They Sawed Me Open, So I Stocked the End of the World novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Saw
Jessa wakes in her old bedroom two months before the outbreak, tests her weakened powers, calls her brother, and finds a message from the lab that killed her.
Jessa woke screaming, both hands clamped over her skull where the saw had been.
The lights were bright, the straps were cutting into her wrists, and a technician was counting backward in a bored voice.
She had felt everything.
Awake was the protocol, a technician had told her once, in the voice of someone reading out a lunch order.
She had died with the blade halfway through the bone, drowning in her own blood.
She was still screaming when she understood that the lights were wrong.
They were soft and gray, a morning color, not surgical white.
Her fingers found skin, hair and no wound.
The sheets tangled around her legs smelled of lavender, not antiseptic and her own filth.
She sat up with her chest heaving.
This was her old bedroom in the Kingsport apartment, with the dresser against the wall and her textbooks scattered across the desk.
The calendar on the desk read October 31st, 2029.
Two months before the outbreak.
She waited for the date to change into something that made sense, and it didn't.
She slapped herself across the face, hard, and the sting rang through her whole body.
It was real.
She was twenty-two again, and she was alive.
Jessa stood in the middle of the room until her breathing slowed and the truth settled in.
She had been sent back.
"My abilities," she said out loud, and began to pace between the desk and the window. "Do I still have them?"
She raised her left hand and pushed.
Small bolts of lightning crackled over her fingers and then fizzled out.
She pushed harder, and the result was the same.
Ice formed in needles over her right palm, no thicker than a pencil.
Level three, both of them, when she used to throw level nine.
Maybe that was the price of the trip.
She closed her eyes and shifted her mind sideways, into the space.
The stream, the pond, the soil, the grass and the little house were all there.
They were a fifth of the size she remembered.
Five football fields of land had shrunk to one.
Then she saw it, stacked in the time-locked corner at the back: a wall of gold bars.
A dry laugh came out of her, the first real one in years.
Gold had been useless once the world ended, but she had never been able to leave it behind.
She had kept it for the day her family might start over.
Beside it lay a small cache of the weapons she had saved.
She stepped out of the space, sat on the floor with her back to the wall and counted what she had.
Two months.
Enough time, and enough gold, to buy everything the five of them would need.
Her throat closed up on their names.
Rhys, Joel, Corin, Jethro and Emmett.
The people she had loved most and failed to save.
"Not this time," she said, and her jaw was tight when she said it.
Her stomach growled loud enough to hear.
First food, then the plan.
In the kitchen she cracked open a can of cola and drank half of it standing at the open fridge.
She had not tasted one since before the world ended.
While the kettle boiled she pulled a pen and notebook from the counter.
Rhys and Joel had always teased her about her lists.
She wrote across the top of the page, underlined twice: Get Rhys and Joel home.
Below it she wrote: gold into cash, seeds, grain, medicine, fuel, solar panels, a place to hold out.
Living through four years of the dead had taught her exactly what a family needed.
Eating her instant noodles at the table, she thought of the lab, and her knuckles went white around the fork.
She wanted to kill every last one of them.
But she was alone, the world was still normal, and one wrong move now would end her before she started.
She would have to be patient.
She would need her brothers, too.
She picked up her phone, put it down, and picked it up again.
She had to sound calm and not crazy.
Rhys answered on the second ring. "Hey, Jessa."
"Hey, Rhys."
He paused. "What's wrong? Did something happen? Did you finally dump that boyfriend?"
She laughed, and it came out watery. Two words, and he already knew.
"I'm fine. I'm home. I need you to come back to Kingsport as soon as you can, and bring Joel, Corin, Jethro and Emmett."
"Jessa. Are you in trouble?"
"No. I swear. But it has to be in person, and you have to trust me."
He paused. "We're mid deployment, so it won't be easy. I'll make it happen. Two days, maybe three."
Her eyes stung. "Thank you."
"Weird thing," Rhys said. "Corin already had his bag packed before I hung up."
"He's just quick," Jessa said, and smiled, because it sounded like him.
She hung up, and the apartment went quiet around her.
They were all coming.
Her phone buzzed in her hand before she could put it down.
It was an email, and the sender's name made her blood stop.
Halcyon Institute.
The logo was the same one she had seen stamped on the saw.
Subject line: Congratulations, Jessa. Your wellness study results are ready, and we would love to see you in person.
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