Doomsday survivalist: Guide to Survive!
Rule 5 : changes
Ryco didn't stop running until he hit the far side of the block, where the noise from Carlos's group finally faded into confused shouting. He dropped behind a half-rusted water tank, catching his breath. The metal felt cool under his palms. His pulse thudded in his ears, but it wasn't fear—just the leftover rush.
Damn… my body's finally keeping up.
He checked his knuckles, rolled his shoulders, shook out the burn in his calves. The month of training was paying off. His muscles still weren't as sharp as his past life, but they weren't dragging him down anymore. They responded. They obeyed. They remembered.
He peeked over the tank.
Carlos and the others were still scrambling around below, pointing in different directions like they'd lost a wild animal. They looked shaken. Confused. Threatened.
Good. The less they messed with him, the better.
Ryco slipped down the backside of the building using a drainage pipe, landing quietly in an alley between a bakery and a motorcycle shop. He brushed dust off his pants, straightened his shirt, and walked out like nothing happened.
As he headed home, his mind drifted to the past again—the real past, the one no one else remembered.
For years, he'd been chased through ruined cities by zombies that moved too fast, too erratic, too hungry. He'd learned the geometry of survival: angles, footholds, the weight of his own momentum, how to cut corners tight enough to survive the swipe of a Hunter. Those monsters didn't get tired. They didn't hesitate. He had to be better every time.
And now, he was teaching this sixteen-year-old body to do the same.
Give me two more months, he thought. Then I'll be ready to face those things again.
He reached the side street near his apartment, but before he stepped out, he froze. Footsteps. Fast ones.
Jake burst around the corner, panting.
"There you are!" he wheezed. "Bro, what the hell happened? I saw Carlos's group running like they just chased Spider-Man!"
Ryco snorted. "They tried to pick a fight."
"And you outran them like a damn ninja?"
Ryco shrugged. "Something like that."
Jake stared at him like he was seeing a stranger. "Man… you weren't lying. You really changed."
"Not enough," Ryco muttered. "But getting there."
Jake shook his head, still catching his breath. "Anyway—you need to come home quick. The others called. They're almost done with their tasks. Marcus found a temporary shelter. Elisia spotted a pattern in the temperature shifts. And Ghelle—she thinks she found a cheap island lot. Like… an actual island."
Ryco blinked. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. And Cyrus found a legit medical supplier. Black market stuff. Expensive, but we've got the funds."
Ryco felt a slow smile forming. The plan… the team… the foundation of their survival—it was all starting to come together.
"Good," he said, walking with Jake toward the apartment. "We stick to the timeline. Two more months till the magnetic shift hits hard. Six months till the first case of the virus. We prep like our lives depend on it."
Jake gave him a sideways glance. "Because it does?"
Ryco nodded once. "Yeah."
They stepped onto the main road. The sunset painted the sky orange and pink, peaceful—deceptively peaceful.
Jake rubbed the back of his neck. "So… you really think we can survive this time?"
Ryco looked ahead, eyes sharp, focused.
"No," he said. "We're not just surviving. We're rewriting everything."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and added quietly,
"And this time… we're not losing anyone."
They headed home together, unaware that someone had watched the whole chase from a balcony above—quiet, curious, and soon to be part of the storm Ryco was preparing for.
Seven months to go. The number sat on Ryco's tongue like a countdown clock he could taste—slow, metallic, inevitable. The team had carved the schedule into the whiteboard, into their phones, into the lines of their conversations. Seven months until the initial outbreak; five months left to get everything right. Anything could still shift. Anything already had.
They were mid–meeting in the cramped warehouse Marcus had found—concrete floors, high windows, the smell of old oil and dust. Ghelle hunched over her laptop, fingers tapping. Cyrus spread supplier lists across a table. Elisia had three tabs open on her tablet—news feeds, satellite weather, and a forum for polar researchers. Jake paced near the doorway like he was trying to outrun his nerves.
Ghelle's voice cut the murmur. "Guys, there's a live interview—some scientist is on national TV talking about an iceberg that's resurfaced. They're calling it 'ancient ice'—apparently the sample dates close to the K–T boundary. People are freaking out."
