CHAPTER 5: THE TRUTH

My mother frowned and reached over to press the back of her hand against my forehead. “Did you have a nightmare last night? You are not making any sense.”

Kairo leaned back against the sofa, grinning. “Mom, call Uncle. Get him to bring one of those shamans over. Sis is possessed. A bowl of talisman water will sort her right out.”

I rolled my eyes at him, though the sight of him joking around like nothing was wrong almost made me want to cry all over again. “I’m not possessed. Weren’t you just asking where Rex and Nido went? Watch this.”

I raised my hand toward the empty space in front of the television. A cat and a dog appeared out of thin air, both blinking in confusion at their sudden new surroundings.

The dark television screen reflected my mother and brother’s wide, stunned eyes.

“Wha… what…” Kairo could not even finish the sentence.

Rex caught the scent of his family before either of them recovered. He wriggled his whole body, whining with joy, and leaped straight into Kairo’s lap. Nido was calmer about it, giving two short meows before climbing into my arms, tucking his paws under his chest, and closing his eyes as if none of this was worth getting excited over.

My mother touched her own forehead, then mine. “Are we all running a fever? Is this some kind of joint delirium?”

“It’s not a fever,” I said. “This is a space, Mom. A spiritual space. And I came back from two years into the apocalypse. Remember the jade ruyi pendant, the one that’s been in our family for generations? That’s what brought me back. Look.”

I reached toward the coffee table and, with a thought, made it vanish. A second later it reappeared, now holding two glasses of clear spring water that had not been there before.

“Try it,” I said, nodding toward the glasses. “You’ll understand.”

My mother hesitated for a few seconds before picking one up and taking a small, careful sip. Her eyes lit up almost instantly. The tiredness that had been sitting behind her eyes since I walked in disappeared, replaced by something brighter and more awake.

Kairo did not wait for convincing. He grabbed the other glass and drained it in one go, then turned to me with his eyes shining. “Sis, this is incredible. I feel like I could take down a bull right now. Is this like those storage space novels? Where the spring water cleanses your whole body? This is unbelievable.”

I smiled, relieved that at least this part was working the way I hoped. “That’s exactly what it does. From now on we use this water for everything we cook and drink. I can grow crops and raise animals in there too. I bought a ton of fruit on the way here and it’s already stored inside.”

To prove it further, I grabbed Kairo by the arm with one hand and rested the other on Rex’s head. The next second, the three of us vanished from the living room.

My mother jumped so hard she nearly knocked over her water. She sat frozen, staring at the empty spot where we had been standing, until a few seconds later I reappeared with Rex, though Kairo did not come back with us.

“Believe me now?” I said, reaching for my mother’s hand, though my own confusion must have shown on my face. “That’s strange. I meant to bring both of them back with me. Let me try again.”

I focused and pulled at the space, trying to bring my mother in with me this time, but nothing happened. She stayed exactly where she was, blinking at me in bewilderment.

“It looks like only I can actually enter,” I said slowly, disappointment settling over me. Whatever this gift was, it seemed to belong to me alone.

Kairo appeared again beside the sofa a heartbeat later, grinning ear to ear despite everything. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Sis, isn’t this more than enough? You basically started this whole apocalypse with a cheat code. Tell me everything. Is it like the zombie movies?” He rubbed his hands together, practically vibrating with excitement.

My smile fell away. “There are zombies. They are worse than anything in the movies.”

The room went quiet. Whatever excitement had built up in the last few minutes drained out of it in an instant.

After a long moment, my mother slapped her thigh and stood up. “Let’s eat first. Even if the sky is falling, we should face it on a full stomach.” She headed for the kitchen without waiting for anyone to argue. “I’ll fry up some water spinach. Kairo, come chop the chicken. We eat in twenty minutes.”

We ended up around the dining table not long after, plates of stir fried beef with pickled long beans, greens, wasabi shrimp balls, and white cut chicken spread out between us. I picked up my bowl and chopsticks and had to talk myself through it silently before I could even take a bite. No one is going to fight me for this. This is not my last meal. There is plenty of food. I do not need to eat fast. I forced myself to sip my congee slowly first, then took a small piece of beef and chewed it carefully instead of swallowing it whole the way my body wanted to.

It was sour and spicy and tender, and it made my mouth water so badly I nearly gave up on eating slowly. It had been over two years since I had tasted my mother’s cooking. Sitting there with a full plate in front of me felt like more of a miracle than the space itself.

Between bites, I explained everything that was coming, my voice steady even as my chest stayed tight the whole time.

My mother kept piling more food into my bowl without seeming to notice she was doing it. “Eat more. It’s been so long since you’ve had this, hasn’t it.” Her voice cracked slightly, and she reached up to wipe at the corner of her eye.

Watching her cry and smile at the same time, and Kairo quietly setting a chicken leg into my bowl without a word, something in my chest finally settled. After everything, after two years of losing every single person I loved, I was sitting at a table with both of them again, and for a moment that was enough.

“At midnight on December twelfth, a meteor shower will hit,” I said, once I trusted my voice again. “It carries a virus. Most of the world’s population turns into something like zombies. Plants and animals mutate too, and some of them get smart enough to take over cities and roads. People start developing powers, the same way the mutated creatures do. Forests grow out of control and swallow up whole towns. Everything stops working, no factories, no shipping, no order. Once that happens, nobody follows the law anymore, because there is no one left to enforce it. Everyone outside this family becomes someone we cannot fully trust.”

I let that sink in before continuing.

“We have three months. In that time we need to build somewhere safe, gather everything we can, and get ready for what’s coming.”

By the time I finished, both my mother and Kairo looked pale, all the earlier excitement long gone from their faces.

“What else happened to you,” my mother asked quietly. “Out there.” What she really wanted to know, I could tell, was how I had died the first time.

I took a slow breath and told them everything, as calmly as I could manage, the way you might describe something that happened to someone else. I told them about the early days, about losing contact with the rest of the world, about learning to fight with weapons that should never have existed. When I got to the part where Rex had thrown himself between me and a horde of infected while trying to protect me, my voice broke and tears came before I could stop them.

And then there was Veyra.

I told them about the woman who had once been my closest friend on the team, who had grabbed Nido and thrown him straight into a wall of zombies to buy the rest of us a few extra seconds, then stood there afterward pretending to grieve while I watched something like relief flicker across her face. She had called it necessary. She had called it a sacrifice for the greater good. I had called it what it actually was the moment I understood her clearly enough to hate her the way I did.

Just thinking about her name again made my hands curl into fists under the table.

Two years condensed down into a handful of minutes, and by the end of it both my mother and Kairo were sitting with red eyes, Kairo hugging Rex close and my mother holding Nido against her chest, neither of them bothering to wipe away their tears anymore.

“Should we report this to someone in the government?” my mother finally asked.

“I want to,” I said, pulling a laptop out of my space and setting it on the table. “But not yet. Once we’ve worked out exactly what we’re doing, we can send something anonymous. For now, look at this. It’s a plan I put together this morning. It’s not finished. Add anything you think I’ve missed.”

I told them about the warehouse I had rented, the gold I had sold that morning, and the apartment I had already listed. “There’s one more thing we need more than anything else. Money. As much of it as we can get our hands on.”

My mother took my hand across the table. “I have some savings put aside. A little over three hundred thousand. I was keeping it for one of your weddings someday.”

Kairo sat up straighter at the mention of money, an idea already forming behind his eyes. “Sis, let’s max out every loan app we can find. I’m turning twenty one in a few days. I can apply for loans too.”