Chapter 1

Kiara’s POV

“This female lead is such an idiot,” I muttered to my empty office, slamming my finger against the backspace key.

As a senior editor for a major w******l platform, I reviewed dozens of apocalypse drafts a week. But this particular manuscript made my blood boil. The female lead was ridiculously passive. She did nothing to survive. She just waited for a man to save her, and she constantly forgave the family that abused her. I typed out a harsh rejection email, dragging the author for the boring plot, the lack of twists, and the extremely weak protagonist.

My phone buzzed on the desk. I glanced at the screen. The delivery guy had sent a text saying my package was outside.

I pushed my chair back, annoyed by the interruption. I stood up and took a step, but I didn't notice the tote bag I dropped on the floor earlier. My foot caught the thick strap. I slipped, my arms flailing in the air. I fell hard. My head smashed right into the sharp edge of my glass coffee table. My vision spun wildly. The last thing I saw before the dark took over was a pool of blood forming beneath me.

***

When I forced my eyes open again, the puddle of blood was gone.

I blinked against a harsh overhead light. I wasn't in my apartment anymore. I stood in a narrow, unfamiliar hallway lined with ugly beige wallpaper. My pulse took a sudden halt. I touched my forehead, expecting to feel a massive gash, but my skin was smooth. Where am I? How did I get here?

Before I could process my confusion, a sharp, rhythmic sound caught my attention.It came from a bedroom door left slightly ajar right in front of me. Loud moans echoed from inside the room.

I pushed the door open and froze.

A man and a woman were tangled on the bed, having sex like there was no tomorrow. The sheer shock paralyzed my lungs. The loud creak of the door made them freeze. They scrambled apart, ripping the bedsheets up to cover their naked bodies.

The man started stammering, throwing out a bunch of panicked words I could barely put together.

"Carys! Babe, wait, I swear this isn't what it looks like!”

Carys?

My brain short circuited. He just called me Carys. That was the exact same name as the pathetic female lead from the manuscript I was just trashing.

I stared at his face, then at the girl frantically pulling her shirt down. I recognized their physical descriptions instantly. Kaelen and Selah. The cheating boyfriend and the evil twin sister from the book.

I stumbled backward and gripped the doorframe tightly to keep myself from falling. This was impossible. People don't just teleport into books. I must be in a coma. This had to be a vivid twisted dream brought on by my head injury. My chest heaved as I tried to wake myself up.

"Carys, please say something," Kaelen begged, stepping out of the bed.

The cold wood of the doorframe felt very real against my palms.

The smell of cheap perfume in the room felt real. Dream or not, I was stuck in this awful scene. I didn't have time to figure out the science of how I got there. It was time to act— If I was stuck in this awful book, I refused to act like the original Carys. I could rewrite my own fate.

I remembered this exact moment from the plot.

The original Carys caught her boyfriend screwing her twin sister, got angry, but ultimately ended up apologizing to the people who hurt her. She was insecure and terrified of being alone.

That single decision led to her death, as these same people threw her out of a rescue helicopter into a zombie horde.

Not today.

I refused to make that mistake. The anger grounded me, replacing my confusion with pure rage.

I looked directly at my cheating boyfriend and let him have it. "It looks exactly like you are banging my twin sister, Kaelen," I said, my voice steady and cold.

“Carys, we were drunk!” Selah cried out, forcing fake tears down her cheeks. “We went to a friend's party and had way too much to drink. It just happened as a mistake!”

In the book, the original Carys believed this pathetic lie. But I had read the whole plot. I knew they were secretly dating. They were never drunk.

I looked my sister dead in the eye. “If you claim to be drunk, how did you two manage to get into this room? You drove past the police checkpoints, navigated to the parking lot, parked your car perfectly, and made your way all the way up here to bang. How is that drunk?”

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Our mother, Lenora, rushed into the room. She heard the commotion, took one look at the scene, and immediately ran to Selah's side.

“Carys, stop yelling at your sister!” She shouted. “Can't you see she is upset?”

I turned to my mother and called her out fair and square. “Mom, you know? You knew what they were doing?”

“Don't accuse me, young lady.”

I walked right up to the foot of the bed, pointing a finger at my cheating boyfriend. "I go to work every single day to pay the rent for this apartment. I put food on your plates and clothes on your backs. You both sit around all day bleeding me dry, and you repay me by screwing each other in my own bed?”

“I’m honestly disappointed in you mom. You knew they were dating behind my back, yet you still chose your favorite daughter. How can you birth two girls and pick one's happiness over the other?”

Lenora's face turned bright red. She was shocked by my words because the original Carys was a massive people pleaser who allowed herself to be used and she would never stand up for herself.

“I'm sorry to say it, but you failed me as a mother,” I told her coldly.

“How dare you say that to me!” Lenora screamed. She raised her hand and swung it hard, aiming to slap my face.

I caught her wrist in the air.

“Don't even think about it,” I warned her. I threw her hand away so forcefully that she stumbled back and almost fell over.

I turned back to Kaelen. He tried the sweet talk approach. “Babe, please blame it on the alcohol. I will never cheat on you again. Remember you love me so much. You can't just leave, you will definitely come back. You said I am your safe place, remember?”

I shut him down instantly. I did exactly what the real Carys couldn't do.

“I am done with you,” I told him. “I never want to have anything to do with you again.” I looked back at my twin. “I hope you keep enjoying his dick.”

I stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway. “I'm done with this mess of a family!”

I turned for the front door. Lenora screamed insults at my back. She called me ungrateful and said I was abandoning my family over a minor incident. Selah wailed fake apologies. Kaelen begged me to stay.

I ignored all their noise. They only wanted me to stay because of what they benefited from me. If I left, there was no one to slave around doing house chores for free. There was no one to work hard to feed them. I resolved in my heart that they should suffer till the end, just as the original Carys suffered for them.

Stepping out onto the street, I patted my hair down. I mentally promised the original Carys that I would make sure she didn't end up dead like in the novel.

I pulled the phone from my pocket and checked the contact list. I needed a place to stay. But the original Kiara was a total loner. She had no friends, except for one person. Her childhood best friend, Evander.

I remembered him from the novel. He was a scientist. Thirty days before the apocalypse struck, he posted on T*****r that something bad was about to happen. He noticed strange insects that looked like spiders, but they carried a deadly venom. He warned people to stay safe. Everyone laughed at him. Even the government arrested him for ruining public peace, forcing him to delete the post.

The original Carys joined the crowd mocking him. She called him a weird lunatic. He was so embarrassed that he stayed away from her. Yet, when the world ended, he was the only one who built a safe bunker. He was also the one who jumped from the rescue jet to try and save her when Kaelen pushed her to her death.

I unlocked the phone and searched his T*****r page.

There it was. A long post about the venomous mutation, uploaded three hours ago. According to the plot, the police would show up at his door right about now to hold him in custody and force him to take it down.

I counted down the minutes on my screen. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve... and the post vanished.

I immediately dialed his number. He picked up on the second ring. I could hear his heavy, rushed breathing through the speaker.

"Evander," I said, skipping all the basic greetings. "I believe you. And I'm coming to you right now."

BOOM!

A deafening noise sounded down the street like a massive gunshot. I scrambled back in shock, hitting my head hard against the street light pole behind me. Pain shot through my skull.

I blinked my eyes open, and that was when I saw it. A glowing blue screen lit up right in front of my face.

[WARNING: Critical Plot Deviation Detected. The Heroine has abandoned her primary emotional tethers. Penalty applied: Hoarding Inventory Space reduced by 20%. Zombie mutation onset accelerated by 72 hours.]