Story so far
Solo is Jimmy Parker, also called James, who was sixteen when the great Louds interrupted his schooling and his expectation of following his father into IT. Separated from his mother in the crush on the stairs, he fell onto the crowd and injured himself before his father secured him in hidden rooms with a key and a new door code. Jimmy watched his father being shot on a monitor, froze when threatened into opening the door, and curled up sobbing after another gunshot outside. He survived vapor descending from the vents and a shutdown, initially mistaking calls from other silos for calls from levels of his own home.
Canned food, a cistern and the books sustained him in isolation. He learned to load a rifle, endured repeated attempts to guess his door code, and shot three intruders when they broke through. As food deteriorated and the refuge grew frightening, he began scavenging for water, clothing, batteries and a can opener. Returning to his school, he recovered his backpack and wrote a poem claiming that solitude made him stronger, though he knew that claim was false. He replaced his declaration of being Jimmy with the name Solo. Further exploration brought fresh crops, glimpses of other survivors and the discovery of rising floodwater that he feared would eventually reach his refuge.
In a flooded community kitchen he found a cat, coaxed it out with ration bars, and carried it away despite being scratched. He named it Shadow and found that companionship restored pleasure to meals and encouraged him to venture out. While exploring, they found bodies behind the upper cafeteria door; their unusually persistent intact faces frightened him, and he waited in vain for them to become bones. Later intruders injured his shoulder and wrist. He killed one with his rifle and shot toward a second voice, discovering a woman. Unable to repair his door after restoring the power, he sought distraction by fishing with Shadow, using techniques learned from Legacy.
His later years alone were shaped by both fear and attachment. A still-warm human body once frightened him into hiding for three days; he took a machete from beneath a recently dead man so no one else could use it, but eventually stopped carrying his gun because it no longer seemed useful. After more than twenty years since entering the hidden refuge, he delayed a painful task by dropping paper parachutes down the stairwell. Having used his last washers, he left the torn book behind and chose a cool, dark corner of a farm, away from his usual food-gathering route, to dig Shadow's grave. He missed the cat rubbing against his shin while he worked and coming when he whistled.
The newly recounted approach to his meeting with Juliette shows how thoroughly fear had shaped his habits. Believing nobody remained to threaten him, he had put his key away and judged that the flood would not reach his home during his lifetime, yet still barricaded the server-room door with a filing cabinet. On a trip for tomatoes, cucumbers and squash, he found an unexpectedly open door on twelve and an unfamiliar knife holding a farm door open. He imagined a person or powerful ghost had left it, seized the knife and fled, abandoning his water jugs when their rope snagged. He blocked doors with a broom and the filing cabinet, retreated through the servers, and swiped at his pursuer while trying to close his hiding-place grate. Discovering a woman happy to find him and asking his name made him think he too could be worth finding.
The earlier account of what followed establishes the companionship he had feared impossible. Initially saying he had no need of a name, he apologized for cutting Juliette's hand and asked whether the outside was safe. He said he had been alone for thirty-four years and expected to turn fifty the following month. He wanted her to stay, joined her repair projects, brought her bread and cucumbers, and managed the compressor and lines for her underwater work. An attack left him with a serious head wound and interrupted her air supply. He then told her his name was Jimmy and that he did not think he had ever been alone. She entrusted him with guiding the children to food, and he helped her prepare her suit again. Choosing to use Jimmy because he would no longer be alone, he shared Elise's optimism as the floodwater fell.
Appearance
Solo has dark, shaggy hair, a thick, unkempt beard flecked with gray, oversized boots and baggy gray overalls. During his work with Juliette, an attack leaves a deep, swollen head wound and difficulty walking.
Role
A long-isolated survivor who learned to scavenge, defend his refuge and work on repairs, Solo becomes Juliette's helper and is entrusted with guiding the children to food.
Relationships
Juliette — He initially injures Juliette while defending his hiding place, then apologizes, wants her to stay, and helps with repairs, diving equipment and her suit.
