The Apocalypse Reborn; No more Sacrifice

Three

CHAPTER THREE

The conversation with Victor marked a turning point. Over the next week, Julian and Victor formed a quiet, practical alliance. While the rest of the apartment building remained blissfully ignorant, wrapped in blankets and complaining to landlords about the failing central heating, Julian and Victor secretly hauled heavy thermal insulation materials and backup power packs into Victor's unit.

Victor brought his engineering skills, helping Julian reinforce the building's basement storage lockers with heavy iron bars and secondary deadbolts. They worked in the quiet hours of the night, avoiding prying eyes and noisy neighbors who would only laugh at their paranoia.

Outside, the sky turned a bruised, metallic purple. The local news channels finally stopped playing cheerful morning shows and began broadcasting emergency weather alerts. A massive, unprecedented Arctic storm system was plunging south faster than any scientific model predicted. Schools were shut down, offices closed early, and panic buying erupted across the city's supermarkets.

Julian watched the chaos from his living room window through a gap in the heavy steel blinds. Down on the street, hundreds of desperate people rushed in and out of grocery stores, pushing shopping carts overflowing with bread, canned beans, and bottled water. Shelves were stripped bare within minutes. Fights broke out over the last bags of rice as shouting shoppers tore packages open in the freezing wind.

His phone buzzed again. This time it was an unknown number sending a video message. Julian clicked play out of mild curiosity.

The camera showed Clara and her mother Elena standing outside in the freezing slush, their noses red and their expensive designer coats clutched tightly around their shivering bodies. Marcus stood beside them, hammering frantically on a locked glass door of a closed supermarket.

"Julian! Please, you have to answer your phone!" Clara screamed into the camera, her voice cracking with hysterical panic. "Mom's house has no electricity, no water, and no food left! The pipes burst and flooded the kitchen! Marcus tried to buy supplies, but everything is sold out! Please, come pick us up in your car and bring us back to your apartment! We are freezing to death out here!"

Elena pushed her face into the frame, her eyes wide with desperation and anger. "Julian, you ungrateful bastard! If you leave your wife and family to die in the cold, God will punish you! Send us your address and open your doors right now!"

The video ended abruptly. Julian stared at the screen, his face completely expressionless. No anger rose in his chest. No pity stirred his soul. Just a cold, empty void where his old life used to live.

They had called him a failure. They had treated him like trash, drained his bank accounts, and in his past life, thrown him out into the snow like a broken toy. Now, the tables had completely turned. The hunters had become the frozen prey.

Julian laid his phone down on the table, walked over to his kitchen, and started frying a fresh piece of chicken, filling his warm, cozy apartment with the delicious smell of garlic and spices. He sat down at his dining table, ate his hot meal in total peace, and listened to the howling wind rattle the heavy steel shutters outside.

The morning after the heavy storm warning brought a strange, unnatural silence across the entire city. Julian woke up wrapped in his thick warm blankets inside his secure, reinforced master bedroom. He did not hear the usual loud honking of cars in traffic, nor did he hear the chatter of people rushing to work. There was only a heavy, deafening quiet. He walked over to the living room window and pulled back a corner of the heavy steel thermal curtain to look outside.

The world had completely changed overnight. Thick sheets of blinding white snow covered the streets, burying cars up to their windows and piling against doorways like giant sand dunes. The sky was an unforgiving bruised purple, and the thermometer display on his indoor wall station read minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. Outside, the wind howled like an angry beast, blowing fine ice crystals through the air with unstoppable force. The global deep freeze had finally arrived in full power.

Julian walked into his modern kitchen and turned on the tap. Nothing came out. The municipal water pipes had frozen solid and burst hours ago across the district due to the extreme drop in temperature. But Julian felt no panic. He walked over to his utility room, where his private indoor water storage tanks stood tall and full, connected to his heavy-duty filtration setup. He opened the valve and filled a clean glass with fresh, crystal-clear drinking water. He took a slow sip, feeling grateful for his early preparations.

Down in the street, far below his high-floor window, tiny figures could be seen moving through the deep snow. They were desperate people wrapped in thin jackets, shivering violently as they tried to trudge through the drifts in search of food or warmth. Most of them were completely unprepared. They had ignored the warnings, trusting that the government would magically fix the weather or that things would return to normal by morning. Now, reality was hitting them with cruel, freezing reality.

Julian's phone remained silent in the desk drawer. He had left it powered off, knowing that any notifications would just be more angry messages or desperate pleas from Clara and her family. He did not want to hear their voices, and he certainly did not want to waste his time or energy on people who had betrayed him in his past life. He sat down at his dining table and enjoyed a hot plate of spiced noodles and fried eggs, watching the snowstorm rage outside through his reinforced glass windows.

Around midday, a faint hammering sound echoed from the hallway outside his apartment door. Julian stood up quietly, walking down the carpeted hallway until he reached the heavy digital security screen by the entrance. He tapped the screen to activate the hallway camera. Standing right outside his door, wrapped in a dirty blanket and shivering so hard her teeth were chattering audibly, was Clara's mother, Elena.

Elena looked miserable. Her expensive hair was tangled and covered in frost, her face was pale blue from the biting cold, and her eyes were bloodshot and frantic. She raised her frozen fist and hammered weakly against Julian's heavy steel door once more, gasping for air as her voice cracked into a desperate, pathetic whine.

'Julian! Julian, I know you are in there! Please open the door! We are freezing to death!' Elena screamed, coughing violently between words. 'The apartment building down the street lost all power, and our pipes burst! Marcus is sick in bed with a high fever, and Clara is crying! Please, have mercy on your family! Open the door and let us in!'

Julian watched her through the high-definition monitor, his face completely expressionless. He did not feel anger, nor did he feel pity. He just felt an empty, detached coldness toward the woman who had spent years looking down on him, mocking his hard work, and treating him like a servant in his own home. In his past life, when he had begged for a blanket in the freezing snow, Elena had slammed the steel door right in his face with a cruel laugh. Now, the wheel had turned full circle.

Julian did not say a word. He did not unlock the door, nor did he make any sound that would let her know he was standing right behind it. After a few more minutes of weak, desperate hammering, Elena slid down the wall, weeping bitterly into her frozen hands before dragging herself away down the icy hallway in search of someone else foolish enough to open their door.

Julian turned away from the screen and walked back to his living room. He picked up a book from his shelf, sat back down on his comfortable sofa, and continued reading. The outside world was falling apart piece by piece, but inside his fortress, everything was peaceful, warm, and secure. He had survived the first day of the apocalypse, and he knew he would easily survive all the rest.