Ryco's chest tightened in a way that made him clamp his hands into fists. He didn't look at the screen at first; he let the words land. Then he said the name without preamble.
"That's him."
Jake blinked. "The doctor? The one you said was close to a cure?"
Ryco nodded. Marcus was already reaching for his keys. "I'll ready the van. We grab him—"
"No." Ryco cut him off so hard the word seemed to echo. He stepped into the middle of the group, voice low and precise. The room leaned in.
"We wait."
Silence rolled, then a spike of confusion. Ghelle tilted her head. "Wait? But why wait? If he's public now, we can just—"
Ryco's face turned serious. Jake watched something he'd never seen before settle over Ryco: calculation, then worry. "This is wrong timing," he said. "This should happen three months before the outbreak, not seven."
Elisia frowned. "You mean our timeline moved because you came back?"
Ryco didn't answer with words at first; he let the idea sit heavy in the air. When he spoke he was blunt. "My being here has shifted things. Little changes ripple. The scientist showing himself this early is dangerous."
Cyrus frowned. "Dangerous how?"
Ryco scanned everyone's faces, then leaned forward so his whisper felt like thunder. "When a figure like him goes public, three groups notice. One: governments and legitimate agencies. Two: private military contractors and pentagon-adjacent black budgets. Three: the predators—criminals, corporations, mercs—who know how valuable this info is and have known about anomalous findings years before we did."
Ghelle's shoulders stiffened. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," Ryco said, "anyone who wants him—control of that research—will move before we can. He'll be swarmed by offers, threats, and people who will capture him to weaponize his work. If that happens now, the place I told you—the location where he was kept and where the cure nearly was—becomes even more dangerous, because lots of people will dig into old records, ask questions, follow money."
Marcus clicked his tongue. "So we do nothing. We let others go and hope they don't screw it up?"
"No." Ryco shook his head. "We do everything—just different timing. We keep our heads down, increase surveillance, and let them make the first mistakes. That way we know who the predators are. We map interest. Then we act when the environment is predictable."
Elisia's face went pale. "You're saying if we act now and pull him out, the people who snatch him will trace us and come for our families, for our supply lines, for the land we buy."
"Exactly." Ryco's eyes were cold. "Do you want the Pentagons, the black-budget teams, private militias, and the cartels converging on our doorstep before the outbreak even starts? Once they know the doc exists and someone grabbed him—they will stop at nothing. They'll have resources and jurisdiction we don't. We would become their target."
A weight of understanding fell over the group. Cyrus ran a hand down his face. "So we watch. And fortify. And keep the doc monitored remotely until the window when grabbing him is least likely to blow everything."
Ghelle rubbed her temples. "Fine. I'll speed up the land transfer and puppet the public interest index. If he's on TV, I'll keep track of every mention, every funder, every contractor name that comes up. If someone sniffed at the K–T sample, they'll have an old client list."
"Good." Ryco's shoulders loosened a touch. He turned to Marcus. "Hold the van. Keep it fueled, ready, but don't move yet. When we go, we go with full intel and a clear extraction window."
Marcus blinked, reluctantly nodding. "Copy."
Ryco met Jake's eyes; Jake's face was sharp with a fear that had steadied into resolve. "Jake, you push the narrative at home—get your parents out earlier if you can. Give them the excuse. Ghelle, you watch the land transfer. If anyone files a claim or if a third party starts vetting it—call me instantly."
Ghelle tapped a note. "On it."
Cyrus chimed in, voice flat with grim practicality. "I'll establish quiet channels with the medical supplier. If someone starts buying reagents or cold-chain gear in bulk near the Antarctic labs or the labs that handled the iceberg samples—we'll know. I'll also get a few contingency kits ready so we can move him medically if we have to."
Elisia's fingers flew across her tablet. "I'll set up a watch feed—weather, forums, embargoed posts, academic servers, and satellite trackers. If any black ops or contractors change flight patterns or sudden charters pop up, I'll flag it."
Marcus checked his phone. "I'll scope the temporary shelter in Manila. Reinforce entry points, set rally points, and stash basic defensive tools."