Shadow — The cat he rescued relieved his loneliness and encouraged him to explore. After losing Shadow, he chose a secluded farm corner for the grave and mourned the cat's familiar companionship.
Solo's Father — Solo's Father hid him in the secret rooms and gave him the silo key; Jimmy later watched his father being shot on a monitor.
Jimmy's Mother — He became separated from Jimmy's Mother during the crush on the stairs, blamed himself, and eventually began accepting that neither parent would return.
EliseBk 1 — He shares Elise's optimism about their future as the floodwater falls.
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 257 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 60
- Jimmy Parker is in class when the last of the great Louds begins.
- Jimmy is sixteen years old.
- Jimmy needs another year of study before he can follow his father’s career.
- Jimmy has begun to find Sarah Jenkins attractive during the school year.
- Jimmy has grown as big as his father during the past year.
- Jimmy becomes frightened when he sees his mother’s distress.
Chapter 61
- Jimmy descends the crowded staircase with his mother to reach his father on level thirty-four.
- Jimmy becomes separated from his mother in the crush above level thirty-four.
- Jimmy climbs onto the inner railing and follows his mother along it.
- Jimmy is knocked off balance and falls onto the crowd.
- Jimmy catches the outer railing as he tumbles over it, painfully wrenching his shoulder.
- Jimmy loses his grip because his injured shoulder can no longer support him.
- Jimmy deliberately lets go while hanging above the crowded landing.
Chapter 62
- Jimmy survives his fall by landing on the crowd and pinning the man in the silver suit beneath him.
- Jimmy has pain in his ribs, knee, and shoulder after landing.
- Jimmy supplies 1218 as the memorable number his father enters into the security keypad.
- Jimmy receives the silo key from his father.
- Jimmy remembers his father disappearing for three months before becoming a shadow.
- Jimmy is left alone in the hidden rooms when his father departs.
Chapter 66
- Jimmy waits alone in a hidden room between silo levels after his father leaves him there.
- Jimmy has sore ribs following his fall.
- Jimmy’s thigh is developing a knot where he landed on another person.
- Jimmy’s shoulder hurts when he raises his arm.
- Jimmy learns to change the camera views between silo levels using the control dials.
- Jimmy intends to work in IT as his father does.
- Jimmy suspects his father shot the new body he sees near the steel door.
- Jimmy finds that pressing the computer’s power switch does nothing.
- Jimmy’s father addresses him as James.
- Jimmy agrees to stay in the hidden room while his father goes to get his mother.
Chapter 67
- Jimmy blames himself for being separated from his mother in the crowd on the stairs.
- Jimmy is afraid to touch the long gun left in the room.
- Jimmy starts toward the door when he sees his father on the monitor.
- A security guard demands the new door code from Jimmy while threatening his father.
- Jimmy begs the men holding his father not to hurt him.
- Jimmy watches his father being shot on the monitor.
Chapter 68
- Jimmy takes a second portable radio from the rack before trying to reach his mother.
- Jimmy climbs out through the grating despite pain in his shoulder and knee.
- Jimmy’s first attempt to enter the door code fails because he confuses the order of the numbers.
- Jimmy hesitates during his second attempt because he remembers his father’s warning that the men will kill him and his mother.
- Jimmy lets the second code attempt expire while paralyzed with fear.
- Jimmy cannot get the code out when the man orders him to say it over the radio.
- Jimmy hears a third failed code attempt consisting of four taps of the same number.
- Jimmy curls up sobbing on the floor after another gunshot outside the door.
Chapter 70
- Jimmy remains alone behind a locked door while people outside fight to get in.
- Jimmy finds that pressing a single digit on the keypad immediately produces a buzz.
- Jimmy connects the headset to the blinking socket marked 40, stopping the flashing overhead lights.
- Jimmy tells the caller on line 40 that people were hurt during the rush upstairs.
