They continued to watch off and on throughout most of the day. When night fell, and the workers left, the walls were almost complete.

The next morning Amy walked into the command center after breakfast.

“What's the status of the sleepers?” RJ asked.

“The only ones awake beside the three of us, are Fitzpatrick in the reactor room, and Abby and Nick here in the command center,” Amy answered.

“The reactor is going to run itself for possibly twenty years; two more days won't make a difference. Let's put Fitzpatrick into a capsule. I assume you're going to ride this out?”

“Yeah, I'm going to stick around until it's done. There's a part of me that's expecting to wake everyone up in a week and tell them this was a big false alarm.”

“I've thought that too,” Brad admitted.

“Amy, you get that guy snoozing, and I'll find us a deck of cards. There isn't much more for us to do. From here on out we're just observers,” RJ instructed.

Amy went to the communications center and triggered the intercom. “Fitzpatrick, please report to your sleep capsule. It's bedtime.”

As she headed for the door, Brad called out. “You need a hand?”

“Sure, it'll be quicker with two of us,” Amy agreed.

RJ had just headed to the Mess Hall to grab a refill of coffee when she was interrupted by a radio call from the team outside. “Miss Anderson, the demolitions officer wants to talk to you,” Abby announced from the communications console.

“Anderson here, what's up?

“I don't know how much this might affect you, but we're ready to blow the ends of the tunnels,” the voice replied.

“Thanks for the warning, we're all set.”

Brad and Amy returned to the command center and RJ glanced over at them. “They're about to blow the ends of the tunnels. What took so long in getting Fitzpatrick to sleep?”.

“It was bad,” Brad began. “As soon as he laid down in the capsule and saw the lid closing, he went crazy. I guess he's afraid of confined spaces, he ripped his IV out and was thrashing all over the place.”

Amy continued. “We got him out and calmed him down, and I gave him a shot of Ativan. While we were waiting for it to take effect, we cleaned up the blood from where his IV ripped out. When the sedative took effect, we got him back into the capsule and put him to sleep.”

RJ nodded, wondering how she might react when it came time to sleep. She'd never liked confined spaces either.

They watched as the camera view of the tunnel entrance was instantly swathed in a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, the tunnel entrance had disappeared.

Small loaders immediately went to work, smoothing out the debris to make it appear more natural. After a few storms and a bit of time, there wouldn't be any evidence that there was a tunnel entrance beyond the debris.