The World Never Ended novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Control Room

The bolt had shot home, and I stood with my forehead against the cold steel and counted to ten.

Then I turned around.

Forty monitors looked back at me.

Dean had locked me in the one room he had never expected me to understand.

"Cora." Shane's voice came small and clear in my left heel. "I'm at the gate. The van's door is open."

"Is she there?"

"Hold on."

I heard a scuffle, a man swearing, a thud.

Then I heard a thin voice, sleepy and cross.

"Mama?"

It was my daughter, and I put my hand on the console to hold myself up.

"She's in my arms," Shane said. "She's fine. She wants her duck."

"Shane."

"I know. Do it."

I sat down in Dean's chair.

It was still warm.

The console had a hundred switches, and I had watched the tech work them for a whole afternoon.

I flipped the master.

Every screen on the wall went black.

Then I pulled up the drives.

Shane had kept every one.

I found the folder marked with Dean's visits, a list of dates with one visit every month for five years.

I hit play on all of them at once.

On forty monitors, my husband came to watch me.

Dean at the glass in month two, eating a sandwich.

Dean in year one, smiling while I screamed through the first birth.

Dean in year three, picking lint off his coat while the medic put a baby in my arms.

Dean, every month, checking his watch while he watched me.

And with each clip, a date and a time ran in the corner of the picture.

I found the master switch for the compound's speakers.

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