- Jimmy assumes the numbered sockets connect to levels within his own silo.
- Jimmy tells the caller on line 1 that his father let him into the room.
- Jimmy coughs after odorless vapor descends from the vents.
- Jimmy survives the shutdown and sees the lights come back on.
- Jimmy reconnects line 40 to stop the flashing lights but leaves the headset lying in the server and ignores the voice.
Chapter 71
- Jimmy cannot remember whether his last meal was one or two days ago.
- Jimmy becomes convinced that his father will never call him again.
- Jimmy unlocks the pantry with the key he carries against his chest.
- Jimmy takes a can of corn and a can of soup from the pantry.
- Jimmy uses a rusty can opener to open the soup.
- While heating soup, Jimmy feels an emotional pain that food cannot relieve.
- Jimmy does not understand why each circle on the wall drawing is labeled as a silo.
Chapter 72
- Jimmy watches people commit violence against one another on the cameras.
- Jimmy initially resolves to stop watching the cameras because the violence frightens him.
- Jimmy moves a mattress into the room with the computer and radio to feel less alone.
- Jimmy resumes watching the cameras while eating, seeking signs of other people.
- Jimmy feels that people are not meant to live alone.
- Jimmy conceals his access to weapons because he fears it would make the men outside try harder to reach him.
- On his sixth night alone, Jimmy searches the Order for guidance about being completely alone but finds no index entry.
- Jimmy opens the Li–Lo volume while searching for information about loneliness.
- Jimmy initially mistakes a vivid picture of a locust for a real insect.
- Jimmy regards Legacy’s descriptions and pictures as fiction about impossible things.
Chapter 74
- A young-sounding male in seventeen answered a later call and asked what was happening on level forty.
Chapter 76
- Jimmy learns that his silo is number 17 and that other silos exist.
- Jimmy has spent a year living in the half-level below the servers.
- Jimmy refuses to write notes even in the margins of the books he considers valuable.
- Jimmy estimates that his food could last at least twenty years if he remains alone.
- Jimmy feels that he will eventually have to leave his refuge to preserve his sanity.
- Jimmy has lost his camera views of the area outside the refuge.
- Jimmy decides against opening the door because he believes dangerous people outside want to enter.
- Jimmy tells the people outside that he is nobody when he dares to speak.
- Jimmy estimates that at least a hundred people remain outside his refuge in groups that fight and kill one another.
- Jimmy hears a woman call for help over the radio but feels unable to help her.
- Jimmy uses a computer clock to track time without the normal changes in the silo’s lighting.
- Jimmy has arranged three months of canned meals in the order he plans to eat them.
Chapter 77
- Jimmy discovers crates of weapons and ammunition after his father disappears with the loaded gun.
- Jimmy learns to load a rifle by taking rifles apart, imitating his father’s method of laying out electronics components.
- Jimmy figures out how the gun works weeks before finding its terminology in a reference book.
- Jimmy eats pineapple every day and is saddened by his dwindling supply.
- Jimmy learns about unfamiliar subjects by following related entries through the books in tins.
- Jimmy has learned not to eat canned food unless opening the can produces a pop of air.
- Jimmy’s toilets have stopped working.
- Jimmy waits with his gun ready to fire if the people trying his door succeed in opening it.
- Jimmy relies on the outsiders’ three daily attempts to enter as his only regular human contact.
- Jimmy calculates that intruders trying codes in ascending order from 0000 would reach his code on their second attempt on day 406, less than a month away.
- Jimmy fears that the intruders could reach his code sooner by skipping numbers, starting elsewhere, or guessing at random.
- Jimmy does not know how to change the door code because he did not watch his father do it.
- Jimmy fears dying but also does not want to kill anyone.
- Jimmy relaxes after the outsiders fail their third code attempt of the day.
Chapter 78
- Jimmy starts defecating in a far corner of the server room after the toilets stop flushing.
- Jimmy urinates in the sink until the tap runs dry and the smell becomes bad.
