Thirty days before the Great Scorch

Chapter Two

Daniel spent the next hour testing every angle of the Storage Space. He boiled a cup of water, watched the steam curl above the rim, then stored it and pulled it back out. The steam was still swirling, the water droplets on the cup wall exactly the same as the second it went in.

He melted a piece of ice cream halfway, stored it for ten minutes, then retrieved it. Not a single drip more had run down the wrapper.

"This changes everything," he whispered.

He no longer had to limit himself to instant noodles and canned goods. Fresh steak, live seafood, hot meals straight off the stove. All of it could be frozen in time and saved for the apocalypse. And cold things would stay cold. In a world at a hundred and sixty degrees, a glass of ice water would be worth more than gold.

"Can living things go inside?"

He looked around the apartment. No pets. No roommates.

A fat black fly buzzed past his face and landed on the leftover fried chicken on the table.

Daniel slapped it out of the air. The fly hit the tabletop with a broken wing, its body twitching and arching. He focused on it. Nothing happened. The Space refused it completely.

"Useless thing."

He crushed it under his shoe. He tried again with the corpse, and it stored perfectly.

"So living things really can't go in."

He was disappointed but not surprised. It would have been too convenient.

His phone rang from the nightstand. The name on the screen made his jaw tighten: Idiot Fat Pig.

That was his department manager at Halvorsen Group, Diane Pruitt.

Daniel hit the red button. The phone rang again immediately. And again. And again. Like a mosquito that wouldn't die.

"Damn it, are you done?"

He picked up, and before he could even breathe, Diane's voice exploded through the speaker like a fire alarm.

"Daniel Cross! Are you looking for death? You dare hang up on me? You will apologize to me in front of the entire department today, or I will make sure you never work in this company again!"

Her voice was shrill enough to crack glass, dripping with years of petty authority.

"Screw you. Screw you. And screw you again."

Daniel's voice was louder than hers, and every word hit like a hammer.

Dead silence on the other end. Diane Pruitt had clearly never been spoken to like that in her entire career.

At that exact moment, Diane was standing at the entrance of the conference room at Halvorsen Group, surrounded by a circle of subordinates. She had been spitting out task assignments, complaining that Daniel had arrived after her again, and had dialed his number on speakerphone to make an example of him.

The subordinates went red in the face, biting their lips, lowering their heads, pretending to scribble notes while the words replayed on a loop in their skulls.

Diane Pruitt was thirty-eight. Unmarried. No boyfriend. She poured every drop of her misery into tormenting her department. She timed bathroom breaks with a stopwatch. She demanded everyone arrive before her and leave after her. She was on call seven days a week and expected the same from everyone beneath her.

The entire department had been choking on their rage for years.

Daniel had just said what every single one of them dreamed about.

Diane recovered fast, her whole body shaking so hard her flesh rippled like waves.

"Daniel Cross, are you insane? Do you know who you are talking to?"

"Yeah, I'm talking to an old woman whose well ran dry twenty years ago." Daniel's sneer could be heard through the phone.

"Your weight is bigger than your height. Your face is wider than a dinner plate. You're a winter squash that only grows sideways. Nobody wants you, so you spend all day taking your frustration out on people who can't fight back. If I looked like you, I would have walked into traffic years ago. You're a waste of air alive and a waste of dirt dead."

He cursed for a full minute without repeating a single insult. From her body to her personality, from her work habits to her personal life, every sentence landed on Diane Pruitt's face like a whip. Diane tried to interrupt but could not get a single word in. She stomped her feet on the conference room floor, her face changing from red to purple to a dark greenish black, like a dishrag that had been wrung out and stomped on.

The subordinates' shoulders shook violently. One of them held his breath so long he started coughing. Daniel took a deep breath. The wall of frustration that had been sitting on his chest for months crumbled into nothing.

"So that's what it feels like to curse out a scumbag boss."

In his previous life, he had swallowed Diane's abuse day after day just to keep Vivian happy. Now that memory made him want to slap himself.

Diane's voice came back, tight and trembling with barely controlled fury.

"Daniel Cross, do you not want to work anymore? What kind of breakdown are you having? I will treat this as temporary insanity. Apologize to me right now and maybe—"

Daniel burst out laughing. It was loud, and it was mean.

"Diane Pruitt, are you talking to me? I really do not want to work. Looking at you makes me physically nauseous."

"Daniel Cross, I swear to God, you are fired—"

"Diane Pruitt, listen carefully." His voice dropped to ice. "It is me who is firing you and this garbage company. Do you understand?"

