Three Months to Doomsday

The air turned to liquid fire. Above the ruined wasteland, a blazing fireball plummeted from the blood-red sky, hurtling straight toward Harper Mercer. The scorching heat blistered her tanned, emaciated skin and melted the cracked asphalt beneath her boots before the flames even arrived. Around her, the last two thousand human survivors on Earth scattered in all directions, screaming like headless chickens searching for a safe place to hide.

But there was nowhere left to hide. For fifteen grueling years, the planet had taken turns destroying humanity. Toxic fogs, megastorms, endless droughts, catastrophic floods, deep freezes, acid rain, and swarms of mutated insects had reduced the once-thriving world to a barren, silent tomb.

Harper did not run. She stood thin and numb amid the chaos, stripped of all human expression. Shock, fear, panic, and despair were luxuries of the past. Having endured fifteen years of unrelenting hell, she had forgotten the basic concept of fear. As the world-ending meteor rapidly closed the distance to erase the final remnants of human civilization, emotion finally flickered in her dead eyes. She simply opened her arms and embraced the fiery oblivion.

"Testing, testing. Hello? Hello?"

A sharp, blaring voice blasted through a neighborhood loudspeaker, shattering the nightmare.

Harper jolted awake. Her eyes snapped open to stare at a clean, perfectly intact white ceiling. Disoriented and breathing in ragged, desperate gasps, she leaped out of bed. Her hands frantically patted her face, her arms, her chest. There were no burns. No blistering wounds. Her fingers felt soft, lacking the thick, bloody calluses she had earned from years of scavenging. She bolted straight into the bathroom and gripped the edges of the cold porcelain sink.

She stared at the mirror, expecting to see a charred, grotesque corpse. Instead, a young, healthy woman stared back. Her cheeks were full. Her skin held a healthy flush. She was not the starving, dying husk from the wasteland. The phantom stench of burning flesh still clung to her nostrils, triggering a harsh reflex. She bent over the toilet and gagged, her stomach heaving with rough spasms. The psychological whiplash crashed over her as reality set in. She had been reborn.

"Residents of Sunstone Residences, please come to the community office and sign the redevelopment papers. The first person to sign will receive an extra ten percent compensation, plus one bag of rice and one bag of flour. Offer ends today!"

The relentless loudspeaker echoed outside the window. It urged the residents to quickly sign the agreements in exchange for extra compensation.

Harper pushed herself up from the floor. She snatched her smartphone from the bathroom counter, her trembling thumb pressing against the fingerprint sensor. The bright screen illuminated her face, displaying a date that struck her like a physical lightning bolt.

March 1, 2056.

She collapsed against the tiled wall. It was exactly three months before the apocalypse would officially commence. On June first, the end of the world would arrive, bringing with it fifteen years of unimaginable suffering. The crushing psychological weight of reliving that hell threatened to swallow her sanity whole. Was she truly going to go through all of that again?

As her hands shook, her fingers accidentally brushed against a cheap, unremarkable wooden bead hanging as a charm from her phone case.

She froze. A crucial memory surged to the forefront of her mind, cutting through the rising panic.

In her previous life, she had accidentally discovered this wooden bead's magical secret during the tenth year of the apocalypse. By that time, the world was a desolate graveyard. Most hoarded supplies had already rotted away or turned into useless junk. Even after unlocking the bead, she had struggled to collect anything of value to place inside it. Yet, that single discovery had kept her alive for five extra years. She had survived by eating nothing but dry, tasteless grass stored within its depths.

Determined to seize this second chance, Harper did not waste a single second. She marched into the living room and grabbed a pair of sharp metal scissors from the table. She pulled up her sleeve, set her jaw, and drove the sharp blades directly into her own forearm.

A fresh streak of crimson blood trickled down her pale skin. She held her bleeding arm over the phone case and let the warm drops fall onto the wooden bead.

The unremarkable charm instantly absorbed the blood. A faint glow pulsed from the wood before the bead vanished into thin air.

Harper's vision blurred. The world spun around her. A moment later, she was pulled into a familiar dimensional void. She stood in the center of an empty, cube-shaped storage space. The area measured roughly sixteen feet long, sixteen feet wide, and sixteen feet high, providing her with exactly 4,400 cubic feet of storage. The air here was perfectly still and silent. Time did not exist in this spatial dimension. Anything placed inside this void would remain perfectly fresh forever.

