Setting the Bait

Bryce’s smooth, manipulative voice immediately floated through the speaker, dripping with practiced affection. “Babe, what do you want for dinner tonight? I’ll cook something and bring it over.”

For over a year, Bryce had meticulously maintained this exact facade of a caring, devoted boyfriend. He loved to parade his cheap, homemade meals—a hastily thrown-together omelet or a basic plate of pasta cooked in his dorm—as grand romantic gestures. He made sure all their classmates saw him delivering food to her, cementing his reputation as a perfect catch. Everyone in their department admired him, constantly telling Sadie she had struck gold, that she was incredibly lucky a handsome student council president would look past her plain appearance to love her. In her past life, Sadie had naively eaten it up, blushing and feeling unworthy of his attention.

But now, standing in the cold, cavernous space of her rented warehouse, she stared at the glowing screen of her phone and saw right through his greedy, manipulative core. He was a parasite, feeding off her wealth while silently despising her for the birthmark on her face.

She forced down the icy disgust rising in her chest, taking a slow breath to steady her racing heart. When she spoke, she effortlessly adopted a sweet, playful, and utterly naive tone.

"I'm not hungry right now, sweetheart, but thank you for offering," she chirped. "Oh, by the way, my parents are flying in tomorrow. Let's have dinner together then?"

There was a brief, tense pause on the line. "Tomorrow?" Bryce asked, his voice tightening slightly. "What for? I already promised some classmates I'd go look for internship opportunities. I can't make it."

He hated dealing with her parents. Her father, Gareth, had never hidden his disdain for Bryce, often hinting that the young man was nothing more than a gold digger living off Sadie’s bank account. Bryce always found every excuse to push bills onto her and avoid her family.

"Duh! They're coming to meet their future son-in-law, of course!" Sadie kept her voice light and bubbly, then dropped the bait. "And they're coming to help me buy a car. Remember that luxury Audi you always talked about wanting? The one around 200,000 dollars? I could just wire you the money now so you can get it."

The shift in Bryce’s demeanor was instantaneous. The hesitation vanished, replaced by a sharp, eager intensity. "A 200,000 dollar Audi? Seriously? How much are they giving you?"

"Well, at least 100,000 dollars, but tomorrow I'll push them to give me more," Sadie said.

Bryce hesitated. "But if they're coming, won't they want to go to the dealership and buy it with you? Then whose name would the car be under?"

Anticipating his boundless greed, Sadie sickeningly cooed, "I'll just tell them tomorrow that I'm only going to take a look, then later I'll come back with you to actually buy it. The car would be under my name for the paperwork, but what's yours is mine, right? Honestly, I don't really need a car right now anyway. When I start working, you can buy me one then."

That sentence perfectly masked her sheer revulsion. She knew exactly how to stroke his immense ego.

"That sounds amazing, baby. Nobody is closer than us," Bryce said, his tone thick with fake warmth. "Once you graduate, we'll get married."

Sadie bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from gagging. She whimpered softly, perfectly playing the role of a distressed victim. "But there’s a huge problem, Bryce. My dad issued a strict ultimatum."

"What kind of ultimatum?"

"He demanded to see a 50,000 dollar balance in my personal bank account tomorrow," Sadie cried, feigning innocent distress. "He wants to prove that I'm financially responsible before he covers the remaining cost of the car. He said he’s worried I spent all my money on you, and if I fail this inspection, he’s going to cut off his financial support entirely. No car, no allowance, nothing."

Silence stretched over the line.

"But I don't have that money anymore," Sadie whimpered, leaning into the act. "We spent so much on our trips, and I bought you that emerald amulet... My balance is basically zero. What am I going to do, Bryce? If my dad sees my empty account, he's going to freak out."

She could hear Bryce gritting his teeth audibly through the speaker. The sound of his jaw clenching was unmistakable. Living off other people had always been his way, and parting with stolen cash was physically painful to him.

"Can't you just take out a personal loan from an app?" Bryce suggested, his voice strained. "Maybe borrow a little. I'll figure out the rest."

"My limit's too low! And if I do that, it'll show up on my credit report, and my dad will definitely check that too," Sadie panicked flawlessly. "Bryce, if we don't have that 50,000 dollars to show him tomorrow, the 200,000 dollar Audi is gone. Your family hasn't wired you any money, right? Maybe we should just forget about the car entirely."

"No way!" Bryce snapped, blinded by the overwhelming prospect of parading around campus in the high-end Audi. He took a deep breath, forcing his voice back into a calmer register. "Fine. Fifty thousand is a lot to pull together, but I'll figure it out. I'll scrape together a loan from some friends to help you pass the inspection."

He reluctantly agreed, but his true colors bled through the facade as his tone turned sour and aggressive. "But listen to me, Sadie. This is just a temporary transfer for your dad to see. The second your parents leave, you have to wire it back to me. Immediately. You have to pay me back the exact same day. Do you understand?"

"Of course, Bryce!" Sadie chirped with sweet certainty. "You know me. I'll give it right back."

The moment she ended the call and pulled the phone away from her ear, Sadie’s sweet expression shattered into a mask of pure disgust. She doubled over, clutching her stomach as she nearly gagged at the physical toll of her own performance. Acting like his submissive, adoring girlfriend made her skin crawl with nausea.

The silence of the warehouse immediately pressed in on her, but it brought no peace. Instead, the quiet gave way to the horrific, vivid memories of her past life, crashing into her mind like a physical blow.

She remembered the chaotic aftermath of the initial Floodfall disaster. Before the apocalypse fully set in, she had selflessly used that exact 50,000 dollars from her parents to stockpile life-saving supplies. She had packed her secure 19th-floor apartment with mountains of instant noodles, canned goods, bottled water, and dried rations, preparing to weather the storm.

