All Chapters of Reborn Before The Apocalypse: My Bloodline Survival System : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The rain came down so hard it felt personal.Sera Quinn stood barefoot on the cracked concrete of the driveway, her thin nightgown already soaked through and clinging to her skin. In her arms, her three-week-old daughter, Rosie, made soft, confused sounds against her chest. The baby’s tiny body was already growing cold.On either side of her, her two older girls clung to her legs.Nora, seven years old, had both arms wrapped tightly around Sera’s thigh. Her dark hair was plastered to her face. She wasn’t crying yet, she was too busy trying to be brave the way her mother had taught her.Ellie, only four, was past bravery. She sobbed openly, her small fists twisted in the fabric of Sera’s nightgown.“Mommy… why won’t Daddy open the door?”Behind the heavy oak door of the house Sera had inherited from her parents, her husband Marcus’s voice came through, calm and final.“Take them and go, Sera. There’s not enough food for everyone. You know that.”A second voice, soft, almost sweet, belo

The diner smelled like coffee, butter, and warm syrup.Sera sat on the vinyl bench with Nora pressed against her right side and Ellie on her left, both girls swinging their legs because their feet still couldn’t reach the floor. A plate of pancakes sat in front of each of them, already sticky with syrup. Ellie had managed to get more on her cheeks than in her mouth. Nora ate more carefully, but her eyes kept flicking up to her mother’s face as if she was afraid Sera might disappear if she looked away too long.Sera kept one hand resting on the curve of her stomach and the other wrapped loosely around her coffee cup. The silver key hung against her chest under her sweater, still faintly warm. Every few minutes she felt the quiet presence of the storage space at the edge of her mind, twelve cubic meters of empty darkness waiting to be filled.Twenty-one days.She had already opened a new bank account on her phone while the girls colored on the paper placemats. The transfer from her pers

The hotel was small, clean, and took cash without asking questions.Sera paid for three nights in advance and carried both sleeping girls up the stairs one at a time, even though her back protested and the weight of the baby made every step heavier. Nora had fallen asleep in the car with her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest. Ellie had cried quietly for the first ten minutes after they left the old neighborhood, then exhausted herself and drifted off with her head on Sera’s shoulder.She laid them on the double bed closest to the wall, removed their shoes, and pulled the blanket over both of them. For a long time she just stood there watching them breathe.In the other life, she had watched those same breaths stop.The memory still had teeth.Sera moved to the window and closed the heavy curtains until only a thin gap remained. The system interface hovered at the edge of her vision, quiet but present.[Countdown: 20 days, 9 hours, 41 minutes.][Local weather anomaly detected.][Pre