The Celestial Chess Piece: Reborn for the Apocalypse

Chapter 2

Caleb's body burned from the inside, and his mind was breaking apart. Brielle and Mason stood over him like vultures waiting for the last breath. He could feel them reaching for his crystal stones already, their greedy hands hovering near his chest where the energy cores pulsed weakly beneath his skin.

He was not going to let them have it.

"If I'm going to die," Caleb whispered through a mouthful of blood, "then I'm taking you both with me."

Brielle's eyes went wide. "What are you doing? Stop him!"

Mason lunged forward, but it was already too late. Caleb activated his remaining life force and channeled every last drop of energy into a self-destruct sequence. His body lit up from the inside, cracks of blinding white light splitting through his skin like fault lines.

In those final seconds, as the world turned white around him, his eyes found Ava's body one last time. And there, hanging from her neck, half hidden beneath her torn jacket, he saw it.

A pendant. Half of a chess piece. Black as midnight.

His hand went to his own chest where the matching white half had hung since he was a boy. The Celestial Chess Piece. The one his childhood sweetheart had given him before she disappeared from his life twenty years ago.

"It was you." The realization tore through him with more pain than the poison ever could. "Ava, it was always you."

She had been the one. His real childhood sweetheart. Not Brielle. Never Brielle. Ava had been right there beside him for the past year, and he never knew.

A strange mechanical voice echoed somewhere deep in his mind.

"Initiating soul binding. System 077, Apocalypse Trading System. Binding in progress."

Before the voice could finish, the explosion consumed everything.

The blast ripped outward in a sphere of pure destruction, obliterating Caleb, Ava, Brielle, and Mason in an instant. The shockwave rattled the walls of Westbrook First Base three miles away. Guards scrambled to the watchtowers, scanning the horizon for incoming zombie hordes. The base leader ordered an immediate lockdown.

Nobody noticed the two thin streaks of white light that shot upward from the blast site and vanished into the sky.

Then there was nothing. Just silence and darkness.

Until there wasn't.

Caleb's eyes snapped open.

The first thing he felt was pain. Not the slow, deep burn of the poison, but a sharp, pounding headache that throbbed behind his eyes like someone was hammering nails into his skull. The second thing he felt was fabric. Smooth, expensive fabric pressed against his skin.

He was wearing a suit. A tailored, charcoal gray suit with a silk tie that he vaguely remembered from another lifetime.

"Caleb! Oh my God, Caleb, can you hear me?"

Ryan Weston's face appeared above him, pale with panic, eyes wide and terrified. His best friend was gripping his shoulders and shaking him like a rag doll.

"Stop shaking me." Caleb grabbed Ryan's wrists and held them still. His voice came out rough and cracked, like he had been screaming for hours.

"You were thrashing around and yelling in your sleep." Ryan's voice trembled as he pulled his hands back and ran them through his hair. "I thought you were having a seizure or something. I already called an ambulance."

Caleb sat up slowly and looked around the room.

Hotel suite. King size bed. Floor to ceiling windows showing the Westbrook skyline at night. A wedding bouquet sat on the dresser. His suit jacket was draped over a chair.

His heart nearly stopped.

He knew this room. He knew this night.

December 29, 2043. The night before his engagement party to Brielle Slade. The night that started everything.

"What's today's date?" Caleb grabbed Ryan's arm so tight the other man winced.

"December twenty ninth. Are you okay? You're scaring me, man." Ryan tried to pull free but Caleb would not let go.

"What year?"

"2043. Caleb, seriously, did you hit your head? Should I call someone else?" Ryan's forehead creased with deep worry lines.

Caleb released him and pressed both hands over his face.

His fingers were all there. Ten of them. No stumps. No blood. No missing pieces.

He was alive. He was whole. And he was back.

Three months before the apocalypse.

Everything came flooding back at once. Ava dying in his arms. The pendant. The explosion. The poison eating his organs from the inside. Brielle's cold smile. Mason's casual betrayal.

All of it had happened. All of it was real. And somehow, impossibly, he had been sent back in time to this exact moment.

"I need to find someone." Caleb swung his legs off the bed and stood up. The room tilted for a second before steadying itself.

"Find who? The ambulance is on its way. Just sit down and wait." Ryan moved to block the door, his arms spread wide.

"I'm not sick, Ryan. I've never been more clear in my entire life." Caleb looked his best friend dead in the eyes, and whatever Ryan saw there made him take a step back.

Downstairs, the banquet hall was in full swing.

Crystal chandeliers. String quartet. Three hundred guests in evening wear sipping champagne and pretending to care about a marriage that was built on lies.

At one of the center tables, Diana Weston leaned back in her chair and took a long sip of sparkling water. Ryan's younger sister had a reputation in Westbrook as a troublemaker, and she had every intention of living up to it tonight.

"This whole thing is a circus." Diana's voice carried far enough to reach the next three tables. She did not care. "Everyone in this room knows that Lane Industries only became what it is because of Caleb. Brielle couldn't close a business deal if you stapled the contract to her forehead."

A nervous laugh rippled through the nearby guests. Nobody dared challenge Diana directly. Not when her brother Ryan was engaged to Natalie Pierce, whose family sat at the very top of Westbrook's social pyramid.

Outside, ambulance sirens pierced through the banquet music. Brielle's mother grabbed the event coordinator by the elbow and hissed instructions to keep the doors closed and the guests distracted.

Upstairs, Caleb turned to Ryan with a look of absolute calm.

"You called the ambulance already?"

"Yeah, like five minutes ago. They should be here any second." Ryan's eyes darted between Caleb and the door.

"Good. Here's what we're going to do." Caleb loosened his tie and sat back on the edge of the bed. "When the paramedics get here, I'm going to pretend I passed out. They'll wheel me out on a stretcher. You walk beside me the whole way. We go straight to the ambulance and we leave."

"Leave?" Ryan blinked. "You mean leave the engagement party? Your engagement party?"

"There's not going to be an engagement." Caleb's voice was steady and final. "Not tonight. Not ever. I'm done with Brielle."

Ryan stared at him for a long moment, his mouth slightly open. Then slowly, a grin spread across his face.

"I've been waiting three years to hear you say that."

"Text your sister. Tell Diana we're leaving."

Ryan already had his phone out, thumbs flying across the screen.

"Done. She's going to lose her mind. She's been wanting to make a scene all night."

A quiet knock came at the door.

Paramedics.

Caleb lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes. He let his body go limp, controlling his breathing to make it shallow and weak.

As the paramedics loaded him onto the stretcher and wheeled him toward the elevator, Ryan walking right beside him, Caleb felt something warm bloom in his chest.

Not pain. Not fear. Something sharper.

Purpose.

He caught a glimpse of Ryan texting Natalie, his ears turning red the way they always did when he talked to her. In the previous timeline, Ryan had died trying to protect Caleb during an ambush at the base. That was not going to happen this time. Caleb would make sure of it.

The elevator doors opened. The stretcher rolled toward the lobby exit.

In his mind, Caleb saw Brielle's face. Mason's lazy grin. The empty vial of poison twirling between his adopted brother's fingers.

Burning with hatred for his betrayers, Caleb vowed that Brielle and Mason would pay for their crimes and would not survive to see the coming apocalypse.