Silo 49: Deep Dark

Chapter Nineteen

Waking up to someone who shouldn’t be there moving around in a room is a jarring thing. Marina woke to just that and saw Taylor gently trying to remove the book from underneath her arm. He saw her eyes open at almost the exact moment they did and he didn’t delay. He moved with a purpose Marina wasn’t ready for after a few hours of disturbed sleep and dreams of blue orbs. Just as she uttered a sound of confused query, he snatched the book from under her arm and made a grab for the envelopes that had scattered while she slept.

Marina bolted upright and grabbed his outstretched arm. “Taylor! What are you doing?”

“You can’t do this. This isn’t right! I’m making it right!” he exclaimed as he tried to yank his arm back. Marina jerked with each yank but held on. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the chart with the silos unfolded on the floor. He had been in here long enough to do that. What else might he have been up to?

Taylor dropped the book back to the bed and papers fluttered to the floor around him as he put more force into the yank. Marina had a grip on him and leverage on the bed while he was trapped by the little chair and table. When his body signaled he was about to make another big effort, she timed her response and threw herself into a solid push at the moment of his pull. Taylor flew backward and hit the table and then the chair. The table fell over with a bang and dishes clattered across the floor.

Marina stepped off the bed and picked up the metal pitcher that normally held water. She held it over his head as he tried to untangle his long limbs from the chair and growled, “What in silo’s depths are you doing, Taylor?”

He righted himself and tugged his coveralls into place. He went to take a step toward her but she held up the pitcher and braced herself. She was confused but she was also angry. This man had been in her room. He’d been taking things while she slept and he had fought her for them when she woke. That bespoke danger and that made her mad.

“You!” he growled right back and jabbed a finger at the level of her eyes. “You and your searching and your little secret finds! Do you know what this will do? I have to fix it!”

“Fix it? Fix what? I just went to get it. I wasn’t going to keep it!” She said this but knew that what she said was at least partially untrue. She would have shared it but the knowledge of what it said would be hers first. It was becoming an obsession with her and she knew it. If he had only been worried about her keeping it he would have brought Greta, not come in and tried to take it while she slept.

He scraped a hand across his unshaven face and said, his tone icy and calm, “I know you would have shared it. That is the problem, Marina.” He enunciated each word clearly and slowly.

Marina didn’t like the way he was looking at her. It was like she wasn’t a person or even alive. It was the look of someone trying to figure out a problem that needs solving and clearing away. Like she had turned from a friend into a mess that needed cleaning up. She tightened her grip on the heavy pitcher and jerked her head in the direction of the book and the scattering of papers. “You were going to get rid of those, weren’t you?”

He nodded, his look measuring and weighing, his shoulders bunching with anticipated movement.

“I can just scream, you know,” she said hurriedly and had the satisfaction of seeing him ease back a little. She could see the exact moment he decided to try another tactic by the shifting of his eyes. A certain slyness crept in that frightened Marina more than the blank anger it replaced.

“You have to understand, Marina. That,” he pointed toward the unfolded chart, “is poison. It will spread and we will all die. You’re proof that it is poison!” His tone changed then. It was more conspiratorial, more intimate. He said, “We can get rid of it. Just you and I. No one ever has to know you found anything.”

She gave a curt nod, agreeing that was a possibility. And it was possible if only in the most abstract way that anything would be possible. She would no more get rid of this find than she would toss her husband out the airlock. She asked, “How exactly did you know that I found anything?”

“I was out on the landing. I was just,” he paused and the emotions that ran across his face were everything from loss to guilt, “sitting near where it happened.”

Marina had been so exhausted by the time she made it back that she hadn’t bothered to see if her movements were being noted. She wouldn’t have thought that it mattered. The Memoriam always had someone around, looking or thinking or trying to figure out a problem in life. The benches on the landing were in shadow when it was dim. She wouldn’t have seen him unless she had been looking.

“Okay. But how did you know I found something?” she asked. Her arm was beginning to ache from holding up the heavy pitcher but she refused to let it dip and show fatigue. That might make him think it was a good time to make another grab at her.

