Reborn Apex: The City Is My Cage

Chapter 1: Butchered for Rations

The butcher knife did not hesitate.

It slid through Ethan Vance’s ribs with a sickening crunch, wet and cold, piercing his heart before he could draw his final breath.

"Stop wasting good breath, Ethan," his brother-in-law, Marcus, spat, his face slick with sweat and greed as he wrenched the heavy blade free. "The shelter's trading post only gives three days of protein paste for a fresh, healthy male body. Your sacrifice keeps us alive for another week."

Across the cramped, freezing concrete basement, his wife, Chloe, averted her eyes, clutching a dented can of expired peaches to her chest. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She only watched his life pool onto the filthy floor with the clinical detachment of a merchant inspecting livestock.

They had used him. For three brutal years of the freezing apocalypse, Ethan had bled, scavenged, and killed infected beasts outside the safe zone, bringing every single calorie back to feed these parasites. While his fingers rotted from frostbite and his stomach shrank from starvation, Chloe and Marcus sat warm by the heater, plotting how to squeeze more utility out of his broken frame. And this was his reward—slaughtered like a pig in the dark so they could trade his carcass for canned corn.

Bitterness burned hotter than the freezing wasteland air, searing through Ethan's consciousness as his vision faded to absolute black. If there is a hell... I will drag every last one of you down with me.

Gasp!

Ethan bolted upright, a violent cough racking his chest as fresh air flooded his lungs.

The air didn't smell like rotting corpses, sulfur, and stale damp concrete. It smelled like expensive coffee, clean laundry, and the faint, sweet scent of springtime pollen drifting through an open window. He looked down at his hands. No frostbite. No black necrotic scars. No blood. Just clean, living skin.

He whipped his head around the room. Leather-bound notebooks, a sleek laptop glowing on a mahogany desk, and a calendar hanging on the wall mocking him with a bold red circle.

October 12th.

Three months. He had traveled backward across the river of time, waking up exactly three months before the global freezing apocalypse annihilated human civilization. In ninety days, the sun would vanish, temperatures would plummet to minus eighty degrees, and billions would freeze or starve in the dark while governments collapsed into anarchy.

In his past life, he had spent these crucial final months working eighty-hour weeks to pay off Marcus's gambling debts, leaving himself completely unprepared when the frost hit. He had spent his savings on luxuries for Chloe's family instead of stockpiling generators, non-perishable food, and heavy-duty thermal gear. They had bled him dry in peacetime, and murdered him the moment peacetime ended.

The sheer weight of that betrayal rushed through his veins, transforming into a cold, focused fury. Every memory of his pathetic servitude flashed before his eyes—the exhaustion, the gaslighting, the cold steel of the knife tearing through his flesh. Never again.

"Ethan!" A sharp, demanding voice slammed through the bedroom door, followed by a heavy, aggressive knock. "Open this door right now! I know you're in there wasting time!"

It was Chloe’s mother, Brenda, her shrill tone dripping with the familiar, venomous entitlement that had once driven him to his grave. In the past timeline, this exact morning marked the beginning of his endless exploitation by their family, culminating in the day they signed away his emergency funds and forced him to clear out his retirement accounts for Marcus's worthless investments.

"Pack your bags and transfer that fifty thousand dollars from your personal savings account to Marcus's business account immediately," Brenda shouted through the wood paneling, rattling the brass handle. "My son needs capital for his new venture, and a useless parasite like you should be glad to contribute to this family!"

Ethan sat at the edge of the bed, feeling the rich, surging pulse of blood through his veins. The submission, the exhaustion, the blind loyalty—they all died on that cold basement floor.

He stood slowly, his joints popping with newfound strength. A cold, terrifying smile crept across his lips as he walked toward the locked barrier.

This time, he wasn't playing the role of the sacrifice.

He reached out, grabbed the heavy wooden door handle, and yanked it wide open, staring dead into his mother-in-law's startled face.

Brenda stumbled backward, her mouth kept opening to spew more venom, but Ethan didn't give her the chance.

"Get out of my room," Ethan said, his voice terrifyingly calm, carrying an icy weight that made Brenda freeze in her tracks.

Before she could recover her voice to scream, the air in the room suddenly warped. A strange, humming blue interface flashed instantaneously across his retina, a spatial storage dimension, waking up early.

Ding.