Wool

Juliet follows Solo down into the floor of the server and into his messy bedroom. Solo tells her that he is fairly sure that he is the only survivor, though sometimes he finds things moved about and thinks there may be others. Solo also reveals that he has been alone for thirty-four years, since he was 16.

Juliet asks him what happened in the silo. He replies, “What always happens. People go crazy[…]Our silo had one bad day. Was all it took”(299). Solo’s father was the shadow of the head of IT and showed Solo into the secret den when the war in the silo began.

Solo tells Juliette that his room is a “silo in a silo” (300), challenging her notion of what a “silo” is. Previously, Juliette took it to mean the whole world. Solo takes a thick book off the shelf and shows Juliette a photograph of a grain silo. Juliette has never before seen such a thick book or a photograph. He explains to her that silos are meant to preserve seeds for the future: “We are the seeds […] This is a silo” (302). He implies that the silos they live in were meant to preserve the human race for when it could live aboveground again. The problem, Solo tells her, is that “we rot” (303).

Knox and the rest of the second group wait nervously in Supply. Knox hopes for a “smooth and bloodless transfer of power” (304). Pieter from Mechanical and his refinery crew arrive at Supply ahead of schedule. Pieter tells Knox that their movement upward is attracting suspicious attention.

Knox reviews his crew, marveling that they were able to construct so many weapons and worrying that he is “leading good people to their slaughter” (306). As they leave Supply, he thinks that their warring intentions are too obvious to passersby. They begin to ascend the stairs. The power outage has begun, and they hand out supplies to disguise their real mission. Knox reflects that he is leading an uprising like “the bad people he’d learned about in his youth” (308).

Juliette marvels at Solo’s books. Solo tells her that the books are “a backup to the backup” of the server, which contains “all that we know. All that ever was” (310). Juliette does not know what that means. Even though Solo is disheveled, she reflects that she is ignorant compared to him.

He leads Juliette into the next room, where he sorts through a stack of maps. The room reeks of rotting food. He shows her a map of land, with small dots representing about 50 silos. Juliette is staggered by the scale of the world. Solo tells her that he once heard from Silo 1. Juliette is amazed and demands he show her how. She becomes frustrated with Solo’s casual attitude toward information she considers important. The machines that built the silos are buried in the walls, he explains. Solo also tells her that the silos are cut off from each other so that “[o]ne bad day” will not ruin all the “seeds” (313), that is, to increase humanity’s chances of survival.

Juliette wants to bring this information back to her silo and asks if the machines can dig a passage between silos. Solo tells her that people in her silo already know all this. Juliette realizes that the person who knows everything in her silo is Bernard. She demands again that Solo show her how to communicate with other silos.

Having been alerted to Mechanical and Supply’s coming attack, Lukas, Peter Billings, and IT wait, armed and taking cover behind a conference table. They have taken old guns out of storage. The turn of events stuns Lukas.

Meanwhile, Knox and his group continue their march upward. The atmosphere on the stairs indicates that the people of the silo are expecting a confrontation. On the 56th floor, farmers ask them for help to illegally divert electricity from the 57th floor. Knox orders Courtnee and Shirly to stay behind and help. They agree begrudgingly.

On the 34th floor, Lucas is shocked when the doors suddenly burst open and fighting erupts. Mechanical and Supply shoot and throw bombs at IT. IT surprises Knox with a barrage of bullets from behind a conference table, killing him. Lukas sees McLain throwing a bomb in his direction and he shoots her. He keeps shooting wildly through the chaos while weeping.

After the battle, the unconscious Bernard is shaken awake by Peter Billings. Peter tells him that IT lost three people while the other side “got it a lot worse” (321). Bernard tells Lukas he wasn’t expecting IT to have guns and that he expects more fighting. He tells Lukas to stay in the secret den below the server until the fighting is over to avoid the risk of both of them getting killed. Lukas agrees reluctantly. They go to the server room to report the uprising from the secret server that has a line to other silos. When they get there, Bernard is stunned to see that they have a call from Silo 17, a “dead silo” (323). He puts on the headphones and slumps to the floor as he hears Juliette’s voice: “I’m coming for you. I’m coming home, and I’m coming to clean” (323).