Story so far
Donald Keene entered Congress in 2049 with architectural and planning training, a wife, Helen, in Savannah, and a longstanding connection to Paul Thurman. He came to understand that Thurman had supported his election to enlist him in the underground facility project. Working with Anna Thurman, a former romantic partner, and Mick Webb, Donald rediscovered his love of design while secrecy kept him from seeing the full plan. Anxiety medication obtained under Charlotte’s name left him emotionally numb. At the convention he recognized his design in more than one facility. When the blasts came, he tried to reach Helen but was swept underground without her.
Awakening after a century asleep, Donald recognized his handwriting in a report signed Troy and recovered memories of designing the structures and terminating Silo Twelve. He rejected Thurman’s justification for destroying the old world and agreed to investigate Silo Eighteen partly to keep searching for Helen. Records revealed that she and his best friend had raised two children; he remembered choosing Troy as a clue leading back to her. His investigation of Victor’s annotations persuaded him that someone in Eighteen remembered the past. He favored resetting that silo over killing everyone and helped identify a resident who avoided medication, accepting the possibility that his intervention might cost lives.
Donald found comfort and intimacy with Anna, then escaped through the drone launch shaft intending to die outside near Helen’s burial place. He exposed a hand before being dragged back. On another awakening, attendants treated him as Thurman, and he used that mistaken identity to investigate the project and prevent an immediate response to an escaped cleaner. Suspecting Anna had engineered his separation from Helen, he woke and poisoned her. Only afterward did he conclude that the silo rankings selected one population to survive and recognize that Anna had been trying to help him. Her death became an enduring source of regret.
Donald secretly woke Charlotte to help investigate the world beyond the silos, telling her he had seen blue skies and green grass through a drone. He also woke and confronted Thurman, shot him when he reached for the pistol, and left believing him dead. While privately communicating with Lukas and Juliette, Donald tried to protect their silo by withholding reports and discouraging excavation that could draw attention. His own culpability remained: he had ended Silo Twelve and authorized bombings of Silo Forty before understanding its rebellion. As his illness worsened, he realized that cleanings released destructive nanos and hoped residents could disable the gas used against them. He wanted their futures to be their own rather than determined by computers.
Security seized and beat Donald, and Thurman’s attack left him with cracked, bruised ribs that made his bloody coughing agonizing. Imprisoned, he admitted killing Anna and regretted it. Charlotte and Darcy eventually took him to the armory. After hiding with his sister in the drone lift, Donald told her he was dying and that Thurman had given him only another day or two. He packed escape supplies, put the map on Charlotte’s suit, and took Darcy’s pistol and identification. His own plan was to destroy the reactor that powered the servers, freeing the people under their control. He gave Charlotte and Darcy half an hour to escape and left with the bomb before she could stop him.
Donald stops the elevator just beyond floor sixty-one and waits to give Charlotte time to escape, intending to detonate the bomb there if pursued. He passes reactor security using Darcy’s identification. As he raises a hammer beside the bomb, he is shot in the chest; the bomb falls without exploding. Seeing Thurman approaching despite his belief that he had killed him, Donald fires his pistol at the bomb’s cone.
On seeing the living landscape outside, Juliette believes it confirms that Donald truly tried to help them.
Appearance
Originally in his mid-thirties with thinning hair and the beginnings of a gut, Donald has aged and atrophied through freezing. He later has scraggly hair and an emerging beard. His latest condition includes bloody coughing, bruised and cracked ribs, and a gunshot wound to the chest.
Role
An architect implicated in the silo system who became its covert opponent, Donald has tried to protect its residents and send Charlotte to safety before attacking the reactor.
Relationships
Helen — His wife before the catastrophe; discovering that she built a family with his best friend devastated him, and he later sought to die near her burial place.
Anna Thurman — His former partner and later companion; he killed her in suspicion and grief, then regretted failing to recognize her attempts to help.
Charlotte — His sister and secret collaborator, whom he woke to investigate the outside and finally sent away while he took the bomb toward the reactor.
Paul Thurman — A childhood acquaintance and project patron turned adversary; Donald sees him approach alive at the reactor despite believing he had killed him.
Juliette — He covertly tried to keep her silo alive; she now believes the living landscape vindicates his intentions.
Darcy — He helped Charlotte remove Donald from confinement; Donald later took his pistol and identification and left him with Charlotte to escape.
Sources — 503 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 89
- Donald Keene is a newly elected congressman serving in Washington in 2049.
- Donald is in his mid-thirties, with thinning hair and the beginnings of a gut.
- Donald has known Senator Thurman since childhood.
- Donald is married to Helen, who is staying in Savannah.
- Donald feels afraid of a cave-in when using Washington’s underground tunnels.
- Donald credits Thurman’s campaigning with helping him get through the primaries.
- Donald studied architecture as an undergraduate at Georgia and planning for his master’s degree.
- Donald promised his constituents he would root out backroom dealings.
- Donald tells Thurman he privately supports the Containment and Disposal Facility.
- Donald no longer likes being called Donny, despite telling Thurman either name is acceptable.
