Fatal Midnight: System's Deadline

[Assignment failed. Preparing deletion.] Five years. Five years of making Adrian Vandermeer fall in love with me. The System's voice went off inside my skull. Flat. Metalcold.

The deadline was my birthday. He never came. He never asked. So that was that. [The one that got away flew home today.

He's been with her the entire time.] Five years of company, and this was the last kindness the System had in it: [As compensation, you may choose how you die.] Fine.

Then let me die in front of him. Let him be the one who does it. Later, in the morgue, a cop pulled the sheet back while he stood there and watched.

He went down on his knees beside my body. Too late. Chapter 1 Five minutes to midnight. It was my twentyfifth birthday. It was also the last night of year five. The deadline.

If Adrian proposed before the day ran out, I got to stay. We had a deal. We did. Balloons up along the ceiling. A buttercream cake on the table.

Roses shoved into every corner of the room, bunch after bunch of them. Our friends had gotten the word ahead of time. They'd driven out to the house in Winnetka to celebrate.

From noon until night, Adrian's phone rang out. Every single time.

Sloane held onto my hand. "Evangeline, breathe," she said. "Maybe something... came up?" What could possibly have come up.

Not that long ago he'd looked at me and said it word by word, like a vow. "Evie, I'm going to give you the perfect proposal. In front of everyone." I shook my head.

I told them all to go home. That room had been full of smiles. Hours ago. By the end it was all pity. Even Sloane couldn't look straight at me. The rule was simple.

If Adrian didn't come back before the day ended, the System deleted me. I didn't want the people who actually loved me watching me come apart.

Maybe I'd checked my watch one time too many. Maybe I looked exactly as pathetic as I felt. With a few minutes left, the System finally spoke up. [Host.

Stop waiting.] Five years of that flat machine voice. Tonight there was something underneath it. Something almost angry. [He isn't coming.] [Amelie Renard flew back today.

He's been with her since she landed. They're at Lakeshore General right now.] Amelie is the one that got away. They grew up on the same street.

Same schools, same summers, all of it. She was born with a bad heart. Always fragile. Her parents sent her overseas in high school for treatment.

After that she barely showed up anywhere. I pressed my fingers into my temples.

I was so tired. "Her heart," I said. "Did they fix it?" [No.] The System explained it to me. [But there's a new protocol here now. A real breakthrough.

She won't have to go back overseas.] Oh. Okay. That tracks. The person he actually wanted was home. No reason to keep dragging out whatever I was.

The System stopped talking and my alarm went off. Midnight. I closed my eyes and waited to be peeled out of myself. Except. A minute went by. Close to a full one. Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. Same room. The bouquets crammed everywhere, the streamers, the lights still burning. I...

Why was I still here? [I filed a request on your behalf.] [Your stay in this world has been extended by twentyfour hours.

In exchange.] [You may choose how you die.] Didn't sound like much of a prize. Then again, it wasn't like I had plans.

So we sat there and workshopped it, the two of us, completely seriously. How to die gorgeously, with the day I had left. Fire. A rooftop. Water.

Since the alarm, its voice had gone strangely gentle. [It is only leaving this world. And I will take the pain out for you.] I made a noise. Opened my phone.

One last scroll through Instagram. Newest post was from Adrian's oldest friend. A photo of a silver sports car. Two lines of caption.

His friend: [Haven't seen this guy tear through downtown in years.] His friend: [Never underestimate the one that got away.] Chapter 2 The Vandermeers go back a long way.

Their money is in everything. Adrian grew up spoiled to the bone. Whatever he wanted, he got. Racing he held onto longer than the rest.

He took the car up into the hills whenever the mood hit him. Until the crash. He put it into a guardrail. Half his body came out red. Two weeks in a hospital bed.

His grandfather took a belt to him over it. That was the end of that. "He's racing again?" I said it out loud, to the System.

It didn't add up. [Not racing.] [Amelie's chest seized up. He drove her in. Ran a few reds on the way. Way over the limit.] That's downtown Chicago. My eyebrows pulled together.

At that speed, if something went wrong, he wouldn't be the only one bleeding. He'd take somebody with him. A few minutes went by. Our friends started stacking up in the comments.

Commenter: [Are you insane? Weren't you supposed to be proposing to Evangeline yesterday? Why are you out street racing?] Commenter: [lol sweetie, update your files. Amelie's back.

Adrian is never taking Evangeline back.] Commenter: [Watch your mouth. Forget the proposal for a second. Tearing through downtown is messed up on its own.] Commenter: [Right??

