Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
The Radio With No Power
I looked at the time: 11:47 p.m. Then the radio suddenly spoke, and it said my name. “Samara.”
My hand stopped above the laptop keyboard.
The voice had come from the old receiver beside my coffee mug. I knew that because everything else in the apartment was quiet: the television unplugged, my phone facedown, Lexi asleep in the bedroom with the door cracked open.
“Samara, don’t turn it off.”
I stared at the radio. I remember that the radio had no battery.
“It isn’t on,” I said.
Static scratched through its speaker. Underneath it, someone coughed.
“I know.”
The reply came too quickly.
I pushed my chair back and hit my knee on the table. Cold coffee jumped over the rim of my mug and spilled across the printed dispatch logs.
“Damn it.”
I caught the papers before the coffee reached the laptop. The top sheet was already wet from the spill; it went through the time column, the part I had spent three hours comparing.
18:42 — First distress call received.
The official copy said 19:06.
Twenty-four missing minutes. Three dead rescue workers. One department insisting the original file had been corrupted.
And me, suspended without pay because I had sent that original file to a reporter.
“Keep your voice down,” the radio said. “Lexi’s asleep.”
I looked toward the bedroom.
Nothing moved beyond the half-open door. The hall light reached one bare foot hanging over the side of Lexi’s bed. She had kicked off one sock again.
I picked up my phone. No active call. No unfamiliar device connected to our wireless network.
“Who is this?”
“You. Tomorrow night.”
I almost laughed. Nothing came out.
The radio was one of my father’s old field receivers, a heavy black box with a bent antenna and paint worn away around the dials. After he died, I had found two leaking batteries inside it. I removed them, cleaned the compartment, and never put new ones in.
Its power cord was still in a carton at his storage unit.
I turned the radio around.
The battery cover was missing. The empty compartment faced me like an open mouth.
“No,” I said. “Try again.”
“I said that too.” The woman sounded tired. Not sleepy. Used up. “I can’t hear you, Samara. I’m answering the questions I remember asking.”
My fingers tightened around the radio’s plastic handle.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No. It doesn’t.” A burst of static swallowed two or three words. “The signal lasts ninety-seven seconds. Don’t waste it trying to make this reasonable.”
I checked the time.
11:47:19.
If this was a prank, someone knew my apartment. They knew Lexi was asleep. They knew how I sounded when I had spent too many hours taking emergency calls and pretending the screams did not stay with me after my shift.
Because the voice was mine.
Not close to mine. Not a recording spliced from videos. Mine, with the slight drag on certain words that appeared when I was exhausted and trying not to show it.
I reached for the volume knob.
“Don’t.”
My hand froze.
“You’re about to turn the volume down because you’re afraid Lexi will hear. She needs to hear none of this tonight. But you do.”
I let go of the knob.
“Give me something I can verify.”
The voice continued as if I had not spoken.
“At 8:17 tomorrow morning, Transformer C at Lira North Substation will explode. East Medical Clinic will lose power for eleven minutes. No one dies there. Use that to prove this is real.”
I grabbed a pen from beneath the wet papers and wrote on the back of Lexi’s school payment notice.
8:17 — Lira North, Transformer C.
The pen tore the paper on the last letter.
“Then what?”
“Get Lexi out of school before noon. Don’t wait for the city alert. Don’t take Eastway Underpass, even if the navigation app sends you there. Get to Bantay Ridge before five.”
I stopped writing.
Bantay Ridge had been closed for seven years. The hilltop hotel had mold in half the rooms, broken windows in the west wing, and an access road that washed out during ordinary storms. My father had spent the last part of his career maintaining the relay station beneath it.
He had also made me promise never to bring Lexi there. Too many loose railings, exposed wires, and rusted service ladders.
“Why Bantay Ridge?”
“It’s high enough. The cistern can be sealed. Dad left what you need in storage.”
Something struck metal on her end of the signal.
The woman sucked in air. Farther away, a man shouted a warning I could not make out.
“What’s happening there?” I asked.
“Not enough time.”
“Then stop giving me directions and tell me what happens.”
Silence.
Not dramatic silence. More like she had lost her place.
When she spoke again, her voice was lower.
“The rain changes at 6:03 in the evening. It comes down black and oily. It burns exposed skin. Anything collected in an open tank becomes unsafe. Keep Lexi indoors before it starts.”
I looked through the kitchen window.
Port Lira was dry. Streetlights ran in two clean lines toward the bay, and the sky above the towers was clear enough to show a few stars. The weather app had promised sun through the weekend.
“Black rain,” I said. “From what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
For the first time, the woman’s answer came late.
“You’re calling from tomorrow, but you don’t know?”
“I know what it does. That’s what matters tonight.”
11:48:08.
My pen moved again.
Before noon — get Lexi.
Avoid Eastway.
Bantay Ridge before 5:00.
“How many people get hurt?”
Static cracked hard enough to make me pull the receiver away.
“A lot.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“What city alert? Why would they tell people to wait?”
“Samara, listen to me. You have twenty-nine seconds.”