- Donald recognizes a college architectural drawing of his in Thurman’s project folder.
- Donald fears that taking part in the facility project could jeopardize his newly won office.
- Donald realizes Thurman supported his election in order to use him for the project.
Chapter 91
- Donald avoids the tunnels because of claustrophobia.
- Donald asks Margaret to reserve one or two morning hours each day for his new project.
- Anna is Donald’s former romantic partner.
- Donald feels attracted to Anna and guilty about what that means for his relationship with Helen.
- Donald proposes collaborating with Anna through a shared AutoCAD document.
- Donald says he would not choose nano treatments for himself.
Chapter 93
- Donald Keene has promised his wife Helen that he will call before ten each night.
- Donald loses track of time while working and calls Helen after eleven.
- Donald has rediscovered his love of architectural work through the Senator’s project.
- Donald and Helen had discussed whether his running for office was worth living apart.
- Donald tells Helen that Anna and Mick are working with him on the project.
- Donald believes site visits for the Atlanta project will allow him to return home more often.
- Donald refuses to show Mick the architectural plans because they are top secret.
- Donald says neither he nor the people on his team will see the complete plan.
- Donald agrees to go out for a drink with Mick after initially declining.
- Donald is puzzled that Thurman knows Mick is in his office.
Chapter 95
- Donald meets Senator Thurman at Kramerbooks in Washington, DC, in 2049.
- Donald worries about the psychological effects of Charlotte’s work piloting drones.
- Donald agrees to let Thurman talk to Charlotte about her difficulties.
- Donald is surprised that excavation has begun while his design is still only an outline.
- Donald believes Helen will dislike his taking on a larger role in the project.
- Donald feels that project clearance restrictions leave Mick and Anna as perhaps the only people with whom he can discuss his new responsibilities.
Chapter 97
- Donald and Mick are congressmen nominally overseeing the construction site.
- Donald fears the responsibility of having designed a building costing billions of taxpayer dollars.
- Donald notices the delivery report lists two thousand spools of fiber optic where his plans require forty.
- Donald signs the delivery report despite objecting to the excess fiber optic.
- Donald plans to celebrate his wedding anniversary with Helen.
Chapter 99
- Donald and Helen return to the restaurant where they had their first date fifteen years earlier.
- Donald plans to fly to Boston the next morning to meet the Senator.
- Donald conceals from Helen how grueling his project hours are.
- Donald expects to finish his portion of the plans in a few months.
- Donald has received constituent calls and emails about the proposed route for spent fuel rods near Atlanta.
- Donald interprets Helen’s question about Anna as insecurity about his working with Anna far from home.
- Donald tells Helen that he has seen Anna only once since their project began.
- Donald says he arranged the work to avoid meeting Anna because Helen would dislike it.
- Donald assures Helen he has no feelings for Anna.
Chapter 101
- Donald undergoes extensive security screening before visiting Thurman in the nanobiotech wing.
- Donald admits that he is somewhat claustrophobic.
- Donald is frightened by the prospect of entering the nanobiotic chamber.
- Donald doubts Thurman’s claim that Iran possessed nanobiotic weapons, pointing out that none were found.
- Donald accepts Thurman’s invitation to work on a contingency plan.
- Donald agrees to attend the National Convention as Thurman requests.
Chapter 103
- Donald suspects that machines in his blood may be monitoring him.
- Donald returns home on an earlier flight than Helen expected.
- Donald tells Helen that the Senator wants both of them on an alert team.
- Donald believes the book the Senator gave him may be an instruction manual for the aftermath of a catastrophe.
- Donald claims that enemies are designing weapons that cannot be defended against.
- Donald fears that destructive nanos may already be inside everyone, waiting to activate.
- Donald suspects his own side will launch a preemptive attack with destructive nanotechnology.
- Donald plans to request more time at home while keeping a closer eye on the project.
- Donald worries about everyone else even while telling Helen that they will get through the danger.
Chapter 105
- Donald has taken medication for two years and feels free of anxiety but emotionally numb.
- Donald fills his prescription under his sister Charlotte’s name.
- Donald wonders whether his medication or workload is distorting his sense of time.
- Donald falsely tells Helen that Mick is present at the meeting.
- Donald and Anna have exchanged design updates for over two years without any overt impropriety.
- Donald objects to removing all lifts because supplies would be difficult to carry by stairs.
- Donald says dealing with mock clients’ demands discouraged him from pursuing architecture.
- Donald says that he and Helen still discuss having children and believe they have time.
- Donald declines to share Anna’s ride after dinner, saying he needs to return to the office.
Chapter 107
- Donald has spent two weeks helping prepare for the National Convention.
- Donald suspects the facility was designed with the 2052 National Convention in mind.
- Donald recognizes his own design inside the facility beneath the South Carolina tent.
- Donald remembers cutting the ribbon at the Tennessee tent and cannot explain why the South Carolina facility matches it.
- Donald has worked on the bunker design for three years.
- Donald coped with designing the underground facility by imagining it aboveground.
- Donald fled the earlier tour after cutting the ribbon because he feared being underground.
- Donald agrees to go farther inside because Mick seems deeply serious.
