Pool_2

cue of about twenty 'Why aren't you answering your phone?' communiqués of frustration over mundane needs, there was one pressured message that spiked her ear. "I'm DONE!" Shannon knew that voice. Reflexly, her heart sank at it's sound. But she had heard that phrase before, and so, stiffened in resolution. In the reading room, a radio and the newspapers recalled events of the last few days. There was plenty to read, but curiously, there was no mention of Armageddon on routes 137 and 156. Nothing. Shannon Eadan O'Brien finally got up the nerve and asked one of the men who had been looking in on her frequently, "Mr. Benson, do you know what has become of a Doctor Marcus Macaluso?" Benson just nodded very assuringly and offered his hand. She followed in gentle tow to the elevator, to the basement, down a long hallway, a highway of plumbing, through several turns toward a room in a back recess of a subterranean maze. Benson's silently outstretched arm gestured at a dark but open doorway. A brief smile and nod warned his quick exit. In the low light, outside the room, blending into the indistinct door frame at nearly its same height, a threateningly vigilant tall swarthy man with a somehow kind and protective looking face, and almost sorrowful eyebrows, stood guard. She startled when he addressed her, "Mmm Mar Mmm Marc-c-cus. Hih' hih heeees in'nin in nnn there," helping her in the shadows with gentle conduct of his heavily scarred steel hands, then disappeared. "I know him," she thought, "the protector." But quickly focusing on the void of the unlit room. "Marcus?" she whispered. "Marcus?" stepping slowly forward, eyes adjusting, "Marcus!" she blurted, acuity now establishing his form sitting in the deepest recess of the dark room, perhaps avoiding any would-be conversation. Nevertheless,