Awakening Before Doomsday

Harper Vance snapped awake, gasping for air as her eyes flew open in the dark.

The bedroom lay quiet. No collapsing concrete crushed her ribs, no gunfire echoed through shattered streets, and no grinding rumble of tectonic plates tore the world apart. Pale moonlight slipped through the blinds, casting thin silver bars across the wooden floor. She stared at the familiar crown molding and the soft pastel paint on the walls, her chest heaving as her pulse hammered against her throat.

She grabbed the smartphone resting on the nightstand. The bright screen illuminated her face.

July 4, 2123. 11:14 p.m.

A tremor ran through her fingers. She was back. Exactly one month before the world collapsed into ruins. In her previous life, she had spent this exact night binge-watching shows, oblivious to the fact that her nightmare was already beginning. Later, she had spent a grueling decade surviving on scraps, fighting off starving looters, only to be crushed in the catastrophic earthquake that brought down the entire city.

She turned toward the window, drew the curtain aside, and looked down at the street below.

A few yards from her building, four middle-aged men sat around a foldout table beneath a buzzing yellow streetlight. They wore shorts and sleeveless shirts, laughing over a deck of cards with cold beers resting near their plastic chairs. Every summer, those neighborhood residents gathered there around nine in the evening, playing late into the humid night before heading home.

Harper knew this scene by heart. A chill crept down her spine as the forgotten memory resurfaced with razor-sharp clarity. Back then, she had assumed they simply got into a drunken brawl over a disputed hand. When several of them lay still on the asphalt, she had called an emergency hotline, never imagining that the quiet scuffle was the opening strike of a global infection.

She unlocked her phone, switched on the camera, and pointed the lens through the glass.

Down on the pavement, a man holding three cards suddenly froze. His shoulders hitched, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, and he threw himself at the player sitting beside him. A strangled scream split the night air. Within seconds, the friendly game descended into madness. The men clawed, bit, and tore into each other like rabid animals, overturning the plastic table and scattering beer bottles across the pavement.

Harper held the phone steady, her knuckles turning white. The chaotic struggle lasted a little over two minutes before the thrashing ceased, leaving four bodies slumped in grotesque angles across the blood-smeared street.

Just as she moved to stop the recording, her breath caught.

One of the men, who should have been cold and lifeless, jerked violently. His spine arched in an erratic spasm. He dragged himself upright with rigid, unnatural jerks, his limbs trembling as he stumbled forward toward the entrance of Harper's apartment complex. He managed three clumsy steps before his knees buckled, and he collapsed motionless onto the concrete once more.

A crisp chime chimed in her head, followed by a mechanical voice that sounded directly inside her mind.

[Apocalypse Awakening System activated.]

Before she could process the sound, a translucent panel of soft blue light materialized in her field of vision.

[Do you accept the beginner awakening mission?]

Harper stared at the glowing prompt. In her previous life, she had awakened an invisibility talent six months into the collapse, but she had never heard of an integrated system interface. Given the horrors she had survived, she did not hesitate for a second. She focused her mind and selected confirmation.

The bedroom vanished instantly.

A surge of weightlessness swept through her, and Harper found herself standing beneath a clear, sunlit sky in a strange expanse of open land. Before her stood a modest wooden cabin with a pitched roof. Beside the structure sat an old stone well with a wooden bucket, and nearby lay a square patch of rich black soil roughly ten square feet in size. The air felt remarkably clean, completely devoid of dust or rot.

She pulled up the interface with a thought, and a new window expanded before her eyes.

[Beginner Mission: Prepare survival supplies for the apocalypse. Current value: 0 / 5,000 dollars.]

The system was ordering her to stockpile resources. Excitement surged through her veins. With another mental command, she exited the pocket dimension and reappeared in her quiet bedroom.

Her gaze swept across the room, searching for something valuable enough to meet the quota. Her eyes landed on the desktop computer sitting on her study desk. Her brother, Declan Vance, had brought it home just the previous week, casually setting the boxes down and claiming he picked it up second-hand on his way home from work for five thousand dollars.

Harper reached out, touched the tower, and channeled her intent into the system.

The computer vanished from the desk. Instantly, the red numbers on the system panel turned into a vivid emerald green.

[Mission Update: Survival supplies acquired. Current value: 28,500 / 5,000 dollars. Mission Completed. Reward: 50 square feet of emergency preparation space.]

Harper stared at the valuation on the screen, her breath catching in her throat. Twenty-eight thousand and five hundred dollars. Declan had spent nearly three months of his engineering salary to buy her a top-tier machine, yet he had lied with a straight face, pretending it was cheap surplus so she wouldn't feel guilty about taking it.