- Donald had expected the bunker’s kitchens never to be used.
- Donald fears being buried alive while following Mick downstairs.
- Donald believes his work is aging him prematurely.
- Donald tells Mick he does not want to know more about the secret project.
- Donald nearly connects the duplicate facility to an excessive fiber-optic delivery but loses the thought.
Chapter 109
- Donald waits at the convention for Helen, who has not arrived.
- Donald feels nervous around Anna, as though talking to her could get him into trouble.
- Donald has kept Mick’s tour the previous day private and considers telling only Helen.
- Donald believes that nobody will ever use the bunker he helped design.
- Donald lacks clearance to tour the other teams’ bunkers.
- Donald withdraws when he realizes Anna is deliberately leaning against his arm.
- Donald agrees to remain nearby as Thurman requests.
Chapter 111
- Donald longs for the convention to end so that he can spend time alone with his wife.
- Donald discovers that Helen is at the Tennessee delegation because his messages directing her to Georgia did not arrive.
- Donald leaves his assigned position during the anthem to reach Helen.
- Donald sees a brilliant flash in the direction of downtown Atlanta.
- The blasts temporarily impair Donald’s sight.
- Donald searches for his pills after the blasts but does not have them.
- Donald tries to return for Helen but is forced underground by the crowd.
- Donald’s vision clears during the evacuation.
- Donald recalls a conversation with the Senator about how everything would end.
- Donald tastes metal as a white mist rises around him underground.
Chapter 117
- Donald is told that he has been asleep for a hundred years, placing his awakening a hundred and sixty years after orientation.
- Donald emerges from hibernation with numb feet that begin to tingle as they warm.
- The doctor expects Donald’s mind to clear no earlier than the next day.
- Donald remembers concealing unswallowed pills in an ulcer inside his lip.
- Donald finds that the ulcer in his lip has healed during his long sleep.
- Donald is assigned a small, cell-like room containing a double bunk, dresser and bathroom.
- Donald identifies himself as Donald Keene.
- Donald remembers the orderlies mentioning that a silo had fallen, but cannot remember which one.
- Donald recognizes his own handwriting in a report signed Troy.
- Donald collapses to the floor as memories return.
- Donald remembers writing a report about a boy who brought about the end of Silo Twelve.
- Donald remembers his role in designing the structures that helped end the world.
Chapter 118
- Donald condemns the destruction of the world and rejects Thurman’s justification for it.
- Donald remembers designing the floors where people now live.
- Donald admits hiding the pills in his gums and spitting them out later.
- Donald disputes Thurman’s claim that he is resistant to medication, attributing his memories to stopping the pills.
- Donald remembers being told that silos were expendable.
- Donald barely remembers writing the report Thurman wants to discuss.
- Donald agrees to meet the person who requested his awakening.
- Donald longs to be reunited with his wife Helen.
Chapter 119
- Donald cannot sleep while confined to a room without a clock.
- Donald recognizes the report as a copy because its signature lacks the blue ink he remembers using.
- Donald is taken by Thurman to level fifty-four.
- Donald discovers Anna working in an office beyond the stored drones.
- Donald remembers Victor as the psychological specialist who worked across the hall from him.
Chapter 120
- Donald believes Victor blamed him for the silo lost during his shift.
- Donald speculates that Victor killed himself after recognizing that the silo project was a mistake.
- Donald recalls terminating Silo Twelve after its residents opened the airlock.
- Donald wants to find his sister.
- Donald wonders whether Helen is still alive and frozen somewhere.
- Donald agrees to investigate Silo Eighteen so that he can remain awake and search for answers about Helen.
- Donald tries to remember how silo numbers correspond to states.
Chapter 124
- Donald identifies Silo Two as the Tennessee delegation’s silo from his memories of the construction site.
- Donald searches Silo Two’s first-generation records for his wife Helen.
- Donald remembers choosing the name Troy as a clue that would lead him back to Helen.
- Donald resolves to remain loyal to Helen until he learns what happened to her.
- Donald finds Helen’s record by searching for their dog’s name, Karma.
- Donald is devastated to discover that his wife and his best friend had two children together.
- Donald traces Helen’s descendants as far as a great-granddaughter.
Chapter 125
- Donald helps place Victor’s body in a pod.
- Donald wants to find and wake his sister Charlotte.
- Donald comes to view his apparent achievements as manipulation connected to Anna and her senator father.
- Donald asks to discuss Erskine’s discoveries because they might help with the problem in Silo Eighteen.
Chapter 126
- Donald questions whether the silo plan killed more people than the danger it was meant to prevent.
- Donald suspects the conversation with Erskine may be another attempt by Thurman to manipulate him.
- Donald remembers that the combined shifts are intended to last five hundred years underground.
- Donald doubts that surviving humanity can simply unlearn the dangerous technologies.
Chapter 127
- Donald spends the day dwelling on death and barely registering the meals brought to him.
- Donald initially resists Anna’s physical comfort.
- Donald believes a century of sleep has weakened him.
- Donald feels angry at Helen for building a life with Mick instead of waiting for him.
