Reborn 7 Days Before Doomsday: Sovereign of the Infinite For

Chapter 5

The morning sun filtered through the blinds of the apartment, casting long, pale stripes across the unmade bed. Elena stirred beneath the silk sheets, automatically reaching her hand out toward the nightstand, expecting the warm aroma of fresh tea and buttered toast to drift in. For three years, Norman had woken up at dawn every single morning, walking on tiptoes so he would not disturb her rest.

He would always set a cup of hot tea by her pillow, along with sweet fruit cut into neat, bite-sized pieces. If the autumn morning was chilly, he would sit on the edge of the mattress and gently rub her cold hands between his warm palms until her skin grew pink again. But this morning, the room was dead silent, freezing, and hollow like an empty tomb.

Elena dragged herself out of bed, shivering as her bare feet touched the icy tiles of the hallway. The kitchen counter was clean and bare, without a single pot of water boiling or a warm plate waiting for her. The silence pressed against her chest, bringing a dull, hollow ache that made her throat tighten.

In the living room, Damian was pacing back and forth across the rug, buttoning his suit with frantic, jerky motions. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes, and his phone buzzed constantly on the glass table with threatening messages from private lenders. He had two million dollars in overdue gambling debts coming due in forty-eight hours, and the loan sharks had already warned him what would happen if the cash was not wired today.

Hearing Elena’s quiet footsteps, Damian snapped his head around, his handsome face twisting into an ugly scowl. "What took you so long to get up?" Damian barked, his voice sharp and grating. "Go boil some water and make me black coffee! I don't have all morning to sit around waiting on you!"

Elena stopped in the doorway, blinking in stunned disbelief at the venom in his voice. "Damian, I just woke up," Elena whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "The apartment is freezing, and there are no coffee beans in the kitchen. Norman always bought the groceries on his way home from work..."

"Don't mention that loser's name in front of me!" Damian shouted, waving his hand with raw disgust. "If you had done your job and kept that fool under your thumb, he would have signed the warehouse transfer yesterday! Now I have to go down to Mercer Logistics myself and pull the money directly from the corporate reserve account!"

He snatched his briefcase from the sofa and shoved his way past her toward the front door, without a gentle glance or a single caring word. Elena stood alone in the cold hallway, her fingers curling tightly into her palms as a sickening dread settled deep in her stomach. For three years, she had convinced herself that Damian was a charming gentleman and Norman was just an obedient servant; yet the moment pressure hit, Damian treated her like dirt beneath his shoes.

Across town, the corporate headquarters of Mercer Logistics stood tall near the bustling freight district. Damian stepped out of his leased black Mercedes at the main entrance, straightening his silk tie and forcing an arrogant smirk onto his face. He strutted through the glass doors, intending to march into the accounting department and order the finance director to wire two million dollars to his personal account.

Before he could reach the elevators, four burly private security guards stepped out from the corridor, blocking his path with broad, immovable shoulders. Behind them walked Walter Sterling, dressed in a sharp gray suit, holding a thick legal folder stamped with official red court seals.

"What is the meaning of this?" Damian sneered, lifting his chin with forced confidence. "Do you idiots know who you're touching? I am the acting executive director of this company! Move out of my way before I fire every single one of you!"

Walter Sterling looked at Damian through his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes filled with cold disgust. "You were the acting director, Mr. Cross," Walter said clearly, his voice carrying across the entire lobby. "As of eight o'clock this morning, the district court granted Mr. Norman Mercer full, uncontested authority over all corporate assets, titles, and bank accounts."

Walter stepped forward, slapping a thick white envelope directly against Damian's chest. "You are officially terminated for gross financial misconduct and unauthorized debt diversion. Your executive clearance has been revoked, your office has been sealed by the court, and your keycards are dead."

Damian’s face drained of all color, his arrogant expression collapsing into wild panic. "That’s impossible!" Damian roared, lunging forward with shaking fists. "Norman is an illiterate bumpkin! He can't run this company without me! That money in the reserve account belongs to my operations!"

