26
• Silo 18 •
A group of kids thundered down the staircase as Lukas was escorted to his death. One of them squealed in delighted horror as if being chased. They spiraled closer, coming into view, and Lukas and Peter had to squeeze to one side to let them pass.
Peter played the sheriff role and yelled at the kids to slow down, to be careful. They giggled and continued their mad descent. School was out for the day, no more listening to adults.
While Lukas was pressed against the outer railing, he took a moment to consider the temptation. Freedom was just a jump away. A death of his own choosing, one he had considered in the past when moods turned dark.
Peter pulled him along, hand on his elbow, before Lukas could act. He was left admiring that graceful bar of steel, watching the way it curved and curved, always spinning the same amount, never ending. He pictured it corkscrewing through the earth, could sense its vibrations like some cosmic string, like a single strand of DNA at the silo’s core with all of life clinging to it.
Thoughts like these swirled as they gained another level on his death. He watched the welds go by, some of them neater than others. A few puckered up like scars; several had been polished so smoothly he almost missed them. Each was a signature by its creator, a work of pride here, a rushed job at the end of a long day there, a shadow learning for the first time, a seasoned pro who with decades of practice made it look all too easy.
He brushed his shackled hands over the rough paint, the bumps and puckers, the missing chips that revealed centuries of layers, of colors that changed with the times or with the supply of dyes or cost of paint. The layers reminded him of the wooden desk he’d stared down at for almost a month. Each little groove marked the passage of time, just as each name scratched into its surface marked a man’s mad desire to have more of it, to not let that time whisk his poor soul away.
For a long while, they marched in silence, a porter passing with a bulky load, a young couple looking guilty. Exiting the server vault had not been the stroll to freedom Lukas had longed for the past weeks. It had been an ambush, a march of shame, faces in doorways, faces on landings, faces on the stairway. Blank, unblinking faces. Faces of friends wondering if he was their enemy.
And maybe he was.
They would say he had broken down and uttered fateful taboo, but Lukas now knew why people were put out. He was the virus. If he sneezed the wrong words, it would kill everyone he knew. This was the path Juliette had walked and for the same absence of reason. He believed her, always had, always knew she’d done nothing wrong, but now he really understood. She was like him in so many ways. Except he would not survive, he knew that. Bernard had told him so.
They were ten levels up from IT when Peter’s radio buzzed with chatter. He took his hand off Lukas’s elbow to turn up the volume, see if it was for him.
“This is Juliette. Who is this?”
That voice.
Lukas’s heart leapt up a little before plummeting a very long way. He fixed his gaze on the railing and listened.
Bernard responded, asked for silence. Peter reached for his radio, turned it down but not off. The voices climbed with them, back and forth. Each step and each word ground down on Lukas, chipped away at him. He studied the railing and again considered true freedom.
A grab and a short leap up; a long flight.
He could feel himself going through the motions, bending his knees, throwing his feet over.
The voices in the radio argued. They said forbidden things. They were sloppy with secrets, thinking other ears were off.
Lukas watched his death play out over and over. His fate awaited him over that rail. The visual was so powerful, it wrecked his climbing pace, it affected his legs.
He slowed, Peter slowing with him. Each of them began to falter, to waver in their convictions. The strength in Lukas drained away, and he decided not to jump.
Both men were having second thoughts.