- Donald condemns himself for wishing his wife had remained lonely while accepting comfort from Anna.
Chapter 131
- Donald prefers stored canned food to the meals Thurman and Erskine bring him.
- Donald suspects guilt over the destroyed silos drove Victor to suicide.
- After three days studying his old report, Donald suspects Victor merely used it as scrap paper.
- Donald thinks Victor’s phrase about someone who remembers may refer to his resistance to the medication.
- Donald allows Anna to lie beside him in his cot before bedtime.
- Donald uses Anna’s computer to investigate Victor’s personal files.
- Donald cannot find his sister Charlotte in the pod records.
Chapter 132
- Donald regularly walks through the weapons and drone storeroom to escape the radio static and cramped living space.
- Donald feels empowered by refusing the pills despite blue-stained fingers and ulcers in his cheeks.
- Donald completes seventy-five jumping jacks, ten more than the previous day.
- Donald discovers the drone launch lift while doing push-ups on his third day of captivity.
- Donald cannot find any controls inside the launch lift.
- Donald finds an unlocked door leading from the storeroom into a dim hallway.
- Donald suspects Charlotte was brought to the silo for a future purpose rather than as a surprise for him.
- Remembering an old prescription, Donald believes he has understood why the drugs do not make him forget.
Chapter 133
- Donald bargains to see his sister before explaining why he may be unable to forget.
- Donald previously awoke under the name Troy.
- Donald spent a century asleep in the deep freeze.
- Donald has physically aged and atrophied while Charlotte has remained unchanged.
- Donald says he obtained medication through Charlotte’s prescription and insurance.
- Donald says the pills suppressed his disturbing thoughts and fear while he studied the Order.
- Donald says he began taking the medication after receiving the Order to read.
- Donald estimates that he took the medication nearly daily for two or three years before the convention.
- Donald says he lost his pills on the hill before orientation.
- Donald wants to visit Charlotte again.
Chapter 134
- Donald favors resetting Silo Eighteen over killing its entire population.
- Donald privately suspects that Victor’s death may not have been suicide.
- Donald discovers that Victor’s annotations leave a gap around the account of an inductee whose great-grandmother remembered the old times.
- Donald concludes that someone in Silo Eighteen remembers the past, possibly through secret transmission of knowledge or immunity.
- Donald believes Victor wanted to locate someone in Silo Eighteen who remembers, rather than have Donald awakened.
- Donald proposes asking Silo Eighteen’s head to identify people spreading discord or discussing the old world.
- Donald realizes he is willing to kill again in order to save others.
Chapter 138
- Donald searches the database for someone who resembles him in remembering, fearing authority, and hiding subversive behavior.
- Donald identifies a resident who avoids medication and distrusts even the water.
- Donald insists on accompanying Thurman for the call about his discovery because he wants to face responsibility for a possible execution.
- Donald sees another man occupying the office where he once worked under a different name.
- Donald feels sympathy and envy for people who do not remember.
- Donald listens to Thurman’s call to eighteen through an additional headset.
- Donald fears that Rodny’s physiological reactions during questioning might lead to his death.
Chapter 139
- Donald has been awake for less than a week after a century of sleep.
- Donald takes the bitter drink to avoid arousing suspicion while planning never to return to the deep freeze.
- Donald resolves to die after following the clues Victor left behind.
- Donald feels that finding comfort with Anna has erased his anger at Helen for living and loving without him.
- Donald has an intimate encounter with Anna on their final night before their scheduled freezing.
- Donald cries himself to sleep after Anna returns to her cot.
- Donald leaves himself less than an hour to escape before Thurman comes for him.
- Donald props the hangar door open with a plastic crate before activating the lift.
- Donald enters the lift and kicks away the crate so the door shuts and the lift begins moving.
Chapter 140
- Donald’s flashlight fails during the lift journey, leaving him in darkness.
- Donald crawls out through the drone launch shaft onto the surface at sunrise.
- Donald uses the distant city as a landmark and heads forty-five degrees to its left.
- Donald remembers tents, a stage, ATVs and celebrations at the site he crosses.
- Donald fears that cafeteria diners may see him on the wallscreen and send people after him.
- Donald struggles uphill in his bulky suit and repeatedly falls in the slippery soil.
- Donald suspects that Silo One’s suits were built to withstand the airborne machines.
- Donald wants to die outside near the tower above Helen’s burial place.
- Donald removes one glove and exposes his hand to windblown grit.
- Someone grabs Donald’s shoulder and pulls him back before he finishes removing his gloves.
Chapter 141
- Donald resists being dragged back toward Silo One.
- Donald is restrained outside by three people wearing white.
- Donald breaks his fingernails trying to grip the ground while being dragged downhill.
- Donald kicks Thurman in the nose during his struggle.
- Donald is carried through the airlock after becoming exhausted.
- Donald welcomes unconsciousness and hopes it will last forever.
- Donald’s last thoughts before losing consciousness include his sister and the covered drones, which he hopes will never be awakened.
Chapter 146
- Donald awakens from a pod without remembering going to sleep.
