The power came back after eleven minutes.
Long enough for Maya to panic.
Long enough for Chris to stop joking.
When the lights flickered on, nobody moved.
“Coincidence,” Maya said, but her voice shook.
I nodded. “Maybe.”
I handed them both printed checklists.
Chris read his in silence.
Maya laughed once. “Emergency kit? Cash split? Water rotation? Evan, this is insane.”
“Do it for forty-eight hours,” I said. “Then call me crazy.”
She looked at the photos again and looked away.
“I hate this.”
“Me too.”
At 6:20 a.m. I was already at a used car lot in Dorchester.
I bought a 2008 Ford Ranger with minimal electronics and paid cash.
No app lockout.
No remote kill.
No software dependency.
The owner asked why I wanted “that old thing.”
“Weekend camping.”
He shrugged and signed.
By 7:30 I was at an ATM, pulling small bills from three different banks.
By 8:05 I was parked two blocks from the marked intersection on my map.
8:17 a.m.
A fuel tanker clipped a delivery van, jackknifed, and rolled.
The noise hit like artillery.
Traffic froze instantly.
People got out of cars to film.
I did not film.
I drove.
I sent one text to my siblings:
Prediction #1 confirmed.
Chris replied first.
Where are you?
Maya sent nothing.
I spent the afternoon on phase-two supplies.
Water drums.
Portable filters.
Industrial bleach.
Medical gloves.
N95 masks.
Solar battery banks.
Hand-crank radios.
At each stop I changed route and timing.
No repeating pattern.
At 6:42 p.m., my phone buzzed again.
Transformer fire in Seaport. Avoid area.
Public alert.
I did not need to read it. I was already parked on a rooftop two blocks away, watching black smoke climb into a pink evening sky.
Then my phone lit up with a call from Maya.
I answered.
She did not say hello.
“How?”
I closed my eyes.
“Come to storage unit B. Bring Chris. No phones after arrival.”
They arrived at 8:11 p.m.
I made them leave their phones in a metal locker.
Chris did it without argument.
Maya hesitated, then dropped hers in.
Inside unit B, I turned on overhead lights.
Rows of labeled crates.
Water stacks.
Medical shelves.
Dry goods by calorie density.
Fuel logs clipped to a whiteboard.
Maya stared.
Chris walked slowly down an aisle and touched a red crate marked ANTIBIOTICS.
“This is real,” he said.
“This is day one,” I said.
Maya looked at me with wide, angry eyes.
“What do you need from us?”
“Discipline,” I said. “And trust you can fake before you feel.”
I gave them both go-bags.
Chris unzipped his. “Tourniquet, filter bottle, map, cash…”
Maya held hers against her chest.
“What happens if we do nothing?”
I answered anyway, even though I could still hear her scream from the old timeline.
“If we do nothing,” I said, “one of us is dead by fall.”
Silence.
Then Chris nodded once.
“Tell us the rules.”
I wrote six words on the whiteboard:
No crowds. No heroics. No loose talk.
Maya swallowed hard.
Outside, thunder rolled over the city.
But the weather app still showed clear skies.