Chapter 18
“Can you stand?”
Mihail’s voice scraped through the fog in her head—gravelly, low. The floor vibrated under her hands, mechanical and steady.
Audrey stared at his hand and didn’t move.
He smiled, nothing but teeth. The split in his lip had dried black at one corner, and his black curls looked damp with sweat. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “You should be quite docile from now on. We’ve given you both sedatives.” His eyes roamed over her. “So, no running.”
She pushed up without touching him, muscles shaking, and got halfway to her feet before her legs collapsed. Her knees crashed onto the floor. It seemed like she’d might collapse entirely, but she didn’t. Pride kept her upright, although kneeling.
“I don’t need your help, you prick,” she managed.
He snickered, clearly savoring her weakness, as if he’d predicted it.
Whatever they’d pumped into her crawled through her blood.
Farther down the corridor, Nikos had a fist wrapped around Emerson’s arm. His shaved head caught the clinical light. Tattoos climbed out from under his collar and disappeared into the cuffs of his coat.
Emerson’s jaw was clenched, eyes murderous, one side of his face swelling dark beneath the eye—but his knees threatened to give out. If he tried to break away, he’d face-plant.
Bastards.
The hallway looked nothing like any office she knew.
Tall, vertical digital identification screens—each essentially a tablet as large as a television—covered each reinforced door.
The walls were white and spotless. No seams showed where the ceiling met the wall.
People moved in clusters, tapping silently at lightweight glass slates.
They waited beside doors to submit to full-body biometric scans, then disappeared inside.
Everything here ran with mechanical efficiency, overseen by nearly invisible cameras.
It was less like a workplace and more like a channel for travelers.
Eight or ten doors. All identical. Intake chambers, not offices.
No one looked at them twice.
Her heart rate skyrocketed. Adrenaline seared below her skin, fighting the drug.
Tears burned in her eyes; she blinked them away.
Fear didn’t change anything. It didn’t erase the knife in her mother’s hand or the flames eating her body.
If she failed now, she might never see her sister again.
Every step pulled what she loved further away.
Escape meant saving Cary, snatching at freedom.
But any mistake would trap her in this nightmare forever.
They reached a queue guarded by a screen bigger than the others—taller than she was, whirring quietly, the surface dark and waiting.
“Get in line,” Mihail said, putting a heavy hand against the small of her back and steering her along. “Welcome to the route.” He slapped a tablet or a phone into her hand.
The Silo ID, she assumed. It was a wafer-thin tablet, barely heavier than paper, dark and cool in her hand, radiating faint, circuit-like lines pulsing beneath the surface. This device probably acted as both permission and clearance, likely embedding credentials and temporary biometrics.
She lifted her chin and stepped into place as if she belonged here.
Her knees were jelly. People shuffled ahead, each carrying luggage, duffels, or metal cases.
Everyone held a Silo ID—either a wristband with a glowing strip, a sleek card with a digital display, or a thin chip set into a tablet worn as a necklace or bracelet.
Some wore them openly, like people used to moving through systems built for them.
Others kept checking theirs, guarding them as if they were stolen.
It looked too much like airport security—but wrong. Wrong scale. Wrong technology. All the visitors walked with intent, as if this place were normal.
She looked down at the Silo ID and prayed it wouldn’t fry her where she stood.
When her turn came, the monitor woke. Light gleamed.
An invisible sensor grid traced up and down her body, its scan leaving pins and needles quivering across her skin.
She wondered what it searched for—breath, blood, bone, or the guilt stamped into her pulse.
Did it read her biometric data, analyzing heart rate and respiration?
Was it sequencing her DNA, checking for banned implants, or hidden contraband embedded in tissue?
No one asked her name. The machine decided whether she existed where she claimed to exist. Everyone here trusted it more than a human face.
Is it in my head? It wouldn’t be the first time she’d hallucinated.
She reached out anyway, fingertips touching the glass. It was hot. The image on the screen changed, confirming a glowing outline of her body, all rendered in pale lines and pulsing points she didn’t understand.
A shrill beep cut through the air. Text appeared in a language she didn’t recognize, followed by a green band of light wrapping once around her outline. Approved. The door beside the screen glided open with a subtle click.