- Donald remembers repeated awakenings but not the intervening descents into sleep.
- Donald expects a pill upon awakening, but none is offered.
- Donald is moved from the pod into a wheelchair.
- Donald initially mistakes the report of someone lost over a hill for news about Helen.
- Donald discovers that the name displayed on his pod is not his own.
- The attendants address Donald as Mr. Thurman and say he ordered them to wake him.
- Donald notices that the attendants treat him as someone with authority.
- An attendant tells Donald that a doctor will clear him for duty.
Chapter 150
- Donald wakes from decades of freezing with exhaustion and incomplete awareness.
- The staff mistakenly address Donald as Mr. Thurman after waking him.
- Donald is given fifteen minutes to get ready after being taken to an apartment.
- Donald’s urine is pink after he wakes.
- Donald remembers having gone outside in an attempt to die free.
- Donald decides to maintain the mistaken identity until he understands the situation.
- Donald recalls helping save a silo on his previous shift.
- Donald requests a file on the escaped cleaner and all available information on silo seventeen.
- Donald orders the staff to take no immediate action about the cleaner.
- Donald remembers removing a glove outside and wonders how he survived.
Chapter 151
- Donald recognizes the Office of Psychological Services as the silo’s real seat of power.
- Donald still has tingling fingers after waking.
- Donald considers whether Erskine or someone else switched database entries to give him another man’s identity.
- Donald orders Eren to warn Silo Sixteen and the silos beside Seventeen about the escaped cleaner.
- Donald is left facing a login prompt after Eren logs out of the computer.
Chapter 152
- Donald cannot log in using his old Troy account.
- Donald successfully logs in with Thurman’s name and his own passkey, 2156.
- Donald suspects Erskine tampered with the shift assignments.
- Donald interprets Victor’s message as a suicide note.
- Donald had nearly become convinced Victor was murdered before reading the message.
- Donald recalls that a last-minute switch with Mick placed him in the silo head’s position.
Chapter 156
- Donald finds a bag of Thurman’s personal effects waiting on his bunk.
- Donald does not know who arranged for him to take Thurman’s place.
- Donald wants to discover what is planned for the world after the shifts end.
- Donald suspects there are further lies to uncover about how the final shift will end.
- Donald decides to use his new authority to seek answers.
- Donald coughs up blood without noticing it while beginning to read a folder.
Chapter 160
- The man conducting the briefing approves Lukas Kyle as the head of eighteen’s shadow.
- The man conducting the briefing orders the operator to watch Bernard closely.
- The man conducting the briefing wants to use a drone to look beyond the hills.
- The man conducting the briefing questions whether the outside air is as dangerous as he has been told.
Chapter 161
- The investigator in Silo One has repeatedly scrubbed his hand because it feels tainted.
- The investigator in Silo One feels guilty that Anna often enters his thoughts before Helen.
- The investigator in Silo One concludes that the young caller from seventeen meant Silo Forty rather than level forty.
- The investigator in Silo One suspects seventeen may have survived and the cleaner may have reached it.
- The investigator in Silo One considers waking Anna but does not know how to wake people.
- The investigator in Silo One wonders whether machines in his blood protected him outside.
- The investigator in Silo One suspects its wallscreen is intended to discourage residents from going outside.
Chapter 162
- Charlotte’s brother tells Eren that he suspects Silo Forty’s involvement.
- Charlotte’s brother authorizes a bombing run without fully understanding the requisition.
- Charlotte’s brother successfully tests his access code for the Emergency Personnel chamber.
- Charlotte’s brother worries about being recognized despite wearing someone else’s badge.
- Charlotte’s brother hopes she knew nothing about Thurman’s plans before entering the facility.
- Charlotte’s brother was taking medication during their museum visit to suppress distress about what he read in the Order.
- Charlotte’s brother recognizes himself as a prisoner in the facility he helped design.
- Charlotte’s brother conceals their relationship from Dr. Wilson by describing her as someone he worked with.
- Charlotte’s brother plans to wake her so they can investigate what he helped build together.
Chapter 166
- Donald studies the supplies and steps needed to wake a frozen worker.
- Donald realizes he could omit the waking paperwork and leave no record of his planned action.
- Donald has helped put people into suspension but has never helped wake anyone before.
- Donald is planning to wake his sister.
- Donald suspects that the word locket in Anna’s note was a typo for locker.
Chapter 167
- Donald volunteers to retrieve the awakened reactor technician’s belongings.
- Donald remembers the number in Anna’s note by interpreting it as November 2nd, 2039.
- Donald fears being trapped in the dark while exploring the storage level.
- Donald finds a locker bearing the ID number he used as Troy.
- Donald worries that someone might see the man they think is Thurman opening his locker.
- Donald retrieves his old phone and wedding ring from his stored belongings.
- Donald recalls that Mick switched places with him at the last moment.
- Donald concludes that Anna engineered his separation from Helen, but this is his suspicion.
Chapter 168
- Donald returns the reactor technician’s personal effects to Dr. Wilson’s office.
- Donald takes extra sleeping pills from Dr. Wilson’s supplies while the doctor is in the lab.
