In the Dark, We Chose - the Valentine Reset
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 2: After the Switch
Tom opened the door slowly.
Not because he was afraid of Sarah—but because the world on the other side of that door felt suddenly unfamiliar, like stepping into a house you’d lived in your whole life and finding the furniture gone.
Sarah stood on the porch in a heavy coat, her dark hair pulled into a messy knot. The porch light above her was dead, so she was lit only by the moon and the faint candle glow spilling from the living room behind Tom. Her face looked sharper in the low light—older somehow. Not softer like people always were in candlelight.
Real.
“Hey,” she said.
That was it. No sarcasm. No edge. Just one word, stripped of everything else.
Tom stepped aside without thinking. “Come in.”
She moved past him, hugging her arms like the cold had found its way under her skin. The door closed behind her with a final sound that felt louder than it should have.
Tom’s mother stood frozen in the living room, candle in hand.
“Oh—Sarah,” she said, relief and confusion tangling together. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
Sarah nodded quickly. “Yeah. I mean—no. But yeah. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Her eyes flicked to Tom.
He felt that pull in his chest again—the one he’d never had words for.
Not attraction. Not dislike.
Recognition.
Something in her saw something in him.
They just never admitted it.
Tom led her down into the basement, the tablet still in his hand like a weight he hadn’t earned the right to carry.
The generator hummed to life as he reached the bottom of the stairs, kicking on the emergency lights in the corner. The basement didn’t return to normal—it returned to survival. One bulb. One outlet strip. One narrow tunnel of visibility.
Sarah let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“You have power,” she said.
“My dad planned for it,” Tom replied automatically.
She looked at him. “Of course he did.”
The words weren’t cruel. Just ... knowing.
Tom set the tablet on the table. It pulsed once, then went still, like it had done its job by waking him up.
Sarah noticed it immediately.
“What’s that?”
Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. Yet.”
They stood there for a moment, the world above them dark, the world below them lit by one lonely bulb.
And for the first time in their lives, there was nowhere else to go.
They found out how bad it was within an hour.
The radios came first—Tom’s father had left one behind in the office upstairs, the kind that didn’t rely on modern networks. Just old signals, bouncing off what still existed.
Static.
Then voices.
Not clear. Not calm.
“ ... grid failure—” “ ... hospitals switching to backup—” “ ... communication down across multiple states—” “ ... this is not a drill—”
Tom stood in the doorway of his father’s office, the radio clenched in his hands.
His mother sat on the couch behind him, wrapped in a blanket she didn’t seem to feel.
Sarah leaned against the wall near the stairs, arms crossed, eyes sharp and unblinking.
“This isn’t a reset,” Sarah said quietly.
Tom didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
By the time the radio fell back into static, the truth had already settled in his bones.
This wasn’t inconvenience.
This was collapse.
The first night passed in fragments.
Sirens in the distance that faded into nothing.
Shouts from neighbors outside.
A car engine screaming and then dying.
The house felt like an island in a dark sea.
Tom barely slept. He kept hearing his father’s voice in his head.
If the lights go out and they don’t come back...
The tablet sat on the table, silent but heavy with promise.
He didn’t touch it yet.
He wasn’t ready to hear what his father had left him.
Not while his mother was still pretending this was temporary.
Not while Sarah was sitting in his basement like she’d been meant to be there all along.
They took turns keeping watch—not because they had enemies, but because it felt wrong to let the darkness go unobserved.
Around three in the morning, Tom found Sarah sitting on the stairs, staring up at the black square of the basement window.
“You don’t sleep much,” he said.
She didn’t look at him. “I sleep when things make sense.”
He sat on the step below her. Close enough to feel her warmth. Far enough not to touch.
Silence stretched between them—not awkward, just ... new.
“My mom freaked out,” she said finally. “Started crying. Thought the world was ending.”
Tom snorted softly. “She might not be wrong.”
Sarah’s lips curved slightly. “You always had a talent for optimism.”
He glanced at her. “You always had a talent for being annoying.”
She looked at him then—really looked.
And for the first time in their lives, neither of them smiled after an insult.
“We’re not kids anymore, Tom,” she said. “We don’t have to keep pretending we hate each other.”
Tom’s throat tightened. “I don’t hate you.”
She nodded. “I know. That’s what scared me growing up.”
The words hung between them like a door neither had known how to open.
Morning came without sunrise.
Just a slow shift from black to gray.
The world outside looked stunned.
No engines. No screens. No distant hum of civilization.
Just people standing in driveways, holding phones that no longer mattered.
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