“Good thing Jaxon knows what he’s doing with those Si-IDs,” Mihail muttered. “Without Aggregate clearance, this door doesn’t open for people like us.”
Audrey stared, mute, for a short instant. Then she forced her feet to move.
The floor swallowed her footsteps as she crossed into the vestibule.
Audrey stopped.
The space was too large to understand immediately.
No one shouted, and no alarms went off. Cold, processed air swept over her, smelling mildly of metal and too-clean water. She strode ahead, mimicking the brisk, bored walk of everyone else.
A massive sign curved overhead. Letters layered in languages she didn’t know. Only English and ancient Greek were recognizable. The English announcement read: ALL TRANSPORTS MUST REPORT TO THEIR EXIT POINTS AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE DEPARTURE.
English sat there like an afterthought, smaller than the others.
Useful, maybe, but not important. The Greek below it was older.
Mycenaean. Her father’s voice muttered the translation in the back of her mind.
Her insides wrenched. Even here, in some impossible underground station, the past scratched at her.
She tipped her head back to see the top of the sign.
She couldn’t.
The space soared up: a hollow cylinder ringed with doorways stacked level upon level into darkness.
Glass bridges stitched the levels together.
Some were crowded with travelers, others patrolled by pale-uniformed guards with mirrored visors.
Shops lined an inner street, their doors sliding open and shut.
This was a Silo. Underground. Circular. Windowless.
Mihail’s fingers squeezed on her arm, dragging her along.
Her eyes caught on everything. A woman in a long cloak hurried through the crowd, and a cluster of travelers with mirrored glasses hiding half their faces stood off to the side.
Some looked like people she might pass on any city sidewalk. Some…definitely didn’t.
She was still in Alex’s sweatshirt and her grimy leather jacket—they felt pitiful. Wrong decade. Wrong world. She wanted the thin mattress in her prison cell. The predictable misery of concrete and metal. At least there, the rules of reality didn’t break.
Announcements boomed overhead, distorted and cold. She caught the ancient Greek again: THE NEXT EMBARKMENT WILL BE OUT OF SILO TWELVE. PLEASE PROCEED TO YOUR EXIT POINT. The rest merged into a litany of names she’d never heard.
Where did a Silo take people? How many were hidden under the skin of Earth? She imagined a whole web running beneath cities, mountains, and oceans. A network so deep and sprawling, most would never guess it existed. What else moved through these routes, invisible beneath everyday life?
I don’t want to go. The thought was childish, but she couldn’t stop it.
Alex. Would she ever see him again? He’d lied to her, yes, but he was still her oldest friend. He still felt like home.
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she could hold the pieces in.
Mihail guided them through the main chamber into another hall—this one broader, more industrial.
The polished vestibule gave way to exposed beams, stacked crates, and scuffed floors.
Overhead, thick conduit pipes ran in ribs across the ceiling, humming faintly.
Yellow hazard lines broke the floor into lanes, indicating they were in a cargo area.
With fake IDs, of course, they weren’t traveling in style.
Workers threaded among the crates, some pushing floating pallets, others arguing over manifests. When their eyes paused on Mihail and Nikos, tension ran through the space—a minuscule stiffening of shoulders, subtle double-takes. No one intervened.
Instead of sleek watches, these workers wore rectangular instruments clipped to their wrists, wraparound glasses with projection displays, and illuminated bands snapped to their belts.
These gadgets emitted a pale light—tracking or communication tools, she guessed.
Workers with tablet-sized touchscreens used them to manage inventories or place orders. This place wasn’t for tourists.
Audrey watched one crew load crates through an open door at the far end of the hall, balanced on a narrow ramp that led to yet another corridor. Her nerves felt raw. Every new sight rubbed on them. Her throat squeezed around a sob she refused.
She looked at Emerson.
He stood straight despite the poison. Shoulders squared, expression carved from stone. The sight of him—still solid, still refusing to fold—steadied her more than she wanted to admit.
They stopped at a massive steel door. Mihail rapped his knuckles three times in a pattern that sounded practiced. A slit scraped open. A pair of dark eyes scanned them, then shut again. Locks clanked. The door groaned, then swung inward.