- Donald mixes crushed sleeping pills into the bitter recovery drink.
- Donald uses his own keycode to begin waking Anna.
- Donald removes the tubing from the needle in Anna’s arm and shuts its valve.
- Donald confronts Anna about preventing him from reaching Helen and arranging Mick’s missed meetings.
- Donald dismisses Anna’s attempt to explain what she discovered during another shift.
- Donald persuades Anna to drink the mixture containing sleeping pills.
- Donald holds Anna as she dies after drinking the mixture.
Chapter 173
- Donald returns an empty wheelchair to Dr. Wilson’s office.
- Donald is horrified by his transformation and the permanence of the life he has taken.
- Donald considers stealing more doses because he fears being unable to sleep.
- Donald concludes that Anna manipulated Mick and Thurman into arranging a last-minute switch that stole his life from him.
- Donald concludes that the silo rankings will determine the sole silo allowed to survive.
- Donald realizes too late what Anna was trying to tell him and regards her as his lost only ally.
- Donald thinks of another person he could wake, whom he had wanted to wake from the beginning.
- Donald concludes that the founders’ agreement is a suicide pact.
Chapter 178
- Donald spends weeks studying archived records to understand the purpose of the silos.
- Donald is coughing and leaves a bloody handprint on his bathroom counter.
- Donald has scraggly hair and the beginnings of a beard.
- Donald orders that only he may enter the armory while he remains on shift.
- Donald orders the new chef to stop experimenting after a fresh bagel brings back memories.
- Donald regrets his order about the chef but leaves it in place.
Chapter 179
- Donald conducts Lukas Kyle’s initiation over a voice-masked communications link.
- Donald is eager to finish the initiation so he can go to the empty armory.
- Donald asks whether Lukas would have handled events differently.
- Donald remembers shutting down a silo during his first shift.
- Donald compares losing a silo to a parent losing thousands of children.
- Donald tells Lukas that protecting the people under his authority requires cruelty.
- Donald confirms Lukas’s conclusion that their own side caused the disaster.
- Donald tells Lukas to stop studying the stars.
Chapter 183
- Donald has waited weeks for a chance to save a life and investigate his suspicions.
- Donald wants to discover what is outside.
- Donald checks that his badge still grants elevator access to level fifty-four.
- Donald persuades the medical assistant to leave early by offering to finish his shift.
- Donald prepares a wheelchair and medical supplies after the assistant leaves.
- Donald feels guilty about waking his sister into the harsh world of the silo.
- Donald believes his sister would choose painful knowledge over remaining asleep in ignorance.
- Donald initiates his sister’s thaw using his code and the pod controls.
- Donald removes the needle and catheter connecting Charlotte to the pod.
- Donald takes Charlotte toward the exit in a wheelchair.
Chapter 184
- Donald puts Charlotte through the recovery routine he has previously endured himself.
- Donald delays feeding Charlotte while making her drink a bitter mixture and flush her system.
- Donald tells Charlotte to stay in the room while he brings back breakfast.
- Donald is startled when Eren addresses him as Thurman.
- Donald asks Eren to tell Gable he has taken care of himself and does not want to be disturbed.
- Donald has stayed awake all night without eating.
Chapter 185
- Donald lets Charlotte eat an hour before the recovery time limit.
- Donald tells Charlotte he was awakened because someone had disappeared.
- Donald conceals his own trip outside from Charlotte.
- Donald asks Charlotte to help him discover what is outside.
- Donald hopes an unarmed drone can fly farther and that its range is not preprogrammed.
- Donald recalls that he had hoped to die on his earlier ride up the lift.
- Donald has become convinced that the project’s attempt to reset life is extraordinarily precise.
- Donald suspects invisible destroyers can be triggered by a cleaner’s location or altitude.
- Donald tells Charlotte that he saw blue skies and green grass before the drone went down.
Chapter 188
- Donald wakes Thurman from the pod labeled Troy to question him.
- Donald conceals his visit to Thurman from Charlotte.
- Donald coughs up pink spittle during his confrontation with Thurman.
- Donald binds Thurman’s wrists before Thurman fully wakes.
- Donald holds Thurman at gunpoint while questioning the plan for the silos.
- Donald comes to believe that evil systems can corrupt anyone.
- Donald threatens to release everyone from the silos unless Thurman explains himself.
- Donald asks why the population was made to suffer through generations instead of sleeping until the world was habitable.
- Donald tells Thurman that someone has broken the pact by putting Donald in Thurman’s position.
- Donald worries that Dr. Wilson could discover the confrontation through a camera feed.
- Donald shoots Thurman when Thurman reaches for his pistol.
- Donald resolves to work secretly with his sister to discover and repair what is wrong with the world.
- Donald intends to observe the results of a change in leadership in another silo.
- Donald closes Thurman’s pod and leaves after killing him.
Chapter 190
- Donald orders everyone out of the communications room so he can make a private call.
- The communications staff call Donald Shepherd and know only that he is in charge.
- Donald tells the mayor that he did not ask for his job.
- Donald tells the mayor he could shut her silo down by pressing a button.
