Chapter 3: Error

JUNO'S POV

I have a nosebleed in front of the four hottest and most dangerous people in the apocalypse.

Great. First impression, Juno. Really nailed it.

The blood dripped onto my dirty shirt. I wiped it quickly with the back of my hand.

Alice lowered her gun a little more, but didn't put it away. Her blue eyes flicked from my face to the blood.

"She's Awakening," Vera said. Her voice was deep and calm, like a general who has seen everything. "Late Awakening. Happens sometimes with trauma."

"No," Kai said. "She didn't have a glow before."

"Maybe it was dormant," Alice said. She holstered one pistol and crouched in front of me. Up close, she was even more intimidating. Her skin was perfect except for a small scar on her eyebrow. Her ponytail was somehow still neat after fighting zombies.

"Hey," she said, softer now. "What's your name again?"

"Juno," I said. "Juno Cooper."

"Juno, I'm Alice. This is Vera, and that's Ren. And you already met Kai."

Ren gave a tiny nod from behind his hair. That was it. That was his whole introduction.

"Hi," I whispered. "Big fan. I mean — hi."

Alice smiled a little, but it didn't reach her eyes. She was assessing me. In the book, Alice was described as kind but paranoid. She had to be, to survive ten years.

"You said you know where we hid our meds and antibiotics," Vera said, crossing her massive arms. The war hammer on her back clinked.

I did. Or rather, I remembered.

In Chapter 3 of Alice in Apocalypse Land, Alice finds a hidden cache under the pharmacy counter. The author wrote it as a lucky find. A loose tile, a box with several medications, antibiotics, three packs of 9mm bullets, and a chocolate bar from before the virus — a Snickers — that Alice saves for three chapters before eating.

I knew exactly where it was because I had highlighted that paragraph.

"It's under the counter upstairs," I said, my voice still shaky. "Behind the pharmacy. There's a loose tile. Third from the left. Under it is a metal box."

Four stares were directed at me.

"How do you know that?" Kai asked. His voice was low.

"Because..." My brain scrambled. I couldn't say "I read it." They would think I was crazy. Or a spy for Dr. Crowe. In the book, Crowe has spies who know base layouts.

"I used to work in a pharmacy?" I tried. "I know where people hide stuff?"

Vera didn't buy it. She turned and climbed up the ladder out of the basement in one smooth motion.

We all listened.

Silence. Then a scraping sound. Then —

"Well, holy shit," Vera's voice called down.

She dropped back down, holding a dusty metal box.

She opened it on the cot between us.

Antibiotics. Three packs of 9mm bullets. And a single, dusty, slightly squashed Snickers bar from 2016.

Exactly as I said.

The basement went dead quiet.

Alice looked at the box, then at me. "You were upstairs?"

"No," I said. "I woke up in the street. Kai brought me straight here."

"I carried her straight here," Kai confirmed. "She didn't go upstairs."

Vera picked up the Snickers like it was gold. "This has been here since Year 2. No one outside our original four knew about it. We never told anyone. How did you know?"

This was the moment. I could lie again, or I could tell a version of the truth that wouldn't get me kicked out or shot.

I took a deep breath. My head was still pounding from the system text.

"I have... I have a power," I said. "I think I just got it. When Kai touched me, I saw... I saw the future. Like, ten seconds ahead."

Ren's head tilted. That got his attention.

"Explain," Alice said.

"I touched... I mean, he touched me, and I saw him saying 'you need to rest' before he said it. And just now, when you asked about antibiotics, I saw this box in my head. Not really saw, but knew. Like deja vu."

It wasn't a total lie. The Spoiler ability was real. The system did give it to me. I just left out the part where I read about the box in a novel while eating cold pizza on a subway.

Kai frowned. "ARK doesn't give future-seeing powers. It gives physical powers. Overdrive, Titan, Deadlock, Ghost Step."

"I know!" I said, a little too loudly. "I mean, I don't know, but maybe I'm a glitch? The text said ERROR."

As soon as I said ERROR, the blue text flickered again in front of my eyes. Only I could see it.

