When I woke, the ceiling was too clean.
No rust stains. No hairline cracks from the constant tremors that had rippled through the warped earth for years. No patched bullet holes.
Just smooth, white plaster, with a faint, decorative swirl in the center I hadn't seen in almost a decade.
For a few seconds, my mind rejected it.
I lay very still, heart pounding, waiting for the weight of my tactical vest, the itch of hardened blood on my skin, the distant rumble of something massive moving outside the walls.
Instead, I heard…traffic.
A distant whoosh of cars on wet pavement. The intermittent blare of horns. Somewhere down the hall, the cheerful jingle of a morning news program.
I turned my head.
The old alarm clock on my bedside table blinked 6:41 a.m. in blue digits. Beside it lay my phone: slim, unscratched, face-down.
I stared at it.
My hands—the hands that had strangled mutated snakes and plunged into zombie skulls for cores—shook as I reached out and picked it up.
The lockscreen flared on with a touch.
No cracks. No improvised metal brackets holding it together. Just the old background photo: Lily and Ryan in their school uniforms, grinning too wide, Alex behind them with one arm around each shoulder, all three of them squinting in the autumn sun.
He looked younger. Softer.
So did I, in the partial reflection: no silver in my dark hair, no network of faint scars along my jaw.
I pressed my thumb to the sensor. The phone unlocked with a soft click.
Notifications stacked down the screen.
Emails about quarterly reports. A group chat exploding with memes. A reminder for my mother's cardiology appointment. A weather alert—
I froze.
"Unseasonal atmospheric disturbance expected over eastern coastal regions," it read. "Light auroras possible. No known impact on health."
Date: April 3rd, 20XX.
I swallowed, my mouth dry.
The Mist had first Fallen on June 15th.
Seventy-three days.
The System hadn't lied.
A faint, familiar chime sounded in my head.
[TIMELINE RECURSION COMPLETE]
[HOST: EVELYN SHEN]
[CURRENT LEVEL: LOCKED]
[SYSTEM FUNCTIONS:
– CORE ACCESS: SEALED
– MULTIVERSE MODULE: OFFLINE
– BASE CONSTRUCTION: LIMITED PRESET
TEMPORARY FUNCTIONS AVAILABLE:
– MEMORY ARCHIVE (PARTIAL)
– EARLY WARNING INTERFACE]
The words weren't in front of my eyes, exactly. They bloomed at the back of my mind, crisp, each letter edged with pale blue.
For a moment, my throat closed.
"Still with me," I whispered.
There was no answer. The windows faded, leaving only a small, pulsing dot of awareness somewhere behind my thoughts—the sense of something coiled, waiting.
I sat up slowly.
The bedroom was exactly as I remembered it from this time: fossils of a life I'd once thought ordinary. The pale gray comforter, the half-open closet door with my pre-apocalypse suits hanging in a neat row, the chair by the window draped in Alex's discarded jacket.
On the nightstand, in a cheap silver frame, was our wedding photo. I was twenty-four, eyes bright, hair pinned up in a style I had hated by the end of the night. Alex was twenty-eight, tie slightly crooked, smiling like the future was a straight road ahead instead of a cliff.
I picked up the frame and studied our faces like they belonged to strangers.
"You're going to sell me," I murmured to his frozen smile. "For a promise from a snake."
The girl in the photo had no idea.
Footsteps thumped down the hallway. A voice called, muffled through the door.
"Evie? You awake?"
Alex.
Eight years boiled up in my chest: love, resentment, memories of his hand on my back as we fought side by side, the sound of his voice selling me out like a business transaction.
I put the frame down carefully.
"Yeah," I called back, and was pleased that my voice only shook a little. "Getting up."
The door opened a crack.
Alex poked his head in, hair still damp from a shower, tie not yet knotted. His eyes swept over me, paused. A small frown creased his forehead.
"You okay? You look…pale."
"I had a nightmare," I said.
Not a lie, exactly. Just incomplete.
He stepped inside, rolling his sleeves up. Same watch on his wrist. Same faint scar on his chin from when Ryan had accidentally clocked him with a toy car years ago.
