REBORN: 5 YEARS BEFORE DOOMSDAY

Kara’s POV

The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but the cold never did. It lived in my bones now, just as hunger lived in my stomach. Both were constant, gnawing, and no longer sharp enough to surprise me.

I lay half-curled against the collapsed concrete wall of what used to be a corner pharmacy, one hand pressed uselessly over the gash in my side.

The bandage had soaked through hours ago. Blood mixed with the black grime on my fingers until I couldn’t tell which was which. Every breath scraped. Every small movement sent a white-hot thread of pain through my ribs.

They had left me here on purpose.

I could still hear Marcus’s voice, calm and reasonable, the way it always was when he was cutting someone loose.

“She’s slowing us down. We can’t carry dead weight.”

Sarah hadn’t even looked at me when she nodded. The same Sarah who once cried on my shoulder after her brother died. The same Marcus who had sworn, three winters ago, that we were family now.

Family.

The word tasted like rust.

I forced my eyes open. The sky above the ruined street was the color of old bruises. Somewhere in the distance, something howled. Mutated. Hungry. The sound was stretched and wrong.

I didn’t flinch. Fear had burned out of me months ago. What remained was colder.

Faces flickered behind my eyelids every time I blinked.

Lin, smiling as she locked the shelter door from the inside while I was still outside, screaming her name.

Derek, trading the last of my antibiotics for a crate of cigarettes and never meeting my eyes again.

The couple from the old subway station took the water purifier I had built with my own hands and left me a thank-you note written on the back of a ration card.

And the ones who were still alive. The ones who had risen high while the rest of us starved. I saw their faces clearest of all. Clean clothes. Full stomachs. Power. Safety.

I had trusted every single one of them at some point.

A wet cough tore through me. Blood hit the back of my throat, metallic and thick. My vision swam. The concrete beneath my cheek felt strangely warm now, or maybe that was just my body giving up.

Five years.

That was how long it had been since the first red moon, since the sky cracked and the world started dying in pieces. Five years of running, bargaining, killing when I had to, and saving people who later sold me out for half a can of beans. Five years of watching every soft part of myself get stripped away until only the rage was left.

I tried to laugh. It came out as a wet rattle.

If I had known, really known, what was coming, I would have done everything differently. I would have stocked up early. I would have built walls before the first riots. I would have put a knife in certain throats while they still slept in soft beds and believed the news.

But I hadn’t known.

No one had.

Another wave of cold rolled through me. My fingers had gone numb. The pain in my side was starting to feel distant, like it belonged to someone else. That scared me more than the blood.

I didn’t want to die like this.

Not after everything. Not after surviving the first winter, the mutant waves, the cannibal camps, betrayal after betrayal. Not face-down in the dirt while the people I had bled for walked away with full packs and clear consciences.

My last clear thought was not a prayer.

It was a list.

Names. Faces. Debts.

I held onto that list as the darkness pressed in from the edges of my vision. I held onto the hate because it was the only warm thing left in me.

The howling in the distance grew closer. Or maybe it was just the blood pounding in my ears.

I closed my eyes.

The last thing I felt was the rain starting again, cold against my cheek. The last thing I knew was that I was going to die exactly as I had lived the last five years: alone, used up, and still stupid enough to have trusted someone one final time.

Darkness took me.

It was not peaceful.

It was heavy and absolute, like being buried under wet earth.

Then I felt the air.

I gasped so hard my lungs burned.

My eyes snapped open to a ceiling I knew. Pale blue paint, a small crack near the light fixture shaped like a question mark. The cheap paper lantern I had bought on sale two years ago. No, five years from now. The same lantern that still hung above my bed in the tiny apartment I had rented before everything ended.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I sat up too fast. The world tilted. My hands flew to my side.

No wound.

No blood.

Just smooth skin beneath a soft cotton tank top I hadn’t worn since the first year of the collapse.

I stared at my palms. Clean. Unscarred. The old burn mark across my left knuckles was gone. So was the thin white line left by the knife fight in year three.

My breath came in short, sharp bursts.

The digital clock on the nightstand glowed soft green.

3:17 a.m.

I turned my head. The calendar hanging on the wall still showed March. The year printed in the corner made my stomach drop.

Five years.

Exactly five years before the first red moon.

Before the power grids failed. Before the cities burned. Before the mutations. Before every person I had ever trusted either died or turned on me.

I pressed both hands over my mouth to keep the sound in.

My body was shaking. Not from the cold. From something sharper.

I was twenty-six again. Healthy. Fed. Living in a world that still believed tomorrow would look like today.

And I remembered everything.

Every betrayal. Every starved winter. Every face that had smiled while locking doors in my face.

I lowered my hands slowly.

The rage that had been the last thing I felt as I died was still there, coiled tight beneath my ribs. But now it had room to breathe. Room to plan.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My bare feet touched the cool wooden floor.

Real. Solid.

Outside the window, the city still hummed with ordinary nighttime sounds. Distant traffic. A dog barking two streets over. The low thrum of a world that had no idea it was already living on borrowed time.

Five years.

I had five years.

My fingers curled into the sheets.

This time, I would not starve.

This time, I would not trust the wrong people.

This time, the ones who had left me to die would learn exactly what it cost to cross me.

And when the sky turned red again, I would already be ready.

I stood on steady legs and walked to the window. The streetlights painted the glass gold. Somewhere out there, the people who would one day abandon me were still living ordinary lives, still soft, still unprepared.

I smiled, small and sharp.

The countdown had already started.