All Chapters of REBORN BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE: MY EX-HUSBAND BEGGED TOO LATE: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

I stared at the screen where **STABLE** had just become **WATCH**, assuming at first it might simply be an echo of the amber infrastructure indicator, some ripple effect spreading outward from the same disturbance.It wasn’t. The new status belonged to an entirely different monitoring category.One warning could be coincidence. Two independent changes were something else entirely.I recorded the time and the shift exactly as I had the first one, and made myself hold steady to the same discipline Margaret had apparently built this whole system around. Watch. Verify. Prepare. Activate only when the threshold is reached.-----I opened both records side by side. The first — infrastructure and supply conditions — still sat at amber. The second drew from an entirely separate part of the Project Ash network, pulling different information from different sources entirely.I checked whether one could have triggered the other, some chain reaction running underneath the surface.The records show

**ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION — WAITING FOR SUCCESSOR AUTHENTICATION.**I didn't open it right away. First I checked whether authentication itself might trigger something I wasn't ready for — some emergency protocol waiting dormant beneath a simple verification step. I reviewed the authorization requirements carefully.My credentials were already recognized as the verified successor. The system only asked that I confirm it.I did.The message opened. I expected pages of explanation.Instead, only a few lines sat on the screen, and the simplicity of it unsettled me more than a wall of text ever could have.---**TO THE VERIFIED SUCCESSOR:**Not Margaret. Not any name I recognized. I understood immediately what that meant — Margaret had designed this system so whoever eventually inherited Project Ash would receive exactly this kind of communication, whoever they turned out to be.No signature followed it. No name. Only the encrypted Project Ash identifier sitting quietly at the top of the m

**STATUS: ACTIVE.**I already knew what I needed to do. No amount of old files or archived records would give me what I actually needed now. I needed to hear it from him directly.I pulled up his current contact information, still valid, his communication authorization still recognized by the system that had carried his message to me through a channel decades old. I sent a request through the secure Project Ash system, keeping it simple.*I need to speak with you. In person.*No accusations. No mention of the encrypted message waiting unanswered in my own head.His response came sooner than I expected.He agreed.-----We met at a secure Project Ash location this time, not the public café where we’d first sat across from each other weeks ago. Everything about the meeting felt different from that first conversation. Back then, I hadn’t understood what Project Ash even was. He had known more than I did about almost everything. I hadn’t yet been verified as anyone’s successor. I hadn’t u

“What happens if I authorize it?” I asked.Reyes didn’t answer casually. He explained, carefully, that Project Ash had never been fully activated. Parts of it had always operated — monitoring, maintenance, inventory management, communications testing, transportation assessments, facility upkeep, all of it running quietly in the background for years.The complete network, though, had remained dormant.“The successor decides when conditions justify activation,” he said. “Not an administrator. Not a facility manager. Not even me.”-----I understood, sitting with that, why Margaret had left the final decision to whoever eventually stood in my position. Administrators could maintain systems. Individual facilities could respond to routine conditions on their own. Monitoring systems could detect changes without anyone’s input at all.But only a verified successor could authorize the full preparation protocol.That prevented Project Ash from ever being triggered by a frightened employee, a f

**UNEXPECTED PROBLEM DETECTED.**I opened the facility report, and the issue sat there plainly once I actually looked at it. Inventory. The facility’s records claimed a specific quantity of essential supplies should be present. Physical verification said otherwise.I made myself consider the ordinary explanations first. My own partial-preparation authorization, shifting things without my fully understanding the scope of it. Recent inventory movement elsewhere in the network. A database update that simply hadn’t caught up yet. A counting error, a transfer logged somewhere I hadn’t checked.Verify first. I wasn’t going to assume theft before I’d ruled out everything simpler.-----I compared three separate records against each other. What the central Project Ash system said should exist. What the facility’s own local administrator claimed should exist. What the physical count actually showed.The first two matched each other cleanly.Neither matched the third.A specific quantity was mi