Chapter 1

I woke up to find myself lying on a pile of soft, imported towels.

The bright lights made my eyes ache. I quickly realized that I was in the home textiles section of Costgo Wholesale.

My girlfriend, Helena Cohen, sat beside me, her face full of concern.

"Carl, you're awake! How are you feeling?"

Damien Farley, her childhood friend, stood nearby with his arms crossed, looking haughtily at me.

"You're awake. Good. Now stop acting like such a damsel in distress."

I pushed myself up into a sitting position, my limbs still weak and limp. "Did you put something in my milk?" I asked Helena.

She averted her gaze, unable to meet my eyes.

"I did it for your own good, Carl. The official shelters are packed. You'd just die if you went there," she said. "Isn't it great here? There are plenty of supplies and so much space to roam around too."

Damien snorted coldly and walked over to us. "Stop wasting your breath on him, Lena. He's just a nerd. What does he know about surviving the apocalypse?"

He looked down at me and continued, "Carl, it's only because we're friends that I let Lena bring you along. You should be thanking me."

I looked at his self-righteous face and smiled.

"Right. I suppose I should thank you," I replied. "In that case, for the sake of everyone's safety, shouldn't we bring over everyone else's family members, too?"

My words caught Damien off guard.

Several middle-aged men and women standing behind him turned to look at me. They were his and Helena's parents.

Damien's mother, Fiona Brown, immediately shrieked, "Absolutely not! The more people there are, the more dangerous it'll get!"

"Exactly! We barely managed to get in here ourselves," Helena's mother, Penny Wilson, chimed in.

My smile deepened. "I see. So that's how it is."

Damien's expression darkened. "Don't you dare try to sow discord here, Carl Sawyer. This is the best possible arrangement for everyone. It's chaos out there, and going out to fetch anyone else would just be a death sentence."

Helena tugged at my sleeve. "Stop picking a fight, Carl. I'm sure Dam must have his reasons for doing this."

I looked at her, and the last shred of warmth in my heart vanished. I just closed my eyes and said nothing more. My body was still weak, and I needed to conserve my strength.

Seeing me fall silent, Damien assumed I had backed down. He cleared his throat, stepped up onto a crate of bottled water, and began his speech as the self-appointed leader.

"Listen up, everyone! From this moment on, we move as a group. To ensure our survival here, we must make sure all supplies are centrally distributed.

"Therefore, I, Damien Farley, will be the one in charge here," he declared confidently.

A few people muttered under their breath, but they were quickly silenced by a sharp glare from his parents.

A man wearing an employee uniform stepped forward.

"Everything has been done as you instructed, Mr. Farley. All the doors are locked from the inside, and the power has been rerouted to the backup generator. The membership registration system has also been officially shut down."

Damien nodded, satisfied, and patted him on the shoulder.

"Well done, Walter. Stick with me, and I'll make sure you eat and live like a king."

Walter Danford bowed and scraped to Damien immediately.

"Thank you, Mr. Farley! Thank you so much!"

I watched this farce unfold, feeling as though I were witnessing a group of jesters performing before me.

The whole idea of ​​using a "membership system" to keep aliens out had to be a joke from the very beginning. Damien was simply using it as a pretext to dupe a bunch of fools into building a private kingdom for him.