Tears welled in her eyes, burning her lashes as she remembered how Declan had always watched over her in silence.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and drew a long breath. There was no time for tears right now. She had to build the safest fortress possible before the sky turned red. Harper opened the beginner task list and began hauling everything she could reach into the space.

Her ergonomic desk chair vanished into the air.

[Ergonomic Office Chair: Value 8,600 dollars.]

She hurried into the living area, targeting the Italian leather sofa.

[Sectional Couch: Value 37,000 dollars.]

She touched the wall-mounted screen.

[Smart Television: Value 23,000 dollars.]

She swept through the hallway, clearing out the designer waste bin.

[Trash Can: Value 66 dollars.]

She picked up a stray pair of athletic socks dropped near the shoe rack.

[Cotton Socks: Value 1 dollar.]

Harper paused, staring at the meager valuation before recognizing the athletic brand Declan wore to the gym. She gave a dry huff, tossed the socks back onto the floor, and turned toward the kitchen cabinets.

As the hours passed, she quickly unraveled the system's operational rules. In the beginning stages, every thousand dollars' worth of non-living material expanded the usable land by ten square feet. Furthermore, the dimension preserved non-living matter in a state of absolute stasis. A tub of strawberry ice cream she had transferred from her freezer an hour earlier remained rock hard on the wooden table, not a single drop melting in the warm cabin air.

This was the ultimate sanctuary for survival.

She thought of her family living next door. Arthur Vance, Cora Delaney, and Declan. If they could step inside this space, they would never have to scavenge through ruins, drink contaminated rain, or fear the monsters roaming the dark.

Determination settled in her chest. In this life, she would keep them safe no matter the cost.

Harper worked through the night, stripping her apartment until almost nothing remained except bare walls and empty floorboards. Inside the dimension, the wooden cabin trembled under successive upgrades, shifting from rough timber into packed earth, and finally settling into a solid, reinforced brick house with double-glazed glass windows.

Just as exhaustion caught up with her and her limbs began to ache, another notification chimed in her mind.

[Congratulations on completing all beginner preparation missions. Reward: 1 Family Member Slot. Please bind a designated family member within 24 hours.]

Harper stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide with shock. The space could harbor living people after all.

Without wasting another second, she exited the pocket dimension and headed toward the doorway.

Her residence was a top-floor duplex spanning roughly thirty-two hundred square feet, featuring an eleven-hundred-square-foot rooftop terrace out front. The entire floor had private elevator access. Across the shared rooftop garden lay the neighboring duplex unit where Arthur, Cora, and Declan lived. The low brick wall separating their terraces had been modified years ago with an iron security gate, allowing Harper to visit for home-cooked meals whenever she pleased while maintaining her own independence.

The lock on the front door clicked before Harper could reach the handle.

Cora Delaney stepped inside carrying a wooden tray, her voice warm and affectionate. "Harper, are you awake? I made your favorite beef sliders and oatmeal. They're still warm. Eat first before you go back to sleep, okay?"

Cora looked up from the tray, and the warm smile vanished from her face. Her gaze swept across the bare living room, taking in the missing couch, the empty TV mount, and the stripped study.

A shrill scream broke from her lips as the ceramic bowl rattled against the tray.

Cora set the breakfast down onto the kitchen island and sprinted across the foyer, her eyes wide with terror as she pulled Harper into her arms. "Are you hurt? Did someone break in while you were sleeping? Let me look at you!"

Cora turned Harper around twice, patting her shoulders and checking her arms before letting out a shaky breath of relief when she found no bruises.

The front door slammed back against the wall. Arthur and Declan sprinted inside, armed with a golf club and a heavy wrench, their expressions tight with alarm. They stopped dead in their tracks at the threshold, staring in disbelief at the stripped, empty apartment.

"Dad, Mom, Declan." Harper choked out the words as hot tears spilled over her cheeks.

Ten long years of brutal solitude melted away in an instant. In her previous life, every single one of them had died shielding her from harm, leaving her to endure a living hell alone until the final earthquake crushed her bones.

Harper threw her arms around Cora's neck, burying her face into her mother's shoulder as heavy sobs racked her body.

Cora wrapped her arms around her daughter, rubbing her back while assuming Harper had been traumatized by a brazen home invasion.

Declan lowered the wrench, standing stiffly beside the wall, his jaw clenched as his fingers twitched toward his sister's shoulder before pulling back. Arthur gripped his golf club with white knuckles, shifting his weight from foot to foot with a deeply furrowed brow, desperate to offer comfort yet frozen by his own protective pride.