Chapter 5: Subject A.S.

I stood at the window long after the black car disappeared, the unknown message still glowing on my phone like a quiet accusation. Every instinct left over from the first life screamed that Damian Cross hadn’t appeared by chance. He knew. Somehow he already knew I was planning to survive what was coming, and the fact that he’d chosen to warn me instead of drag me away made the warning feel more dangerous than any threat could have.

I locked the door, closed every curtain, and sat on the edge of my bed with the notebook open on my lap. Ninety days didn’t feel abstract anymore. It felt like a countdown written across my skin. I crossed out my first list and rewrote it with ruthless precision, ranking every item by how fast it would become impossible to find once the virus hit the news: food that wouldn’t spoil, water purification, antibiotics, a generator that could run on more than one fuel type, a location no one who knew my name would ever think to search.

By mid-morning I’d moved every liquid asset I could shift without raising flags, spreading the purchases across new accounts buried under layers of false information. Three weeks before the outbreak, a handful of tech stocks had climbed in a pattern I still remembered with perfect clarity, and one cryptocurrency had exploded right before the financial system collapsed. Within two hours the numbers on my screen had already started moving the way I needed them to. Information was the only inheritance the apocalypse had left me, and I intended to spend every scrap of it without mercy.

Ethan called twice before noon. I let both ring out. On the third attempt he texted, shorter and sharper than his usual sweetness: Ava, talk to me. You’re scaring me. I stared at it until the screen dimmed, then deleted the conversation. In the first life, that same voice had promised he’d never leave me. I wasn’t giving him the chance to prove otherwise a second time.

Mia’s message about the strange dream still sat unanswered. I typed something that said nothing — Probably just stress. Let’s talk later — and made myself leave it there. Trust had already killed me once. I wasn’t handing it another opportunity that easily.

At half past one I left the apartment with a plain backpack and cash that left no trail. The first stop was an outdoor supply store on the edge of the city — the kind of place that sold generators and tactical gear to people who still believed the worst thing that could happen was a long power outage. I moved through the aisles with the calm of someone who’d already lived through the exact hour those shelves would be stripped bare by panic: a compact solar generator, two water purification units, a trauma kit built for the field, thirty days of vacuum-sealed meals if rationed without mercy. The cashier joked about doomsday prepping. I smiled like a normal person and paid in cash.

The second stop was harder. I needed a place that didn’t exist on any map connected to Ava Sterling. In the first life, I’d died on the roof of an abandoned hospital on the industrial side of the river — a building with underground levels that once held emergency generators and a sealed water system, condemned years before the outbreak, which meant no one had bothered to see what still worked beneath it. I drove out under a name that wasn’t mine, parked two streets away, and walked the rest with my hood up.

The hospital looked exactly the way I remembered it: broken windows, rusted fencing, the smell of damp concrete and something older underneath. I found the service entrance I’d used once before, when everything was already burning, forced the lock with tools I’d bought that morning, and went down into the dark. The generator room was still intact. The water tanks, though drained, could be resealed. The lowest level had a secondary exit into a drainage tunnel that led to the river. It wasn’t comfortable. It was invisible, and invisible was worth more than comfortable once the dead started walking.

I spent three hours mapping corridors and marking what needed reinforcing. When I climbed back into the fading afternoon light, my phone showed seven missed calls from Ethan and two messages from Mia asking if I was okay. I ignored both. On the drive home I passed the intersection where, in ninety days, the first major pile-up would trap hundreds of people while the infected poured out of the surrounding buildings. The knowledge sat in my chest like a stone I couldn’t put down.

I got back just after six. The black car was gone, but the feeling of being watched hadn’t left with it. I unloaded the supplies into the hidden compartment behind the false wall in my closet, then sat down and opened the laptop again. Damian Cross. Vallis Biotech. EVA-9. The partnership announcement was still there, two months old. I dug deeper this time, following shell companies and quiet investment trails until I found a single internal file that should never have been public: Subject Protocols — Preliminary.

I almost closed the laptop.

Instead, I opened it.

Most of the document was redacted, but three lines near the bottom were still legible. One mentioned accelerated cellular adaptation. Another referenced a failed early trial and a surviving subject whose blood still showed anomalous resistance. The third line held a date — almost exactly four years earlier — and a set of initials I’d never seen before.

A.S.

My hands went cold.

Ava Sterling.

I was still staring at those two letters when the intercom buzzed once, sharp and deliberate. I didn’t move. It buzzed again. Then a third time, longer.

I walked to the panel and pressed the button without speaking.

A man’s voice came through — low, controlled, already familiar even though I’d only ever heard it once, from a distance, in another life.

“Ava Sterling,” Damian Cross said. “We need to talk. Now.”

I didn’t answer.

Outside, the evening light was already fading, and somewhere beyond the glass, the ninety days kept counting down without me.