I hated the way she said my name. I had used that same tone with callers who kept asking why while smoke filled their rooms. Not cruel. Just out of time.
“What do I buy?”
“Sealed water. Masks. Medicine. Food you don’t need power to cook. Fuel, if you can get it safely. Don’t spend time searching for everything. You won’t find everything.”
That last sentence sounded less like advice and more like regret.
I wrote faster.
“Who do I tell?”
The signal broke apart.
For a second, I heard only static and the sound of something heavy beating against a door.
Then my voice returned.
“Start with Lexi. Believe the transformer. After that, move.”
“Wait. What happens to her?”
11:48:31.
The static thinned. The woman breathed once against the microphone.
“At 6:03, the rain turns black. If it touches Lexi, she will not survive the night.”
The radio clicked off.
11:48:37.
I stayed bent over the table, pen pressed so hard against the paper that ink pooled beneath the tip.
The refrigerator hummed. A motorcycle passed on the road below. Somewhere in the building, water moved through old pipes.
Ordinary sounds. All of them irritatingly ordinary.
I turned the radio over again.
Empty battery compartment. No cable. No warmth from the casing. I held it near my ear and heard nothing.
Exactly ninety-seven seconds since the minute turned. I checked twice.
“Mom?”
I nearly dropped the radio.
Lexi stood in the hallway wearing an oversized sleep shirt and one sock. Her hair was flattened on one side. She held the faded blue whale she had slept with since she was four by its tail.
“Why are you awake?” I asked.
She squinted at me. “You were talking.”
“I’m sorry. Go back to bed.”
“Who was it?”
“No one.” The answer came too fast. “The radio. It was... I think it was a recording.”
Lexi looked at the receiver, then at me.
“Of you?”
I set it on the table.
“It sounded like me?”
She nodded.
“What did you hear?”
“My name. And school.” She rubbed her cheek with the whale’s tail. “Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Did I forget something?”
“No, Lex. You didn’t do anything.” I crossed the kitchen and crouched in front of her. “You have class tomorrow. We’re going back to bed.”
“You too?”
“In a minute.”
She gave me the look children gave adults when both knew the adult was lying, but only one of them was allowed to say so.
“Hall light stays on,” she said.
“Hall light stays on.”
I tucked her back into bed and pulled the loose sock off instead of fighting it onto her foot. The blue whale went under her chin. She watched me from the pillow.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“You look scared.”
I smoothed the blanket over her legs once, then again.
“I heard something strange. That’s all.”
“Strange bad?”
“I don’t know yet.” That was the closest I could get to the truth. “Sleep. I’ll tell you if there’s something we need to do.”
Her hand found my wrist before I stood.
“Not after everybody else knows.”
I looked at her.
“Tell me first.”
“Okay,” I said. “You first.”
She let go.
Back in the kitchen, I shut the laptop before the coffee could do more damage. The official Saint Orla file disappeared from the screen, but the last line I had read stayed in my head.
Delay caused by inaccurate caller information.
The callers had not been inaccurate. The record had been changed afterward by people who needed the delay to belong to someone else.
I picked up my phone and called the night dispatch desk.
Tess answered on the fourth ring.
“Emergency coordination.” Then, after a pause, “Samara?”
“Hi.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“I know. I need you to check something.”
She exhaled into the phone. “You can’t ask me to reopen Saint Orla.”
“I’m not.”
“That was quick.”
“Lira North Substation. Transformer C.”
Silence. Then keys clicking.
“Why?” she asked.
“Is there a fault?”
“You don’t work here anymore.”
“Suspended isn’t fired.”
“Right now, it means the same thing.” More keys. “The sector is green.”
I looked at the empty radio.
“Check the sensor history.”
“Samara—”
“Please, Tess.”
The clicking stopped.
“There was a temperature alert at 10:52,” she said. “It cleared in eleven seconds. Maintenance marked it as bad telemetry.”
“Could it explode?”
“Anything can explode. That doesn’t mean it will.”
“At 8:17?”
The line went quiet.
“Why that time?” Tess asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you get this?”
I stared at the radio’s dead speaker.
“I’ll call you in the morning.”
“No, wait. Samara, don’t—”
I ended the call.
It was a rotten thing to do to someone who had risked her job helping me once already. I knew that. I also knew if I told her a powerless radio had warned me about tomorrow, she might send an ambulance instead of checking the transformer.
I opened the weather app.
Six percent chance of rain. Light winds. A hot, clear afternoon.
I checked two other forecasts. Both said the same.
Then I set an alarm for 8:10 a.m. and another for 11:00. I put Lexi’s school ID, my wallet, the cash from the rice tin, and two bottles of water beside the door.
Not because I believed the radio.
Because believing it for seven minutes in the morning would cost me nothing.
I rewrote the instructions on a clean sheet of paper. Times first. Routes second. Supplies last. My handwriting stayed neat until the final line.
There, the letters cut through the paper and marked the page underneath.
At 6:03, the rain turns black. If it touches Lexi, she will not survive the night.
