Apocalypse Rebirth: Seven Days to Hoard and Take Revenge

Cora's eyes snapped open.

Her chest heaved violently, sucking in air as if she had been drowning. Her lungs burned. Her heart hammered against her ribs so hard it felt like it might crack her sternum.

She threw her hands up over her face, bracing for the tearing of flesh, the hot spray of blood, the rotting teeth of the infected sinking into her neck.

Nothing happened.

There was no pain. Just a sharp, stinging pinch on the back of her left hand.

The heavy scent of bleach mixed with the sickeningly sweet smell of vanilla candles flooded her nose. It instantly shattered the bloody illusion of the apocalyptic ruins.

Her vision was blurred, a lingering side effect of the high fever. She blinked hard, forcing the double images to merge into the familiar, clean lines of her single dorm room at the university.

A muffled sob came from the chair next to her bed. The person crying was deliberately slowing their breathing, making the sound soft and pitiful.

Cora turned her head. Hailee sat there, dabbing at perfectly dry eyes with a tissue.

Declan stood right behind Hailee. He took a step forward and placed his hand on Hailee's shoulder. The movement was so natural, so fluid, it looked like they had practiced it a thousand times.

Cora's pupils shrank to pinpricks.

The memory of their faces-twisted in ugly survival instinct as they shoved her backward into the zombie horde-superimposed perfectly over the concerned expressions they wore right now.

A violent wave of nausea hit her stomach. The room spun. Cora bit down hard on the side of her tongue. The sharp pain and the metallic taste of blood grounded her, forcing her mind to stay sharp.

Hailee noticed her movement. She lunged at the bed, grabbing Cora's cold fingers with both hands.

"Oh my god, you're finally awake," Hailee said, her voice trembling with a practiced sweetness. "I thought this awful meningitis was going to take you away from us."

Cora looked down. Hailee was gripping her hand so tightly that her manicured nails were digging into Cora's skin, leaving angry red half-moons.

Declan moved to the other side of the bed. He leaned over, his voice a low, magnetic hum.

"Cora. Hey, baby."

Cora's fingers twitched. Every muscle in her body screamed at her to grab the heavy metal IV pole and smash it into his skull. Instead, she slowly lifted her head and stared at him with blank, exhausted eyes.

"Water," Cora rasped. Her throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper.

Declan immediately turned toward the water dispenser across the room. In the split second he turned his back, Cora caught it.

Declan and Hailee exchanged a look. It was fast, but it was there. Pure, unadulterated annoyance.

Cora shifted her gaze past them, locking onto the digital clock on her desk.

October 14. 2:00 PM.

The floodgates of her memory burst open. The Cerberus virus would leak from the underground lab in Manhattan in exactly seven days.

Declan walked back with a plastic cup of warm water. He reached out, trying to slide his hand behind Cora's neck to lift her head.

Cora flinched away, turning her head sharply.

"My neck is stiff," she lied, her voice completely flat. She reached out and took the cup from his hand.

The warm water slid down her throat, easing the physical ache, but doing nothing to put out the cold fire burning in her chest.

Hailee kept talking, rambling about how worried she had been, making sure to highlight how many hours she had spent sitting in that uncomfortable chair.

Cora set the cup on the bedside table. She pressed her fingers against her temples, rubbing them slowly.

"My head is killing me," Cora whispered, making her voice sound weaker than it was. "I need quiet. Please."

Hailee's mouth snapped shut. A flash of irritation crossed her face, but she quickly masked it with an understanding smile.

Declan reached out and tucked the blanket around Cora's shoulders.

"Get some rest," Declan said softly. "I'll bring you that chicken soup you love tonight."

They turned and walked toward the door together. As they faced away from the bed, Declan's fingers brushed against Hailee's palm. He hooked his pinky around hers for a fraction of a second.

Cora watched them through half-closed eyes. Her stomach twisted again, but this time, the corners of her mouth twitched upward into a cold smile.

The door clicked shut. The sound of their footsteps echoed down the hallway, moving faster, clearly relieved to be out of the room.

