Damien stood there listening to them talk and for a moment he felt a strange kind of pride swell up in his chest because he was the one who made that drug, he spent three years locked in a basement lab mixing chemicals and running tests and failing over and over again until he finally figured it out.He did that.And now the Whitmore family was going to be one of the richest families in the entire world because of him.Damien looked at Clara and smiled. "I am glad it worked."Clara glanced at him for half a second and then looked back at her father without saying anything.That was when the door opened.Everyone turned toward the sound and a man walked into the room like he owned it.He was tall, maybe six foot two, with dark hair slicked back and a suit that probably cost more than Damien had earned in his entire life, his face was handsome in a cold sharp way and his eyes swept over the room with the kind of confidence that only came from being born into money.Julian Crane.Damien

Julian nodded slowly and looked at Richard with the kind of expression that said they were both thinking the same thing. "He is absolutely going to be a problem."Richard's face hardened and he walked back toward the center of the room where Damien was still on the floor with the guards holding him down. "We cannot let him leave."Margaret folded her arms across her chest and her voice came out sharp and final. "Not after what just happened, not when we are this close.""Close to what?" Damien said, his voice muffled against the floor. "You already collected everything, you tookthe formula, I gave you three years of my life, what else do you want from me?""We want you silent," Julian said, and he said it like he was discussing the weather. "Right now you are the only person in the world who knows the truth about that drug, and if word gets out that you were the one who created it, every top family in this city is going to want you, they are going to hunt you down, they are going to o

Damien lay there in the frozen pit with his broken body sinking deeper into the ice and garbage, with the cold wrapping tighter around his chest like invisible hands squeezing the last bits of warmth out of him, and somewhere in the fog of pain and exhaustion his mind started drifting toward his mother."I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice so weak it barely made a sound, so thin it almost disappeared into the frozen air around him. "I'm so sorry, Mother, I failed you."The words came out broken and slow because his throat was closing up from the cold, because his lungs were struggling to pull in air, because every part of him was shutting down piece by piece."I failed you," he said again, and tears started sliding down his frozen cheeks. "I was so foolish, I believed them, I believed every single word those good-for-nothing bastards told me, I thought if I just worked hard enough, if I just did what they asked, they would keep their promise, they would give me the ring, they would le

At that moment Damien stared at the notification without blinking.Another line of text appeared beneath it.[STARTER ATTRIBUTES HAVE BEEN UNLOCKED.][1. UNLIMITED SYSTEM STORAGE.][2. UNLIMITED SYSTEM FARMLAND.][3. SYSTEM TIME DIFFERENCE.][ONE MINUTE INSIDE THE SYSTEM EQUALS ONE DAY OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM.]Damien's eyes widened as he read the next line.[ONE HOUR INSIDE THE SYSTEM EQUALS SIXTY DAYS OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM.]He quickly began calculating in his head.One day inside the system had twenty-four hours, and every hour held sixty minutes, which meant one day inside the system contained one thousand four hundred and forty minutes.If one thousand four hundred and forty days in the system world would equal one day in real words That was almost four years in the system word.Damien's lips slowly parted.He had sixty days before the apocalypse, but inside the system, he could spend over 240 years and still gain the same amount of outside time before the disaster arrived.With that mu

At that exact moment, Damien felt his entire body go rigid with shock, and it was not the shock of receiving another system mission that froze him in place, it was the single word attached to that mission, a name that struck something deep and painful inside him the second it registered in his mind.Whitmore.That name alone was enough to send a cold shiver crawling up his spine, a name he had never once expected to hear again so soon, a name that belonged to the very family who had destroyed everything he once loved in the life he had already lived through. Clara, his wife in that frozen future, the woman who stood over him with a bat in her hands and broke every bone in his body without a flicker of guilt on her face, her family name had been Whitmore. That could only mean one thing, and the realization hit him like a punch to the gut, this woman lying on the ground bleeding out in front of him, this Megan Whitmore, had to be connected somehow to that same bloodline, to that same r