CHAPTER SIX

The hum of the high-rise private elevator died down as the digital floor indicator settled on twenty-eight. Inside, the atmosphere remained heavy and charged, still holding the lingering chill of the forty-minute blackout. Outside the panoramic windows, the city was slowly stuttering back to life. Streetlamps flickered, traffic signals shifted back to green, and down in the bay, the ocean water swelled quietly back toward the concrete piers.

To the rest of the world, it was just a temporary power surge—a minor grid glitch that meteorologists would dismiss by evening.

Zaid stood near the doorway, he had excused himself and went up to his penthouse apartment moments after the glitch ended to pick up something, his broad frame relaxed, though his sharp hazel eyes remained pinned on Betony. He didn't ask her why she hadn't panicked when the lights went out. He didn't question her about the reinforced steel door frame being installed or the heavy 4x4 diesel truck parked in her assigned space downstairs.

He simply reached into his fitted black jacket, pulled out a sleek, matte-black military frequency card, and held it out to her.

"Direct satellite channel," he said. "Bypasses the municipal grid."

‎She took it, fingers brushing. The spark was real, but his next words were colder.

‎"My unit upstairs has three months of MREs and water filtration. What's your count down here, Betony?"

‎She froze, eyes widening at thought forming in her head. What does that mean.

‎ He leaned in, looking her directly in the eye, a faint smile cutting over his lips, voice barely a whisper. "Relax, neighbor." He rasped, his warm breath grazing her neck "Your secret is safe with me. For now."

Before Betony could ask him what he meant or thank him for the card, he turned around and left swiftly. 

Betony slid the heavy deadbolt home and leaned her back against the reinforced door. She looked down at the card in her hand, then up at the dark, expansive apartment, her mind wondering. She was entirely alone.

She held up her left hand. Under the pale ambient light of the living room, the antique silver ring glinted.

Betony closed her eyes, focusing her mind. In an instant, the vast, pitch-black vacuum space of the ring opened up in her mind’s eye. It was an infinite, temperature-locked dimension where time stood completely still. Hot food placed inside would stay steaming forever; ice would never melt.

She opened her eyes and walked into the empty kitchen. For appearances, she pulled a few visible boxes of non-perishable canned goods from a paper bag and lined them neatly inside the pantry cabinets. The decoy stash. If anyone ever managed to breach Unit 28B, they would see a reasonable, modest pantry—not a fortress holding tons of survival gear.

Her phone buzzed violently in her jacket pocket, shattering her concentration.

Betony pulled it out. The screen was flooded with missed calls, text notifications, and three furious audio messages from unregistered numbers.

She tapped the first voice note. It was from James. "Betony! Are you insane?!" James’s shrill, frantic voice echoed through her speaker. "Eleanor went to check the emergency medical account to pay for Saskia’s birthday venue deposit, and the entire balance is gone. You literally emptied everything? Emptied ten thousand dollars? Saskia is having a panic attack, and Eleanor’s blood pressure is through the roof! Transfer that money back right now, or I swear to God, I will call the police and sue you for fraud!"

A cold, deadpan expression washed over Betony’s face. She didn't rage. She didn't cry.

Instead, she tapped her keyboard, typing out a single, precise reply:

“Call them. I’ll bring the bank statements proving I deposited every single dollar into that account over three years of freelance work. Let’s see who the judge believes.”

She hit send. Before James could even reply, Betony tapped her banking application, revoked all shared emergency financial authorizations tied to her identity, and permanently blocked both James and her mother across every platform.

The silence that followed was intoxicating.

Grabbing her keys, Betony headed out of the high-rise and down to the private underground parking garage. Her matte-black, heavy-duty 4x4 diesel truck sat waiting—a massive, reinforced beast built to handle rough terrain and rising floodwaters.

She climbed into the high leather driver's seat, started the roaring engine, and drove out into the morning traffic toward the industrial sector on the western outskirts of the city.

An hour later, Betony pulled into the gated courtyard of a private, climate-controlled warehouse she had rented two days prior under a registered business alias.

A heavy commercial flatbed truck was already parked inside the bay. Two workers in steel-toed boots were waiting beside wooden pallets stacked ten feet high with wholesale goods: industrial-grade solar battery banks, sealed cases of broad-spectrum antibiotics, medical trauma kits, thousand-serving freeze-dried meal tubs, and high-density water purification tablets.