The two security guards moved instantly, grabbing Damian’s arms and twisting them behind his back with practiced force. They dragged him toward the revolving doors, while office workers gathered around the upper railings, whispering and pointing at his disgraced figure.

"Also, Mr. Cross," Walter added calmly, pointing toward a tow truck backing up to the entrance. "That Mercedes you drove here was leased under the Mercer corporate name. The keys have been repossessed, and your personal belongings will be mailed to your mother's house in a cardboard box."

"Get your filthy hands off me!" Damian shrieked, kicking wildly as the guards dragged him across the polished tiles. "Norman! You ungrateful bastard! I'll tear you apart for this! I'll ruin you!"

With one hard shove, the guards threw Damian out the glass doors, sending him sprawling face-first onto the dirty sidewalk. His briefcase popped open, scattering business cards into the gutter while his expensive trousers ripped open at the knee. Passersby stopped to stare and laugh, leaving Damian shivering in the dust, consumed by helpless, burning rage.

Before he could pull himself up, his phone rang shrilly in his pocket. He scrambled to pull it out, his blood turning to ice as he saw the name on the screen: Red Viper. With trembling hands, Damian pressed the green button, hearing a low, raspy whisper come through the speaker: "You have thirty-six hours, Damian. If my two million isn't in my hands, my boys will bring me your fingers one by one."

Damian hung up, his chest heaving with terrified, ragged breaths as cold sweat soaked his collar. He spent his last bill on a cheap taxi, screaming at the driver to rush back to the residential district. He barged through the apartment door like a madman, kicking the wooden frame so hard the walls rattled.

Beatrice was sitting at the table polishing her gold rings, while Elena stood near the window with red, tear-stained eyes. Damian swept his arm across the counter with a roar, sending mugs and glass bowls crashing to the floor in a shower of sharp pieces.

"Damian! What happened?!" Beatrice shrieked, jumping out of her chair in terror. "Where is your car? Did you get the company cash?!"

"The company threw me out!" Damian screamed, his face bright red and veins bulging along his neck. "That filthy stray Norman hired Walter Sterling and locked down every single bank account! They took my car, they locked my office, and the loan sharks are coming to take my life tomorrow!"

Elena rushed forward, her hands outstretched in genuine concern. "Damian, please, calm down! We can talk to the lawyers, or we can go to the bank and explain—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Damian swung his heavy forearm, striking Elena hard across the shoulder. The sudden blow knocked her completely off balance, sending her crashing against the edge of the wooden dining table. A sharp cry of pain tore from her throat as she collapsed onto the floor, clutching her bruised arm.

"Shut your damn mouth!" Damian roared, towering over her with clenched fists. "If you weren't so completely useless, Norman would have signed that warehouse deed days ago! You swore he was your obedient dog, but you couldn't even keep him on a leash! This is all your fault, you stupid woman!"

Beatrice rushed over, not to help her bruised daughter off the floor, but to grab Damian’s arm with desperate greed. "Damian, honey, don't shout! We need a plan! What about Norman's new house? The one on the mountain that cost twenty million dollars! He must have millions in cash hidden up there!"

Elena sat crumpled on the cold floor, silent tears streaming down her pale cheeks as she looked up at Damian's twisted, furious face. She held her aching shoulder, remembering how Norman used to wrap his own coat around her whenever the evening wind picked up. When she had twisted her ankle two winters ago, Norman had carried her up four flights of stairs on his back without a single complaint.

He really loved me, Elena thought, the realization stabbing through her heart like a freezing needle. Norman would have bled dry just to keep me safe, and I threw him away for a coward who beats me the second his money runs out. A bitter, suffocating regret filled her chest, so heavy she could hardly breathe.