When the disaster struck, she had foolishly welcomed Bryce and her best friend Tessa to take shelter with her. She thought they were a team. She thought they cared about her.

But when the megatsunami inevitably hit, completely wiping out the city's infrastructure and trapping them in the high-rise, their dwindling food supply changed everything. The calculating, parasitic nature of Bryce and Tessa had fully emerged.

They mercilessly gaslit her, day after day, wearing down her fragile self-esteem. They secretly ate her food and drank her drinks while finding ways to control her every move. As the food ran dangerously low, Bryce had callously reasoned that Sadie was the one who needed to risk her life to find more.

"Sadie, you're strong and smart," Bryce had told her, his eyes cold and evaluating. "And... well, you're not exactly pretty. If you go out looking for supplies, you'll be safe. Tessa is lovely; it'll be too dangerous for a beautiful girl like her out there."

Tessa had chimed in, playing along perfectly as the fragile, beautiful damsel whose safety was paramount. "Yeah, Sadie. I'm too pretty. I might be in danger. I'm just fragile. I couldn't possibly survive out there."

For six agonizing months, Sadie had believed them. She swallowed her pride and risked her life daily, diving into the deadly, flooded, corpse-ridden streets to scavenge for them. She built a flimsy raft out of empty plastic bottles and paddled through freezing, toxic floodwaters, fighting off desperate survivors and navigating floating debris just to bring back a few soggy cans of food so Bryce and Tessa could eat.

This endless torment culminated in her returning early one afternoon. She had nearly drowned that day, her hands blistered and bleeding, only to walk into her own apartment and hear rhythmic thumping coming from her bedroom.

She opened the door and caught Bryce and Tessa violently rolling in her bed. The memory was seared into her brain with brutal clarity. Bryce was naked, sweating profusely as he drove his hips forward, his hard penis thrusting deep into Tessa’s wet vagina. Tessa’s legs were wrapped tight around his waist, her bare breasts bouncing as she moaned loudly, her fingers digging into Bryce’s back. They were fucking right on the sheets Sadie had washed, eating the food Sadie had bled to scavenge.

The sheer betrayal hit her like a sledgehammer. A shattered Sadie had screamed at them, ordering them out of her apartment. She told them she never wanted to see them again.

That was the moment Bryce’s mask finally disintegrated.

He didn't apologize. He brutally beat her. He struck her across the face with a closed fist, the force of the blow shattering her nose and sending her crashing to the floor, her ears ringing violently. As she laid there bleeding, Bryce and Tessa dragged her down the hall and locked her inside the tiny spare bedroom, tying her hands and feet with heavy rope.

Over the next few days, Bryce deliberately invited a gang of violent, roving drifters to take over the apartment. These were hardened, desperate men who had lost everything in the floods. Bryce made a deal with them, offering up her secure apartment and her remaining supplies.

Through the thin walls, Sadie had listened in absolute horror as Bryce explicitly offered her up to the gang as shared property. He told them they could use her holes whenever they wanted, treating her like a piece of communal meat to cement his leadership among the thugs.

Preferring death to the living hell he had just orchestrated, Sadie fought like a cornered animal. She rubbed her bound wrists against the sharp metal edge of the bed frame until her skin tore, her blood lubricating the ropes until she finally shattered her bindings.

With the drifters drinking and laughing in the living room, Sadie shoved the door shut, smashed the heavy glass window of the bedroom, and climbed out. The howling wind and freezing rain instantly lashed her face. Miraculously, she squeezed through the broken frame and began to scale down the slippery, rain-lashed exterior of the 19th-floor balcony. Her fingers cramped, her nails tore, and her boots slipped on the wet concrete, but she climbed down level by level, dangling over the deadly drop, fueled by pure adrenaline and a desperate will to live.

She eventually made it to the lower floors and found temporary refuge with a kind upperclassman from her department, Faye Adler, and Faye’s boyfriend, Jared. Faye had been furious when she heard what Bryce had done and took Sadie in without a second thought.

For a brief period, they survived together. But as the apocalyptic starvation worsened and the floodwaters brought new horrors, Jared’s true colors began to show. The hunger drove him to madness.

Jared secretly bartered a deal with the very gang of drifters Bryce had brought in. He planned to trade both Sadie and Faye back to Bryce’s violent group in exchange for a few pathetic scraps of food.

When Sadie and Faye discovered the brutal betrayal, the two women fought back with feral desperation. It wasn't a clean fight. It was a bloody, screaming struggle on the floor of the apartment. They used whatever they could find, fighting tooth and nail, ultimately killing Jared in the bloody struggle to save themselves.

Covered in blood and severely traumatized, the two women escaped the ruined city. They trekked north, clinging to the faint hope of finding a military safe zone or unflooded land. They walked for weeks through freezing rain, mud, and complete societal collapse.

But the elements and their injuries proved too much. Faye grew weaker by the day, succumbing to the harsh conditions. Despite Sadie’s desperate attempts to carry her, Faye tragically did not survive the grueling journey, passing away in the freezing cold.

Standing in the warehouse in the present day, Sadie opened her eyes. The lingering shadow of Faye’s tragic death pressed heavily on her chest, acting as a grim reminder of the absolute stakes of the apocalypse. Faye had died because the world was merciless and cruel, and because they had trusted the wrong men.

Sadie clenched her fists, her fingernails biting painfully into her palms. The deep-seated revulsion she felt for Bryce had evolved into a dark, agonizing trauma, but it also sharpened her tactical brilliance. She had successfully trapped him into returning the stolen money, and when the world ended, she would ensure he experienced a hell far worse than the one he had given her. A somber, determined hook anchored itself in her soul. There would be no mercy this time.