She knelt and brushed her hand against the invisible barrier, calculating just how many crates of food and water she could stack to the ceiling. Knowing from past experience that this spatial dimension would eject her physical body after a strict five-minute limit, she quickly grounded herself. If she overstayed, the space would toss her out onto the hard floor, leaving her bruised and aching for days. She willed herself back to reality before the time limit expired.

The transition was instantaneous. Harper found herself standing in her living room again.

Outside, the blaring loudspeaker broke her concentration once more, repeating the redevelopment offer. The sound reminded her of the tragic past. In her previous life, her stubborn neighbors had collectively refused the developers' low compensation, holding out for a better deal. Three months later, a catastrophic flood washed over the city, wiping out the entire neighborhood and drowning everyone who had stubbornly stayed behind.

Harper moved with clinical purpose. She walked to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out her property deed. She stared at the thick, official document. This small, worn-down apartment in the urban village had cost her everything. Growing up in an orphanage, she had learned early on how cold and unforgiving the world could be. She had worked grueling jobs, sacrificing her grades and her youth, saving every penny for five years just to afford the down payment. She had nineteen years left on her mortgage.

None of that mattered now. The home she had sacrificed so much to buy would now serve as her critical starting capital.

She carefully tucked the document into her backpack, treating it like a priceless treasure, and hurried outside.

Harper stepped through the front doors of her building and walked into a vibrant, mundane world she hadn't experienced in over a decade. The bright morning sunlight warmed her skin. The normal atmosphere was almost overwhelming. People hurried down the sidewalks in clean clothes. Delivery riders zipped past on electric scooters. Distant traffic hummed a steady, peaceful rhythm. It was a bustling paradise she had thought lost forever.

She paused for a moment to let the sun hit her face, but her calculating mindset quickly took over. There was no time for sentimentality. She needed cash, and she needed it today.

As she walked down the apartment complex's main pathway, the lady from the apartment next door suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm with a tight grip.

"Hey, Harper! Where are you going? I'm telling you, everyone has to stand together. We cannot sign anything for those greedy developers. We have to demand better compensation. Listen to me—"

Harper maintained a blank expression. She looked at the older woman's hand, then met her eyes.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. I'm going to the grocery store. I'm out of food."

Harper delivered the vague reply and effortlessly pulled her arm out of the woman's grip. She didn't wait for a response. She turned her back and walked away with long, measured strides. Escaping the suffocating neighborhood dynamics, she headed straight toward the busy commercial streets just outside the gates.

The moment she crossed the threshold of the neighborhood, the rich, overwhelming aroma of restaurant street food forcefully hit her senses.

The smell of frying bacon, steaming pork buns, and roasted scallions drifted from the nearby breakfast stalls.

Harper froze in her tracks. Her mouth instantly flooded with saliva. A ravenous, animalistic hunger roared to life inside her stomach. Her core cramped with a sharp, blinding ache. For fifteen years in the apocalyptic wasteland, she had survived on tree bark, insect paste, and bitter grass. The memory of real, hot food had faded into a myth. Now, the scent of fresh meat and hot cooking oil surrounded her.

Her hands began to shake. The craving was so intense it nearly shattered her iron-forged self-control. A cold sweat broke out across her forehead. She wanted to rush the nearest stall, tear the hot buns from the steamer, and shove them into her mouth until she choked. The primitive urge to consume everything in sight screamed in her brain.

Taking a ragged breath, she pulled out her phone and opened her banking app. The screen displayed her current balance. Five hundred dollars.

It was more than enough for a lavish, decadent meal. She could buy dozens of steaming pork buns right now. She could sit at a table and eat until her stomach burst.

However, the ruthless survivor forged in the apocalypse knew better. Learning to strictly control one's basic desires was the fundamental rule of surviving the end of the world. Indulging in short-term comfort would only lead to a swift death. She needed massive funds, and she needed them immediately to fill her 4,400-cubic-foot void with long-term supplies. Five hundred dollars was a pathetic drop in the bucket compared to what she would need for the coming decades.

Harper locked her phone screen and shoved the device back into her pocket. She forced her eyes away from the golden, sizzling food and stared straight ahead. Her features hardened into a mask of pure resolve. Once she secured the massive payout she was owed for the apartment, she could satisfy her cravings on a monumental scale later.

She fixed her sights on the relocation office down the street and forced her legs to move forward.