- Donald claims he saved the mayor’s silo a long time ago.
- Donald claims to know the truth the mayor is seeking.
- Donald warns the mayor to be careful where she digs.
Chapter 193
- The voice speaking with Lukas urges him to continue investigating the data.
- The voice speaking with Lukas interprets the account of a brain-altering fungus as evidence that none of them are free.
- The voice speaking with Lukas offers to help divert attention from trouble.
- The voice speaking with Lukas claims that machines alter his voice.
Chapter 204
- Donald fears a handyman from his first shift may have recognized him while they shared a lift.
- Donald says only a few people know him as Thurman.
- Donald plans to bring Charlotte additional dry food supplies in case their arrangement collapses.
- Donald has changed Charlotte’s badge clearance to let her use the lifts if something happens to him.
- Donald has checked that nobody else can access the level where Charlotte is staying.
- Donald is relying on the departing silo head to explain his status to the next head.
- Donald does not understand how the resident data in the servers produces the silo rankings.
- Donald believes that only the highest-ranked silo will survive.
- Donald claims that withholding reports about Silo 18’s activities protects it.
- Donald says Juliette enjoys threatening him during their conversations.
- Donald believes Juliette’s return from outside and Silo 18’s unexpected survival may make its people the best hope.
- Donald coughs blood into a cloth.
- Donald says he is not afraid of dying.
- Donald fears being buried alive and making the wrong choice.
Chapter 205
- Donald works secretly on a protective suit during the night.
- Donald suffers repeated coughing fits and uses a rag while coughing.
- Donald has requisitioned a microphone to complete Charlotte’s radio.
- Donald has a fear of being buried alive that Charlotte once accidentally triggered during play.
- Donald claims the suit is needed for work connected with the reactor.
Chapter 207
- Donald has warned Juliette and Lukas that their silo can be shut down at any time by undisclosed means.
- Donald again urges Lukas to stop the excavation.
- Donald says his people can detect vibrations from the excavation.
- Donald says he has ordered his people not to investigate the vibrations.
- Donald describes his job as keeping Lukas and his people alive.
- Donald says he holds the conversations to help Lukas remember because he knows what forgetting feels like.
- Donald says the books are intended for whoever is chosen to inherit the world.
- Donald says the books are meant to teach their eventual recipients how to set things right.
Chapter 210
- Whitmore says the blood on the cryopod lid matches Troy.
- Whitmore says Troy’s records indicate that he was put into Deep Freeze over a century ago without a subsequent awakening.
- Whitmore finds an accessible record showing Troy was awakened from Deep Freeze.
- Thurman accuses Donald, whom he also identifies as Troy, of shooting him.
Chapter 217
- Lukas says the man from Silo 1 confirms that the world orbits the sun.
Chapter 218
- Donald’s respiratory illness is worsening.
- Donald fears that he will die before he can change the silo project’s course.
- Donald has begun to doubt the green fields and blue skies he saw through a drone.
- Donald hopes to let the silo inhabitants live free of outside interference.
- Donald wants a painless death for himself and Charlotte.
- Donald holds daily private communications sessions at the same time and worries that the operators are becoming suspicious.
- Donald relies on machines to make his weak voice sound stronger over the connection.
- Donald did not know what Juliette meant when she accused him of supplying destructive gas for cleanings.
- Donald realizes that each cleaning releases more destructive nanos into the world.
- After Juliette disconnects, Donald shouts that he is an ancient and bears responsibility for what happened.
Chapter 219
- Donald returns from his latest call without Charlotte’s dinner or the promised final radio part.
- Donald paces and mutters while appearing ashen with blood specks on his coveralls.
- Donald says the same gas used in cleanings is pumped into silos to kill their inhabitants.
- Donald hopes the silo inhabitants can disable the gas as others have disabled cameras or demolitions.
- Donald wants people to determine their own futures rather than have computers decide for them.
- Men in silver coveralls drag Donald from the conference room and punch him in the ribs.
- Donald is pinned down by two men while a frail white-haired man repeatedly kicks him.
Chapter 223
- Donny has been attacked, and his sister Charlotte does not know whether he survived.
- Donny had left spare parts for Charlotte to work with.
Chapter 224
- Donald is imprisoned with bruised and cracked ribs that make coughing severely painful.
- Donald has given up trying to escape his locked room.
- Donald coughs up blood while confined.
- Donald concludes that the sleeping women give the men someone to work to save.
- Donald believes people and the planet should have been left alone rather than subjected to the silo project.
- Donald says he helped the people in silo eighteen because they deserved a chance.
- Donald remembers personally ending silo twelve and writing a report about it.
- Donald believes the silos are competing in a war that only one can win.
- Donald admits bombing silo forty to create a distraction before understanding its rebellion.
- Donald admits killing Anna and now regrets it.
- Donald accuses Thurman of starting the uprising by breaking his own rules to wake Anna.
- Donald begins trying to tell Thurman where Charlotte is hiding, but Thurman leaves.
Chapter 225
- Lukas recalls receiving dire warnings from Donald before the new caller’s threats.
