Shift

Jimmy lets himself into the hall, where he can see the remnants of a fire, proof of other survivors. He closes the door and worries it won’t reopen, so he tests it. He’s glad that it reopens but worries that once he leaves, something will change. Jimmy makes his way out to the main stairwell, remembering all that happened the last time he stood there.

Jimmy begins by going up, hoping to find a new can opener in the general store. He can hear sounds and sees a couple of people run past a door on one of the landings. The general store is mostly empty except the shelves of toys. He finds a skeleton in female clothing under an overturned shelf. Jimmy stops briefly at his old apartment and then continues up to the school.

Jimmy arrives at the school and sees evidence that it has been ransacked. In his old classroom, he finds his backpack still there. He goes to the chalkboard and writes a poem about his experiences and loneliness. He originally titles it “I am Jimmy” and then “I am Solitude,” finally settling on “I am Solo” (483).

Donald returns to the medical suite, where he finds a note about the folder he took from Anna’s locker, which reminds him that he left it behind. He opens it and finds a single sheet of paper inside, something like a memo, similar to those from his time in Congress. It’s a discussion about the timeline of the silos, written by Victor and signed by five men, including Thurman, Erskine, and Governor Charles Rhodes. Donald realizes that this memo discusses the destruction of all but one of the silos when the time comes to release their inhabitants.

During his exploration, Jimmy travels lower and lower, noticing signs of other survivors but not seeing anyone. He makes his way to Supply and breaks the lock by shooting it. Inside, he finds a burning flashlight and is spooked when he realizes that someone must have left it recently.

Jimmy works his way deeper into the silo, coming close to the bottom, where Mechanicals is located. When he reaches level 137, he discovers that it’s flooded. The water frightens Jimmy and he begins to turn away, but he hears a cry.

Jimmy hears the cry again and thinks it might be an infant. He decides to investigate, so he takes off his boots and socks before wading toward the landing door. Jimmy hears the crying again when he enters the corridor beyond the landing door. He follows the sound to a community kitchen. In the cabinets, he finds a cat.

Jimmy wades through the water, tripping on skeletons of the long dead as he goes. He calls to the cat, but it’s clearly frightened. He uses pieces of a ration bar to draw it near him, but when he picks it up, the cat claws his arm so he drops it in the water. The cat panics and allows Jimmy to pick it up again and to hold it. Jimmy shares another ration bar with the cat as he picks his way out of the kitchen.

Donald has turned his apartment into a research room, studying every document he can find to support his theories. As he studies, he’s called to induct the shadow from Silo 18. Donald asks about the armory. They had been running drones from the armory, but it’s empty now and Donald requests that it stay that way. Eren tells Donald that the current head of the silo was previously a member of the psych team, but he had a mental health crisis and requested a demotion. In addition, Donald learns, most of the men who work in psych—including Eren—aren’t psychiatrists.

Donald runs Lukas through the familiar questions of indoctrination. When the formality is over, Donald asks about the unrest in Mechanicals. Lukas becomes agitated. Donald tells him that sometimes the hardest part of being a parent is having to be mean to the children. Donald then tells Lukas that he can ask questions. Lukas asks how it all began. Donald makes him reason it out himself, which Lukas does, concluding that they did this to themselves.

Jimmy adjusts his life to the cat’s, deciding to call it Shadow. Jimmy takes Shadow with him on his explorations, talking to it as he complains about the lack of can openers. On one visit to the cafeteria, Shadow is drawn to the airlock. Jimmy opens it and is shocked to find a pile of dead bodies—but these bodies still have their flesh, as though they just died. He shuts the door and piles tables and chairs against it, deciding not to go that far up again.

A man cuts the power to the server room and gains access to Jimmy’s hiding spot. The man has a pipe and attacks Jimmy. Jimmy grabs his rifle and fires wildly, catching the man with the third shot. Jimmy climbs up through the hatch and finds the steel door open. He spots movement in the hallway and fires the gun again. When he goes to look, he finds that the other person was a woman with a swollen belly.

Jimmy finds the breaker the intruders tampered with and gets the power back on. He tries to fix the broken keypad but can’t. Nervous, Jimmy decides to take Shadow fishing to calm his nerves. They go to the flooded part of the silo, where someone dumped all the fish tanks into the water. Jimmy dislikes fish and only catches them for Shadow.

Donald goes down to the medical suite in the middle of the night and sends the assistant away, promising to cover the last of his shift. When the assistant is gone, Donald makes the reviving drink and goes into the storage area, where he locates his sister’s cryopod and begins the process of awakening her. Charlotte is confused when she wakes, but Donald assures her, feeling that as long as they’re together everything will be okay.

Donald takes Charlotte to the armory and sets her up in the same conference room where Anna was hidden during his last shift. He leaves her while he goes to check in upstairs with Eren, informing him that the rebellion in Silo 18 is apparently over. He then goes to the cafeteria to get breakfast for himself and Charlotte.

Donald talks to Charlotte about their situation and then takes her to the drones to show her the setup. They put one of the drones on the lift, and Charlotte uses the remote equipment to pilot it. The drone almost immediately begins losing oil pressure, but Donald watches the video feed from the drone’s camera closely, anxious to see what’s outside the silos. Just before the drone crashes, Donald catches a glimpse of greenery and blue skies, which fills him with optimism.

Jimmy reflects on how things break down and decay over the years. The only things that didn’t break down predictably were the bodies in the airlock. He makes some parachutes out of paper from the Legacy and washers to drop down into the rising flood waters. Jimmy is delaying a chore he doesn’t want to do.

Jimmy reflects on how he searched for years for certain items and never found them but then found other things he needed before he needed them. One of these was a machete that came in handy when the farms became overgrown. After years of searching, he found a mechanical can opener in an apartment with cans of cat food thanks to Shadow. However, now he’s tasked with burying Shadow in the soil of one of the farms.

Donald finds a cryopod marked “Troy” and begins the awakening process. Thurman awakens, and Donald accuses him of planning to kill everyone. Donald wants to know why he’s putting them through the heartache of living in the silo if they’re just going to die. Thurman says that they had to make sure no one knew how to recreate the problems of the past. When Thurman reaches for Donald’s gun, Donald shoots him and shuts him back inside the cryopod.

Jimmy takes his trash to the landing and throws it down into the flooded sections of the silo before making his way to the farms. When he reaches level 12, he discovers that the door is open. Jimmy is confused because he never leaves the door open. Then, he hears a noise. Jimmy turns and runs back to the safety of his home, rushing through the steel door that no longer locks and down through the hatch. As he tries to close the hatch, someone grabs it and calls to him, telling him that she doesn’t want to hurt him. Jimmy realizes that he has been found.

Donald has asked everyone to leave the comm room as he makes a call, expecting Lukas to answer. Instead, it’s Juliette. She tells him that she’s in a room full of books that contain the truth, and she plans to find it. Donald warns her that she might not like the truth she finds.