Reborn before the outbreak, Now they beg at my gate

CHAPTER 5: THE KNOCK AT TWO IN THE MORNING

"Where is the ninety thousand dollars, Leo?"

Vanessa stood in the middle of our living room with her phone in her fist and the evening news muttering behind her. She had not turned on a lamp. The last of the sunlight fell across her face and showed me something I had never seen in my previous life, because in that life I had never once made her afraid.

I set my keys in the dish by the door, slowly, and let my eyes go wide.

"What ninety thousand?"

"The transfer." She took a step closer. "The bank says the joint account has been restricted. It says the restriction was requested from your device this afternoon."

"I did not request anything." I wrapped my arms around my middle and let my voice wobble. "I was at the pharmacy all day. I thought the bank had sent me an alert and I tapped the wrong button. Vanessa, I am so sorry. I am hopeless with these apps."

It was a lie, of course. I had frozen the account from the parking lot an hour earlier, with the help of a banker who still owed my late father a favor. But Vanessa had known me for six years, and the man she knew was gentle and clumsy and eager to please, so she hesitated.

Behind her, Brandon came out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder as though he lived here, and he did not look surprised. He looked calculating.

"You should be more careful, Leo," he said smoothly. "Money is important."

"I know." I lowered my eyes so they could not see my face. "I will fix it tomorrow."

Vanessa's jaw worked. For one second I thought she might push, and I braced my feet against the carpet. Then her hand closed around my wrist, hard enough to leave a mark, and she smiled with all of her teeth.

"Tomorrow," she said. "First thing."

I let her squeeze. I let the bruise bloom. I thought about the horde, and the gate, and her gentle voice saying that someone had to stay behind, and I memorized the exact pressure of her fingers like a debt I intended to collect with interest.

At eleven o'clock that night, while Vanessa slept in our bedroom and Brandon snored on the sofa he had claimed as a "temporary arrangement," I sat on the floor of the bathroom with the shower running and my laptop balanced on my knees.

The lawyer's reply had come an hour before. Mr. Okafor had handled my father's estate, and he did not ask questions when I told him I needed our engagement and our joint finances untangled in total secrecy, with every account and deed sealed under my sole name, ready to file the moment I gave the word.

He wrote one line at the bottom of his email.

Your father left a sealed letter for you, to be opened when you were ready to leave that woman. I did not understand it until now.

I read it twice, and then I pressed my sleeve against my eyes and smiled behind my hand.

The blue panel had been silent since afternoon, but now it flickered at the corner of my vision.

Hidden task: Identify the Variable. Progress: 0 percent.

"I know," I whispered. "I am working on it."

My phone buzzed against the tile. The screen said Nora Vale, which was strange, because I had not given her my number. Then I remembered that the card in my pocket had come from her, and that Gideon had mentioned her warmly, and that people like Nora always found what they wanted.

I turned off the shower and answered.

"Mr. Hart." Her voice was rough and low, the voice of someone who had not slept. "I am sorry to call so late. Are you alone?"

"Yes. Why?"

"The first patient. The man with your name in his pocket." A pause, and the sound of a door being closed. "I went down to the morgue an hour ago to examine him again. The drawer was empty."

The cold started in my fingertips.

"Empty."

"I checked the security footage myself. He sat up at ten forty. He climbed down from the tray, he walked past the guard, and he left through the east doors." Nora's breath was unsteady, which was somehow worse than anything she had said. "I watched a dead man walk out of my hospital, Leo. And when I traced the cameras across the city, he was heading toward the old district on the north side, in a straight line."

I stood up very slowly. "What is on the north side?"

"Your street."

The bathroom fan hummed. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror, white-faced, eyes enormous.

"That cannot be," I said. "The outbreak is not supposed to..."

I stopped.

"Not supposed to what?" said Nora.

Before I could answer, something knocked at the front door.

It was not loud. It was three slow, patient raps, spaced evenly apart, exactly like a polite visitor who knew he was expected.

My skin tightened over my bones. Nora was saying my name through the phone, but her voice seemed to come from a great distance, and I crossed the hallway one careful step at a time with my bare feet silent on the floorboards. In the living room, Brandon stirred on the sofa and mumbled something in his sleep. The apartment smelled of lavender and old coffee.

I pressed my eye to the peephole.

The corridor light was dim and yellow. A man stood on the mat in a faded courier's uniform, and he was gray from the collar to the hairline, with a dark rash creeping up his neck like spilled ink. His eyes were clouded white. His head hung a little to one side, like a puppet whose string had been pulled by someone far away.

He raised one stiff hand and laid it flat against the door.

Then, in a voice that was not quite his own, a voice that rasped and rattled but carried a strange note of pleasant, almost friendly amusement, he spoke through the wood.

"Leo Hart. He says it is lovely to finally meet you."

Behind me, the bedroom door creaked open, and Vanessa's sleepy voice asked, "Who is at the door?"