JULIUS EVERTON

CHAPTER THREE

Marcus stared at me. I could see the flicker of genuine fear in his eyes. He didn't understand why I wasn't shaking. He didn't understand why I looked at him as if he were already dead.

“Get out,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “Get out before I fire you on the spot.”

I smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I don't think I'll be needing this job much longer.”

For a few seconds, neither of us moved. Marcus looked as though he wanted to say something else, but the words refused to come. His face had gone pale, and there was a strange tension in his shoulders. He had spent years intimidating employees with his temper and threats, but now, for the first time, he seemed to realize that whatever had changed inside me was something he couldn't control.

I turned around and walked out of the office, leaving him shivering in his own skin.

The moment the door closed behind me, I let out a slow breath.

I didn't feel relieved.

I felt focused.

The world was changing, whether people knew it or not. The System was coming, and when it arrived, money, social status, corporate positions, and carefully built reputations would mean almost nothing. Survival would become the only currency that mattered.

I spent the rest of my shift planning my finances. I had three thousand credits in my savings—a pittance for most, but enough to get me started if I spent it wisely. I needed calories. I needed water. I needed a weapon, though nothing in the civilian market would hold up against a System monster.

I needed a knife. A heavy, serrated combat knife made of high-carbon steel.

Not because I expected to become some legendary warrior overnight. I knew better than that. The first days would be about preparation, positioning, and avoiding unnecessary fights. Strength would come later. The people who survived the beginning would be the ones who understood that courage without preparation was just another form of stupidity.

I checked my account again before leaving work.

Three thousand credits.

Soon, it would be worth less than a bottle of clean water.

I needed to act before everyone else realized what was happening.

On my way home, I stopped at a black-market kiosk in the under-city. The air here was thick with the smell of ozone and frying oil. The vendors sold everything from hacked neural-links to synthetic organs.

The under-city was a place most respectable citizens avoided. It stretched beneath the polished towers and luxury districts, a maze of narrow streets, old tunnels, illegal markets, and buildings that hadn't seen proper maintenance in decades. Security cameras were either broken, hacked, or owned by someone who could be bribed.

That was exactly why I came here.

I walked through the crowded market without looking around too much. Looking nervous attracted attention. Looking too confident attracted a different kind of attention. I kept my expression neutral and my hands visible.

I approached a man sitting behind a curtain of beaded wires. He was thin, his skin a translucent grey, with cybernetic eyes that whirred and clicked as they focused on me.

“Looking for something, kid?” the man asked. His voice sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

“I don't have much time,” I said. “I want a tactical blade. High carbon. No fancy electronics, just steel.”

The man chuckled, a dry, hacking sound.

“Steel? Who uses steel anymore? I got some plasma-edges that can cut through a bulkhead.”

“I don't want plasma,” I said, leaning in. “Plasma requires a power cell. Power cells fail. Steel doesn't.”

The man stopped clicking.

For the first time, his expression changed.

He looked at me with those whirring eyes, his expression shifting to curiosity.

“You've got a strange vibe about you, kid. Most people who come here are looking for a quick high or a way to cheat their taxes. You look like you're preparing for a war.”

I didn't answer.

There was no point explaining something he couldn't possibly understand. If I told him that the world would soon collapse beneath the arrival of the System, he would either laugh at me or try to sell me something far more expensive.

Instead, I just placed two thousand credits on the counter.

The man's cybernetic eyes immediately focused on the money.

Two thousand credits was a lot for a single knife. He knew that. I knew that. But I wasn't paying for the blade alone.

I was paying for something I couldn't buy later.

Time.

The man looked at the money, then back at me. He reached under the counter and pulled out a heavy, matte-black knife. The blade was eight inches of brutal, unreflective steel with a serrated spine.

He placed it on the counter.

“The Widow-Maker,” the man said. “Old military stock. It'll cut through bone like it's warm butter.”

I picked it up carefully.

The weight settled naturally into my palm. There was no glowing interface, no power cell, no complicated mechanism waiting to malfunction. Just steel, weight, and an edge sharp enough to remind me that some things never became obsolete.

I tested the grip.

It felt right.

It felt like a promise.

I paid the man without negotiating.

He stared at me as I slid the remaining credits across the counter.

“You really are preparing for something,” he muttered.

I slipped the knife into its sheath and concealed it beneath my jacket.

“Everyone should be prepared for something.”

The man's cybernetic eyes followed me as I turned away.

I didn't look back, as I left the kiosk, my phone buzzed, the sound made me stop, for a second, I simply stared at the screen.

A message.

From a number I hadn't seen in years, my heartbeat slowed, there were only two words on the screen.

Julius Everton

I stared at the name until the market around me seemed to disappear.

Julius Everton.

The man that had killed me in my last life, why on earth was he texting me this early, in my last life, we hadn't gotten in touch until the year two of the apocalypse, my fingers tightened around the phone.

Why now?

Why, of all people, was Julius contacting me?

I opened the message.