30 days to save my enemy

CHAPTER ONE: THE MAN WHO KILLED MY FATHER

I watched Commander Kael Draven put a bullet through my father’s head.

The sound was smaller than I expected. One sharp crack, a burst of smoke, and my father dropped to his knees on the execution platform. For one impossible second, he looked almost surprised. Then he fell forward, and the world I knew ended with him.

“Your father betrayed the city,” Kael announced to the crowd. “His actions endangered every survivor under our protection.”

My father had spent twenty years trying to protect those survivors. He had warned the council that the containment project was unstable. He had begged them to shut it down. They called him a traitor, and Kael believed them.

I screamed until my throat tore. Soldiers dragged me away before I could reach my father’s body. Kael watched without blinking.

I swore I would make him pay.

Three days later, the infected broke through the city gates. The council fled, the military abandoned the outer districts, and the people who had cheered at my father’s execution became food for monsters. I ran through streets I had once called home, carrying a kitchen knife and a backpack with two bottles of water.

A creature caught me near the collapsed railway station. Its teeth sank into my shoulder. I stabbed it, kicked it, and crawled away, but more came. As the infection burned through me, I saw Kael’s evacuation convoy pass the end of the street.

He didn’t see me.

Then the darkness swallowed everything.

I woke choking on air.

My hands flew to my shoulder. No wound. No blood. No infected teeth marks. I scrambled out of bed and nearly fell over my own feet. The room was familiar: cracked blue mug, laundry on the chair, cheap curtains, and the calendar I had stopped looking at months ago.

My phone lay beside the pillow.

The date on the screen made me forget how to breathe.

Thirty days before the outbreak.

I checked the date again, then the news, then the messages from my father. His last message was still there: *Dinner tonight? I found something important to tell you.*

I pressed the phone to my mouth. Tears spilled before I could stop them. My father was alive. Somewhere in the city, he was drinking bad coffee, complaining about his research, and expecting me to come home for dinner.

I laughed and cried at the same time. I had been given back the one thing I thought I could never recover: time.

Then I wiped my face.

This time, I would not beg the council to listen. I would not wait for officials to approve my warnings. I would not stand helpless while people I loved died. I knew where the first containment failure would happen, which roads would become death traps, and which supply warehouses would be abandoned before the first week ended.

I also knew the name of the man who would kill my father.

Commander Kael Draven.

I opened my banking app. My account held barely enough money to cover rent and food, but I remembered a logistics company whose shares would triple before collapsing. I remembered the exact date a wealthy investor would die in an explosion. I remembered the warehouse outside the port that would be left full of bottled water, canned food, batteries, and medical supplies when its owners fled.

I had no time to waste.

A translucent blue screen flickered across my vision.

[REBIRTH SYSTEM ACTIVATED.]

[HOST: SERENA VALE.]

[PRIMARY MISSION: KEEP COMMANDER KAEL DRAVEN ALIVE FOR NINETY DAYS AFTER THE OUTBREAK.]

[FAILURE PENALTY: HOST TERMINATION.]

I stared at the message, then burst out laughing again. The universe had returned my life only to chain it to the man who destroyed it.

“Absolutely not,” I whispered.

[MISSION CANNOT BE DECLINED.]

“Then we need to negotiate.”

[NEGOTIATION UNAVAILABLE.]

I rubbed my forehead. “Of course.”

A second message appeared.

[OPTIONAL MISSION: OBTAIN COMMANDER DRAVEN’S MILITARY ACCESS CARD BEFORE 23:59. REWARD: EXPANDED STORAGE.]

I knew what that card opened: the restricted military supply database, emergency transport manifests, and the security system for the command centre. With that information, I could prepare before the outbreak and expose the people who had framed my father.

The only problem was getting it.

Kael would be at headquarters in two hours. In my first life, he always kept the card clipped inside his jacket during evening briefings. His office had a service entrance used by the maintenance crew. I remembered the guard rotation because I had once delivered a package there.

I dressed, tied my hair back, and emptied my backpack onto the bed. Knife, flashlight, phone charger, two protein bars, and a roll of tape. It was not much, but I had survived worse with less.

Before leaving, I called my father.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Serena? Are you all right?”

His ordinary voice broke me all over again.

“I’m fine, Dad. I just wanted to hear you.”

“That’s unusual. Did something happen?”

“Not yet.” I swallowed. “Can I come over tonight?”

“Of course. I’ll make your favourite.”

I almost told him everything. Instead, I said, “Lock your research files. Don’t trust anyone with access to the containment project, especially Dr. Mara Voss.”

Silence followed.

“Why are you mentioning Mara?”

“Please, Dad. Just promise me.”

“I promise I’ll be careful. But you’re frightening me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll explain soon.”

I ended the call before I lost my nerve. My father was alive, and I would keep him that way. The first step was getting inside the command centre.

By 9:20 p.m., I was in the service corridor, wearing a maintenance jacket borrowed from a laundry cart. I kept my head down and pushed a toolbox toward Kael’s office. Two guards passed me without a second glance.

The office door was unlocked.

I slipped inside, found the access card beside a stack of files, and reached for it.

“Looking for something, Miss Vale?”

Kael stood in the doorway with a pistol aimed directly at my chest.

I had imagined this moment a hundred times. In every version, I hated him. In none of them had I forgotten how handsome he was, with dark hair, cold grey eyes, and the kind of stillness that made everyone else in a room nervous.

“Put the card down,” he ordered.

I placed it on the desk, slowly.

“Now tell me why you broke into a military office.”

Because you killed my father. Because you’ll die if I don’t save you. Because the world ends in thirty days, and I have no intention of dying twice.

Instead, I lifted my chin. “I came to warn you.”

“About what?”

“Someone in your building is planning to kill you tonight.”

A shot shattered the window behind him.

Kael lunged, grabbed my waist, and dragged me behind the desk as glass sprayed across the floor. His body shielded mine for a heartbeat before he reached for his radio.

I stared at the blood spreading across his sleeve.

The system flashed a new warning.

[PRIMARY TARGET IN CRITICAL DANGER.]

The man who killed my father was bleeding beside me, and the clock had started ticking.