Wool

Juliette descends deep underwater, reminding herself that she has an unlimited supply of air. The atmosphere underwater is oddly tranquil. Further down she sees dead bodies by level 139, the entrance to Mechanical.

Juliette arrives at the bottom. Forced to leave her rope behind, she experiences doubts about her mission. She reminds herself that she is not only doing it for revenge, but also to help the people in Silo 18 she left behind. She also dreams of using the flooded digging machines to connect the two silos and get Silo 17 working again, and this consideration “steel[s] her resolve” (393).

Juliette struggles to get over the security gate with her weighted knees. She instructs Solo not to say anything unless there is a problem due to the startling volume of the radio. Juliette reaches the very bottom of Mechanical and relaxes, feeling that her goals are attainable. As she starts to work on the pump, however, she notices that air is no longer getting into her suit, and Solo does not respond to her question about it. She tries to calculate how much air she has left and figures it took her about an hour to get down there. While she struggles to fix the pump, she hears static and what sounds “like her name in a faraway distance” (398) on the radio. She realizes that the air pressure in her suit is gone.

The mechanics run away from the explosion, deeper into their levels, until they are in the generator room. Shirly and Walker go into the control room with the radio parts and set them up to hear transmissions from the other silos again. Even though the fighting frightens the other mechanics, Shirly’s curiosity about the radio overpowers her fear. They start turning the dial, looking for signals from other silos, when they hear Juliette trying to reach Solo in Silo 17. Shirly, stunned, drops the radio. Walker cries “tears of confused joy” (404). 

Juliette finds herself deep underwater, “an impossible distance from breathable air, from any hope of survival” (405). She has only the little air left in her suit and in the limp air hose. She struggles to remove the weights from her knees until she remembers her knife. Cutting them off, she floats upward uncontrollably, dropping her flashlight and ending up in total darkness. She is unsure whether she is running out of air or breathing shallowly because she is panicking. In the dark, she grabs hold of the hose and starts to use it to navigate her way up, wondering how far she will make it before drowning. 

Lukas receives a visit from his mother in the server room while Bernard and Peter Billings stand nearby. Lukas reassures his mother that he is getting enough to eat and will get a promotion for his time in the bunkroom.

After Lukas’s mother leaves, Bernard tells him that it’s time to “make this official” (410) and leads him to the server to dial Silo 1. Lukas pretends he does not know how to use the headphones, hiding his previous calls with Juliette. The voice from Silo 1 asks Lukas a series of ritualistic questions, which Lukas, feigning confidence, answers satisfactorily. The voice tells Lukas he is “next in line for the control and operation of silo eighteen” (413). Before telling Lukas that he may ask a question, the voice tells him: “Welcome to Operation Fifty of the World Order” (414).

Lukas asks, “How did this all begin?” (414). The person on the other end seems to sigh. He tells Lukas: “The reason is the purpose” (414), and asks Lukas why he thinks that all 50 silos are concentrated in one small part of the world. Lukas realizes that the ancestors of the silos not only saw the end of the world coming, but that they caused it after building the silos.