While the apartment drowned in bitter shouting, a heavy pickup truck climbed the winding mountain road on the city's western ridge. Norman drove slowly, the warm morning sun reflecting off the hood as the vehicle reached the high granite peak. Beside him sat his mother Martha, dressed in a soft woolen sweater, looking out the passenger window in quiet wonder.

The reinforced gates of Mount Pinnacle Villa No. 1 swung open automatically as Norman approached, guided by the new biometric sensors. The fortress stood tall against the blue sky, surrounded by three-foot-thick concrete walls and high steel fences. Norman parked in the courtyard, walked around to the passenger side, and gently lifted his frail mother into his arms.

"Norman, sweetheart, where are you taking me?" Martha asked softly, her thin hands resting against his chest. "This looks like a palace for kings. A poor family like ours doesn't belong in a place like this, son."

Norman smiled warmly, his eyes softening with deep, unconditional love as he carried her through the front entrance. "You don't ever have to worry about rent again, Mom," Norman said gently. "I took on a major consulting contract with a private energy group, and this house is ours for good."

He carried her into the master bedroom on the first floor, where wide panoramic windows let in endless streams of bright sunlight. The heated floors warmed Martha’s slippers, and outside the glass lay a climate-controlled greenhouse filled with blooming jasmine and fresh green herbs. Martha reached out with trembling fingers, touching the warm stone walls as tears spilled from her gentle eyes.

"My boy... it's so warm in here," Martha wept softly, resting her wrinkled hand against his cheek. "My knees... they don't ache at all when I walk on this floor. Your father would be so proud to see you today."

Norman held his mother’s hand tightly, feeling a deep, quiet peace settle into his chest. In his past life, she had frozen to death on an icy balcony, murdered by the very people he had starved himself to feed. In this life, she would live in comfort and warmth, completely protected from the nightmare that was about to consume the world below.

After tucking Martha into the soft bed with her medicine and a warm cup of herbal tea, Norman walked down to the basement. He passed through two heavy vault doors, descending into the deep bedrock bunker carved directly into the mountain stone. The air was cool, dry, and dead silent.

Norman stood in the center of the concrete room and focused his mind, reaching out toward the boundless void inside his consciousness. To test the absolute limits of his new storage dimension, he had stopped at a diner on his way up the mountain. He had purchased a boiling clay pot of spicy braised beef stew, bubbling with red chili oil, and a carton of soft-serve vanilla ice cream.

Twelve full hours had passed since he placed them inside the pitch-black space. Norman extended his right hand, willing the items to return to reality. With a faint shimmer in the air, the clay pot and the cardboard carton materialized cleanly on the steel table before him.

Norman leaned forward, checking the food with sharp attention. The clay pot was still bubbling violently, steam rising in thick, fragrant clouds, the beef soup boiling hot to the touch. Beside it, the soft-serve ice cream stood completely firm, without a single drop melting or softening along its crisp edges.

"Absolute zero decay," Norman murmured, a cold, satisfied smile touching his lips. "Ten thousand years inside that space, and hot food won't lose a single degree of heat." The ultimate tool for surviving the cataclysm was firmly in his hands.

Norman left the mountain and drove straight down to the commercial docks of Southport Harbor. The waterfront was a massive maze of industrial depots, cargo ships, and rail lines, moving millions of tons of goods every single day. Using his verified credentials as the procurement director for an overseas relief charity, Norman signed leases for four cavernous storage warehouses near Pier 9.

Armed with his remaining twenty million dollars in cash and high-limit corporate credit lines, Norman began the greatest supply sweep the city had ever seen. He didn't waste time bargaining over small amounts; he bought out regional distribution hubs in bulk, paying double rates for immediate delivery within forty-eight hours.

He contacted the largest grain suppliers in the province, ordering five thousand tons of vacuum-sealed white rice, three thousand tons of premium flour, and hundreds of tons of refined sugar, salt, and cooking oil. Next, he visited the massive cold-storage facilities by the docks, writing multi-million-dollar checks to clear out entire warehouses of prime wagyu beef, whole pork sides, frozen mutton, and thousands of crates of seafood.

