Page 57 of The Delivery

She walks over to the desk.

She picks up the titanium business card.

She brings it back to Rebecca and Mark.

It is shiny in her small hand.

It glints up at them.

It says: YOU’RE IN CHARGE.

At the sight of it, Rebecca’s and Mark’s last requests play like echoes in Rebecca’s mind.

Maybe you should go back in.

I think we’d do well to take a break. Wouldn’t you like to take a break too?

We’d like you to get back into the prism.

We don’t want this to turn violent. Let’s just get you back in the prism.

Everything phrased indirectly, elliptically, with equivocation.

Rebecca takes the hard-edged card. Stares down at the words. Feels something rising within her, something young and buried and firm of purpose.

Her eyes lift to laser into Mr. Man, and her voice takes on the timbre of a foreman on a job that allows no overtime. “Go to the nursery,” she says. “Now.”

Mr. Man remains still for a second too long.

And then he is walking toward them.

Rebecca braces, but Mr. Man walks right past her and Mark, heading toward the foyer.

They follow him up the hall to the nursery. Rebecca enters after him, Mark behind, holding Maddy’s hand.

“Get in,” Rebecca says.

Mr. Man approaches the bulky prism. Above the laser-etched N0RM LLC, the sensor light glows green. The lid is propped up.

He rests his hands on the rim. Then turns to look back at her over his shoulder. His face is expressionless, but there is something about it that seems to be pleading.

Rebecca says it again: “Get. In.”

Mr. Man climbs in.

“Close the lid.”

Mr. Man blinks and then blinks again. His smooth hand reaches for an internal control and pulses, and then the lid lowers down slowly, slowly, wiping him from view.

His dark pupils are the last thing Rebecca sees before the prism seals.

“Do not come out of here,” she tells the closed casket, “ever again.”

She takes a step back and then another, until she is standing beside Mark and Maddy.

And then Mark walks over to the 240-volt charging point and rips the fat cord out of the wall.

The green sensor light flickers once and dies.