- Jimmy taps into the cistern by following instructions in the Order.
- Jimmy drinks as much canned juice as possible because the cistern’s water will eventually run out.
- Jimmy drinks a can of tomato soup each day despite disliking it.
- The outsiders find the door code two days earlier than Jimmy expects.
- Jimmy wonders whether illness or sleeping after reading caused him to lose track of days.
- Jimmy briefly considers the person entering as a potential companion who could share work.
- Jimmy has spent a year preparing to defend the door by shooting empty tomato cans and maintaining his gun.
- Jimmy shoots the first man who appears in the doorway.
- Jimmy fires three shots at a second man who rushes into the room, and the man collapses nearby.
- Jimmy finds a black pistol beside the fallen intruder inside the server room.
- Jimmy momentarily sees his father in the wounded man lying outside the door.
- Jimmy realizes that the retreating third man knows the door code.
- Jimmy sees the retreating man in green overalls disappear into an office.
- Jimmy waits with his rifle aimed at the office doorway while the wounded man crawls toward him.
- Jimmy partly recognizes that his mother and father are gone and will not return.
- Jimmy fires when the remaining man peeks out of the office, producing a burst of blood in the hallway.
- Jimmy pushes the refuge door shut after shooting the intruders.
- Jimmy drops his gun and weeps with a dying man still inside the server room.
Chapter 82
- Jimmy notices brown spots spreading across his stored food cans.
- Jimmy is increasingly sick to his stomach, although he is unsure whether the canned food tastes different.
- Jimmy delays leaving his refuge for two days by turning preparation into a project.
- Jimmy considers finding a can opener and flashlight batteries his highest priorities.
- Jimmy has experienced two power outages over the years, both of which terrified him.
- Jimmy packs two empty bottles in hopes of finding water outside his refuge.
- Jimmy has gradually restricted himself to a makeshift cot by the computer desk as more of his refuge has become frightening to him.
- Jimmy remembers killing three men at the steel door through which his father brought him.
- Jimmy fears the air beyond the door may be toxic but reasons that he probably already breathes the same air.
- Jimmy uses his school and home levels as the code to unlock the steel door.
- Jimmy wonders whether any of his school friends are still alive.
Chapter 83
- Jimmy finds a brown stain outside the steel door and remembers a man dying there.
- Jimmy tests his door code from outside and successfully reopens the door.
- Jimmy recognizes that repeatedly checking the door code will never satisfy his fear of being locked out.
- Jimmy leaves to find a can opener, a working toilet, replacement overalls, and more food and water.
- Jimmy passes the security gate and finds the stairwell landing empty.
- Jimmy finds a human bone on the landing.
- Jimmy experiences relief from confinement despite fearing that he will die outside his refuge.
Chapter 84
- Jimmy uses a toilet in an apartment but finds that the toilet, sink, and wash nozzle have no running water.
- Jimmy hides behind a landing door when he hears footsteps approaching from above.
- Jimmy sees two figures rush past, with the second chasing the first and shouting threats.
- Jimmy feels alone despite discovering other survivors, believing that company means pursuit or death.
- Jimmy searches the general store for batteries or a can opener.
- Jimmy avoids searching the goods trapped under the fallen shelves beside a body.
- Jimmy’s old apartment no longer feels like home to him.
- Jimmy feels that he has failed his parents when he visits his old apartment.
- Jimmy approaches his old school and longs to return to his classroom as though doing so could change the past.
Chapter 85
- Jimmy returns to his old classroom and finds his backpack still there.
- Jimmy remembers holding Barbara’s hand after a class trip to the livestock pens when he was fourteen.
- Jimmy transfers his belongings from his makeshift bag into his old backpack.
- Jimmy erases repeated obscenities from the classroom blackboard.
- Jimmy writes a poem about being alone on the classroom blackboard.
- Jimmy knows his poetic claim that solitude makes him stronger is a lie.