Chapter 226
- Juliette believes the man in Silo 1 is carrying out his threats by poisoning the silo.
Chapter 229
- Donny told Charlotte that the ID he gave her would operate the elevators.
- Charlotte remembers Donny being held down by two men and kicked by another.
Chapter 230
- Charlotte identifies Thurman as the person who beat Donny.
Chapter 232
- Charlotte’s brother told her that he once ended a silo by pressing a button.
Chapter 234
- Juliette blames a man she has spoken to by radio for the attack on her silo.
Chapter 236
- Donald told Charlotte that the receptive silo was helping him hack into its computers to understand events.
- Donald told Charlotte that reaching out to other silos was unsafe because their leaders would turn him in.
- Donald had told Charlotte he could unleash gas on the people in the silos.
Chapter 237
- Donald loses track of time while confined in a room whose clock has been removed.
- Donald suspects that a missed meal and noisy nighttime footsteps are interrogation tactics.
- Donald is in severe pain when Thurman and two security officers bring his breakfast.
- Donald suspects Charlotte may be the person Thurman describes as searching for him.
- Donald denies knowing anything about the attacker Thurman is investigating.
- Donald considers revealing Charlotte’s hiding place so she will not be left alone.
- Donald tells Thurman that he liked Eren.
- Donald regards Thurman’s gift of a clean rag as an interrogation tactic.
- Donald says he does not remember Anna leaving the armory while he was awake.
- Donald denies knowing what gas feeds are when Thurman asks whether Anna discussed them.
- Donald says he went outside because he wanted to die, rather than to be seen over the crest.
Chapter 239
- Donald had told Charlotte they would not live long enough outside the pods to see the results of their actions.
- Charlotte believes Donald had hoped to escape because he was working on a suit.
- Charlotte says Donald may already be dead.
Chapter 244
- Darcy says Donny is barely alive.
- Darcy says Donny is scheduled to be put back under that day.
- Darcy remembers Donny as someone who did not seem capable of killing people.
Chapter 245
- Donald has severe bruising and painful ribs after Thurman’s beating.
- Donald coughs blood onto his coveralls.
- Charlotte and Darcy take Donald out of confinement to the armory.
- Donald recognizes that he killed Anna despite her efforts to help him.
- Donald believes too many silos were built to allow effective monitoring.
- Donald admits authorizing drone bombings after discovering Silo Forty had not been destroyed.
- Donald says he woke Charlotte after the other pilots were put back to sleep because he wanted to explore outside.
- Donald wants to contact the mayor who escaped to Silo Seventeen.
Chapter 249
- Donald and Charlotte spend the day hiding in the drone lift while searchers look for them.
- Donald has cracked ribs that hurt when Charlotte holds him tightly.
- Donald coughs up blood after emerging from hiding.
- Donald admits he went outside once intending not to return.
- Donald says he wanted to see where Helen lived and died.
- Donald tells Charlotte he is dying and reports that Thurman gave him only another day or two to live.
- Donald proposes forcing another awakened pilot at gunpoint to fly Charlotte and Darcy out.
- Donald suspects residents of the other silos experience chronic anxiety about their underground lives.
- Donald recalls playing solitaire for hours to stop thinking about his misery.
- Donald suspects some silos that went dark withdrew from contact and continue living independently.
- Donald believes Anna wanted silo residents to be free to choose how to live and die.
- Donald regrets distrusting Anna and wishes he had listened to her.
- Donald now suspects the silo creators ensured complete destruction so they could control the survivors.
- Donald tells Charlotte they need to assemble another suit for going outside.
- Donald asks Charlotte what a kilo is after recalling her estimate of the bunker busters’ weight.
Chapter 250
- Donald packs food, water, medical supplies, weapons, and survival tools for the escape.
- Donald puts the map on Charlotte’s suit because he considers her the better navigator.
- Donald says he was trained as an architect and designed the facility they occupy.
- Donald says their own side caused the catastrophe and built the facility for that purpose.
- Donald takes Darcy’s pistol and identification while Charlotte holds Darcy at gunpoint.
- Donald intends to destroy the reactor to free the people whose lives the servers control.
- Donald intends to detonate the bomb himself with a hammer rather than risk its failing to explode.
- Donald gives Charlotte and Darcy half an hour to escape.
- Donald believes leaving Darcy with Charlotte is his only chance of getting her to leave without him.
- Donald departs in the elevator with the bomb before Charlotte can reach him.
Chapter 254
- Donald stops the elevator just after floor sixty-one while carrying the bomb.
- Donald intends to detonate the bomb in the elevator if anyone comes for him.
- Donald delays his approach to the reactor to give Charlotte time to escape.
- Donald goes fifteen minutes without coughing while waiting in the elevator.
- Donald passes reactor security using an ID bearing Darcy’s name.
- Donald is shot in the chest while raising a hammer beside the bomb.
- Donald knocks the bomb to the floor while falling, but it does not explode.
- Donald sees Thurman approaching despite believing he had already shot and killed him.
- Donald fires his pistol at the bomb’s cone.
Chapter 255
- Juliette believes the living landscape confirms that Donald truly tried to help them.