Who First Said This Is Not A Drill During News Alerts?

My adopted younger sister, Marissa Payton, loves pulling pranks on others. But I'm the only one who gets hurt in her pranks. Last year, she and our older brother, James Payton, locked me up in a cold storage room. Because of that, I'm afflicted with a case of severe asthma. James apologizes to me before telling me that he'll take me cave diving just to make it up to me. Marissa tags along with us on the trip. She keeps casting me malicious glances every now and then. Feeling rather uneasy, I quickly get into the water just so I can get away from Marissa. But when I'm 65 feet deep, I feel a wave of suffocation hitting me all of a sudden. It turns out that Marissa has secretly shut off the oxygen supply. I can hear Marissa's smug laughter ringing out from the underwater communicator. "Look, Jamie! I told you that Nat would fall for it again!" James' voice is filled with affection. "Leave it to you to be smart enough to think of such a prank to play on your sister, you little imp." My face has gone blue from the suffocation. I struggle with all my might in an attempt to turn on the bailout cylinder, only to feel my hands getting slapped away from them thanks to Marissa, who has swum over to me. She then whines into the communicator, "Look at how dramatic Nat is being, Jamie! She can't stand the suffocation at all even though it's only been a few seconds!" I hear James' icy and aloof voice reverberating in my earpiece. "Just hold on a little longer. Look at how delicate you are! It hasn't been all that long, yet you already can't stand it. How humiliating. You're not even in the same league as Mari!" This time, I can only stare at James in despair as my complexion slowly goes purple. Has he forgotten what happened to me? Thanks to their prank, my lungs have already sustained irreversible damage. It's getting more and more difficult for me to breathe. Finally, my vision goes black, and I collapse in the dark bottom of the sea. This prank isn't funny at all, James. This time, I'm going to die for real.

Outside the police tape surrounding a fancy hotel, a police officer can be seen blocking my way. "There seems to be a bomb hidden in the hotel! Unauthorized personnel are not allowed to get any closer!" I'm just about to dig out my work badge when the intern next to me, Christine Wyatt, covers her mouth in a pretentiously shocked manner. "Officer, there's a detonator and a timer in his bag! Those things look so scary!" The entire scene goes eerily silent. Almost immediately, I see a few guns getting aimed at my forehead. Anxiety begins overwhelming me. "I'm a bomb disposal expert from the Headquarters Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit! My bag contains all the tools necessary to dispose of a bomb!" "Throw your bag over to me and keep your hands where I can see them!" Captain Scott Hunter roars at me. My bag is opened afterward. Things like an insulated cutter, a bomb suppression blanket, and a liquid nitrogen cooling tank are scattered across the ground. Before I can explain myself, Christine suddenly points at me while screaming, "Why are you still playing dumb? You just told me that you wanted to set off an explosion in that hotel! "What, now that the police are here, you dare not admit what you just said, huh? You're a terrorist through and through!" Scott reacts quickly by pinning me on the hood of the police cruiser with my hands folded behind my back. "We're taking you back for a thorough interrogation!" My heart almost stops at those words. The bomb that's packed with enough firepower to take out half a street has already gone on a countdown in the hotel lobby. But I, the only bomb disposal expert who can get rid of the bomb, have handcuffs put on me because of Christine's nonsensical accusations. Right now, there are only 29 minutes left before the bomb goes off.