The same man who would one day barter my System for safety.
"About what?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe, concern softening his features.
I looked at him for a long beat.
In the old timeline, I would have told him. We would have held each other, and he would have made coffee, and I would have gone to work and forgotten the sharp edges of the dream by lunchtime.
If I did that now…
He would comfort me. He would be sincere. And then, when the Mist fell and everything broke, he would make different calculations.
The knowledge sat heavy in my chest.
"Nothing," I said lightly, swinging my legs off the bed. The floor was warm; the underfloor heating we'd splurged on when we bought the apartment still worked, bills and shared dreams and all. "Just…weird. You know those ones where you wake up and you're still halfway in it?"
He nodded. "You've been working too hard. Maybe I should talk to Chen about taking some of those projects off your plate."
Old Evie would have smiled, warmed by the offer. New Evie heard the underlying pattern: he was stressed, too. Moving pieces in his own career. Balancing equations.
"You focus on your board," I said. "I'll be fine."
He studied me a moment longer, then shrugged, accepting.
"Kids are almost done," he said. "Lily's hogging the bathroom. Ryan's refusing to wear anything but that dinosaur hoodie again. You should get ready if you want to beat the traffic."
Traffic.
The word felt almost…cute.
"I'll be quick," I said.
He pushed off the frame, then paused.
"You sure you're okay?"
I considered.
No, I wanted to say. I am thirty-four and forty-two at the same time. I just watched you betray me in another life. I watched our daughter die on a wall you helped break. I made a choice that erased that entire world to save you all again, and I don't know if that makes me a monster.
Instead, I said, "I'm sure," and gave him a smile I'd honed over years in meetings.
He smiled back, the old, easy curve of his mouth, and left.
The second the door clicked shut, the smile dropped off my face.
My hand went automatically to my chest, to a space just over my heart where, in my old body, a thin scar marked the spot I'd once taken shrapnel. There was nothing there now. Smooth skin. No reminders.
"It's real," I whispered. "It's all back."
I stood and padded to the bathroom.
In the mirror, a stranger stared back at me.
I knew this face, of course. It had been mine for most of my adult life. But after years of watching it age in cracked glass, under UV-scarred skies, it was…uncanny to see it unlined.
No sunburned streaks, no perpetually chapped lips from recycled air, no fine cracks at the corners of my eyes from squinting into the radioactive glare. Just…Evelyn Shen, thirty-four, mid-level project manager, wife, mother.
"Host," I whispered, meeting my own gaze. "Can you hear me?"
For a second, nothing happened.
Then a tiny, translucent icon pulsed in the upper right of my vision, like the corner of a HUD in a video game.
[EARLY WARNING INTERFACE INITIALIZED]
Under it, faint golden text scrolled.
[GLOBAL ANOMALY: THE DESCENT MIST – T - 73 DAYS]
[PREPARATION PHASE COMMENCED]
A smaller line appeared beneath.
[BEGINNER TIP: DENIAL IS INEFFICIENT. START NOW.]
A laugh broke out of me, sharp and a little hysterical.
"Now you do tips," I muttered.
My reflection didn't laugh.
I splashed cold water on my face until the urge to break the mirror subsided.
Seventy-three days.
No spatial compression yet. No plant manipulation. No Temporal Echo. The multiverse doors were locked.
But I had something better, right now.
Time.
And knowledge.
In my first life, I had been like everyone else before the Mist: busy, distracted, lulled by the comforting hum of normalcy. When the auroras spread unnaturally across the sky, we treated them like a light show. When the animal migration patterns went insane, we scrolled past.
The government had noticed, of course. Quietly. They had started building bunkers. Stockpiling. Running "exercises" in remote regions.
We found out too late.
This time, I would not.
I dried my face, tied my hair back, and dressed mechanically.
When I opened the bedroom door, the hallway was a familiar chaos.
Lily, twelve, was arguing with Ryan, nine, over something ridiculous, voices bouncing off the walls.
"It's my turn to pick the playlist!" Ryan shouted, dinosaur hoodie indeed in place, bangs sticking up.