Ryco nodded, then lowered his voice. "One more thing—we create a decoy. If anyone gets wind that a team is moving a high-value scientist, let them chase ghosts. Use misinformation to separate predators. If they're distracted by noise, we keep our window open."
Jake's mouth twitched. "We're becoming chess players. This is getting heavy."
Ryco allowed a tired half-smile. "Good. Be heavy."
They spent the next hour carving out the finer points: secure comms, dead drops, separate bank accounts for purchases, legal proxies for Ghelle's land transfer, and rotation schedules for the night watch. They rehearsed simple contingencies—what to do if a drone hovered over the island, how to burn data on a compromised laptop, who to call and who to avoid telling.
As the meeting closed, Ryco's face was hard but calm. The team filed out into Manila's dim light with new tasks and an extra layer of fear—tamed, focused, actionable.
Outside, Ryco stood for a second, watching the sky. The cold wind bit at his jaw. He thought about the timeline shifting, about how his presence had created this new curve. He thought about the scientist on TV and the knowledge that could save millions—or doom them if it fell into the wrong hands.
He clicked his tongue, then tapped his phone:
Message to team: Stay sharp. We watch. We prepare. We strike only when the math is right. No heroic pulls. No headlines. No signatures on our way out.
He hit send and felt the small, controlled thrum of being the one who could steer the storm—if they didn't screw it up.
Inside the warehouse, the whiteboard glowed faintly under the fluorescent light. Seven months until the outbreak—maybe less. Five months to tighten everything. The clock kept moving.
Ryco turned back inside and began to map the extraction windows on a fresh sheet of paper.
Inside a closed-door conference room buried beneath the Pentagon, the air felt heavy. The lights were dim, the projector humming softly, casting a faint blue glow over the long table. Men and women in suits sat stiff, some tapping pens, some folding their arms, all staring at the frozen creature displayed on the screen.
The man at the head of the table—broad shoulders, silver streaks in his hair, voice rough from too many years barking orders—leaned forward.
"That thing," he said, tapping the remote against the table, "is unlike anything we've ever recovered. We want it on our soil before anyone else touches it."
A younger official raised a hand. "Sir, several countries already dispatched observation teams. China. Russia. Even private groups—Blackwell Industries, Helix Labs—"
He cut her off with a sharp wave. "Don't care. We get the sample first. I'm authorizing Shadow Group Twelve. Full black-out operation. No flags. No fingerprints." His eyes moved across the table. "If anyone tries to interfere, they disappear. Clear?"
No one argued. Most didn't even breathe.
"Good." He pushed himself up from his chair. "Send the order. Twelve hours from now, I want that ice block in our cargo bay. The scientist, Dr. Reaves, will take it from there."
As the officers stood and the room broke into murmurs, none of them noticed a faint tremble from the live camera feed fixed on the Antarctic iceberg.
We cut to the frozen world outside.
A howling wind swept across the endless white plains, dragging snow in thin ribbons. The iceberg—if it could still be called that—rose like a pale monolith against the horizon. But unlike the others, this one wasn't smooth. Parts of it bulged outward as if something inside had pushed from beneath.
Veins of faint blue luminescence pulsed through the ice.
Deep in the frozen mass, a silhouette towered—easily twelve feet tall. Its limbs were thick, not elongated like the Tomorrow War creatures but broad, armored with layered plates that looked like something between bone and iron. Jagged ridges wrapped around its shoulders and spine. Even frozen solid, it radiated menace.
Its face—partially obscured in ice—had no soft features. Just angles. A brutal, predatory shape. No eyes could be seen, only two recessed hollows, dark and endless, like pits leading far deeper than they should.
A gust of wind hit the side of the iceberg, blowing loose snow away… revealing a small crack running vertically across the creature's chest.
Then another.
And another.
Far off in the distance, lights appeared—headlamps from snow crawlers, carrying the first of the groups sent to claim the prize.
They weren't the only ones.
Several other convoys crept toward the same place from different directions—some military, some private, some wearing no insignias at all.
And none of them realized they were already late.
Inside the ice, just beneath the creature's plated throat, a low vibration rippled outward. A deep, almost subsonic growl.
The kind that didn't come from something asleep.
But from something waiting.
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