I run at Valentino, knocking him down onto the concrete, right as the gun has been fired. Another gunshot goes off, this time from the police officers as they chase down the skull-masked man who’s running away, past Dalma, who’s hiding behind an overflowing trash can. She’s terrified, I got to get her out of here too, we all got to bounce.

But I can’t move.

I feel like high-pressure air is inflating my chest, threatening to explode so fiercely it’ll pulverize my bones. There’s a burning pain between my shoulder blades, and I don’t know if a bullet hit me or not. Maybe I haven’t noticed because of adrenaline, or how fast life has been changing and ending since midnight. I want to pat myself down to see if a bullet caught me, but sharp pains are running up my arms, it’s like someone is dragging knives along them—up and down, up and down, up and down. I’m going into cardiac arrest, this is the kind of heart attack that I’ve always thought of as seismic. I try massaging my chest and sitting up to dull the pain, but it’s too miserable, and I fall on my back, my face next to shell-shocked Valentino’s.

Did I just save him?

If so, by changing his fate, did I change mine too?

Am I going to die instead of him?

Or will we both die by the end of this day?

Joaquin Rosa

12:07 a.m.

“This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

That iconic quote by the poet T. S. Eliot is the first thing Joaquin Rosa thinks about after hanging up with Valentino Prince. He already knows how he’ll tweak it for his memoir:

This is the way the first Death-Cast call ends, not with a whimper but a bang.

Joaquin fully expected some whimpering after telling the first Decker he would die today, but instead there was a bang—a gunshot. Many gunshots, to be precise, each one making him want to jump in his seat as if he were being hit by all the bullets. He’s safe, mercifully, but he can’t say the same for today’s remaining Deckers who may be victims of this attack.

Is Valentino Prince a victim, or is he the attacker?

Solving that mystery isn’t Joaquin’s job.

Removing mystery from the equation of death is.