Cashing Out and Infinite Void

The Presidential Suite at The Sovereign Hotel cost five thousand dollars a night. 

Elena didn’t blink when she handed the concierge Robert’s platinum black card. It was the last time she would ever use it. By tomorrow, he would report it stolen, but by then, she would be long gone.

She stepped into the massive, sprawling suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the city skyline. The air smelled of expensive lilies and fresh linen. 

But Elena didn’t care about the view. She had work to do.

She walked over to the lavish mahogany desk, set her purse down, and closed her eyes. She focused on the dark, vast void she had felt in her consciousness since waking up. 

Open.

She reached out and placed her hand flat against the fully stocked, glass-fronted minibar. 

Zip.

In the blink of an eye, the entire glass cabinet, along with the hundreds of dollars worth of premium liquor and snacks inside it, vanished into thin air. The space on the wall where it stood was completely empty.

Elena’s heart raced. She visualized the space in her mind. She could see the minibar sitting perfectly intact in the endless, starry void of her System storage. 

Come back.

Zip.

The minibar reappeared on the wall, completely undisturbed. Not a single bottle was out of place. 

"It really is time-frozen," she whispered, a thrill of pure adrenaline shooting down her spine. If she put a boiling pot of stew in there, it would be boiling when she took it out three years from now. If she put in ice, it would never melt. 

It was the ultimate cheat for the coming Ice Age.

Elena turned away from the minibar and sat at the desk. She opened her laptop and pulled out her phone. She had $450,000 from the divorce settlement. 

It was a lot of money for a normal person. But for a woman preparing to survive a global, apocalyptic freeze and fortify a luxury penthouse? It was a drop in the ocean. 

She needed millions. And she needed them today.

Elena’s fingers flew across the keyboard. First, she applied for fifteen different high-interest online payday loans and personal lines of credit. Because her credit score was pristine, the algorithms approved her instantly. Ping. Ping. Ping. Another $150,000 flowed into her checking account.

Next, she picked up the phone and dialed a ruthless private hard-money lender she knew from her past life. 

"Mr. Sterling," Elena said smoothly when the broker answered. "I need a bridge loan against my fully paid-off property in the Hills. I want eighty percent loan-to-value. I need the cash wired by tomorrow morning."

The broker whistled. "Elena, that’s a multi-million dollar payout. The interest rates on a short-term hard money loan will eat you alive."

"I don't care about the interest," Elena said, her eyes cold. "Just wire the money."

She hung up. That would net her another $3 million by tomorrow. 

But Elena wasn’t done. She still had one more trick up her sleeve. 

In her past life, she had discovered Robert’s secret offshore crypto and stock trading accounts right before he locked her out to die. She had memorized every password, every security question. 

She logged into his hidden brokerage account. The balance was $2 million—money he had embezzled from Vanguard Corporation. 

Elena didn't transfer it to herself. That would leave a digital trail. Instead, she took the entire $2 million and used a 10x leverage margin to aggressively short Vanguard Corporation’s stock. She was betting everything that the company’s value would plummet. 

Why would it plummet? Because in exactly two hours, the anonymous tip she had sent to the SEC and the FBI from a burner email would go public. Vanguard’s stock was going to crash to zero, and the SEC would freeze Robert’s accounts, tracing the embezzled funds directly back to his illegal trades. 

He wouldn't just lose the money. He would lose his freedom.

[Ding!]

The pale blue System screen materialized in front of her.

[System Prompt: Host’s financial liquidity increased significantly.]

[Warning: Global currency collapse and banking system failure imminent in 29 days. Recommend immediate physical asset conversion. Fiat currency will soon hold zero survival value.]

"I know," Elena murmured, watching the final wire transfers clear on her screen. "That’s why I’m going to spend every single penny before the banks close forever."

She opened her banking app and looked at her total liquid balance. Between the divorce settlement, the maxed-out credit cards, the hard-money loan against the house, and the massive, leveraged payout from Robert’s shorted stock, the number stared back at her in glowing green digits.

Total Available Balance: $12,540,000.00

Twelve and a half million dollars. 

In twenty-nine days, this money would be nothing more than useless paper and digital ghosts. But today? Today, it was a weapon. 

Elena closed the laptop. The phantom chill of her past-life death was completely gone, replaced by a burning, ruthless fire in her chest. She grabbed her coat and headed for the door.

"Time to go shopping."