Reborn Before The Apocalypse

CHAPTER 2: ANOMALY

"Jay?"

Lilly’s voice drifted from right outside my door, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

Those blue letters were still hovering in the air, suspended right in front of my eyes.

[HOST DESIGNATION: FIRST OF THE REBORN.] On pure instinct, I swiped at them, half-hoping they’d feel solid. They didn't. My hand just passed through the light as if it were nothing.

The text didn't budge. It stayed exactly where it was.

"Jay, I'm coming in, okay?"

"Wait…" My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Wait, I’m not dressed yet."

There was a pause, then a light, warm laugh from the other side of the door. "Since when has that ever stopped me?"

 Since I spent three years being unable to say no to you,  I thought. Out loud, I just said, "Two minutes. Promise."

I heard her footsteps retreating toward the kitchen. I sat there in the sudden, heavy silence, staring at words that no one else in the world could see in an apartment where the woman who had laughed while I died was currently making eggs just forty feet away.

I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. My hands were shaking, and I just let them shake; there was no one around to witness it yet.

Okay, I thought, glaring at the notification as if I could bully it into making sense. Okay. What the hell are you?

Nothing happened. The words just sat there, patient and steady, glowing a faint blue against my bedroom wall.

I tried again, this time shaping the thought like a question, the way you’d speak to someone standing right in front of you. Show me more. Please.

The blue light flickered. New text began to bleed in beneath the first line, smaller, almost delicate.

[Status: Active]

[Level: 1]

[Skill Unlocked: Truth Sight — Passive]

[Skill Unlocked: Restraint — Passive]

[Note: You are the only host currently active. This state is temporary.]

I read that final line three times.

The only host currently active. Which meant that, eventually, that wouldn't be the case. It meant I already knew—with a certainty that settled in my bones like ice water exactly what "temporary" implied. I knew exactly how much time I had before the world I remembered began to collapse into the one I was standing in right now.

Months. Maybe even less.

"Eggs are getting cold!" Lilly called out from the kitchen.

I caught my reflection in the closet mirror. Same face. Same tired eyes I’d carried for years, the ones that used to look at her like she was the center of the universe. I forced a smile at my own reflection, testing it to see if it still worked.

It did. And that terrified me more than anything the system had shown me so far.

--------------------

Breakfast was exactly as I remembered it. It was exactly how it used to be, before I realized what "used to be" was going to cost me.

Lilly sat across from me wearing one of my old T-shirts, her hair pulled up in a messy knot, humming along to something quiet on her phone. She’d made too much coffee, as always, and slid the extra mug toward me without even asking—because she already knew I wanted it.

I watched her over the rim of my cup, thinking about a locked door.

"You're staring," she said with a smile, not looking up from her eggs. "What is it?"

"Nothing." I forced a smile back. "Just thinking you look nice this morning."

It wasn't even a lie. That was the worst part. She did look nice. She always had. That had never been the issue.

"Kyle wants to do dinner tonight," she said, stabbing at her food. "Says he’s got news. He sounded pretty excited on the phone."

My stomach did a slow, cold flip. In my first life, Kyle had never once shared his "news" until he was ready to reveal it. I used to just think it was his personality dramatic, always building up the suspense.

Now, I wondered how long he’d been building up to the thing that eventually got me killed.

"Sounds good," I said. "I'll be there."

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, a quick, warm gesture that used to be the highlight of my day. "You've been acting weird all morning," she said, studying my face a little too closely. "Are you okay?"

No, I thought. I died in this apartment. Or I will. Or I did. I don't even know which tense to use for any of this anymore.

"Just a weird dream," I said instead. "I'm fine."

She smiled, satisfied, and dropped it. That was Lilly, never one to push too hard, never one to dig into the things I wasn't ready to show her.

I used to think that was kindness.

Now, I wondered if it was just convenient.

------------------------

She left for work shortly after nine. I stood by the window and watched her walk down to her car, watched her do a quick check of her reflection in the side mirror, and watched her drive away like it was just any other Tuesday.

The moment her car turned the corner, the apartment fell silent. The blue light flared back to life in the corner of my vision, sharper than before.

I sat back down at the kitchen table, alone with my cooling coffee, and tried to focus. There had to be more than just a status screen and two passive skills. There had to be something I could actually use.

Show me everything, I thought. Everything you've got.

The system remained quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I began to doubt it had even heard me.

Then, suddenly, new text bloomed across my vision, bright and urgent, edged in a shade of red I hadn't seen yet.

[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED.]

[Distance: 400 meters from current location.]

[Classification: UNKNOWN.]

[Recommendation: Investigate or ignore. Choice will be recorded.]

I set my coffee down so hard that it sloshed over the rim.

Four hundred meters. That was... that was the old grocery store on Fifth. The one that had been half-empty for years, boarded up on one side since before I even moved into this building.

The outbreak wasn't supposed to start for months. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I had lived through the actual beginning once already; I had watched the news break and watched the world fall apart in real time over a single, devastating week.

But this wasn't that. This was early. This was wrong.

“Choice will be recorded,” the system repeated, its voice steady and patient.

I pushed myself up slowly, the chair legs scraping harshly against the floor. I turned toward the window, looking out at a building that ought to have been empty and silent, just as dull and predictable as it had been for years.

But something was already there. Something that shouldn't have existed yet.

And it was sitting only four hundred meters from my front door.