Juliette Nichols works in Mechanical, the deepest section of the silo, 144 floors below the surface. She fixes generators, pumps, and the machines that keep everyone alive. She prefers machines to people. Machines make sense. The silo’s rules do not.
The silo is an underground structure where thousands of people live. No one goes outside. The surface is toxic, visible only through a sensor array on the roof. When someone says they want to go outside, or when they break certain rules, they’re sent to clean the sensors. It’s a death sentence. Everyone who cleans the lenses dies in the poisoned air. And yet, everyone who’s sent out cleans them. No one understands why.
When the silo’s sheriff dies under suspicious circumstances, Juliette is brought up from Mechanical to replace him. She doesn’t want the job. But she starts asking questions about the previous sheriff’s death, and those questions lead her toward the silo’s deepest secrets. The people who run the silo from IT, the mid-level department that controls information, don’t want her asking those questions.
Hugh Howey built Juliette as someone whose mechanical expertise gives her a different way of seeing the world. She understands systems, pressure, and failure points. When she applies that thinking to the silo’s social structure, she sees the cracks that others have been trained to ignore.
Reading Order
See the complete Silo reading order for all books featuring Juliette Nichols.