Bernard Holland runs IT and becomes acting mayor, enforcing secrecy through violence before his removal for cleaning; later accounts revisit his training of Lukas.
Bernard runs IT and cultivates influence over judicial and sheriff appointments. He resisted Jahns's choice of Juliette, used Pact provisions to defend IT's privileges, and became acting mayor after Jahns died. Though a prime suspect in her death, he proposed a forgiveness moratorium and intended to retain both offices. He claimed Scottie had killed himself and used charges against Juliette to pressure her to return below. During her cleaning, he expected the deceptive view and failing suit to work as before; when she passed beyond the hill, he reported the crisis to Silo One. Preserving server data remained his highest priority.
Fearing a succession failure, Bernard chose Lukas as his shadow because he already knew the servers. He confined him for training with The Order and Legacy, demanded secrecy, and directed the fighting against the down deep. An attack left him stunned and bleeding; a call from seventeen further shook him because he had believed that silo dead. He planned to starve out Mechanical, prepare Peter Billings for the mayoralty, and eventually turn IT over to Lukas. He also admitted that the world had been deliberately destroyed, condemned its destroyers, and presented obedience to their rules as the price of keeping everyone alive.
Bernard admitted George (Mechanical worker) had been killed, declined to name the killer, and told Lukas that eliminating threats would become part of his duties. When Lukas sought release and secretly communicated with Juliette, Bernard arranged his cleaning and threatened to build the suit himself so he could not reach the hills. Bernard continued sentencing people despite reports of surrender. His own removal for cleaning caused the uncontested mayoral election to be called off; the account of the airlock fire describes a dead cleaner who was not Lukas, without naming that cleaner in the supplied facts.
The later account of the succession crisis returns to Bernard identifying Lukas as a vetted candidate. He dismissed a possible-gazer report as a rival's overreach and defended Lukas's star observations. In the initiation, Lukas says his boss intends him to spend time in the Suit Labs, adding detail to Bernard's preparation of a successor.
Bernard is short, portly, and potbellied, with glasses, crooked front teeth, and a wispy mustache. He wears pressed silver IT overalls.
IT chief and acting mayor whose suppression of dissent and control of succession culminate in his removal for cleaning.
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