- Jimmy initially considers the poem’s claim that nobody calls him Jimmy untrue because he still thinks of himself by that name.
- Jimmy replaces his written declaration of being Jimmy with a declaration of being Solo.
Chapter 87
- Solo grows bolder in exploring the silo as encounters with other people’s fighting become rarer.
- Solo reaches the lower farms on level one-twenty, farther down than he has ever ventured.
- Solo scavenges carrots and beets from the overgrown lower farms.
- Solo goes to Supply hoping to find batteries and a can opener.
- Solo fires three rifle shots at the locked Supply doors.
- Solo forces open one of Supply’s shot-damaged doors after kicking it.
- Solo mentally records the locations of pipe fittings and pumps for possible projects.
- Solo finds wet tomato paste on a discarded can, suggesting it has not been there for many days.
- Solo explores Supply’s unlocked rooms with his rifle ready.
- Solo takes a brightly shining flashlight he finds switched on in a room beyond Supply’s shelves.
- Solo realizes a flashlight left switched on could last only a few days.
- Solo accidentally fires his rifle against the doorjamb as he turns to flee.
- Solo flees without realizing he has frightened people living in Supply and taken away their light.
Chapter 88
- Solo explores deeper after fleeing Supply with a second flashlight.
- Solo has found a second farm with food.
- Solo still lacks a can opener and plans to use a screwdriver and hammer instead.
- Solo visits the Deep for the first time.
- Solo obtains only half a jug of water from an emergency fire hose despite opening its valve fully.
- Solo suspects people might remain in Mechanical because power and air are still available.
- Solo is unsure whether he ever wants to see other people again.
- Solo remembers his mother telling him to continue without her on the crowded stairs.
- Solo falls to one knee in the floodwater and soaks his clothes.
- Solo cannot detect whether the floodwater is rising.
- Solo fears the flooding may eventually reach his home on level thirty-four.
- Solo realizes he is not alone when he hears crying from inside a flooded level.
Chapter 89
- Solo removes his boots and socks before entering the flooded level.
- Solo leaves his bag four steps above the floodwater.
- Solo is uncertain whether he is twenty-six or twenty-seven years old.
- Solo remembers believing that blowing out the family candle quickly would let him and his parents live forever.
- Solo has never previously been in more water than a tubful.
- Solo fears sinking if he falls over the landing railing into the floodwater.
- Solo’s feet lose feeling as he searches the flooded level.
- Solo connects the phrase hub and spoke with the Legacy entry on bicycles.
- Solo worries that losing flashlight power would leave him groping for the exit.
- Solo locates the source of the cries in a community kitchen.
Chapter 90
- Solo initially believes the cat will be harmless company.
- Solo wonders whether the cat survived the silo’s collapse or was born afterward.
- Solo finds human bones scattered underwater around his feet.
- Solo lures the cat out of its hiding place with pieces of a ration bar.
- Solo’s attempt to pick up the cat results in scratches that draw blood.
- Solo feeds the cat a second ration bar while holding it against his chest.
- Solo carries the cat toward what he thinks is the exit through the dark flooded room.
Chapter 93
- Caring for the cat makes Jimmy enjoy meals and venture out more often.
- After rescuing the cat, Jimmy feeds it beans from a can found beneath a mattress.
- Jimmy finds that the cat’s companionship relieves his loneliness.
- Jimmy names the cat Shadow after the darkness where he found it and its habit of following him.
- Jimmy fears that losing Shadow will return him to the isolated state he associates with being Solo.
- Jimmy explores the upper cafeteria in hopes of finding a working can opener.
- Jimmy follows Shadow to a closed cafeteria door and finds it unlocked despite remnants of rope around the handle.
- Jimmy discovers piles of bodies behind the cafeteria door.
- Jimmy barricades the door to the bodies with tables and chairs.
- Jimmy fears that opening the room may have released ghosts.
- Jimmy leaves the upper level after finding no useful food or tools.
