She found the standard-metric wrench that had fallen to the floor, calibrated its hook jaw to precisely half an inch and then two centimeters and back again. She not only pulled out many of the binders from the wreckage of the shelves, she stood them on end upon the floor and then she alphabetized them. She took up the rediscovered flashlight, scuffed off the piece of plastic that had splintered off from its broken tail cap, and strung it upon a hook that was bolted into the wall. The wrist strap had broken during the blasts, and the flashlight must have flown from her wrist and rolled off across the floor. Blessedly, it was still on, and therefore operational. She clicked it off to save the precious batteries. The dark. The dark is coming. “Sophie. Don’t think about that.” She shook her head, as if to clear it from the unsettling shadows which were layering her thoughts with other people’s voices once again. There was a challenge as she struggled to remember which order she had done things in, which things still required a ritual of initiation and which were fated to be redone a second time.