"Miss Betony?" the delivery manager asked, checking his clipboard. "We've got the full order here. Where do you want us to unload?"

"Right here on the concrete floor," Betony said, handing him a generous cash tip. "I have a private logistics team arriving shortly to handle the interior transport. You're clear to leave."

The delivery crew didn't ask questions. They unloaded the pallets, signed the delivery receipt, and drove away, locking the heavy corrugated metal garage doors behind them.

Once she was completely alone in the echoing warehouse, Betony walked up to the towering mountain of supplies.

She raised her left hand, her silver ring catching the overhead fluorescent lights. She concentrated her consciousness onto the first stack—a two-ton consignment of vacuum-sealed white rice and dried black beans.

SWOOSH.

In a fraction of a second, the entire pallet vanished into thin air, leaving behind clean, empty concrete.

Betony’s lips curved upward. She moved swiftly through the warehouse.

SWOOSH.

The solar generator stations vanished.

SWOOSH.

One hundred cases of canned protein, medical kits, and stabilized fuel canisters vanished into the ring's endless vacuum space.

Within fifteen minutes, the massive warehouse was entirely empty. Betony didn't feel a hint of exhaustion; the ring absorbed the physical mass effortlessly.

Satisfied, she drove her heavy truck back through the city as the afternoon sky began to turn a gloomy, bruised purple. Dark rain clouds were assembling over the ocean line far out in the bay—a subtle warning sign of the atmospheric instability that was quietly building up.

By six in the evening, Betony returned to The Apex Ridge. She parked her truck, took the elevator up to the twenty-eighth floor, and unlocked her apartment door.

She was just about to set her keys on the counter when a sharp, firm knock echoed off the heavy steel core door.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Betony paused. Who could that be? Who knew her new apartment? She walked silently over to the wall-mounted security monitor beside the entrance and tapped the screen.

Standing in the carpeted hallway outside was a man she recognized instantly.

He was wearing a tailored navy suit, a gold watch gleaming on his wrist, and carrying an leather tablet folder under his arm. It was Marcus—the senior account manager from Double Fold Micro-Finance.

Three years ago, when Betony and James first started dating, they had opened a joint high-yield savings account intended for a future down payment on a house. Betony had deposited ninety percent of the funds, while James contributed occasional scraps. After discovering James's affair, she had completely forgotten the account existed in the rush of her rebirth.

James, now financially paralyzed after his family pushed him away and Saskia’s expensive birthday and completely cut off from Betony's main accounts, had clearly remembered it. But because the joint account required dual authorization or primary signature to release the funds, James couldn't touch a single dollar on his own.

Marcus stepped closer to the intercom camera, his expression smug and condescending.

"Betony? I know you're in there," Marcus’s slick voice came through the speaker. "James contacted me today. He told me you've been acting extremely unreasonable and withholding shared assets out of spite. I have the legal release forms right here on my tablet."

Marcus adjusted his suit jacket, leaning in with an arrogant smirk.

"James is willing to settle this quietly without taking you to court if you just sign off on releasing his half of the fifty thousand dollars in that house fund," Marcus continued, his tone dripping with patronizing authority. "I brought the digital portal. Sign the authorization now, Betony, or as your account manager, I will be forced to flag your primary checking profile for a contractual freeze."

Betony stood in the quiet hallway, staring at the screen. His half of the fifty thousand dollars, she thought. She had really been milking cow for James.

She remembered Marcus back when she and James were together, Marcus had always treated her like an inconvenient footnote, constantly kissing up to James because of James’s wealthy family connections. Marcus assumed she was still the same soft, pushable girl who would bend under a threat of legal trouble.

What Marcus didn't know and what James had clearly forgotten in his desperation was the exact structure of that joint account.

Because James had been a junior applicant at the time, Betony had been registered as the primary holder with master administrative rights. James was merely a secondary contributor.

Which meant Marcus hadn't just brought a release form to her door—he had brought a direct, live administrative portal to the account right to her doorstep.

Instead of James taking her money, Betony could use Marcus’s own system to instantly strip James of every single cent he had deposited, along with closing the account permanently.

A cold, terrifyingly sharp smile spread across Betony’s face in the dim light of her foyer.

She reached out, turned the heavy steel deadbolt with a slow, deliberate click, and pulled the door open.