He slapped the book shut and flung it as hard as he could at the wall, the binding cracking, making a little indentation there as loose pages spilled across the carpeted floor. Seeing the thing fall apart cleared his head. Kicking it made him feel even better. Was Snow watching this? Let him watch. He hoped Snow could hear him, too. “You know what I’m going to do, you son of a bitch? I’m going to find my wife and kid and we’re walking out of here. How do you like that?”

No response, of course, and had he expected one? It didn’t matter. He knew where he needed to go. The realization was just there, that was how he knew he’d earned it, how he knew it was right.

He ran back up the hall to the rotunda, where the other hallway branched off, retracing the route where he and Walker had rushed Snow earlier in the evening. The frozen flow of smoke damage marbled the walls, a permanent addition, like the skins of so many ghosts. Up ahead he could already see the door that Calhoun and the doctor had taken Snow through just before the explosion. It was open. He got to the end of the corridor, turned the corner, went through the door—

And stopped.

Because this couldn’t be right.

He was in the hospital operators’ room.

Impossible! It’s on a completely different level of the hospital, down on the main floor! That smoke from before, it’s still stuck in my lungs, making me see things—

The physical reality of his surroundings defied any further attempt at rationalization. Long tidy tables flanked either side with a dozen empty chairs in front of a dozen phones, computer consoles, and microphones. Muted light emanated from the fixtures overhead with an almost audible sigh. Mike stared at it, turned to look back.

The door clicked shut behind him.

It wasn’t until he looked at the tables a second time that he saw the book there, resting next to the microphone closest to him. Its binding was intact, its pages all there, as before, waiting for him. Even the chair had been pulled back slightly, an unspoken invitation.

One by one, the phones began to chime.

CHAPTER 44

44.

Sarah stepped out of the elevator with the pistol in one hand and her son in the other, a combination she’d never imagined for herself. But it was a night of firsts, wasn’t it?

The elevator doors had opened on the sixth-floor rotunda with a big semicircular nursing station in the middle. Up ahead she saw two arrows drawn on the wall, pointing two different ways, marked J and M.

“Look at the camera,” a distant voice said from up the hall.