2025-07-29 00:11:53The SUV’s engine rumbled low and steady like a warning growl. Jared stood beside it for a moment, listening, testing—every gear, every turn, every tremor in the machine. It wasn’t perfect. It wouldn’t outrun an explosion. But it would move, and in the days ahead, that was enough.
He wiped his hands clean, though the grease clung to his fingers like guilt. The garage lights flickered. Another surge. The city’s power grid was failing in waves now, and no one was fixing it.
[Time Remaining: 68 hrs 42 mins]
[Objective Update: Gather Med Supplies – In Progress]
The system had gone quiet after that, no new prompts. No help. Just a countdown.
He turned back toward the house.
A sharp voice echoed through the halls upstairs—Mrs. Bai, again, her shrill tone cutting through silence like shattered glass.
“You’re saying we can’t get through to the warehouse? What do you mean gone dark? Are you telling me the entire eastern district shut down and no one knows why?”
Jared climbed the steps slowly, each footfall careful and quiet.
He reached the top landing and saw chaos in motion.
Mr. Bai stood near the window, phone pressed to his ear, face pale as ash. Beside him, his wife paced with fury in her heels, clutching her tablet like it held answers. Mei sat on the couch, biting her thumbnail, her eyes darting from screen to screen on the TV.
News reports played on a loop.
Riot in Port Harrow.
Supermarket looted in broad daylight.
A man attacking paramedics on Main Street.
No motive. No warning.
Just… rage.
“What’s happening to people?” Mei whispered.
Jared watched her for a second longer than he should’ve. Her soft voice didn’t match the fear in her eyes. This wasn’t the world she was raised in. The ivory tower was crumbling—and she had no idea how to breathe in the dust.
Mrs. Bai finally turned, catching sight of him. “You.”
Jared raised a brow. “Me?”
“You fixed the garage car, right? I want it moved into the covered port. It’s not going to sit outside in that filth.”
“I’ll get to it,” Jared said, voice flat.
“Now,” she snapped.
“Sure. Right after you all stop ignoring the fact that this city’s falling apart.”
That made the room pause.
Mr. Bai looked up from his call. Mei slowly turned toward him. Even the television anchor seemed to hold his breath.
“What did you just say?” Mrs. Bai asked, her voice sharp with disbelief.
“I said you’re pretending this is just a bad news cycle. But it’s not. This isn’t a riot. This isn’t a protest. It’s collapse,” Jared said evenly. “The supply chains are gone. Communications are failing. People are panicking. And in about three days, the real violence starts.”
Silence.
Then Mrs. Bai scoffed. “And what—now you’re some kind of expert? Please. You’re a mechanic, Jared. An unemployed son-in-law we dragged in from the streets out of pity.”
“Enough,” Mr. Bai barked, but his voice lacked bite.
Jared ignored her. His eyes went to Mei. “You saw it. You’ve been watching. You feel it in your chest, don’t you? That sense that something’s wrong—not just wrong, but different.”
Mei didn’t speak. But she didn’t look away either.
“Listen to me,” Jared continued, tone low. Measured. “In less than three days, whatever’s spreading will reach this neighborhood. And once it’s here, your gates and bodyguards won’t mean a thing.”
“We have a panic room,” Mr. Bai muttered, as if repeating a prayer.
Jared nodded slowly. “Sure. You do. But it’s stocked for maybe a week. After that? You’ll need fuel. Food. Water. And good luck finding it when the whole city’s tearing itself apart.”
“You sound insane,” Mrs. Bai spat.
He turned to her now. Fully. Calm, but firm.
“I sound prepared. You’ve spent years treating me like a ghost in this house. Useless. Weak. Like I belonged beneath your heels,” Jared said. “But here’s what’s going to happen. In about sixty-eight hours, those same heels will be soaked in blood, and you’ll realize the world doesn’t care how rich you were. It only cares how fast you ran and who you stepped on to survive.”
Mrs. Bai opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Jared took a slow breath, then turned to Mei again. “You still have time. If you want to come with me when I leave, I’ll keep you safe. But I won’t ask twice.”
Mei stared at him like she didn’t know who he was. And maybe she didn’t. Not this version. Not the one who wasn’t afraid anymore.
Jared turned and walked out without waiting for a response.
Outside, the sky had turned gray.
Thick smoke crept in from the northern districts, and sirens had given way to silence. The kind of silence that rang too loud. That hinted at something breathing in the dark.
He stepped into the SUV and closed the door.
There was a knock on the window. He looked up—and saw her.
Mei.
She stood stiffly, arms crossed, hugging herself. Her voice muffled through the glass.
“Where would we even go?”
He rolled the window down halfway. “Out of the city. Into the hills. I know a place.”
She hesitated. “And my parents?”
Jared’s jaw clenched. “You know they won’t come. Not until it’s too late.”
She didn’t answer right away. Then nodded once. “I’ll pack.”
He watched her turn and hurry inside, and for the first time in hours, something shifted inside him. Not relief. Not comfort. But resolve.
He wasn’t just surviving anymore. He was choosing who to save.
