Free Shift - Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey Page B

up for the heads of the other silos, and he needed to make sure the vocabulary in these memos adhered to the ever-changing standards.
    He got it wrong himself, often calling them bunkers instead of silos. It was difficult for those who had lived in the time of the Legacy. An old vocabulary, a way of seeing the world, persisted despite the medication. He felt envious of the men and women in the other silos, those who were born and who would die in their own little worlds, who would fall in and out of love, who would keep their hurts in memory, feel them, learn from them, be changed by them. He was jealous of these people even more than he envied the women of his own silo who remained in their long-sleep lifeboats—
    There was a knock on his open door. Troy looked up and saw Randall, who worked across the hall in the psych office, standing in the doorway. Troy waved him inside with one hand and minimized the game with the other. He fidgeted with the copy of the Order on his desk, trying to look busy.
    ‘I’ve got that beliefs report you wanted.’ Randall waved a folder.
    ‘Oh, good. Good.’ Troy took the folder. Always with the folders. He was reminded of the two groups that had built that place: the politicians and the doctors. Both were stuck in a prior era, a time of paperwork. Or was it possible that neither group trusted any data they couldn’t shred or burn?
    ‘The head of Silo Six has a new replacement picked out and processed. He wants to schedule a talk with you, make the induction formal.’
    ‘Oh. Okay.’ Troy flipped through the folder and saw typed transcripts from the comm room about each of the silos. He looked forward to another induction ceremony. Any task he had already done once before filled him with less dread.
    ‘Also, the population report on Silo Thirty-Two is a little troubling.’ Randall came around Troy’s desk and licked his thumb before sorting through the reports. Troy glanced at his monitor to make sure he’d minimized the game. ‘They’re getting close to the maximum and fast. Doc Haines thinks it might be a bad batch of birth control implants. The head of Thirty-Two, a Biggers … Here we go.’ Randall pulled out the report. ‘He denies this, says no one with an active implant has gotten pregnant. He thinks the lottery is being gamed or that there’s something wrong with our computers.’
    ‘Hmm.’ Troy took the report and looked it over. Silo Thirty-Two had crept above nine thousand inhabitants, and the median age had fallen into the low twenties. ‘Let’s set up a call for first thing in the morning. I don’t buy the lottery being gamed. They shouldn’t even be running the lottery, right? Until they have more space?’
    ‘That’s what I said.’
    ‘And all the population accounts for every silo are run from the same computer.’ Troy tried not to make this sound like a question, but it was. He couldn’t remember.
    ‘Yup,’ Randall confirmed.
    ‘Which means we’re being lied to. I mean, this doesn’t happen overnight, right? Biggers had to see this coming, which means he knew about it earlier, so either he’s complicit, or he’s lost control over there.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Okay. What do we know about Biggers’s second?’
    ‘His shadow?’ Randall hesitated. ‘I’d have to pull that file, but I know he’s been in place for a while. He was there before we started our shifts.’
    ‘Good. I’ll speak with him tomorrow. Alone.’
    ‘You think we should replace Biggers?’
    Troy nodded grimly. The Order was clear on problems that defied explanation: Start at the top. Assume the explanation is a lie . Because of the rules, he and Randall were talking about a man being put out of commission as if he were broken machinery.
    ‘Okay, one more thing—’
    The thunder of boots down the hallway interrupted the thought. Randall and Troy looked up as Saul bolted into the room, his eyes wide with fear.
    ‘Sirs—’
    ‘Saul. What’s going on?’
    The