Chapter 1: The Woman They Left to Die

The first thing I noticed was the blood.

It soaked through my shirt, warm against my skin, and spread across the concrete beneath me. Every breath hurt. When I tried to move, a sharp pain tore through my abdomen, forcing a strangled gasp from my throat.

For a moment, I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there.

A flickering fluorescent light hung from the ceiling. Rusted pipes ran along the walls, and a heavy metal door stood several feet away. The air smelled of damp concrete and old machinery.

I pressed a hand against my stomach.

Blood coated my fingers.

"Oh, God."

The voice wasn't mine.

I froze.

My hand was slender, with pale skin and neatly shaped nails. A thin gold ring sat on my index finger, and a silver bracelet circled my wrist. I recognized both pieces of jewelry, though I'd never owned either.

Because I had invented them.

My heart began to pound.

"No. No, no, no."

I pushed myself up, but the pain sent me crashing back down. Black spots danced across my vision. I swallowed a cry and forced myself to look at my reflection in the dark screen of a phone lying beside me.

Dark hair tangled around her cheeks. Her lips had lost their color, and a faint scar marked her left eyebrow. Even through the cracked glass, I recognized her.

Odette Turner.

The name struck me harder than the pain.

Odette was a character in my unfinished apocalypse romance novel. A wealthy young woman whose fiancé betrayed her, whose relatives stole her inheritance, and whose death cleared the way for the original heroine.

She was supposed to die in an abandoned service building.

I knew that because I had written the scene myself.

My fingers tightened around the phone.

"I can't be Odette."

I was Cameron Reed. A writer. A woman who spent far too many nights staring at a laptop, arguing with fictional characters, and rewriting scenes until they finally worked. My biggest problem yesterday had been a chapter that refused to end on a satisfying cliffhanger.

One million credits, carefully set aside for Odette before her mother died. It was the only financial security her mother had managed to protect from the Turner family, and she'd made certain the money would remain under Odette's control.

Martin had promised to help her manage it.

Instead, he'd stolen it.

"I trusted you," Odette had whispered.

Yvette stood beside him, holding Odette's handbag. Her cousin wore a pale dress and an expression of concern so convincing that anyone watching might have mistaken her for the victim.

"You should have signed the papers when Martin asked," Yvette said. "Then none of this would have happened."

The memory sharpened.

"You helped him?" Odette asked.

Yvette's expression barely changed. "Don't be dramatic. You're always making everything about yourself."

"Martin, what if she survives?"

"She won't."

The door slammed shut.

The memory vanished, leaving me trembling against the wall.

"That bastard."

My voice sounded weak, but the anger behind it was real enough.

I had never met Martin Cross. I had never met Yvette. They were fictional people, products of my imagination, and I had written them as cruel because the plot needed a betrayal.

Now I was the woman they had betrayed.

I wanted to scream at the absurdity of it all. I wanted to wake up in my own bed and discover that the entire thing had been a nightmare brought on by too much coffee and too little sleep.

But the blood beneath me was real.

So was the pain.

And if I remembered the story correctly, Odette had only a short time left before she died.

I couldn't afford to waste it.

I forced myself to examine the room.

There was a narrow window near the ceiling, its glass clouded with grime. Through it, I could see a slice of the city outside. Cars moved along the road, their headlights catching the afternoon sun. A delivery truck rumbled past, and somewhere nearby, a horn blared.

I had transmigrated into my own story.

My gaze dropped to the phone in my hand. The date appeared on the lock screen, and my stomach twisted.

Thirty days.

The apocalypse would begin in thirty days.

In my manuscript, the first outbreak was supposed to start at St. Agnes Medical Center. A patient would attack a nurse, and the incident would be dismissed as an isolated case of drug-induced violence. Only later would anyone realize that something far more dangerous had begun spreading.

But the first wave wouldn't be the end. It would be the beginning of a collapse that swallowed cities and turned survival into a daily struggle.

And Odette Turner?

She was supposed to be dead before any of it happened.

I had written her as a selfish villainess who lost everything because of her own choices. Her death would be discovered after her relatives reported her missing.

Martin would claim she had been unstable, while Yvette would pretend she'd tried to save her.

The authorities would eventually close the case.

The story would move on.

I stared at the blood on my fingers.

Not anymore.

I wasn't foolish enough to believe that knowing the plot made me invincible. I had no idea whether every event would happen as written.

I didn't know if my knowledge would remain accurate or whether my presence would change the timeline.

But I knew enough to understand that I needed to survive the next thirty days.

First, I needed medical attention.

I searched the pockets of my trousers and found a wallet containing a few bank cards, some cash, and an identification card bearing Odette's photograph.

My phone showed twelve percent battery and no signal, but it was still working.

Then a notification appeared.

Martin Cross

Don't make this harder than it needs to be.

I read the message twice.

He thought she was dead—or close enough to it that he no longer considered her a threat. The text wasn't an apology. It was a warning, delivered by a man who believed he had already won.

The old Odette might have replied. She might have begged him to explain himself or threatened to expose him.

I did neither.

I deleted the notification and silenced the phone.

Let Martin wonder.

Let him believe Odette Turner had disappeared for good. If he thought she was dead, he wouldn't be looking over his shoulder for her.

That gave me time to recover, reclaim what I could of my mother's trust, and prepare for the disaster ahead.

I pushed myself against the wall, struggling to stand. My knees shook, and pain flared beneath my ribs, but I managed to stay upright.

One step at a time.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe the incident had nothing to do with the outbreak. I had no evidence that the apocalypse had started early.

But I knew the timeline I'd written.

And something had already gone wrong.

I looked toward the door, then down at the blood staining my clothes. I had barely survived the first chapter of Odette's life, and the world was already threatening to stray from the story I knew.

I had no time to panic. I needed to get out, find help, and discover what was happening at St. Agnes before the next warning arrived.

I tightened my grip on the phone and forced myself to take another step.

I knew how this woman was supposed to die.

I just hadn't planned on being the one who had to survive her story.