THE APOCALYPSE BEGINS

ADELINE 

The vine came through the glass doors so fast that I didn't have time to scream.

It dragged itself forward, twisting around the legs of chairs and splitting the polished wood beneath its weight. Its thorns scraped against the floor, leaving thin,dark marks behind.

A security guard raised his weapon.The gunshots cracked through the room, and I flinched so violently that I nearly fell onto my injured leg again.

The bullets punched holes through the vine. For half a second, nothing happened.

Then the damaged sections began to swell.

New shoots burst from the wounds, spreading in different directions. One curled around the guard's boot before he could step away.

The vine yanked.

He hit the floor face-first, his weapon skidding beneath a table. Two other guards rushed to help him, but the thing had already wrapped around his calf.

 Then the green liquid on the floor began to smoke.

“Get it off me! It burns! Oh God, it burns!”

He clawed at his clothes, stumbling backward. A patch of skin above his boot was already turning an angry red.

Everyone around him scattered.

I scrambled away from the spreading liquid, dragging my bad leg behind me. My hands slipped on broken glass, and I barely stopped myself from falling again.

This was real.

I had spent the previous night watching a movie about the end of the world. I had complained about the heroine's stupid decisions, laughed at the ridiculous plot, and gone to sleep believing I would wake up in my own bed.

Instead, I was watching a man's skin blister in a mansion I recognized from the screen.

And this wasn't even supposed to be happening yet.

“Adeline!”

Dorian's voice came from my left.

"Can you stand on that, Adeline? I need a straight answer right now, not a debate."

"I don't know," I rasped, pressing my palm against the cool marble to steady myself. "Do you want a realistic assessment of my torn ligaments, or do you want the answer that lets you pretend we aren't completely trapped in this room?"

His jaw worked, a muscle ticking beneath his temple. He looked exhausted, terrified, and intensely frustrated that he couldn't simply order the chaos around us to obey him.

"Adeline, please," he said, and the rough, uneven edge in his voice caught me off guard. "Just let me look at your leg so I know whether I'm carrying you or leading you out of here."

The word stopped me. But I had never heard him say please to me in the movie.

"There's broken glass everywhere," I muttered, leaning back.

"I'm aware of the glass," he snapped back, checking my shoe. "I'm trying to figure out if it's broken or just sprained so we don't snap your bone in half when we have to start running."

Before he could pull me up, a woman screamed behind us.

“Dorian!”

Sloane Mercer was standing near the staircase.

His secretary had one hand pressed against her mouth. Her other hand gripped the banister so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. A thin branch hung from the ceiling above her, swaying despite the absence of wind.

“Dorian, there's something blocking the upper hallway,” she cried, her voice trembling violently. “I tried to make it to the front entrance through the west gallery, but the entire corridor is covered in those things!”

He stood immediately.

“Are you hurt, Sloane? Did any of it touch you?”

“No... I don't think so,” she stutered, stepping down a stair. “I ran the second I heard the glass crack. Dorian, I was just trying to find you!”

He crossed the room toward her.

I watched him go.

Of course he did.

The woman he cared about had called his name, and he had moved before she finished speaking. I was sitting on the floor with blood running down my leg, and he had needed several seconds to decide what to do.

“Dorian!” I called.

He looked over his shoulder.

“The rain outside,” I said, pointing toward the shattered entrance. “Don't let her anywhere near it. And don't let her touch those plants, either—not even the small shoots.”

Dorian turned his back on me completely, placing a steadying hand on Sloane's shoulder. "Stay away from the exterior glass. We need to gather whatever security officers are left, pull back into the inner wing, and find a secure room until the estate team establishes a perimeter."

I let out a sharp, disbelieving breath. "A secure room? Dorian, look around you! The floor beneath your feet is literally cracking down the center, and you're still talking like this is a corporate security breach that can be resolved with a locked door and a stern phone call!"

In the movie, the first disaster was a warning. The mansion's occupants eventually evacuated, and the main characters made it into the city. The real horror began afterward, when the streets became impassable and the authorities lost control.

But the movie had never shown anything like this.

The plants weren't simply growing. They were spreading through the building, damaging the structure, and injuring anyone who came close enough.

If the mansion fell, we wouldn't have a safe place to return to.

I pushed my hands against the floor and tried to stand.

My ankle gave way. I grabbed the edge of a table, gasping.

“Stop doing that!” Dorian said, appearing beside me again.

“Doing what, exactly?” I wheezed through gritted teeth.

“Trying to put your full weight on an ankle that clearly can't support you!”

“I am trying to ensure I am not sitting on the rug when the ceiling decides to join us on the ground floor!”

“You can barely stand upright without shaking!” he snapped, catching my elbow before I could slide down.

“And you can barely manage an emergency without barked orders and denial, but I’m managing not to make a speech about it!”

He exhaled sharply.

“Is it physically impossible for you to stop picking a fight with me for five consecutive minutes?”

“Is it physically impossible for you to realize that I am not fighting with you, I am trying to keep us from dying in a gilded cage?”

A small tremble in the floor caused us to shut up,The movement was small at first, almost like a heavy truck passing outside. Dust sifted from the ceiling. A glass on a nearby table rattled against its saucer.

One of the guards looked toward the windows.

“Sir! The east retaining wall—it's giving out!”

The rest of his sentence disappeared beneath a sound like a building being torn apart.

The entire mansion lurched.

