Chapter 11: The Golden Collar

Brown

I paced back and forth across the polished hardwood floor of my penthouse living room. My boots hit the ground in a restless, uneven rhythm.

Dark circles sat under my eyes. I hadn’t slept at all last night. Every time I tried to close my eyes, my brain kept counting down the hours left.

Beside the couch, Rex sat on his hind legs. His large dark eyes followed my every step. His head tilted slowly left, then right, watching me wear a path into the floor.

“How can a system be so cruel and senseless?” I snapped, throwing my hands up like the dog could actually understand. “Why wouldn’t it give me this mission earlier so I could budget my money? Now out of nowhere, it expects me to pull funds out of thin air to buy a whole truckload of needles?”

I stopped and rubbed my aching temples hard. The cold mechanical prompt from yesterday still echoed in my head.

“I don’t even know what the hell these syringes are actually for,” I muttered, starting to pace again. “Injecting zombies? Making a cure? Extracting something? I have no idea. But if the System says the dimensional storage lock and system completion depend on it… I don’t have a choice. I need it. And there are only twelve hours left.”

Rex let out a soft, low grunt and rested his heavy snout on his paws, as if telling me to calm down.

“Easier said than done, boy,” I hissed.

Desperate, I turned and started tearing through the bags and boxes I still had in the penthouse. I ripped open crates, searching for anything valuable I could sell without wrecking my own preparations. Medical kits. Non-perishable rations. Tactical gear. Nothing I could re-sell for quick cash without hurting myself later.

I did a quick calculation in my head. I needed at least two thousand dollars to buy a bulk industrial order of medical-grade syringes.

I rushed over to the walk-in closet and dumped the bags of extreme-weather clothing onto the bed, sifting through the layers. I had never been the type to care about designer labels, but I checked every tag anyway, searching for anything that still had resale value.

I managed to pull out three high-end, heavy-duty leather and fur-lined coats—pieces I had bought months ago during my heiress days, before everything fell apart.

“If I sell all three of these…” I murmured, checking the stitching, “I might get a thousand bucks. But I still need another thousand. Where the hell am I getting another thousand?”

I kicked the side of the bed in frustration and turned back to Rex. “You don’t happen to have a secret stash of cash buried somewhere, do you?”

Rex let out another low growl and gave his neck a hard shake.

CLINK.

A sharp metallic sound rang through the quiet penthouse.

My eyes dropped to his neck. Hanging from his heavy leather collar was a thick, solid gold name tag—custom-engraved with his name in bold letters.

My breath caught. My memory flashed back to last year, when I was still swimming in Crown Holdings money. I had bought that custom tag as a birthday gift for him. It wasn’t gold-plated junk. It was five ounces of pure, solid 24-karat gold. I had dropped nearly four thousand dollars on it without thinking twice.

“Oh… Rex,” I gasped, dropping to my knees and cupping his massive head. “Is that a sign?”

Rex gave a soft whine and leaned his forehead against mine.

“I am so, so sorry I have to take this back from you,” I whispered, unbuckling the heavy gold tag with trembling fingers. “I promise you, if we survive this and there’s ever a chance to give you gifts again, I will buy you two of these. Solid gold.”

He gave my hand a brief, wet lick, as if giving me his blessing.

I shoved the gold tag into my pocket, grabbed the three luxury coats, and almost ran out of the penthouse.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in the downtown district.

I hit a high-end consignment shop first to dump the coats. The snobby clerk looked over the leather, sniffed, and slid a thin pile of cash across the glass.

“Seven hundred dollars,” she said flatly. “That’s the best we can do for pre-owned outerwear.”

It wasn’t even the thousand I had hoped for, but I didn’t have time to argue. “Done.” I snatched the $700 and walked out.

Next, I pushed through the creaky door of Gold & Gilded Pawn—the exact same sketchy shop I had gone to earlier.

The old broker with the thick bifocals looked up from his counter. He opened his mouth to give his usual dry greeting, then stopped dead when his eyes landed on my face.

He blinked in surprise and adjusted his glasses. “You’re back again?”

“I am,” I said, stepping up to the counter without wasting a second.

I reached into my pocket and slammed Rex’s solid gold dog tag onto the glass display case.

The old broker picked it up, weighed it in his palm, and brought his jeweler’s loupe up to his eye. After testing the metal with a drop of acid, he looked up at me with a lazy smirk.

“Solid 24-karat. Heavy,” he noted, tapping the glass. “I’ll give you a thousand cash.”

“No,” I cut him off immediately, leaning over the counter with a gaze so fierce it wiped the smirk off his face. “One thousand three hundred. Not a penny less. I need this exact amount to finalize a purchase right now.”

The broker stared at me for a long moment, scanning my intense, unblinking eyes and my urgent posture.

“You’re real good at bargaining, lady,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Why are you so desperate to sell off everything you own?”

I didn’t answer him. I just leaned in closer, my voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. “Are we trading, or am I taking my gold down the street?”

He swallowed hard and held up his hands. “Alright, alright! Deal.”

He reached into his safe and counted out thirteen crisp hundred-dollar bills. Added to the seven hundred from the consignment shop, I had exactly $2,000 burning in my hands.

I didn’t waste another second. I drove the pickup straight to Bio-Tech Wholesale Medical Logistics, a massive industrial pharmaceutical distributor on the outskirts of the city.

I marched into the front office and dropped the entire two thousand dollars in cash right onto the manager’s desk.

“I need a full commercial pallet of high-capacity industrial syringes and medical auto-injectors,” I said bluntly. “Loaded into my truck bed immediately.”

The manager, a skinny man with wire-rimmed glasses, blinked at the stack of money, then looked at me like I had two heads. “A whole pallet? Miss, we usually supply hospital networks or research labs. Are you representing a clinic? Do you have an institutional purchasing license?”

“I’m opening a private large-scale veterinary and medical pharmacy,” I lied smoothly, my face calm and confident. “And I don’t have time for corporate paperwork. Is two thousand cash enough to clear a surplus pallet off your warehouse floor today, or do I take my business to your competitor?”

The manager hesitated. He looked at the cash, then out the window at my beat-up truck. He clearly didn’t fully believe my story, but the sight of green bills on a slow afternoon was too tempting.

“Alright… cash talks,” he grunted, stamping a surplus release form. “Drive around to loading dock four.”

Twenty minutes later, a forklift shoved a massive, plastic-wrapped wooden pallet into the bed of my Ford pickup. It held tens of thousands of sterile, industrial-grade syringes and automatic fluid injectors. The weight made the back of the truck sink lower.

I slammed the tailgate shut, climbed into the cab, and collapsed back against the seat, letting out a long, exhausted breath.

[CONGRATULATIONS ON COMPLETING YOUR MISSION BEFORE THE ONSET OF THE APOCALYPSE.]

[ONE PALLET OF INDUSTRIAL SURVIVAL UTILITIES SECURED.]

[DIMENSIONAL STORAGE SPACE & SYSTEM VISUAL INTERFACE ARE NOW FULLY PREPARED FOR ACTIVATION.]

[PRIMORDIAL ANTIDOTE ALSO LOCKED UNTIL DAY ZERO]

[TIME REMAINING UNTIL DAY ZERO: SIX HOURS.]

A slow, dark smile pulled at my lips as I checked my watch and turned the key in the ignition.

Six hours left. The bunker was ready. Every mission was complete. My survival was locked in.

I glanced toward the city center in the distance, my eyes narrowing with cold satisfaction.

“Six hours,” I whispered, a cold smile curling my lips. “Just enough time to visit Mavel and Ginger in their cell… and watch them rot before the zombies came.”