2026-06-22 12:43:13The last thing I felt was the sting of cold spit on my face and the sound of my own ribs snapping like dry twigs. It hurts like a bitch. I remember the smell most, that nasty metallic stank or old blood and wet rot. Then there was Anna. My “loving” girlfriend. I can still see her face, all sweaty and pale, as she shoved me backward into the dark.
“Sorry, Mateo! Better you than me!” She snapped and ran away.
That cunt. After ten years of me paying her bills and kissing her ass while being her bodyguard in disguise as boyfriend, she used me as a shield to get away from a pack of shamblers. She didn't even look back. She just bolted, leaving me to get ripped apart while she ran for her life.
Then, everything went black. I thought I was dead. I should have been dead.
Gasp!
I sat up so fast my head spun. I wasn't on the cold, dirty pavement. I was in bed. The sheets were clean, and the room smelled like those vanilla candles I always buy.
I looked around, my heart hammering against my chest like a trapped bird. The sun was peeking through the blinds, hitting the messy pile of clothes on the floor. On the nightstand, my phone buzzed.
8:12 AM.
I stared at the dates. Tuesday. My brain felt like it was melting. This was Day Zero. The day the world went to crap. In exactly nine hours, that purple “Black Must” would roll into the city and turn everyone into a “Standardized Hive”.
“Babe? You okay? You're making weird-ass noises over there.”
I froze. That voice. I wanted to puke just hearing it.
Anna walked out of the bathroom, running a towel over her head. She looked so…normal. No scars, no blood. Just the same arrogant, “pretty girl” face I’d been swallowing sandpaper.
“Well, get over it. We're supposed to meet folks for brunch at ten, and you know my mom's a total psycho about being late.” She didn't even look at me. She was too busy checking herself out in the mirror, fixing her hair like she was some kind of movie star.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking, but it wasn't fear anymore. It was pure, unfiltered rage. I remembered the way her hands felt when they pushed me. I remembered the sound of her sneakers hitting the pavement as she ran away.
“Mateo? Hello? Earth to Mateo?” Anna turned around looking annoyed. “Did you iron my gray slacks or what? I can't go to brunch looking like a hobo because you decided to sleep in.”
I looked at her, really looked at her. I saw the “Narcissistic Parasite” she really was. In my first life, I would've jumped up, apologized, and ironed those stupid pants.
Not today.
“Iron ‘em yourself, Anna,” I said. I kept my voice low and cold.
Anna's jaw dropped. “What did you just say?”
“I said I'm not your damn maid. And I'm definitely not going to brunch with your fake-ass parents.”
I got out of bed, my legs feeling like jelly but my head clearer than it had ever been. I grabbed my big camping backpack from the closet and started throwing stuff in. I didn't have much time. Nine hours is nothing when you're trying to prepare for an apocalypse.
“Are you having a mid-life crisis or something?” Anna laughed, that annoying chuckle. “Look, if this is about me missing dinner last night, get over it, I'm gonna be a doctor, Mateo. I have real pressure.”
I stopped and walked right up to her. I'm way taller than her, when I looked her in the eye she actually stepped back.
“In nine hours, Anna, nobody's gonna give a damn about your medical degree,” I whispered. “And honestly? Nobody's gonna give a damn about you.”
I reached past her and grabbed her wallet off the dresser.
“Hey! Give that back!”
“No, this is the money I gave you for your ‘textbooks’ that you actually spent on hair and makeup,” I said, flipping it open. I took the credit cards and every single twenty-dollar bill inside. “Think of it as a jerk tax for the last ten years.”
“Mateo, I'm not kidding! Put that back or I'm calling the cops!”
I didn't even blink. I grabbed a heavy glass award from the desk and I slammed it into the wall mounted mirror. The glass exploded. Shards flew everywhere, and Anna screamed like a little girl, tripping over her own feet.
“Don't follow me,” I told her, my heart finally finding a steady beat. “If I see you again today, I'm not gonna aim for the mirror. I'll aim for your teeth.”
I walked out of the apartment and slammed the door. I was halfway down the stairs when a sharp ping echoed right inside my brain.
A glowing blue screen popped up right in front of my eyes.
[Eros- Survival System Initializing…]
[User: Mateo Ambrose]
[Status: Reborn (Cycle 2)] [Mutation Level: 0.01% (Latent)] [Welcome back, Subject 001. The countdown has begun.]I stared at the screen, my mouth hanging open. I wasn't just lucky. I had accidentally bound a high level AI meant for the “Architects” of the new world.
I looked at the timer on the edge of the screen.
