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electricity that
entered Virgil’s hand and heard the sound of the pop it had
made as it killed him.
    John drew his wrist close to his face and
examined the watch again, hoping to accidentally stumble upon its
secrets. As he looked through the glass at the tiny humming wires
beneath its hands, the bus drove over a large pothole in the road.
The impact sent the watch sharply against his forehead. It
stung.
    “Truce?” John asked the watch unemotionally,
slipping his attention back to the world outside his window.
    He uncurled and sat slumped in his seat,
trying to empty his mind of the day’s events. He didn’t want to
think about any of it, not the watch, not Virgil, Molly, his
mother, Adam, or his swollen and aching jaw.
    His mind finally quieted for but a moment
before a familiar sensation overcame him. His heart began to pound
strongly against his ribs. His limbs were quickly becoming limp,
and the energy they seemed to lose was being funneled in pulse to
his left arm, energizing it just as it had before. John slid
uncontrollably downward into his seat, hoping he could keep from
flopping to the floor and drawing unwanted attention from the other
passengers.
    He lifted the watch to his tilted face and
noted the time: 3:14. The watch’s hands sat in the same position
they’d been sitting in when he’d been mysteriously brought to
Tallahassee earlier that afternoon. His mind raced, fighting the
unconsciousness that he knew was soon to follow.
    3:14 again. Is this going to happen every
twelve hours? It was his final thought before blacking out.
     
    One minute later John was awake again. He
waited patiently through the moments it took to regain movement in
his body. While he waited for his vision and hearing to return, he
slid his hand beneath his legs to the cold porcelain seat of an
open toilet. He could hear the voice of a man speaking from outside
the room, then another, more metallic, crackling through what
sounded like a walkie-talkie. Soon, John was aware of many voices,
all men, all serious in tone.
    Was he back in Tallahassee? Would he walk out
of the bathroom once more to find Adam, calm, composed and clothed,
telling the police about a young rapist who, as they would soon
discover, was dumb enough to reenter the house? The idea chilled
him.
    Gathering his courage, John opened his eyes
and saw that he wasn’t in Adam’s bathroom at all. He was back in
the bathroom from which his journey had started, the bathroom in
the back of America Offline’s headquarters.
    Did I imagine all of that? He pondered
for a moment before seeing the watch still on his wrist and feeling
the swell of his jaw. No.
    Fully recovered from the travel’s side
effects, John slowly rose from the toilet and crept to the door. It
was open, though only slightly, and revealed just enough of the
outside warehouse for him to see who was out there and just what
was going on in the warehouse at this time of night.
    Peering through the crack, John saw that he
was correct about the police presence in the building. Multiple
officers were moving through the scene. Two were within his limited
field of vision, but he could hear others milling about, just to
the side of where his eyes could monitor.
    Feeling daring, John inched the door open
just a little more, giving him a better view of the main warehouse.
He saw a large, black plastic bag, zipped closed upon a metal table
with wheels on the bottom of its legs.
    That must be Virgil , he thought.
    Two men next to the bag were having a
conversation. “And the janitor who called this in?” one of them
said. “He saw nothing? He telling the truth?”
    “Nothing. And we still can’t find anything
here that could have caused an electrical burn like this.”
    “Well, if nothing’s here then someone took it
with them. Means they probably also brought it with them when they
came. Sorry to say, it’s looking more like homicide after all.”
    “We interviewed a few ladies who were here
earlier today.