HE KNOWS THE WOMAN I USED TO BE

Calista’s POV

Evren Sable had enough evidence to suspect me of something, and I had exactly

one advantage: he had no idea how much I already knew about him.

I didn't blink under his unyielding stare, forcing my hands to remain relaxed at my

sides rather than gripping the edge of the mahogany table. The highlighted

spreadsheets spread out between us mapped out every bulk purchase of medical

iodine, batteries, and water filtration equipment I had authorized over the last ten

days.

"My financial records and business expenditures are private matters, Commander

Sable,

" I said, my voice cutting through the heavy silence of the municipal

conference room with clinical detachment."If I choose to invest in contingency equipment, that is my prerogative. Edevane

has never lacked for speculative markets.

"

Evren didn't move. His steel-grey eyes remained fixed on my face, evaluating

every micro-expression, every shift in my posture.

"That isn't an investment,

" he

replied quietly.

"That's a panic response. You’re purchasing items that have no

commercial intersection, medical supplies, high-capacity generators,

weather-resistant textiles. People don't buy that volume of survival gear unless they

are expecting a disaster.

"

"Or unless they prefer being self-sufficient,

" I countered smoothly.

"Unless your emergency-response division has made emergency preparedness

illegal, I believe my business here is concluded.

"

"You haven't answered the question,

" he said, stepping closer. The faint scent of

cedar and cold rain accompanied him.

"Are you acting on insider information? Do you know something about the

municipal grid that the public hasn't been told?"

"I know that municipal infrastructure is unreliable, and that waiting for a

bureaucratic committee to respond to an emergency is a foolish way to live.

" I met

his gaze directly, keeping my mask of cool indifference firmly in place.

"If you are worried about security, Commander, perhaps you should look into your

own department's supply leaks instead of auditing a private citizen's ledger.

"

A muscle twitched along his jawline. He was searching for the woman he

remembered, the impulsive, social-climbing heiress who would have folded under

his disapproval or turned the interrogation into a personal melodrama.

The original Calista would have preened under his attention, weaponizing her

frustration or trying to charm her way out of his scrutiny.

Instead, I stood there like an auditor closing an account.

"You've changed,

" Evren murmured, his voice dropping an octave as he studied me

with a new, sharper brand of wariness."A month ago, you couldn't attend a charity gala without making sure I noticed you

across the room.

Now you’re liquidating assets to buy logistical supplies. Did your priorities shift

overnight, or is Maelis Orwyn somehow involved in this sudden transformation?"

The name hung in the air between us. Maelis Orwyn.

The golden-brown-haired heroine of The Last Dawn, celebrated for her

compassion and destined to become the moral center of a collapsing world. In the

original novel, Calista’s toxic jealousy of Maelis had been legendary, a petty

rivalry that ultimately sealed the villainess's doom.

I let out a dry, humorless sound.

"Maelis Orwyn has nothing to do with how I

manage my estate. Frankly, what Miss Orwyn does with her time is of zero interest

to me.

"

That caught him off guard. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his features,

breaking his controlled facade for a fraction of a second.

He had expected anger, denial, or a thinly veiled threat against the woman he

viewed as a model of civic virtue.

"You aren't competing with her,

" he stated, half to himself.

"I am not competing with anyone, Commander,

" I said, stepping back from the

table.

"Now, regarding the logistics compound at District Twelve, since neither of

us is willing to concede the lease, I propose we submit a sealed, transparent bid

through the municipal board and let the legal framework decide. Unless, of course,

your emergency division intends to seize private property without due process.

"

Evren’s expression tightened into a hard, unreadable mask.

"The property is

strategically vital for regional disaster staging. If you acquire it, I need to know

your intentions are not going to compromise public safety.

"

"My intention is survival,

" I replied.

"Nothing more, nothing less.

"

With that, I turned and walked out of the conference room before he could press

the interrogation further. I did not secure the property that morning, but I had heldmy ground, and Evren had agreed to review a revised framework for the

acquisition.

Yet as I rode the elevator down to the ground floor, my pulse hammered

uncomfortably against my ribs. He was looking too closely. He was connecting

dots that ordinary citizens never even saw.

By afternoon, I shifted my focus to execution. I contacted Nyvelle Thorne, a

former logistics officer whose practical competence and sharp instincts I trusted far

more than any municipal board. We met in a quiet, unassuming café away from the

central business district.

I explained the outline of the District Twelve compound without revealing the full

extent of my apocalypse countdown, tasking her with conducting a thorough,

independent evaluation of the site's structural integrity, water access, and logistical

bottlenecks.

"If we're turning that wasteland into a stronghold, Lady Drevane, we'll need to

reinforce the perimeter fencing before anything else,

" Nyvelle noted, sliding her

notebook across the table with a critical frown.

"The storage bays are solid, but the

access roads are a disaster if traffic ever locks up.

"

"Reinforce them,

" I told her.

"Cost isn't the primary constraint. Time is.

"

She agreed to inspect the property at dawn the next day. But as I returned to my

townhouse and settled at my desk to review the evening reports, a notification

flashed across my secure tablet, an official municipal memorandum detailing an

emergency-response drill scheduled for the following week, designed to test

Edevane's readiness against sudden, cascading infrastructure failures.

My blood ran cold. I sat completely still, staring at the date listed on the digital

seal. According to the timeline I had memorized from The Last Dawn, the first

major grid failures and regional blackouts were not supposed to manifest until

weeks after the initial catastrophe had already begun. The novel explicitly placed

the preliminary infrastructure disruptions after the societal collapse.Yet the municipal report sitting on my screen included documented warnings about

unexplained voltage drops and localized grid instability recorded across three

different sectors of the city over the last forty-eight hours.

I grabbed my personal copy of the novel, flipping frantically through the dog-eared

pages of the exposition chapters, my eyes scanning the dense paragraphs for any

mention of early anomalies.

There was nothing. The text was absolute: the collapse began with the sudden

cataclysm, not a slow, bleeding erosion of the grid beforehand.

The report on my screen wasn't a drill. It was a symptom.

If the novel was already wrong about the beginning, what else was it wrong about?