The second the sound faded, Cora threw the blanket off.

She calmly peeled off the medical tape securing the IV catheter, pulling the needle from her vein without a single ounce of hesitation. A small bead of dark blood welled up, and she casually grabbed a tissue from the bedside table, pressing it over the puncture wound. Her eyes remained completely devoid of emotion as the red stain bloomed against the white paper.

She stepped onto the freezing hardwood floor barefoot and walked straight to the full-length mirror.

The girl staring back at her was pale and sickly, but her eyes were different. They were the eyes of a wolf that had already died once.

The countdown had started.

Cora locked the bathroom door behind her.

She leaned over the marble sink, gripping the edges so hard her knuckles turned white. She turned the faucet on full blast.

The freezing water rushed over her hands. She stared into the mirror, but all she saw were the flashes of the refugee camp. The smell of rotting flesh. The sight of people dying in agony because there wasn't a single dose of antibiotics left in the city.

She looked down at her hands. They were smooth. The massive, jagged scar that had torn through her left palm in her past life was gone.

She closed her eyes and focused.

In her past life, she had awakened a hydrokinesis ability. The military had classified it as a low-level support skill. It was weak, but it was something.

She pushed her focus to the tips of her fingers.

The water running from the faucet stuttered. It was a microscopic pause, but it happened.

Cora's eyes snapped open. She curled her index finger upward.

A single drop of water, the size of a marble, broke away from the stream. It defied gravity, floating silently an inch above her palm.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

The ability had come back with her.

It was tiny, but it meant she wasn't completely defenseless. She flicked her wrist. The water droplet shot forward, hitting the mirror with a soft, wet tap, harmlessly splattering tiny droplets across the smooth glass.

A wave of dizziness hit her. Using the ability this early drained her physical energy fast.

She grabbed a towel, dried her hands roughly, and walked back into the dorm room.

She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk, bypassing the textbooks, and pulled out a black notebook with a combination lock.

She spun the dials, flipped past the old class notes to a blank page, and grabbed a thick black marker.

She wrote the first word in all caps: FOOD & WATER.

She drew a massive star next to it. She remembered the taste of moldy dog food. She knew exactly what hunger did to the human brain. It turned people into animals.

She wrote the second line: MEDICAL SUPPLIES.

Antibiotics. By the second month of the apocalypse, a single pill was worth more than a gold bar.

She wrote the third line: WEAPONS & DEFENSE.

She needed distance. She couldn't fight infected hand-to-hand, not with her current physical strength.

Cora stared at the list. The ink bled through the paper. She had the knowledge, but she hit a massive, physical wall.

Money.

She opened her laptop and logged into her Bank of America account.

Balance: $3,050.00.

She let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

She had one other card-a black Visa tied to a small emergency account her parents had established before the crash. Harlon didn't know it existed. But when she checked that balance, the number staring back at her was barely four thousand dollars. Combined with her main account, it wouldn't even cover a single pallet of MREs, let alone the arsenal she needed. The trust fund was still the only real answer.

Her eyes drifted to the framed photo on her desk. It was a picture of her parents. Standing behind them was a man in a tailored suit with a fake, tight smile. Her uncle, Harlon.

When her parents died in a car crash, they left behind a ten-million-dollar trust fund. Harlon controlled every single penny of it.

In her past life, she never saw that money. When the world ended, those millions just became useless code on dead servers.

Her brain worked in overdrive, calculating how to pry a massive chunk of cash from a greedy Wall Street shark legally.

Her phone buzzed on the desk.

An iMessage from Hailee lit up the screen: Do you want me to grab you an organic salad from Whole Foods? Love you!

Cora's jaw clenched. She typed back: No thanks. I'm good.

She tossed the phone onto her bed. It bounced on the mattress and slid toward the edge of the pillow, teetering on the edge.

Cora lunged forward to catch it before it hit the floor.

The second her fingertips brushed the cold metal casing of the phone, the air around her hand warped.

It didn't make a sound. There was no flash of light. The phone just ceased to exist in the physical space.