"You picked it all last week," Lily snapped, brushing her hair with one hand and her phone screen with the other, thumbs flying over a chat. "And you only play that one stupid hero song on repeat."
"It's not stupid! It's from Stellar Guardians!"
"It's for babies."
"They have a sixteen-plus rating!"
"You're mentally five."
I leaned against the wall, watching them.
Alive. Whole. No flicker of power yet in their hands, no trauma in their eyes. Just kids.
My throat thickened.
"Mom!" Ryan spotted me and bounced over. "Lily says I can't—"
"Good morning," I cut in, smoothing a hand over his messy hair. He beamed up at me, missing tooth and all.
Lily glanced up, rolled her eyes automatically, then froze.
"What?" I asked.
She narrowed her gaze. "You look weird."
"Thanks."
"No, like—you were crying."
She dropped her voice, stepping closer, expression shifting from bratty to genuinely curious. "Bad dream?"
For a heartbeat, I saw her as she would be: taller, leaner, eyes harder, hands glowing green as she held a shield against a tidal wave of flesh. Heard her choke out "Don't go."
I blinked it away.
"Yeah," I said softly. "Bad one."
She hesitated, then, in a move rare enough to be notable, slung an arm around my waist and leaned in for a quick, awkward hug.
"It's okay," she mumbled. "It was probably just that true crime thing you watched last night. I told you not to."
My chest ached.
"Maybe," I said.
She pulled back, already halfway gone into her notifications again. "We're going to be late," she announced. "Dad's freaking out about some investor call. You driving us or is he?"
"I am," I said.
Alex appeared at the end of the hall, jacket on, tie knotted, phone to his ear.
"I told you, we need the numbers before Q2," he was saying. "No, I don't care if the model needs more time—"
He covered the mic with his hand.
"Can you take them?" he mouthed.
I nodded.
"Yeah," I said aloud. "Let me grab my bag."
As I bent to pick my old work tote from its hook, the System pinged again.
[EARLY OBJECTIVE: SECURE PERSONAL BASE SITE]
[HINT: URBAN CENTERS = HIGH INITIAL CASUALTY ZONES]
A tiny map expanded in my mind's eye, overlaid with red and green zones I recognized with a bone-deep chill.
In my old life, I had escaped the city only after the Mist fell, driving through streets gone feral. I'd lost friends on that road. I'd lost innocence, if any had been left.
This time, I could leave before the curtain dropped.
"Mom?" Ryan tugged my sleeve. "Can we get donuts?"
"Donuts?" Lily echoed, scandalized. "We're gonna be late."
"There's a drive-through," he protested.
For a moment, the absurdity of it all hammered at me. Donuts. School. Investor calls. Under it all, a ticking bomb only I could hear.
"Yes," I said.
Both kids stared.
"You can get donuts," I clarified. "And we're leaving five minutes early. Shoes on. Now."
They scrambled, years of parental training finally kicking in.
As they pulled on sneakers and squabbled about who got the front seat, I pulled out my phone again.
My fingers moved without thought, guided by memories burned in.
Search: "rural properties within 150km, water source, poor road access, old mining tunnels."
Seventy-three days was both a long time and no time at all.
I didn't have my powers yet.
I didn't have the System fully unlocked.
But I had a head start.
And this time, I would not hesitate. I would not assume that people I loved wouldn't choose themselves over me when the world burned.
I would build our sanctuary early, far from the clusters the Mist would chew through first.
I would gather the family members worth saving—and I would watch the others, the ones who would become liabilities, with new eyes.
"Mom!" Lily called. "Earth to Mom."
I looked up.
Both kids were at the door, backpacks slung, half-irritated, half-expectant.
"Coming," I said.
As I stepped into the hallway, the System chimed again, almost conversationally.
[NOTE: GOVERNMENT-LEVEL PREPARATIONS BEGIN IN T - 30 DAYS]
[YOU HAVE: 73]
[EARLY ADVANTAGE: SIGNIFICANT]
In my first life, I had stumbled into the apocalypse.
In my second, I was walking toward it with my eyes open.
"Let's go," I told my children, and we left our bright, fragile apartment behind.