When a cell starts to undergo programmed cell death, cytochromec moves from the mitochondria, where it usually acts in an electron-transfer chain, to the cytosol. One of the relatively recent dogmas of apoptosis is that the death-suppressing protein Bcl-2 acts before cytochrome c in this pathway. But two new papers could overturn this dogma, by showing that Bcl-2 can also protect cells after cytochrome chas been released.