I fell against Dorian, and he caught me around the waist. Sloane stumbled into the staircase railing. Several people screamed as the lights went out.

Darkness swallowed the room. For a few seconds, all I could hear was breathing. Then came the sound beneath the floor. A deep, grinding crack.

It traveled through the mansion from one end to the other.

I felt it in my teeth.

“Get away from the central load walls!” someone shouted. “Everyone move toward the archways!”

The roots pushed upward, breaking the tiles apart. A table toppled. Someone fell over it, and another person dragged them away just before a third root burst through the floor where they had been lying.

“Move! Into the interior hallway now!” Dorian shouted.

This time, nobody needed to be told twice.

“Adeline, move!” Dorian shouted. He pulled my arm over his shoulders and helped me limp toward the corridor.

Sloane followed close behind us.

We reached a set of double doors leading to the mansion's interior hall. Dorian shoved one open, ushered us through, and slammed it shut.

His phone rang and He accepted the call immediately.

“Father?”

I watched his expression change as he listened.

At first, he looked impatient. Then confused. Then genuinely alarmed, I could hear the voice on the other end now, though I couldn't make out the words.

Dorian's expression became unreadable.

“Fine. I'll handle it.”

He ended the call.

Sloane stepped closer.

“What did he say? Dorian, please tell me what he said! Is your father sending help?”

“The eastern district is under full military quarantine,” he said, his voice flat. “The central corporate tower lost power twenty minutes ago. The main roads are completely impassable, and emergency services have abandoned their posts.”

Sloane covered her mouth.

“How can a whole city fall apart in less than an hour?”

Nobody answered her. Because I was asking the same question.

The movie had shown a slow collapse. The Green Tide had spread over several days, giving people time to panic, prepare, and make mistakes.

But the disaster outside had accelerated beyond anything I remembered.

And if it had started six days early, the events that followed might not happen in the same order.

I had been so focused on getting away from Dorian that I hadn't considered the most frightening possibility.

What if knowing the story no longer gave me an advantage?

What if the only thing I knew about this world was already wrong?

"We aren't going down to the garage, and we aren't crossing that courtyard," I said firmly, leaning my weight against the wall. "There's another exit. A ground-level exit near the back of the service wing."

Dorian stopped, his eyes narrowing as he evaluated me. "Where, exactly? I've lived in this estate for twelve years, Adeline. I know the floor plan better than the architects who drew it."

"Past the main pantries, down the narrow corridor where the catering staff unloads the delivery crates," I said,pulling memory fragments from the movie's quick transition shots. "There’s a reinforced delivery door that opens directly onto the eastern estate access road."

"That road is narrow, completely unlit, and flanked by fifty-foot trees," Dorian countered, his voice tight. "If the vegetation outside is expanding at this rate, that lane is probably already completely choked with roots!"

"Then at least we will be standing on our own two feet in open air with room to run, instead of being buried under three floors of concrete!" I snapped back. "It is an exit, Dorian! It gives us a chance to move, which is a lot more than this hallway offers!"

He stared at me for three long seconds, his expression shifting from suspicion to genuine confusion. "How do you even know that delivery bay exists? You've refused to set foot anywhere near the service quarters for the entire three years we've been engaged."

"I started paying attention," I said, wiping a streak of rain and dust from my cheekbone. "Mainly because I realized that dying in a mansion because we were too arrogant to use the servants' exit would be a remarkably stupid way to go out. Now, can we save the interrogation for after we are out of range of the killer vines?"

A sound escaped Sloane that might have been a laugh if she hadn't been so close to tears. Dorian looked between us, then shook his head.

“Fine. Lead the way.”

We turned back toward the interior corridor. Behind us, the courtyard gate groaned.

Metal scraped against stone Then the gate collapsed.I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the vegetation outside surge through the opening, spilling across the courtyard like a flood.

The Green Tide was no longer contained by the garden walls. It  had reached the mansion And it was coming inside.

I limped faster.

For the first time since waking up in this world, I stopped thinking about the wedding, the original plot, and whether Dorian Cross would ever love the woman whose body I had stolen.

I didn't care about any of it.

I wanted to live.

But as we reached the kitchen passage, a burst of static crackled from the emergency speaker above us.

A new announcement began.

The voice was different from the one before. It sounded strained, as though the person speaking was struggling to remain calm.

“Attention, all residents. This is an emergency broadcast from the Municipal Disaster Management Bureau.”

Dorian stopped beneath the speaker.

Sloane clutched his sleeve.

I held my breath.

“Following catastrophic, widespread structural failures across all major infrastructure... residents are officially advised to abandon all attempts to reach designated evacuation assembly points in the eastern and central sectors.”

The announcement broke into static.

Then the voice returned.

“Repeat... Do not approach the eastern evacuation centers. They are... they are no longer operational.if  anyone is still listening to this... lock your doors. God help us all.”

The speaker went dead.

Nobody moved.

I stared at the ceiling.

In the movie, the evacuation centers had been the first places survivors fought to reach. They had food,medicine, security, and generators.

They were supposed to be safe.

My injured leg throbbed. My hands were wet with blood and sweat. Somewhere behind us, the mansion groaned as its foundations shifted.

I had no supplies, no plan I could trust, and no idea what the next six days were supposed to look like anymore.

Dorian finally broke the silence.

“We are getting outside. We find a working vehicle on that back road, we clear the district, and we find somewhere elevated to hole up.”