08:42:15
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0058
Jaxen and I ended up on the same scouting mission three days later, not by any grand gesture toward reconciliation, but because Ruby's beacon triangulation had finally narrowed Red Sun's location down to a five mile radius, and someone needed eyes on the ground to confirm it before we committed real resources to an assault.Neither of us had said a proper word about the fight yet. We'd fallen into a careful, professional truce instead, speaking only when the mission required it, both of us clearly aware of how much easier this would be if we just talked and neither of us willing to be the one to start. Ruby had offered, more than once, to send Ward in my place, and both times I'd told her no before she finished the sentence, some stubborn part of me refusing to let a fight I hadn't apologized for cost us this too.We moved out before dawn, quiet, professional, the easy warmth from the watchtower night feeling like something that had happened to two entirely different p
0057
Jaxen and I didn't speak for two full days after the fight, and the fortress felt smaller for it, every hallway suddenly full of careful, deliberate paths that avoided crossing each other's routes.I threw myself into helping Ruby instead, mostly because it gave my hands something to do that wasn't replaying the look on his face when he walked out. She'd set up a proper decryption station in the corner of the rebuilt workshop, cobbled together from salvaged servers and a patience I didn't fully understand, working her way through the lab data fragment she'd first found weeks ago, back before Red Sun ever became more than a symbol on a tree."You don't have to babysit me," she said, not looking up from her screen, fingers moving fast over a keyboard held together with electrical tape."I'm not babysitting. I'm helping.""You're avoiding your own bunk because Jaxen's in it and you two are being idiots about a fight neither of you has the guts to finish."
0056
Jaxen's hand closed around mine at last, and the meter's climb finally broke, dropping fast enough that my knees buckled with the sudden release of pressure. He caught me before I hit the ground, lowering us both onto the dirt, one arm banded tight around my back while the other stayed pressed flat against my chest, over my heart, the way he always did when things got this bad.For a moment neither of us said anything, my breathing slowly evening out, his hand still shaking slightly against my chest even after the immediate danger passed. Ruby hovered a few feet away, wringing her hands, clearly torn between wanting to help and knowing there was nothing left for her to do but wait. Ward had gone to fetch water and came back with a full canteen he pressed into Jaxen's free hand without a word, and Jaxen tipped it against my lips without looking away from my face, watching me swallow like he needed to see proof, physical and immediate, that I was still capable of something as simple as
0055
The idea came to me three days after the ambush, in the quiet stretch between morning watch rotation and the afternoon supply count, when I should have been resting instead of chasing a theory that scared me even as I turned it over in my head.If I could feel the swarm at range, if that connection ran both directions the way it had with the nest back before we ever reached the fortress, then maybe I could push something back through it too. Not just sense the undead. Direct them.I spent most of the morning arguing with myself about it, sitting on the edge of my bunk turning the idea over like a stone I couldn't put down. Part of me kept circling back to the ambush, to the fear aura I hadn't asked for and couldn't explain, to the way something inside me kept unlocking doors nobody had given me a key for. If that was happening whether I wanted it or not, didn't it make more sense to understand what I could actually do on purpose, rather than let the System keep surprising me in the mi
0054
We moved the water detail to round the clock watches within the hour, but Ruby's beacon triangulation still needed another full day to finish narrowing down Red Sun's base location, and Jaxen refused to just sit still waiting for Voss to make good on his threat."We go on the offensive," he said, spreading a rough hand-drawn map across the command room table. "Hit one of their supply routes before they hit our well. Force them to react to us instead of the other way around.""That's aggressive," I said."That's the point."Ruby, still bandaged and exhausted, pulled up a satellite image on her tablet that she'd managed to salvage some use out of despite the damage. "There's a supply convoy scheduled to pass through this junction based on patrol patterns I've been tracking. If we hit it clean, we cripple their logistics and buy ourselves breathing room."We moved out before dawn, a small strike team, me and Jaxen at the front, Ward and two of the new
0053
Jaxen didn't tell me who Voss actually was until three days later, and even then it came out sideways, half answer and half something he still hadn't fully worked through himself."He was a captain," Jaxen said, staring out at the treeline from the watchtower, arms braced against the railing. "Before everything. Different unit than mine, but we crossed paths twice on joint operations. He was good. Disciplined. The kind of officer men actually wanted to follow instead of just obeyed because rank said so.""And now he's Red Sun's enforcer.""Now he's whatever they needed him to become." Jaxen's jaw worked, something bitter twisting behind the words. "That's what worries me. Voss doesn't improvise. If he's running Red Sun's field operations, everything they've done so far has been calculated. The firebombing wasn't rage. It was a message."I didn't get to ask what kind of message, because that was the exact moment the watch bell started ringing again, three
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