"You? Firing the company?" Her voice went so shrill it could shatter a window. "Just you wait. As long as I am at Halvorsen Group, no company in this state will touch you. I will make sure you never work in Colorado again!"

"You think you're the queen of Colorado? Your sorry little company? You really think you're something?" Daniel laughed once more, hung up, and calmly blocked Diane's number on his phone, iMessage, and Slack.

He leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles.

This feeling of saying whatever he wanted without answering to anyone was more addictive than hoarding supplies. He remembered his previous life. Once Diane discovered his family money, she hinted for gifts every other day. "The new purse I bought doesn't really match my outfit." "I've been wanting to visit Cancún." Over and over and over again. When he ignored her, she piled the worst projects on his desk and criticized him in front of the entire floor.

"After the apocalypse, if you dare mess with me, I'll reward you with something sharper than words."

Daniel snorted, grabbed the cola from the table, and drank half of it in one go. The bubbles exploded in his throat and it felt glorious.

His stomach growled. He looked at the half-eaten fried chicken on the corner of the table. Last night's takeout, meant for breakfast.

"What time is it, and I'm still eating leftovers?"

He smirked, then stored the fried chicken into his Space. In the apocalypse, this scrap of meat would be enough to make people kill each other. It could not be wasted.

"In one month, the world ends. I need to eat everything I want while I still can."

Daniel changed clothes and headed for the door. He planned to find a high-end restaurant and treat himself to a proper meal. Consider it a funeral dinner for his dead previous life and that pathetic, one-sided love.

Back at Halvorsen Group, Diane Pruitt stood in her office shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

She clutched her phone so hard her knuckles turned bone white. The words "CALL ENDED" on the screen seemed to mock her personally.

"Rebellion! This is rebellion!"

She slammed the phone on the desk. The plastic case cracked down the middle.

Every subordinate in the room froze, heads down, not daring to breathe.

She tried to call Daniel back. A cold automated voice answered: "The number you have dialed is no longer in service."

She switched to iMessage. "This person is not in your contacts."

"That son of a— Daniel Cross, you want to play it like this?"

Diane kicked the nearest chair so hard it crashed into the wall with a bang.

Her mind kept replaying every word Daniel had said. Every single insult stabbed at the thing she cared about most. Her weight. Her age. The fact that nobody wanted her.

"I want him gone! Gone right now!"

Diane stomped out of the office in her high heels, click click click, fat trembling with every step, heading straight for the HR department. She could not wait a single second. She would fire Daniel Cross, issue a company-wide announcement, and destroy his name completely.

"Ha ha ha..."

The second Diane disappeared around the corner, the entire office exploded.

"Since when was Daniel's mouth that deadly? That kid is a genius at roasting people!" A guy in the back row slapped his desk.

"So satisfying. He said everything I've been holding inside for three years." A woman near the window wiped tears from her eyes.

"He poked the hornet's nest, though. Diane will definitely fire him. But that kid has money, so who cares?"

Just as the laughter peaked, the office door slammed open. Diane Pruitt stood in the doorway, face darker than a thundercloud.

The room went silent so fast you could hear the air conditioner hum.

"What are you laughing at?!"

Her voice came out distorted, cracked at the edges from pure rage.

Every head went down. Eyes locked on computer screens. Fingers suddenly very busy typing nothing.

"Who laughed just now? Stand up!"

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

"Owen Pike!" Diane pointed a shaking finger at a guy wearing glasses in the corner. "I saw you laugh! Tell me what is so funny!"

Owen Pike stood up slowly. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger and looked Diane dead in the eye.

"Manager Pruitt, I didn't laugh."

"I clearly heard it!"

"You might have heard wrong." Owen didn't blink. "Besides, it's not working hours yet. Laughing isn't against company policy, is it?"

"I asked you what you were laughing at!" Diane's voice climbed three octaves.

Owen paused, tilted his head like he was thinking hard, then answered with a completely straight face.

"I remembered something happy."

"What happy thing?"

"My wife had a baby."

Diane's left eye twitched. She pointed at his nose and screamed. "You are not even married! Where the hell did you get a wife?!"

"Manager Pruitt, can't it be in a dream?" Owen spread both hands, palms up, looking genuinely innocent. "You can't control what I dream about, can you?"

"You…"

Diane's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping on dry land. Her chest heaved three times, and then she kicked the door shut with a bang and stomped toward HR, her footsteps echoing down the hallway like gunshots.

The second that door closed, the laughter came back so loud it rattled the windows.

Diane heard it from the corridor. Her pace doubled, her whole body bouncing with fury.

One single thought burned in her skull: Fire Daniel Cross. Fire him today.