First Shift - Legacy (Part 6 of the Silo Series) (Wool) Read Online Free Page A

doctor.
     
    “You’re my third coming out. I’ve put two under.” He lowered the light and smiled at Troy. “I’ve only been out myself for less than a month. I can tell you that the strength will return.”
     
    Troy nodded. The doctor’s assistant came over and handed him another pill and a cup of water. Troy hesitated. He stared down at the little blue capsule nestled in the crease of his lifeline.
     
    “A double dose this morning,” the doctor said, “and then you’ll be given one with breakfast and dinner. Please do not skip a treatment.”
     
    Troy looked up. “What happens if I don’t take it?”
     
    The doctor shook his head and frowned, but didn’t say anything.
     
    Troy popped the pill in his mouth and chased it with the water. The cup looked identical to the one he’d peed in. He hoped they washed them thoroughly. A bitterness slid down his throat.
     
    “One of my assistants will bring you some clothes and a fluid meal to kick-start your gut. If you have any dizziness or chills, you’re to call me at once. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here in six months.” The doctor made a note, then chuckled. “Well, someone else will see you. My shift will be over.”
     
    “Okay.” Troy shivered. The doctor looked up from his clipboard.
     
    “You’re not cold, are you? I keep it a little extra warm in here.”
     
    Troy hesitated before answering. “No, doctor. I’m not cold. Not anymore.”
     
    ••••
     
    Troy entered the lift at the end of the hall, his legs still weak, and studied the array of numbered buttons. The orders they’d given him included directions to his office, but he vaguely remembered how to get there. Much of his orientation had survived the decades of sleep; it was other items that seemed to be slipping away.
     
    Memory wasn’t supposed to work like this. He felt as though he were on a ship beset by fog. There were breaks where he could spot the shoreline, the recent past, but much of what lay inland was obscured. Voices rang out, drifting over the water. Troy sensed bad things happening to the people deep in the woods.
     
    The doors to the lift closed automatically, and he shook away the image. His apartment was on thirty-seven; he remembered that. His office was on thirty-four. He reached for a button, intending to head straight to his desk, and instead found his hand sliding up to the very top. He still had a few minutes before he needed to be anywhere, and he felt some strange urge, some tug, to get as high as possible, to rise through the soil pressing in from all sides.
     
    The button for the top floor clicked and glowed to life as he applied pressure. Something loomed above him. He could feel an attraction upward, a thread running clear through the top of his skull and yanking him like a puppet. There was something there he needed to see, something he’d left behind.
     
    Troy struggled to remember as the lift lurched upward. He groped for this gossamer and fading dream, this glimpse through the mist—but the bitterness in his throat and the pills in his stomach were a tide tugging him away from the shore. Why had he been crying earlier? Or had he cried? He couldn’t remember. His stomach grumbled around the shake he’d been forced to drink. He shivered but was not cold.
     
    The elevator accelerated up the shaft. There was a whooshing sound as another car or maybe the counterweight zoomed by. He knew these things. The round buttons flashed as the floors passed. There was an enormous spread of them, seventy in all. The centers of many were dull from years of rubbing. This didn’t seem right. Just yesterday, the buttons were shiny and new. Just yesterday, everything was.
     
    The elevator slowed. Troy palmed the wall for balance, his legs still uncertain.
     
    The door dinged and slid open. Troy blinked at the bright lights in the hallway. He left the elevator and followed a short walk toward a room leaking chatter. His new boots were stiff on his