Well, shit.

Mitch looked at himself in the mirror. Not a single hair. Not one. He really couldn't decide how he felt about this. He turned this way and that to get a better look. The hair on his back, shoulders, and upper arms was gone. He was totally okay with that. But his chest hair was gone to! His forearms, his legs, his groin: all clean. He couldn't decide if he felt like a movie star or a chihuahua.

He hadn't really looked at himself for more than a moment since this whole ordeal began, and as he was looking now, he was noticing some other changes. The early grey hairs he had started to accumulate were gone; as well as the bags under his eyes. The hair in his beard was straighter as well.

He touched his face; his skin was firmer. He looked more like he had in his twenties. Better even.

He took a couple of steps back from the mirror. The paunch and softness he had accumulated the last few years working an office job had faded, and he actually saw some definition in muscles that he hadn't seen since college. When he tensed up, there was even a hint of some abs. Megan would have loved this.

He froze: Megan who? He didn't know anyone named Megan, especially not someone who would care about these developments.

He had had a few thoughts like this that he couldn't place recently. Was he going crazy? Was the energy he was working with fucking with his mind? He wanted to shake this off but was worried about the consequences if he did.

He didn't want to die, but did he want to survive as a madman? He wasn't hearing voices or anything yet, but false memories were nothing to sneeze at. An image popped into his head of himself walking down the street randomly attacking strangers, cackling madly and generally behaving in a manner consistent with someone who had just done a massive amount of bath salts.

He shivered. No way did he want that. Another image popped into his head, of a scorch mark on his living room floor. That was all that would be left of him if he didn't make enough progress to make it through this next Tolling.

He stood silently for a moment, almost desperately debating these two possibilities. True death; or death of self. It seemed like a catch twenty-two. He was damned either way.

He headed back to his living room and turned on the tv to distract himself while he continued to deliberate in the back of his mind.

Samsung was releasing an electronically hardened phone that they said eliminated the errors and glitches that people were seeing since the second Tolling.

The class action against life insurance companies for not paying out for victims of the Tolling was ongoing, although there seemed to be some hope of a settlement offer soon.

Some radical group in Texas was making noise about the Tolling being God's judgment against sinners and had attacked some family health clinic workers and vandalized the clinic itself, as well as a mosque. No one had died, but a few of the clinic workers were in critical condition.

Scorism was on the rise. Mitch wasn't sure what this meant at first but soon realized that this is what they were calling things like what Brad was doing, believing that they were superior because they had a higher score from the testing that had sent Mitch down this rabbit hole. Great.

Suddenly a breaking news banner popped up. Mitch leaned forward. As the news anchors appeared on screen, the ticker at the bottom popped up with "Death score?". Mitch inhaled sharply. Someone had leaked what the test scores meant.

"Disturbing news today from one of our best investigative reporters, Pulitzer prize winner, David Farnborough..." The male anchor trailed off, appearing rattled.

The female anchor cut in.

"According to Farnborough's source the scores everyone received earlier this year predict your chances of death at the next Tolling, and that who lives is not random but the result of measurable traits. Farnborough has stated that his source is a 'highly placed' military official."

The male anchor had composed himself and started talking again.

"The source is, at this time, not willing to identify themselves as he or she claims that doing so would put them at risk for court-martial on charges of treason."

There is a moment of silence on screen. No-one seems to know what to say next. Mitch already knows this is true, and he knows what the shock of it feels like.

"Supposedly," the female anchor continues, "the lower the score a person has, the more likely they are to die." At this, she throws both hands over her mouth and her eyes tear up.

Muffled, barely caught by her mic she says, "Richard... oh no." She throws her mic off and runs away from the set.

"Angela was married recently..." the male anchor says by way of explanation, too stunned to finish the sentence.

Mitch shut off the tv. There was going to be hell to pay for this.

That night there were riots. Even people with high scores stormed the streets. Everyone had someone that they cared about that had a low score and the tension caused by everyone having a sword of Damocles hanging over their necks finally burst forth.

Mitch stayed in his apartment, but he could hear the shouts and the breaking glass, and the sirens. He could see the glow of flames from his window.

Around midnight the military rolled in, and after a bit of what sounded like full automatic gunfire, things started to quiet down. Mitch headed to bed bout one.

He rechecked the news in the morning. Currently, they were estimating about one-hundred deaths, about thirteen attributable to the military directly so far just in his city. Several other cities had had riots or bombings as well.

The government had declared martial law.