CHAPTER 3: The First Decision

Kara’s pov

I sat at the small kitchen table with a blank notebook open in front of me and a pen that still had most of its ink. The coffee had gone cold an hour ago. I didn’t care.

Writing things down felt necessary. Memory was sharp, but paper didn’t lie to itself the way a tired mind could.

I started with the big dates.

First public signs: red moon, five years and three months from today. The news would call it a celestial anomaly. Most people would treat it like a pretty sky event and post pictures. Three weeks after that, the first localized power failures. Two months later, the food shortages in the coastal cities. By the end of year one, the mutations would no longer be rumors.

I wrote the sequence in clean bullet points. My handwriting looked neater than it had any right to after years of writing with shaking, half-frozen fingers.

Next came the people.

Marcus – construction crew lead, charming, always knew how to make himself the center of any group. In the old timeline he had taken me in during the second winter, then left me bleeding in an alley when the supplies ran low.

Sarah – soft voice, bookstore job, good at looking harmless. She had been the one to nod when Marcus decided I was dead weight.

Lin – nursing student now, competent, practical. She would lock a shelter door with me on the other side and never look back.

Derek – the one who traded my antibiotics for cigarettes.

There were more names. Smaller ones. People who had taken water, tools, information. I listed them all without emotion. Emotion could come later, when I had the power to do something about it.

The pen paused.

I had died with a list. Now I have time to use it.

But lists were only useful if I survived long enough to act on them.

I flipped to a new page and wrote two words at the top:

Priorities.

Money.

Information.

Everything else came after.

Without money I couldn’t stockpile. Without information I risked changing the wrong things and losing the advantages my memories gave me.

The big trigger, the red moon and whatever force sat behind it felt fixed. I had no reason to believe I could stop the sky from cracking. But the personal events? Those were softer. Who lived, who died, who ended up holding power in the early years, those could shift if I pushed hard enough in the right places.

The thought both steadied and terrified me.

What if I pushed too hard and erased the only future I understood?

What if I did nothing and watched the same betrayals unfold again?

I set the pen down and pressed my fingers against my temples.

A soft chime sounded inside my head.

Not through my ears. Inside.

Text appeared in the lower corner of my vision, pale blue and translucent, like a notification that didn’t belong to any phone.

[Orientation complete.]

[Basic System functions unlocked.]

[First Task issued: Secure starting capital.]

[Reward upon completion: 10 Points.]

I stared at the words until they faded.

A system.

Of course.

I had heard fragments about these things in the later years of the old timeline; people who survived early mutation waves sometimes woke up with interfaces, tasks, and points that could be spent on small enhancements. Most of those people had been torn apart by something stronger before they could explain the rules. I had never gotten one. Until now.

The cold spatial storage in the back of my mind pulsed once, as if acknowledging the new presence. Still empty. Still limited.

Ten points. I had no idea what ten points could buy, but the task itself was clear enough.

Secure starting capital.

My current bank balance sat at three hundred and forty-two dollars after rent. Almost nothing. Enough for a week of careful groceries and bus fare. Not enough to buy bulk rice, medical supplies, or the kind of tools that would matter later.

I needed more. Fast. And quietly.

Drawing attention this early would be stupid. The world still ran on ordinary rules. Banks still tracked large transfers. People still asked questions when someone suddenly started hoarding generators and freeze-dried food.

I needed a plan that looked boring from the outside.

I picked up the pen again and started listing options under the money heading.

Sell things I wouldn’t need.

Take extra shifts at the office job I still technically had.

Find small, legal ways to turn knowledge into cash without revealing why I knew things.

The office job. I had almost forgotten it existed. Administrative assistant at a mid-sized logistics company. Steady, dull, and most importantly connected to shipping routes and warehouse contacts. In the old timeline that job had ended six months before the first shortages when the company downsized. I still had time to use it.

Information came next.

I needed current maps of the city. Locations of wholesale suppliers. Names of people who would become useful or dangerous later. I needed to know which of my old contacts were already in the city and which ones hadn’t arrived yet.

And I needed to test the storage properly. Weight limits. Whether it accepted liquids. Whether anything inside degraded over time. All of that would have to wait until I had something worth storing.

The fear sat under everything, quiet and constant.

One wrong move and I could waste the only second chance I would ever get. One moment of softness and I could end up bleeding out in another alley while the same people walked away.

I closed the notebook.

The system text did not reappear. It seemed content to wait.

I stood and walked to the narrow window above the sink. Morning traffic moved along the street in ordinary patterns. A man in a suit checked his phone at the crosswalk. A woman pushed a stroller. Somewhere a dog barked at a delivery truck.

None of them knew the clock was already running.

I picked up my phone and opened the banking app one more time.

Three hundred and forty-two dollars.

Almost nothing.

I stared at the number until the fear settled into something colder and more useful.

Then I smiled.

It wasn’t a nice smile.

Starting capital.

I knew exactly where to begin.