[ABILITY: SPOILER LVL 1 - ACTIVE]

[TO ACTIVATE: PHYSICAL CONTACT REQUIRED]

[WARNING: OVERUSE CAUSES MIGRAINE, NOSEBLEED, FAINTING]

[TIMELINE DIVERGENCE: 2% -> 3%]

Timeline divergence. In the book, that term was never used. That was new. That was because of me.

Alice reached out slowly. "Can I...?"

I nodded.

She touched my hand. Her fingers were calloused from guns.

The instant our skin touched, my head exploded with pain.

A flash — bright, fast, like a camera shutter.

I saw Alice, ten seconds from now, pulling her hand back and saying, "Your hands are freezing."

I gasped and yanked my hand back. My nose started bleeding again.

Alice pulled back like she had been shocked. "Your hands are freezing," she whispered.

Her eyes went wide. She looked at Vera, then Kai.

"She did it," Alice said. "She saw it."

Vera stared at me with new interest. "Future sight. That's new. That's not in ARK's database."

Ren finally stepped forward. He didn't speak. He just held out his hand, palm up. Long fingers, scars on the knuckles.

He wanted to test it too.

I hesitated. The system warned about overuse. My head was already pounding.

But I needed them to trust me. If they didn't trust me, I was dead out there alone.

I touched his hand.

Pain. White hot.

Flash.

I saw Ren, ten seconds from now, turning his head to look at the trap door above, because someone was walking on the street above us. A Rotter. One Rotter, dragging its foot.

I stumbled back, clutching my head. "Above! Above! One Rotter, on the street, dragging its foot!"

Everyone froze.

We listened.

A faint dragging sound. A low moan. Right above the pharmacy.

Ren moved without a sound. He was up the ladder and out in half a second. No one saw him move — one second he was there, next he was gone.

Ah. That must be the famous 'Ghost Step' ability of his. Exactly how I imagined it.

A second later, a soft thud came from above. Then silence.

Ren dropped back down, wiping his katana clean on a rag.

One Rotter. Dragging its foot. Exactly like I said.

Now all four of them were staring at me like I was something else entirely. Not a crazy girl. Not a spy.

A valuable asset.

Vera opened the Snickers bar and broke it into five pieces. She handed one to each of us.

"Welcome to the team, Error," she said, and popped her piece in her mouth.

I took my piece with shaking hands. Chocolate from before the world ended. It tasted like dust and sugar and survival.

Kai sat down on the cot next to me, closer than before. "Spoiler. That's what we'll call your power."

"Spoiler," Alice repeated, tasting the word. "Fits. You spoil things before they happen."

I laughed, even though my nose was bleeding and my head felt like it was being split open.

I had a name. I had a power. I had a team.

And I had just changed Chapter 3.

Because in the original Chapter 3, Alice finds the cache alone. Vera doesn't break the chocolate into five pieces. There are only four pieces.

The fifth piece was mine.

I looked at the blue text one more time before it faded.

[TIMELINE DIVERGENCE: 5%]

[CAUTION: DR. SILAS CROWE HAS BEEN NOTIFIED OF ANOMALY]

My smile froze.

Oh.

Oh, that's not good.

Far away, in a lab that the book described as all white and too clean, Dr. Silas Crowe — sadistic, elegant, the man who ended the world because he thought he could make it better — looked at his own system screen.

A red dot had appeared in Sector 7. A dot that had never been there in ten years.

He leaned forward, his smile thin and cold.

"An extra girl," he murmured to the six shadows standing behind him — The Hex, his six perfect mutants. "Find her. Bring her to me. I want to see what makes her so... erroneous."

One of the shadows — the one who made sound — let out a low, humming sound.

I didn't hear it. But deep in my gut, as I ate stale chocolate in a basement with four heroes who were supposed to die without me, I felt cold.

I had read up to Chapter 89. I knew how the first three Hex died.

But I never got to exactly read how the story ended.

And now, it seems like the man who wrote the virus was coming for the girl who already knew too much.

Me.