She couldn’t hear him, but she didn’t need to. His pain and anguish and guilt were written all over his face. The fear faded from her eyes as a strange calm appeared to settle over her. He could tell she knew what he did, what he’d had to do, and what it had cost them both. She placed her palm up against the glass. He reached out to place his own hand over hers, only to hear a jarring buzzer inform him that their time was up.

The second barrier engaged. Two solid-lead doors slid in from both sides of the doorway. Joe yanked his hand back just in time. For a few final moments, their eyes met in silent communion. Her lips moved, as though she was trying to comfort him, or perhaps just say goodbye, but he would never know what her last words were.

The doors slammed shut, cutting her off from view… forever.

Goodbye, Joe thought. May God forgive me.

He wasn’t sure he ever would.

A violent tremor jolted him from his grief. The building quaked all around him. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. The floor bucked beneath him.

“The entire plant is collapsing!” Takashi shouted from the comm. “We have to get out… NOW!”

Joe placed his hand on the lead door, exactly where he knew Sandra’s face must be. It tore him apart to know that she was still there, still alive, less than a foot away. Entombed inside a radioactive deathtrap, facing the end without even her family beside her in her final moments. And it killed him to know that now he had to leave her.

“You have to live!” she had said. “For Ford!”

Joe knew she was right. If not for their son, he would have gladly stayed behind to perish with Sandra. At least they’d be together, even if a wall of lead separated them, but he had to think about Ford now. The boy couldn’t lose his mother and his father. He owed it to Sandra to make it out of this alive… for Ford’s sake.

Tearing himself away from the lead doors, he scrambled to his feet and ran for his life.

* * *

The control room was empty now. Not even Takashi remained to bear witness to the plant’s final moments of operation. Unattended monitors captured real-time video surveillance of the last wave of plant personnel fleeing the complex. Joe could be glimpsed on one monitor, barely making it to the parking lot in time, along with Takashi. Squealing cars and trucks sped out of the gates, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the plant. Power lines snapped and whipped about, spitting showers of sparks. The sky-high transmission towers in the switchyard tottered.