Rewriting the Apocalypse novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ten Seconds

Jo freezes the recruiter with one touch in an alley and learns he was in the room when she died.

Eli Mercer did not flinch at the wrench.

He stood on the porch with both hands in his jacket pockets and looked at her face.

He looked at her hair, her forehead and the place above her ear, and then he looked at nothing else for a long moment.

Something in his shoulders let go.

"Put it down, Jo," he said. "I'm not going to touch you."

"You're Eli."

"Yes."

"You work for Dr. Faulk."

"Yes."

"Then get off my porch."

"I will. In about four minutes." His voice was low and flat. "She expects me to call in by eight. When I don't, she sends two men in a gray van. They'll be here by half past."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I've done this morning before."

Jo did not wait to hear more.

She shoved past him, down the porch steps and around the side of the house, with the wrench still in her fist.

The alley behind the rowhouses was narrow and smelled of wet cardboard.

Sam's truck was parked at the far end with the engine running, and Sam was halfway into it, one boot on the running board, shirt half buttoned.

"Jo! Who was that guy?"

"Get in, start moving, don't stop."

"You're not making any sense."

"I know."

Boots hit the pavement behind her.

Eli had followed her around the house, and he did it quickly and without a sound.

He came into the mouth of the alley with his hands still in his pockets, and he stopped ten feet away.

"Jo. Please. Listen to me."

"Stay back!"

"I am staying back."

He was. He did not take a single step closer.

That made it worse.

A man who wanted to grab her would have grabbed her.

A man who wanted her calm would have held out a hand and smiled, the way he had the first time.

Eli only stood there, hands hidden, watching her.

Jo made up her mind.

She walked straight at him.

His eyes widened. He took a step back, and then another, until his shoulders hit the brick wall.

"Don't," he said.

She caught his wrist through the glove and pushed.

It was the oldest thing her body knew.

The power came up through her palm the way it always did, a cold bright line from her shoulder to her fingertips, and it found his nerves and held them.

Every muscle in his arm locked.

His whole body locked, standing, rigid against the bricks.

His eyes still moved. They went to her face and stayed there.

He could see and hear and feel everything, and he could not even blink.

"Jo?" Sam said behind her. His voice had gone high. "What did you just do?"

"Ten seconds," Jo said. "Then he moves again."

"You can't do that. People can't do that."

"I've been able to do it since the crash," she said. "I just never showed you."

Sam stared at the man against the wall.

"What else haven't you shown me?"

She did not answer. She was counting.

She counted the way Dr. Faulk had counted, backward, from ten, and she kept her hand on his wrist the whole time.

On four, she looked into his face.

There was no panic in it.

There was something she could not name at first, and then she could, and it turned her stomach.

It was relief.

On one, she let go.

Eli sagged off the wall, caught himself on his knees and dragged in a breath that shook all the way down.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For doing it this way." He straightened slowly. His eyes were wet and he did not wipe them. "It's gentler than the other way."

"What other way?"

He did not answer that.

"Jo, I'm not here to take you in. I'm not taking you anywhere. I came to your door to make sure you were awake."

"Why would you need me awake?"

"Because I'm the only other one," he said.

The alley went quiet.

A bus sighed at the end of the street.

Sam looked from his sister to the stranger and back.

"The only other what?"

Jo kept her eyes on Eli.

Her wrench hand was shaking, and her stomach had dropped through the floor.

"Say it plainly," she said.

"I've lived this day before. I lived the whole year after it." He looked at her hand, then at her face. "I drove you to Corwin on the ninth. I walked you down to Sublevel 3. I was in that room."

"You watched them."

"Yes."

"You stood there while she counted."

"I did."

Jo's whole body went hot.

She remembered the restraints and the white light, and a hand closing over her fingers while the blade went in, and she had always known that hand was there to keep her still.

She raised the wrench.

"Hit me if you want to," Eli said, and his voice cracked. "I was the one holding your hand."

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