For quick, high-calorie meals, Norman purchased one hundred thousand boxes of premium instant noodles, self-heating beef hot pots, canned luncheon meat, chocolate bars, and energy biscuits. He added two hundred thousand bottles of clean drinking water, soda, canned coffee, and fruit juice, ensuring that decades of isolation would never run his pantry dry.

Medical supplies were even more critical than food. Norman drove to the regional distribution depots of two major pharmaceutical companies, purchasing surgical tools, sterile gauze, burn ointments, broad-spectrum antibiotics, painkillers, and thousands of bottles of pure disinfectant alcohol. He also secured fifty industrial oxygen tanks and complete emergency trauma kits, gathering enough medicine to supply an entire hospital.

Finally, Norman arranged for fuel tankers from the state refinery to pump one hundred thousand gallons of high-grade diesel directly into Mount Pinnacle's underground fuel bladders. The estate had geothermal generators and industrial solar arrays, but in the coming apocalypse, diesel was life, power, and absolute security.

By midnight, the harbor district had fallen quiet under a heavy sea fog rolling off the dark ocean. A lone night guard at the gatehouse waved Norman’s truck through, knowing the wealthy director liked to inspect his relief supplies in private. Norman drove deep into Warehouse Depot B, locking the heavy steel rolling doors behind him.

The sight inside the depot was breathtaking: towering stacks of wooden pallets reached four stories high, packed with millions of pounds of vacuum-sealed grain, crates of meat, and boxes of medicine. It was a mountain of survival resources capable of feeding thousands of people through years of ruin.

Norman walked down the center aisle, his boots clicking softly against the concrete floor. He raised his right hand, his eyes burning with calm, absolute authority as he opened the dimensional void. An invisible wave of spatial distortion rippled out from his palm, sweeping across the rows of cargo pallets like a silent tide.

Stack after stack of grain vanished into thin air without making a sound. Mountains of canned meat, crates of antibiotics, and barrels of cooking oil dissolved into his time-stasis dimension in the blink of an eye. Within ten minutes, the massive warehouse was stripped completely bare, leaving behind only clean, empty concrete under the dim halogen lights.

Norman repeated the exact same process across all four rented depots, moving through the foggy harbor like a ghost. By the time he walked out of the final warehouse, ten thousand tons of life-saving supplies were resting safely inside his infinite storage, ready to be summoned with a single thought.

A crisp, crimson chime chimed loudly inside his mind, echoing with triumphant finality:

[Mission 2 successfully completed: Safe Shelter Built & 10,000 Tons of Supplies Secured!]

[Reward Issued: Body Strengthening Level 1. Old injuries healed, stamina and strength doubled.]

[Reward Issued: Danger Radar. Detects infected people within five kilometers.]

[Mission 3 issued: Drive the intruders away from Mount Pinnacle!]

[Mission 3 Reward: Zombie Camouflage. Full viral immunity. Zombies will ignore you and never attack.]

A warm feeling spread through Norman's chest and flowed down into his arms and legs. The heavy ache in his lower back and the stiffness in his knees faded away, wiping out the wear and tear of years of hard labor in seconds.

His body felt light, healthy, and full of steady energy, just like a trained soldier in great shape. He was not an invincible giant yet, but doubling his strength gave him the perfect foundation to grow even stronger in the days ahead.

Norman rolled his shoulders and started the truck engine, feeling calm and confident behind the wheel. He reached over to turn on the dashboard radio, wanting to check the roads before driving back up the mountain.

The radio crackled with static before the tense voice of a news reporter filled the cabin. "We have an urgent health update from the lower harbor district, where twelve dockworkers have been quarantined after attacking people with sudden fevers and violent bites."

Norman looked down at the red clock on his dashboard, watching the numbers tick quietly in the dark. Only two days were left before modern civilization fell apart, and everything was moving exactly as he remembered.