Thirty days before the Great Scorch

"Vivian Hale, if I could do it all over again, I would…"

Daniel Cross never finished that sentence. A burning, ripping pain tore through his chest and swallowed every word he had left.

He looked down. A blood-soaked fruit knife stuck out of his chest, and the handle was still gripped tight in his ex-wife's fist.

In the last second before his vision went black, he searched Vivian's face for something. Guilt. Regret. Anything. But all he found was cruel mockery, like she was watching a cockroach twitch under her shoe.

"Daniel, have a safe trip."

Gavin Rourke stood right behind her, one arm hooked around Vivian's waist, the other hand running shamelessly across her body. His grin was crooked and rotten.

"Thanks for taking care of us these past six months, buddy. Vivian and I were about to starve out here. Your only real purpose was to be our backup food supply."

Backup food.

Daniel finally understood. He had been set up from the beginning. He had treated Vivian like a goddess and Gavin like a brother. They repaid him with a knife through the heart. Vivian had even divorced him the week the world went hot, once she had squeezed out everything she could.

Hatred and regret flooded through him like poison. He wanted to tear their faces apart. He wanted to scream.

But his body was already shutting down.

Daniel Cross died.

"Hoo…"

Daniel shot straight up in his bed, chest heaving, sweat soaking through his shirt. His hand flew to his chest. Smooth skin. No wound. No blood.

"I didn't die?"

His voice came out cracked and raw. He pinched his thigh so hard a bruise bloomed under his fingers.

The pain was real. He was alive.

His trembling hand grabbed the phone off the nightstand. The screen lit up: June 3, 2026. 6:12 a.m.

Exactly one month before the Great Scorch.

He had been reborn. Thirty days before the end of the world.

The realization hit him so hard his whole body shook. He remembered everything. On July 3rd, an unprecedented heat wave would sweep across the entire planet. Denver, a city known for its cool mountain nights, would shoot from ninety degrees to one hundred and sixty in three days. People would post the blood-red sunsets on T****k, laughing and taking selfies, thinking it was beautiful. Nobody would realize it was the beginning of the end.

Within a month, ninety-five percent of Earth's population would be dead from heatstroke, thirst, starvation, and violence.

And Daniel himself, having survived the heat for one miserable month, had his life ended by the two people he trusted most.

He walked to the bathroom and stared at the young man in the mirror. Sharp jaw, fair skin, a decent face. A little pale from the shock.

"I didn't even look bad, so why the hell was I so blind over that witch Vivian Hale?"

He bent down, scooped tap water into his mouth, and drank until his stomach couldn't hold anymore.

The faint chemical taste of the water felt like heaven. In his previous life, the water and electricity had been cut off three days into the apocalypse. He had been forced to drink things no person should ever have to drink.

Daniel's parents had been small business owners in the building materials industry. A month ago, they died in a head-on collision with a semi truck while driving their new Tesla. They left him a luxury penthouse duplex at Summit Ridge Towers, twenty million dollars in the bank, and a BMW 7 Series. Instead of living comfortably, he had crammed himself into Halvorsen Group to keep his wife Vivian Hale happy, working seven to seven, seven days a week, spending every cent of his salary on gifts for a woman who was sleeping with his best friend behind his back.

They had been married for only three weeks. Vivian had kept him waiting for years, then suddenly said yes to a courthouse wedding two weeks after his parents' funeral. He had been too happy to ask why.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Vivian, sent at 5:40 a.m.: "Babe, the deposit for the beach villa is due Friday. $85k. Gavin says it's a great investment and I already told the agent yes. Just send it, okay? Don't make this weird."

In his last life, he would have wired the money before breakfast and thanked her for the chance. Now he deleted the message without replying.

"Vivian Hale. Gavin Rourke."

His fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.

"Since God gave me a second chance, just wait and see what I do with it."

But he was not impulsive. Not anymore. If he went after them now, the cops would have him in cuffs within three hours. Revenge had to wait. Wait for the apocalypse to arrive, for law and order to collapse, and then he could deal with them however he pleased.

The most important thing right now was preparation.

"Money. Supplies."

Twenty million sounded like a lot, but for hoarding enough to survive a lifetime in the apocalypse, it was far from enough. And where would he even put everything? His penthouse was big, but not big enough to hold a lifetime of supplies.

Just as that worry gnawed at him, a strange sensation flooded his skull. The bathroom vanished. He was standing in a boundless white space, smooth floor stretching endlessly in every direction, so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat.

"Where is this? I want to go back!"

The instant he shouted, the white world vanished and he was back in the bathroom, face pale in the mirror.

"That thing just now... could that be a Storage Space?"

He concentrated and tried to enter again. The white world returned. He went in and out a dozen times before his hands stopped shaking.

Talk about getting a pillow right when you needed to sleep.

He grabbed a bottle of soda and a popsicle from the fridge. He focused his mind and thought store.

Both items vanished from his hands. He thought retrieve, and they appeared again, the condensation on the soda bottle completely unchanged, the popsicle not a single drop more melted.

"It even has a preservation function!"

Daniel pumped his fist.

He tested bigger objects. A sofa, a washing machine, a laptop. Everything worked as long as it was within ten meters and was a separate item. Fixed structures like walls, tiles, and doors could not be stored.

Daniel leaned against the wall and exhaled long and slow. He stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes had changed. The softness was gone. Something cold and sharp had taken its place.

One more month.

He had twenty million dollars in savings, an infinite Storage Space with time-freeze preservation, and every memory of the apocalypse burned into his brain.

Vivian Hale. Gavin Rourke. Just wait.

In this life, the hunter and the prey were switching places.

And this Great Scorch would be his greatest stage.