I am a firefighter. A beam crashes onto me in the middle of a burning building. At the same time, my oxygen is about to run out. I writhe and struggle as much as I can to reach for my backup oxygen canister, only to feel my fingers brushing over a bottle of water instead. When I turn around, I see my wife, Leah Sawyer, giving the last backup oxygen canister to her new mentee, Roderick Wyndham. I begin calling out to her via a walkie-talkie. "Leah, I'm being pinned down right now, and my oxygen's running out! Where is the oxygen canister?" As Leah shields Roderick behind her, she replies impatiently, "I've already given it to Roderick. It's his first time inside a burning building, so he's frightened. Having an extra canister on him gives him a sense of security. "You're already a veteran firefighter, so you can just think up a way to resolve your situation. Don't go around wasting precious resources." I can feel thick smoke infiltrating my lungs at that moment. Feelings of asphyxiation soon overwhelm me. "My leg is broken, so I can't move at all! Without oxygen, I won't be able to hold out till I get rescued!" But Leah merely chortles in response. "Stop playing the pity card! Every time we're out on a mission, you're always the cowardly one who's terrified of dying! You have zero sense of dedication at all! I shouldn't have let you join the firefighting squad, to begin with! "What's the use of you clinging to the equipment? Giving it to the newbies is the best way of maximizing its value!" I can only smile bitterly in response. Using what's left of my strength, I switch to a public channel and begin reporting to the command center. "For the record, Captain Leah Sawyer deliberately tampered with the essential rescue equipment in order to protect Roderick Wyndham, causing me, a fellow firefighter, to be trapped in a deadly situation. "I hereby request the immediate activation of the Firefighter Emergency Evacuation Act. Also, I formally charge Leah with gross negligence and attempted homicide."

On the day the zombie outbreak occurs, I tell my boyfriend, Valerio Petrucci, to come over and hide in my apartment, where my front door is already reinforced. Soon, sounds of the door being knocked can be heard. I'm about to get up when transparent comment bubbles appear in front of my eyes. "Don't open the door! Valerio isn't the only one out there—there are a bunch of loan sharks with him as well!" "One of them is already infected with the zombie virus and is about to turn into a zombie!" "You'll die if you let them in!" Someone knocks on the door once again at that moment.

To save my mother who's been bitten by a zombie, I exchange my own kidney for the only vial of serum that's available. I'm not given any anesthetic during the surgery. I bite down on a wooden rod until it snaps, but I still don't make a single sound. But when I rush back to the shelter to look for Mom, I catch her talking to someone on the phone. "You should drop the act soon, Mrs. Sawyer. Mr. Sawyer is going to collapse if this continues!" I recognize the voice. It belongs to Mom's assistant, Richard Peterson. "What's the rush?" Mom replies flippantly. "Although Terence is my son, he's never faced any hardship since he was a child. He doesn't know how hard it is to earn money. "I had to overcome many challenges before I became the richest person in the city. What if Terence is only treating me well for my money? He must pass this test to prove that his love for me is genuine." I clench my fists. The life-saving serum drops to the floor. It turns out that the apocalypse and the man-eating zombies aren't real. I have carried Mom on my back while darting through ruins for the last month. I eat rotten meat and even sacrifice my kidney without any hesitation for her, but everything is just part of a test that she designed. I look down at the bloody hole that wasn't stitched up properly on the side of my waist. Mom thinks that everything is just part of an act, but she has no idea that the doctor who wandered onto the set and performed the surgery on me is real.

The new intern in our department, Astrid Stokes, had a soft, harmless look people viewed as innocent. She also claimed she could see a countdown over people's heads, ticking down to their deaths. Most of us just laughed it off and told her she had been reading way too many web novels. When an elderly man was rushed into the ER, she told the department head, Melanie Brooks, not to bother. She said the man wouldn't make it through the day. Melanie ignored her and pushed ahead with everything we had. The old man still died. The attending doctor even got slashed by the patient's family during the fallout. After that, people started to waver. During a team outing, Astrid suddenly screamed and told us not to get on a specific bus. She said if we did, we would all die. With no other choice, we switched vehicles. By the time we reached our destination, news came in. The bus we were supposed to take had lost its brakes and gone off a bridge. After that, almost everyone believed her. Everyone except me. The next day, she pointed straight at me. "Ruth shouldn't be a doctor anymore. If she stays, she'll get caught up in a medical dispute, and the whole department will end up dead or injured." Just like that, Melanie reassigned me. I went from doctor to janitor, handling medical waste. One day, I got scratched by a contaminated needle. Yet, no one would treat me. "Astrid already said it. This is her destiny. Anyone who gets involved will die, too." My body rotted from infection, sores breaking open across my skin. I died alone on the street, full of fury. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day Astrid first claimed she could see those death countdowns.