Chapter 10: Graveyard Shift

👉 Previous Choice: You escaped the collapsing sanctuary, leaving Silas trapped beneath the rubble.

Exactly three days later, the storm had passed. I sat at my dispatch desk, another midnight shift stretching ahead. The air was heavy, humid, the remnants of the downpour still clinging to the trees outside. A different kind of storm brewed in Sanctum County.

Bartholomew Gidley, the corrupt notary, had been detained. Federal agents, called in by Martha Sallow, had descended on the township, uncovering his intricate web of fraud, land seizures, and insurance scams. Silas, miraculously alive, remained hospitalized under police guard, his limbs crushed, his power shattered.

But the atmosphere in Sanctum Township remained uncomfortably tense. The cult elders still watched me. Their black sedans were parked at distant corners, their occupants mere silhouettes in the dim light. Neighbors averted their eyes when I walked down the street, their faces masks of fear or thinly veiled resentment. The Covenant was wounded, but not broken. Its tendrils still reached deep into the community.

I stared at the blinking lights on the console, the silence punctuated only by the hum of the computers. My fingers rested on the cool plastic of the headset. It was just another graveyard shift.

Suddenly, the emergency console line, the very one that had started all this, lit up. It was an incoming call. My heart lurched. I pressed the headset button.

“Sanctum County Emergency,” I said, my voice steady, professional. “This is Dispatcher Holcomb. How can I help you?”

A frantic, weeping voice, unmistakably female, burst through the earpiece. It was the same voice. The double-layered echo was gone, but the terror was identical.

“Help me!” the caller cried, her words tumbling out. “He’s here! He’s breaking in!”

My blood ran cold. The caller then read out an emergency location, an address that made my breath catch in my throat.

It was the address of the dispatch station itself.

My eyes snapped to the reinforced metal door of my booth, sealed tight against the outside world. From beyond it, I heard a faint, distinct sound. The scraping of heavy boots. Right outside my locked door.

Some darkness isn’t just banished; it merely shifts its shadow to another corner of the room.

THE END – TRUE ENDING