He shrugged, his shoulders slumping a little, looking resigned. His tone was almost normal when he said, “I don’t know. The way you were walking, maybe. I knew you went to IT when you left here.” He sighed, his look almost resigned, before he went on, “I got the report today, you know.”

Of course. He would have gotten the IT summary that Piotr got each evening. Since IT and the Memoriam both had working terminals, it had been being sent via wire and Piotr excused himself every evening to review it. She should have known visitors requesting rooms, especially ones working on this little hush-hush project, would have been noted. How stupid of her.

She gave another curt nod, indicating her understanding and waited.

He made to reach downward and Marina braced herself with the pitcher. He stopped and held up both hands and said, “I’m just going to get the chair. I’m tired.”

Marina could see that much was true, at least. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days and exhaustion came off him in waves. She took a step backward, making distance, and said, “Go ahead. But slowly.”

Taylor righted the chair and Marina thought he was going to sit down. The pitcher was formed of thick stainless steel and heavy. She had the passing thought that it was meant to last the ages and give a bitter internal laugh. Of course it was.

It happened so fast that Marina had no time to react. Taylor hit the chair and it slid violently toward her. She tried to skip aside, keep her eyes on Taylor and figure out how to hit him with the pitcher all at the same time. He had no such quandaries, because he took one step and leapt at her.

They collided, Taylor’s larger bulk carrying the momentum, and Marina fell back with frightening force. Her pitcher banged once on the floor and skittered away with loud ringing clangs on the tile floor. His hands were around her throat before she could even process the situation. She saw his grimace, lips skinned back from his teeth in a parody of a smile. His hands were so tight there was no possibility of a breath, just a squeaky trickle that didn’t do enough to replenish what she had lost when he fell on top of her. The knot in her kerchief was like a heel being pressed to the side of her throat.

Marina kicked and tried to reach his face but his arms were longer and he seemed to have an instinctual knowledge that he should raise up and out of her reach. How could anyone have an instinct for murder, Marina wondered even as she struggled. She grabbed his wrists and felt the iron in his grip and stance.

She could not stop him. She could only hope that he could stop himself. She raised her hands, fingers splayed as the black spots grew in her vision. She could see his eyes and see that he was looking at her. She had no breath, no matter how hard she pulled in nothing was coming, so she mouthed the words, “Hope. Future.”

Every fiber of her being was screaming for her to fight and she lost control of her hands. They pulled at his fingers almost of their own accord. Suddenly, the pressure was gone. The tightly clenched fingers lifted away and the breath she had been straining to take rushed into her, making her feel like she might float away. The dark blotches in her eyes grew and all she could hear was the liquid thud of her pulse in her ears and the squealing breaths sawing in and out of her.

Her hands and body didn’t feel totally connected but the desire to survive is strong and primal and doesn’t think. It just acts. She felt herself lever up and her arms and legs scrabbled to move her backward and away from her attacker. The blotches diminished into spots and she could see Taylor on his knees, hunched over and head bowed, but her body kept moving back and toward the door.

She turned to crawl and grabbed the pitcher where it lay against the door. She missed the lever twice but on her third paw at it, she caught it and jerked it downward. Everything was drifty and dizzy and out of focus. All she could do was keep sucking in air with huge, loud gasps.

Somehow she got the door open and crawled into the hallway. The air rushed in, cool and dry and painful. She tried to make a sound, cry for help or just get out anything at all but it was a ragged whisper that felt like fire in her throat.

She fell against the wall on the other side of the hallway. The dizziness was so profound she was having a hard time deciding which way was up. All she could do was lift the pitcher and bang it against the wall. The first couple of strikes were weak but the loud reverberation gave her heart. She hit harder, then harder again, and the clanging of metal on concrete sent increasing waves of sound down the deserted hallway. Piotr and Taylor and she had been the only guests on this hallway. She struck harder and felt a give as the thick metal began to dent.

It was two men in maintenance red that peeked around the corner, tentative and unsure. One held a tool bag and the other a large square filter. They said nothing and stopped at the corner. Marina could no more talk than she could stand up and offer them cookies but she managed one more bang and held out her arm. She got out a single croaking word, “Help.”