A ruthless resident of the Silo who is not afraid to get his hands dirty, Bernard Holland is the Head of the IT Department and the current interim Mayor of the Silo. Bernard comes into heated debate with Mayor Jahns following her appointment of Juliette Nichols as the new Sheriff.
Bernard is very protective of his territory and is not afraid to voice his opinions nor get his hands dirty.
Throughout the series[edit | edit source]
Bernard initially appears as the head of the IT department within the Silo, where Allison Becker works. He tells her that her recent post, explaining to people how to recover deleted files from the IT servers within the Silo, is not allowed and as a result, has been deleted. This is to presumably stop people recovering files pertaining to actions that occured before the building of the Silo; or potentially, shows that there is something the IT department is hiding.[2]
Bernard later expresses his discontempt with Mayor Jahn's decision to respect Holston's wishes and promote Juliette Nichols to be the next Sheriff of the Silo. The two have a strained relationship, and Bernard sees Jahn's as a hurdle to him gaining more power within the Silo and expanding his reach. He urges her to reconsider her decision, and instead, appoint Peter Billings as Holston's replacement, but she stands her ground and declines. It is not explicitly stated, but it is speculated that Bernard had something to do with Jahn's untimely death shortly after this encounter.[3]
Following the death of Jahns and Deputy Marnes, Bernard held a vigil and burial for the two and, despite this being against the tradition of the Silo, he allowed the two to be buried together. He later worked closely with Nichols, assisting her in her investigations whilst also convincing her that Judge Meadows was trying to gain access to the Silo's technology infrastructure in a bid to seize control of the Silo.
Eventually, however, it becomes clear that Bernard is actually the mastermind behind the plans to seize control of the Silo and is actually the leader of Judicial. He explains that the Founders selected one person to be the host of all knowledge of what happens in the Silo an what has happened before; Bernard is this person and as such, is one of the only people who knows what happened before the existence of the Silo[1]. After Nichols figures this out, he has her arrested by Judicial under the guise of hearing her say that she wishes to be sent out to clean. In reality, however, she did not express this and Bernard simply wished to cover up the fact that Juliette knew he was running Judicial and attempting to seize power.