Chapter 2 - The Morning Before the End

Emilia woke up screaming, and the scream was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard, because it came from lungs that were whole and a throat that had no poison in it.

She sat bolt upright in her old bed with the blanket tangled around her legs, her hands flying to the back of her calf where the Hollow had bitten her. The skin was smooth and unmarked. Sunlight spilled across the pale yellow walls of the apartment she had lost forty three days into the end of the world, the apartment that had been looted and burned and buried under ash before she ever saw it again.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she snatched it up with trembling fingers. The screen glowed with a date she knew by heart, the morning of the day the sky had turned red, only five hours before the first siren sounded across the city.

Emilia pressed the phone against her chest and laughed until the laugh broke into sobs. She had died on a riverbed with Daniel's betrayal burning in her mind, and now she was here again, in a world that did not yet know it was ending.

A soft chime sounded inside her head, and a pale blue panel unfolded in the air before her eyes, glowing like frost on a window. She stared at it, certain that grief had finally broken her mind, but the words stayed steady and clear.

Regression Survival System activated. Time remaining until the Red Event: 4 hours and 52 minutes. Primary objective: survive. Secondary objective: change what you remember.

Emilia read it three times, and then she did the only sensible thing, which was to swing her legs off the bed and start moving.

She had learned many things in forty three days, and the most important was that hesitation killed faster than hunger did. In her first life she had spent this exact morning rushing to a coffee shop meeting with Daniel, laughing about wedding venues while the whole world was about to collapse, and she had lost three precious hours that she would have paid anything to recover.

She dressed in the sturdy boots and dark jeans she had worn on her worst days, and she pulled her hair into a tight knot. In the kitchen she dumped her entire savings account into a transfer to her emergency card, grabbed the cash from the old tea tin above the refrigerator, and counted it quickly. It was not enough to buy everything she needed, but it was enough to begin.

Her phone buzzed again, and Daniel's name flashed across the screen.

Her stomach clenched so hard that she almost dropped the phone. His message was warm and cheerful, and it asked if she was still coming to breakfast, with a little heart at the end that made her want to scream. In her first life she had answered with three hearts of her own, and she remembered that with a sickening clarity.

This time she turned the phone face down on the counter and left his message unanswered.

Then another message arrived, from Joss, a photo of two coffee cups on a table with the caption that she was saving Emilia a seat. Emilia stared at it for a long moment while a cold, patient fury settled into her bones. It was strange how betrayal could stay so quiet when you were the only person who knew about it, and she was beginning to understand how dangerous that quiet could be.

She grabbed her backpack and ran down the stairs.

The street outside was bright and ordinary, with a bakery owner sweeping his doorstep and a pair of children arguing over a scooter, and for a moment the sheer innocence of it nearly stopped her breath. None of these people knew that most of them would be dead within the month. She wanted to shake every one of them and tell them to run, but she knew exactly how that would end, because a woman screaming about the apocalypse on a sunny morning gets locked away, not listened to.

So she hurried to the hardware store on the corner and bought bolt cutters, rope, a heavy crowbar, work gloves, and as many water purification tablets as the clerk would let her carry. At the pharmacy two blocks farther she emptied the shelves of antibiotics, bandages, antiseptic, painkillers, and anything else she remembered missing so desperately in the dark. The pharmacist raised her eyebrows at the pile, and Emilia gave her a bright and shaky smile and said she was preparing for a hiking trip.

At the grocery store she filled three carts with rice, canned beans, dried fruit, salt, and every jar of peanut butter on the shelves. The checkout line grew longer behind her, and a man muttered about hoarders, and she ignored him with a calm that frightened her a little. She had stood in the dust with her stomach eating itself, and no stranger's opinion could touch her anymore.

By the time she carried the last bag into the trunk of her aging hatchback, only one hour remained on the glowing panel in her mind.

She slid behind the wheel, and her hands began to shake. She had done the easy part, the part that required only money and a clear memory, and now came the part she dreaded most. She needed a safe place to hide before the sky turned red, somewhere with strong walls and a water source and no strangers who might sell her out for a place behind a gate.

She started the engine, and her phone buzzed against the dashboard once more.

It was not Daniel and it was not Joss. The message came from an unknown number, and it contained only a few lines of text that made every hair on her arms stand on end.

Do not go to the stronghold, Emilia. Do not trust the ones who love you most. Drive to the old observatory on Marlowe Hill before the sirens begin, and I will explain everything.

She read it twice with her heart hammering, and a second line appeared beneath the first before she could even breathe. I remember the bridge too.