Episode 36 - Preparing the Return

The moment the key turned, the station noticed.

It wasn’t dramatic. No shaking walls. No flickering lights. Just a shift.

A breath held.

A pulse stilled.

A page turned quietly, deep in the Archives.

Charles stopped mid-sentence while rerouting a hallway that had started looping on itself.

He felt the change like a ripple behind the eyes.

“She’s gone through, then,” he muttered.

The vending machine hissed. Ejected a note.

“DOOR SEALED. WAITING.”

He folded it carefully and placed it in his coat pocket.

Then turned off the hallway reroute system.

The building didn’t need to be restructured right now.

It needed to be still.

Miss LaDonna lit a candle with no flame.

It flickered in a color no one had ever agreed upon.

She poured two cups of tea. One for now. One for later.

And whispered to the second:

“When you’re ready. We’ll be here.”

Bernard paused mid-sort in the Vault.

He set down a reel labeled “Pending Olivia (Loop 5C, Aborted)” and gently slid it into a drawer marked “In Progress.”

He did not hum.

He did not pulse.

He simply floated to the center of the room.

And waited.

Even the Farm went quiet.

The background feeds calmed. No unscheduled cartoons. No memory-leaking trailers.

Monitor 6B showed only static.

But in the lower corner, the cartoon dog blinked once.

Then curled up.

Watching.

Nobody said it aloud.

But everyone knew:

She would come back different.

Not broken. Not lost.

But more.

The kind of “more” the station didn’t get very often.

And when she did return—

They would be ready.