuss was about. He held open the door with his elbow and slid into the room, the box tight against his chest.

Most of the yelling, it seemed, was coming from Bernard. The head of IT stood outside the security gates and barked at one tech after the other. Nearby, Sims, the head of IT security, similarly lit into three men in gray coveralls. Lukas remained frozen by the door, intimidated by the angry duo.

When Bernard spotted him there, he snapped shut and waded through the trembling techs to greet him. Lukas opened his mouth to say something, but his boss was fixated less on him and more on what was in his hands.

“This is it?” Bernard asked, snatching the box from him.

“It—?”

“Everything that greaser owned fits in this little damn box?” Bernard tugged the flaps open. “Is this everything?”

“Uh… that’s what I was given,” Lukas stammered. “Marsh said—”

“Yeah, the Deputy wired about his cramps. I swear, the Pact should stipulate an age limit for their kind. Sims!” Bernard turned to his security chief. “Conference room. Now.”

Lukas pointed toward the security gate and the server room beyond. “I suppose I should get to—”

“Come with me,” Bernard said, wrapping his arm around Lukas’s back and squeezing his shoulder. “I want you in on this. There seems to be fewer and fewer ratshit techs I can trust around here.”

“Unless y-you want me on the servers. We had that thing with tower thirteen—”

“That can wait. This is more important.” Bernard ushered him toward the conference room, the hulking mass of Sims preceding them.

The security guard grabbed the door and held it open, frowning at Lukas as he went by. Lukas shivered as he crossed the threshold. He could feel the sweat running down his chest, could feel guilty heat in his armpits and around his neck. He had a sudden image of being thrown against the table, pinned down, contraband yanked from his pockets and waved in his face—

“Sit,” Bernard said. He put the box down on the table, and he and Sims began disgorging its contents while Lukas lowered himself into a chair.

“Vacation chits,” Sims said, pulling out the stack of paper coupons. Lukas watched the way the man’s arms rippled with muscle with even the slightest movement. Sims had been a tech once, until his body kept growing and made him too obviously suited for other, less cerebral, endeavors. He lifted the chits to his nose, took a sniff, and recoiled. “Smells like sweaty greaser,” he said.

“Counterfeit?” Bernard asked.

Sims shook his head. Bernard was inspecting the small wooden box. He shook it and rapped it with his knuckles, listening to the rattle of chits inside. He searched the exterior for a hinge or clasp.

Lukas almost blurted out that the top slid, that it was so finely crafted you could barely see the joints and that it took a bit of effort. Bernard muttered something and set the box aside.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Lukas asked. He leaned forward and grabbed the box, pretended to be inspecting it for the first time.

“Anything. A fucking clue,” Bernard barked. He glared at Lukas. “How did this greaser make it over the hill? Was it something she did? One of my techs? What?”

Lukas still couldn’t figure the anger. So what if she hadn’t cleaned—it would’ve been a double anyway. Was Bernard pissed because he didn’t know why she’d survived so long? This made sense to Lukas. Whenever he fixed something by accident, it drove him nearly as nuts as having something break. And he’d seen Bernard angry before, but this was something different. The man was livid. He was manic . It’s just how Lukas would feel if he’d had such an unprecedented piece of success with no cause to pin it on.

Sims, meanwhile, found the notebook and began flipping through it. “Hey boss—”

Bernard snatched it from him and tore through the pages, reading. “Someone’ll have to go through all this,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “There might be some sign of collusion in here—”

“Hey look,” Lukas said, holding out the box. “It opens.” He showed them the sliding lid.

“Lemme see that.” Bernard dropped the notebook to the table and snatched the wooden box away. He wrinkled his nose. “Just chits,” he said disgustingly.

He dumped them on the table and was about to toss the box aside, but Sims grabbed it from him. “That’s an antique,” the large man said. “You think it’s a clue, or can I—?”

“Yes, keep it, by all means.” Bernard waved his arms out toward the window with its view of the entrance hall. “Because nothing of greater fucking importance is going on around here, is it, shit-for-brains?”