Chapter 94
- Jimmy leaves the hatch open so Shadow can explore the server room.
- Jimmy sleeps with lights and radio static to ward off his fear of ghosts.
- Jimmy suffers blows to his shoulder and wrist from an intruder’s pipe.
- Jimmy kills the intruder in his room with his rifle.
- Jimmy suspects someone deliberately used the power outage to open the server-room door.
- Jimmy shoots toward a voice in the hallway calling for Hank.
- Jimmy discovers that the second person he shot is a woman.
- Jimmy believes the intruders came to steal his food.
Chapter 95
- Jimmy restores power by finding the breaker the intruders tampered with.
- Jimmy cannot repair the door despite two days of working on the keypad wiring.
- Jimmy goes fishing with Shadow because the unsecured door prevents him from sleeping peacefully.
- Jimmy digs for worms partly to distract himself from the people he hurt.
- Jimmy increasingly finds himself insisting that he is not crazy.
- Jimmy learned fishing techniques from the Legacy.
- Jimmy wonders whether someone emptied the fish tanks into the flooded stairwell.
- Jimmy kills a caught fish with his knife to stop its suffering.
- Jimmy has never tasted the fish he catches for Shadow.
- Jimmy decides that he would spare the last remaining fish.
Chapter 99
- Solo has learned to estimate how long someone has been dead by looking at the body.
- Solo recalls moving the stiff bodies of people he killed years earlier.
- Solo once moved bodies blocking the stairs and found that their flesh came apart.
- Solo observes that bodies generally leave clothes, bones, and hair within a year.
- Solo observes that most bodies have been reduced mainly to bones after ten years.
- Solo has lived more than twenty years since being shown the secret lair beneath the servers.
- Solo initially assumed the bodies behind the cafeteria door had died recently when he and Shadow discovered them.
- Solo avoided the bodies near the outside door because their intact faces frightened him.
- Solo waits in vain for the bodies behind the cafeteria door to become bones.
- Solo releases a paper parachute from the third-level railing.
- Solo delays his planned task by tearing another page from the book and trying not to think about another carcass.
Chapter 100
- Solo once found a bin of usable razors in a doctor’s office after he had already accepted having a beard.
- Solo took a machete from beneath a recently dead man so that nobody else could use it.
- The sight of a still-warm body once frightened Solo into hiding below the server room for three days.
- Solo has stopped carrying his gun because he no longer finds it useful.
- Solo releases his last paper parachute and leaves the torn book behind because he has run out of washers.
- Solo chooses a cool, dark corner of the farm away from his regular food-gathering route for Shadow’s burial.
- Solo digs a grave for Shadow with a shovel he finds among abandoned tools.
- Solo misses Shadow rubbing against his shin while he worked and coming when he whistled.
Chapter 102
- Solo has put his key away because he believes nobody remains to threaten him.
- Solo still barricades the server-room door with a filing cabinet despite believing the silo empty.
- Solo believes the rising water will reach his home only after he is gone.
- Solo throws two bags of empty cans onto the landing at forty-two.
- Solo heads upstairs for tomatoes, cucumbers and squash because the crops below require more cooking.
- Solo repaired a leaking pump himself years earlier.
- Solo discovers a door unexpectedly open at the landing on twelve.
- Solo drops a pipe containing odd-smelling water over the railing by accident.
- Solo discovers an unfamiliar knife wedged through the grating to hold the farm door open.
- Solo concludes that a person or a powerful ghost must have left the knife holding the door open.
- Solo flees toward his hiding place carrying the unfamiliar knife and abandons his jugs when their rope snags.
- Solo barricades the outer doors with a broom while fleeing the sounds behind him.
- Solo slides a filing cabinet against the metal door before retreating through the servers.
- Solo swipes at his pursuer with a knife while trying to close the grate above his hiding place.
- Solo discovers that his pursuer is a woman who is happy to find him and asks his name.
- Meeting the woman makes Solo think that he, too, can be something worth finding.