[System Update: Companion Acquired – Mei Bai]
[Survival Bonus Activated: +15% Resource Luck]
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 105- She Doesn’t Know Me
POV: JaredJared forgot how to breathe.Emma was standing three steps away from him.Alive.Not a projection flickering across a broken monitor. Not a figure made of golden light. Not a fragment of consciousness trapped inside the system. Not someone he had to chase through another reality or reach through a wall of memories.Just Emma.She stood beside the old computer with one hand resting against the edge of the desk, her dark hair falling loosely around her face. The glasses were the same. The slight crease between her eyebrows was the same. Even the way she tilted her head when she was trying to understand something was painfully familiar.There were no glowing threads beneath her skin.No strange distortion around her body.No system interface hovering in the air.Nothing separated her from the world.She was flesh and blood.Jared’s chest tightened so suddenly that he almost doubled over.“Emma.”Her name came out broken.He took a step toward her.Then another.He wanted to la
Chapter 104- The First Jared
POV: JaredThe screens came back one by one.Jared stood in the middle of the server room, unable to move.Every monitor showed him.Not the same him.Different ones.A boy with a missing front tooth.A teenager sitting alone in a classroom.A young man wearing a military uniform.An older Jared with silver in his hair.One version had blood running down the side of his face.Another was lying motionless on a hospital bed.Another was standing beside a woman Jared didn’t recognize.Another was holding a child.Another was laughing.Another was screaming.Some were dead.Some were clearly alive.Some looked like they had lived completely different lives.Jared walked closer to the screens.He saw one version of himself standing in a kitchen, barefoot, cooking breakfast.Another was sitting behind a desk in a company office.Another was running through a burning city.Another was wearing the same clothes Jared had worn during one of the loops.He remembered that one.He remembered dying
Chapter 103- The Man Behind The Glass
POV: JaredThe man stood behind the glass wall.Jared didn’t move.Neither did he.For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the servers.The emergency lights washed the man’s face in a dull white glow.He looked ordinary.That was the first thing Jared noticed.No glowing eyes.No strange markings.No unnatural movement.No golden light surrounding his body.Just a man.Older than Jared remembered him.Maybe in his late fifties.His hair was mostly gray, neatly cut. He wore a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His hands rested loosely at his sides.He looked like someone Jared could have passed on the street without noticing.And somehow, that was worse.Jared knew that face.Not from one memory.From hundreds.Fragments.A voice speaking through broken speakers.A silhouette standing inside white corridors.A man appearing whenever the system reached a point Jared wasn’t supposed to survive.A man who always seemed to know what Jared had done be
Chapter 102- Run 37
POV: JaredJared was out of bed before the figure could take another step.“Emma?”The woman stood at the end of the hallway.She didn’t answer.Jared’s heart slammed against his ribs.Every part of him wanted to believe it was her.The face was right.The hair was right.Even the slight tilt of her head was familiar.But the eyes were wrong.Emma’s eyes had always moved when she thought. She looked away when she was uncomfortable. She narrowed them when she was trying to understand something. She rolled them when Jared said something stupid.This woman simply stared.Jared stepped into the hallway.“Who are you?”Nothing.He took another step.The figure turned.Then she walked away.“Wait.”Jared followed.His bare feet hit the floor hard as he moved through the hallway.He reached the corner.Nothing.The hallway was empty.Jared stopped.He checked the stairs.The living room.The kitchen.The front door.Locked.The back door.Locked.Nobody.He searched every room in the house.
Chapter 101- The Life That Never Happened
POV: JaredJared went home the next morning.He almost expected the world to resist him.It didn’t.The drive from the hospital was painfully ordinary.Cars moved through familiar streets. People crossed roads with shopping bags in their hands. A bus stopped too close to a traffic light, and the driver leaned on the horn when the car behind him refused to move.Nothing was burning.Nothing was collapsing.There were no infected people wandering through the streets.No alarms.No strange lights in the sky.No invisible pressure pressing against Jared’s skull.The city simply existed.And somehow, that frightened him more than the apocalypse ever had.He stared through the passenger window as Elena drove.Three days ago, he had been standing beneath a tree in a world that should not have existed.Three days ago, he had watched Emma become something larger than one body.Three days ago, he had made the hardest decision of his life.Now there were traffic jams.Now there were advertisemen
Chapter 100- After She Let Go
POV: JaredJared woke to the sound of a machine beeping.Once.Twice.Again.It was annoyingly ordinary.For several seconds, he didn’t open his eyes.He waited.There was always something waiting for him when he woke.A voice.A warning.A command.A strange pressure behind his eyes.Sometimes there had been pain.Sometimes there had been light.Sometimes he had opened his eyes in places that should not have existed.He waited for the familiar sensation to arrive.Nothing did.Jared frowned.He opened his eyes.A white ceiling stared back at him.A fluorescent light buzzed above his head.There was a curtain beside the bed. Pale blue. Slightly wrinkled.An IV line ran into the back of his hand.He stared at it.Then at the monitor.Then at his other hand.Nothing.No golden light beneath his skin.No faint lines moving under his veins.No threads stretching beyond the room.He swallowed.The air felt different.Not cleaner.Not safer.Just…Empty.Jared slowly pushed himself upright.
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