Chapter 48 - The Final Meeting
The blast door required several hours to open safely.
Behind it lay a communications room frozen in time.
Old radios.
Telephones.
Maps.
Dust covered nearly everything.
Except one conference table.
It had recently been cleaned.
Eight chairs surrounded it.
A ninth chair stood slightly farther away.
On the tabletop rested a reel-to-reel recorder.
Still connected to electricity.
Still functioning.
Michael slowly pressed the play button.
Static crackled.
Then voices emerged.
Harold recognized them immediately.
Samuel.
Arthur.
Catherine.
Michael.
His own younger voice.
The recording captured the final meeting of the Eight Promises.
Harold listened in stunned silence.
He remembered attending.
He remembered leaving early.
What he had never heard...
...was the conversation that followed.
A younger Catherine spoke first.
"If we disappear completely, someone else will eventually rewrite everything."
Daniel answered calmly.
"Then we leave witnesses."
Another voice objected.
"That creates danger."
Daniel replied,
"So does silence."
The discussion continued for nearly twenty minutes.
Finally Daniel said something that caused everyone in the present to freeze.
"If I disappear, do not come looking for me."
Harold whispered,
"I never knew he said that."
The recording continued.
"I won't be hiding from enemies."
A long pause followed.
"I'll be hiding from friends."
The tape abruptly stopped.
No explanation.
No conclusion.
May you like
Only silence.
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