Rewriting the Apocalypse novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Retained

Jo held the page up to the penlight.

"This has your name and today's date," she said. "You've been next to me all day. Explain."

Eli took one look at the signature and went white.

"I didn't sign that."

"It's your name."

"It's my name, in somebody else's hand." He took the page from her and turned it to the light. "Look at the E. I loop the top. That one doesn't."

"Then who wrote it?"

"Kessling's lawyer. In the first life I signed on the tenth, because they told me I couldn't leave the building after I'd seen the lab." His voice dropped. "They must have printed it early and dated it for the ninth. Here, it makes me their employee from the day they took you. If this ever went to a judge, I'm the man who took you in."

"You are the man who took me in."

"Yes. And now they have a paper that says I knew."

Jo said nothing.

She knew what it meant.

If they went to the police, the police would find Eli's name on every page.

Eli would go to prison, and Jo would be a runaway test subject with a cracked story.

Kessling had been planning for this, and he had not even met her yet.

"They want me pinned to it," Eli said. "So you can't trust me, and nobody else will either."

"Smart," Jo said. "He's good."

"He's very good."

Sam was staring at the ceiling.

"Hey," he said. "Does anyone else hear that?"

It was a thin electronic whine.

The guard in the doorway had stirred.

He was sitting up with one hand pressed flat against a plate on the wall, and his mouth was moving.

"Silent alarm," Eli said. "Run."

They ran.

Jo had the folder pressed to her chest, and she took the aisle at a dead sprint.

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