That's so dangerous. What if he hits somebody?] Commenter: [Did Adrian forget the belt his grandfather took to him?] Commenter: [He was way over the limit.

Somebody teach this guy a lesson already.] I made a small sound at that. "Enough." I called the System back. "Where is he right now?" [He got Amelie to the hospital.] [They sent her out with a long list.

A few things they want started fast.] [He'll have to make a pharmacy run for it.] Mm.

Actually, that works. "I know how I want to leave this world." I spun the pen between my fingers. "He's going to hit someone tonight.

It may as well be me." "I want to see his face when he works out what he ran over. His car. His hands.

For her." Most of the twentyfour hours the System borrowed for me went by like that. Next time I looked at my watch, it was dark out again. Adrian wasn't far from me.

The System told me so. It took a second to land. Then I got it, and I laughed at myself. Wishful thinking. There's a compounding pharmacy a few blocks from the house. Meridian.

It's the only one in the state licensed to make the rare things, the limited things, the formulations nobody else will touch. My stomach used to give me trouble.

Adrian would get up in the middle of the night for it. Threw a coat on, drove out to the allnight pharmacy at two in the morning.

Then he'd stay up the rest of it on the little kitchen stool, hunched over the stove, fanning every spoonful cool before it got anywhere near me. One spoon. Then the next one.

All night. That was him. When he decided to be good to you, he carried you around in both hands. Thinking about you at every hour of it.

Terrified you might be uncomfortable for one second. And tonight he was out getting medicine too. Running lights the whole way. Flooring it across the city. Just not for me.

When you've been loved like that, you don't get to wonder whether it stopped. You just know. The System asked if I wanted to go see. I nodded. Obviously. This was the goodbye.

There's only one road that runs to that pharmacy. Sheridan. I put my coat on and went out. A few hundred yards down, the Tintersection.

Everything headed that way has to come through it. It was night by then. Eight, maybe nine. Winter. The dark comes down early here. It was already full black.

The streetlight behind me buzzed on and dropped a yellow ring on the pavement. I stood in it. A few moths went past my face. There's exactly one road he can take tonight.

And I was standing on it, waiting for him. Chapter 3 I hesitated. Right at the end there, I did. Was I really going to spend what was left on Adrian? Three hours to midnight.

Maybe four. I could watch a movie. Play the songs I wanted to hear. Walk down to the lake and pick beach glass out of the sand. Last memories in this world. Decent ones.

Rare ones. [Evangeline.] The System. It didn't call me Host. For once it used my name. I answered it without thinking, and my head came up. Light. A wall of it.

Down the road, a silver sports car coming fast. Adrian's car. Too fast. I got a hand up. His high beams went straight through it anyway. [Are you sure?] Yes.

Because there was a little girl with a backpack, and she was about to step off the curb. The light was too much. It took a few seconds before I picked her out of it. Ponytail.

School jacket from the elementary down the road. First grade, maybe second. Tiny. Oversized headphones swallowing her whole head. Phone up, texting somebody. Thumbs going.

Smiling at whatever they'd sent her. Not looking at one single thing around her. Say Adrian did see her. At that speed, braking right then wouldn't matter.

All that weight would just throw her. I didn't think about it. "MOVE!" I ran, and I threw myself at her. Somebody screamed. Right against my ear. The girl went sideways.

I must have gotten her. She hit the pavement, crawled forward a couple of feet, then staggered up and turned around. "Miss? Miss!" "Help!

Somebody help!" "There's so much blood..." "SHE GOT HIT! Somebody, she got hit! Aah! Aah!" The System hadn't lied. It took the pain out.

So when the car went over me, there wasn't much to feel. Just some strange impact sounds. And bone. Snapping. Then coming apart. Not a great thing to listen to.

The System pulled me out of the body fast, though. I was standing in midair, looking down on all of it from a long way up. The girl was terrified.

Shaking so hard she couldn't find her phone. She was trying to call 911. And it landed on me that this had been worth something. I was dying tonight either way.

This way somebody got to keep hers. Adrian knew something was wrong.

He stood on the brakes and the car still ate another few hundred yards before it stopped. "What was that?" Maybe it was not being stuck inside a body anymore.

Through a shut door and a rolledup window, I heard him perfectly. He blinked once, slow, like the road had rearranged itself on him.

One hand closed on the door handle. "Did I hit someone?" "That's insane. No way