Silo 49: Going Dark by Ann Christy

Are we talking hours or days or more?"
    Graham thought about the records and how long it would take to get all that data into computers and how many of them would be in before those in Silo One felt they had enough. "I would say at a minimum we have a few days but if we're lucky it could be a lot longer. I can only really confidently say a few days though."
    "Hmm," came John’s reply. It was a grim sound to Graham's ears. "That would move up our timetable quite a bit and the others aren't even close to being ready."
    "Ready? For what exactly?"
    "Graham, we're going off line. All of the silos who have been able to establish communications with each other are considering the same. Since you hadn't communicated with us this way, your silo was actually the one we were most concerned with leaking information to Silo One if we did go offline. Until recently, we’d been rebuffed by your silo."
    Graham was stunned at the thought of going offline. This was not at all what he had been expecting to hear from Silo 40. He had expected to have to make his case for just cutting the lines on level 72. He knew that tampering with the control lines on level 72, the ones that Silo One could use to remotely destroy a silo, was forbidden within the group of silos that knew their purpose and spoke with each other.
    It was forbidden for good reason because there was a chance that Silo One would figure out a way to prevent anyone after that from doing the same. That would leave everyone, forever after, at the mercy of Silo One’s whim. It had been long agreed that if it was done at all, it needed to be coordinated between the many silos that had been having their own contact in these past years.
    Coordination would ensure that others wouldn't pay whatever price Silo One would extract in blood to make absolutely positive no other silo thought of doing the same. But Graham had known nothing of any plan to go offline. How could the silos even go offline? Even now his plan for his own silo didn't call for anything other than removing the ability to destroy his world from the hands of another silo. He hadn't considered anything else past that point. He realized he probably should have thought of that. He was a terrible conspirator and had proved it yet again.
    "Graham, are you there?"
    "Uh, yeah. I'm just…well…just surprised," he swallowed loudly. His throat was suddenly parched again and he asked, "How can we go offline?"
    "Think about it, Graham. What do they actually do for us over there? They keep us going around in the same cycle over and over and watch until something fails and a silo dies. Your own silo is a prime example! How long has this sickness been going on? It's been decades, right? This has been happening to your people since before we started talking. Tell me I'm not right."
    Graham could hear the intensity in John’s words, the utter conviction. He keenly regretted that he hadn't had the guts to get this communications gear altered a long time ago. He might have been able to avert all of this current pain and horror. They might now be offline, whatever that might mean, and working on a way to save the silo with people who really wanted to help rather than just control. Those regrets were for later though, after this silo was safe.
    "I see what you're saying, I really do. This has been going on for a long time. Since before I was born though we didn't know that then. What I want to do now is try to fix it if I can but first I just want to stop them from blowing us up or whatever they do. Can I do that?"
    Graham could hear his counterpart take a deep breath over the line. The static was still hissing but less so now and the words came through loud and clear. "You can. We all can."
     

Waiting is the Hardest Part
    Waiting was hard for Graham and he could see the difficulty it caused for Wallis as well. It was writ large in his nervous movements and stiff gait. What Grace was going through, he couldn't know. Their paths didn't cross