Reborn Before The End

CHAPTER 6: THE WOMAN AT MY DOOR

Soren's Pov

I stood frozen a few feet from the door, listening to the woman on the other side.

“Soren. Open the door. We need to talk.”

The voice was exact.

Nadia Kessler.

In my first life I had heard that voice only once, thin and strained over a dying radio in the final weeks, broadcasting coordinates for a survivor group that no longer existed by the time I reached the location. I had never seen her face. According to every memory I carried, Nadia Kessler did not appear until long after the cities had already fallen. She was a post-collapse survivor. Not a pre-collapse stranger standing in my hallway three months before the end.

Yet the voice was hers.

And the spatial ability inside my mind was reacting to her presence. The darkness trembled in irregular pulses, supplies shifting at the edges of my awareness like loose objects on a vibrating table.

I did not open the door.

“Who sent you?” I asked through the wood.

A short silence. Then: “No one sent me. Not exactly.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know something is wrong with you,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I’ve been looking for you.”

I kept my voice flat. “How do you know my name?”

Another pause, longer this time. “I don’t know how to explain that either. Not in a way that sounds sane.”

“Try.”

She exhaled. “Three nights ago I started having dreams. The city collapsing. Power stations going dark. People fighting over water. And you. I kept seeing your face. I didn’t know who you were. I just knew I had to find you before the first major failure.”

My hand stayed on the deadbolt.

“What first major failure?”

“The power facility,” she said. “The one that went offline at midnight. The one the news called a technical malfunction.”

The words landed with precision.

Only someone who remembered the future or had been told about it could have connected that specific event to me this quickly.

I unlocked the door and opened it halfway, keeping my body angled to block the interior.

Nadia Kessler stood in the hallway exactly as the outline of her voice had suggested. Early thirties. Dark hair pulled back. Calm posture. Observant eyes that studied me the same way I was studying her. She looked nothing like the frightened, dirt-streaked survivor I had imagined from that single radio transmission. This version of her was composed, alert, and clearly evaluating every detail of my face and the narrow slice of apartment visible behind me.

“You’re shorter than I expected,” she said.

“You’re earlier than you should be.”

Her brows pulled together slightly. “What does that mean?”

“It means you shouldn’t be here yet.”

She didn’t ask for clarification. Instead she glanced past me into the apartment, then back at my face. “Are you going to let me in, or are we doing this in the hallway?”

I stepped aside just enough. She entered. I closed the door and immediately put distance between us, stopping near the table still covered in maps.

Nadia’s gaze moved across the room, sparse furniture, the duffel, the marked maps, the notebook. She didn’t comment on any of it. She simply looked, cataloguing.

“I’ve been having the dreams for three nights,” she said. “They’re not normal dreams. They feel like memories that don’t belong to me. A city I recognize falling apart. People dying in ways that feel too specific. And you. Sometimes you’re searching abandoned buildings. Sometimes you’re arguing with people I don’t know. Sometimes you’re already dead.”

I kept my expression neutral. “Dreams don’t usually come with names and addresses.”

“No. They don’t.” She met my eyes. “I woke up yesterday with your name in my head and this building’s address. I didn’t know why. I just knew I had to get here before something else happened.”

“And the message?”

Her expression shifted. “You know about the message.”

“I know someone has been contacting people who shouldn’t have certain information yet.”

Nadia nodded once. “An unknown number. It gave me your name and this address. It said I had to find you before the first major disaster. That was two days ago. The power failure happened last night. I came as soon as I confirmed the location.”

The same unknown sender. The same impossible knowledge. Now reaching more than one person.

Before I could ask the next question, the spatial ability surged without warning.

The darkness inside my mind expanded hard enough that the edges of my vision dimmed. For a fraction of a second the boundary between the ordinary room and the storage space felt thin, almost translucent.

Nadia’s eyes widened.

She took a half-step back, staring at the air between us as if she could see the same darkness I felt.

“I’ve seen that before,” she whispered. “In the dreams. That exact darkness. It was around you.”

I forced the ability back under control. The trembling slowed, then stilled. The supplies settled.

Nadia’s breathing had changed. She was no longer simply studying me. She was re-evaluating everything she thought she understood.

“What are you?” she asked quietly.

“Someone who doesn’t have time for incomplete answers. Who sent the message?”

“I don’t know. The number doesn’t exist when I try to call it. Same as yours, I’m guessing.”

She was right. But that didn’t make her safe.

Nadia took one careful step closer. “Look. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I’m dreaming about a future that hasn’t arrived. I don’t know why your name and face are in those dreams. But the message told me to find you, and the power failure happened exactly when it said the first disaster would. So I’m here. And you clearly already know more than you’re saying.”

I opened my mouth to answer.

She suddenly grabbed my forearm.

Her grip was strong. Her expression had changed completely; alert, focused, no longer exploratory.

“Someone is watching the apartment,” she said under her breath.

I didn’t question her. I moved to the window at an angle that kept me mostly hidden by the frame and looked down at the street.

A dark vehicle sat parked across the road, lights off, engine off. The silhouette of a person was visible in the driver’s seat. Unmoving. Facing the building.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out.

A new message from the unknown number.

*Don't trust Nadia.*

I looked up.

Nadia was staring directly at the phone in my hand, as if she already knew what it said.

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“They found you faster than I expected.”