Cora froze. She stayed bent over the bed, her hand still hovering in the empty air. Her heart stopped beating for a full second.

She dropped to her knees. She ripped the blankets off the bed. She crawled under the frame, sweeping her hands over the dusty floorboards.

Nothing.

She sat back on her heels, forcing her breathing to slow down. She closed her eyes and reached inward, trying to find that weird mental pull she had felt the moment the phone vanished.

Deep inside her consciousness, a space opened up.

It was massive, roughly the size of a basketball court. The air inside was gray and completely still.

And right in the center of that void, her iPhone was floating, perfectly suspended in nothingness.

Cora's pulse pounded in her ears.

She focused her mind on the phone in the gray void and whispered, "Out."

The phone instantly materialized in her palm. The metal was still cold.

She needed to know the limits. She grabbed a thick, heavy macroeconomics textbook from her desk. She touched the cover. It vanished. She grabbed her desk lamp. Gone. She grabbed the heavy wooden chair. Gone.

She closed her eyes and looked into the space. The book, the lamp, and the chair were floating exactly as they had been the moment she touched them. There was no dust, no air movement. Time didn't exist in there.

She pulled them all back out. They dropped onto the floor with loud thuds.

A wave of exhaustion hit her brain, but she couldn't stop the massive, genuine smile that broke across her face.

She had the ultimate vault. Now she just needed to fill it.

She sat back at her laptop and opened Google. She searched for the most volatile, high-risk financial trends in the current market.

Cryptocurrency ICOs.

Harlon was an old-school, conservative hedge fund manager. He hated anything he couldn't physically touch or legally manipulate. He despised crypto.

Cora opened a Word document. She typed furiously, creating a garbage business plan for a fake company called "Future Assets." She stuffed it with buzzwords: decentralized finance, blockchain, Web3 integration.

She deliberately left massive, glaring holes in the financial projections. She made it look exactly like a scam designed to steal money from dumb, rich kids.

She saved the file, picked up her phone, and dialed Harlon's private number.

It rang six times before he picked up.

"Cora," Harlon said. The sound of wind brushing against a golf cart speaker echoed in the background. "Is your fever gone?"

Cora pitched her voice up. She made herself sound frantic, arrogant, and completely unhinged.

"I need money, Uncle Harlon. I found an angel investment opportunity. It's going to change the world. I need to liquidate one million dollars from the trust right now."

The wind noise stopped. Harlon's voice dropped an octave, turning sharp and condescending.

"Did the meningitis fry your brain? You are not touching a dime for some internet scam."

"I'm eighteen!" Cora yelled into the receiver, playing the part perfectly. "It's my money! You can't keep treating me like a child!"

She heard Harlon take a deep, angry breath.

"You will pack a bag and come to the estate in Connecticut immediately," Harlon ordered. "We are going to have a serious talk about your financial future."

Got you.

"Fine. I'll be there tonight," Cora snapped, and hung up.

She stripped off her sweatpants and pulled on a thick, dark hoodie and jeans, hiding her weight loss and pale skin. She shoved her laptop and her ID into a black backpack.

She opened the dorm door and walked right into Hailee.

Hailee was holding two Starbucks cups. She jumped back, her eyes widening as she took in Cora's clothes.

"Cora? What are you doing? You're sick!" Hailee said, her voice dripping with fake concern.

Cora stepped around her, not even making eye contact.

"I have to go home to deal with my inheritance," Cora said flatly.

Hailee froze. Cora didn't look back, but she knew exactly what expression was on Hailee's face. Panic. The fear of losing her invisible ATM.

Cora walked out of the building. The crisp October wind hit her face, clearing the last bit of the fever fog from her brain.

She walked out to the busy intersection, raised her hand, and hailed a yellow cab, paying the driver upfront in crisp, untraceable cash to take her to Grand Central Terminal.

She sat in the back seat, watching the crowded streets of New York blur past the window. Thousands of people walking, laughing, drinking coffee. None of them knew they were dead walking.

Her phone buzzed. A massive block of text from Hailee, asking a dozen questions about the inheritance.

Cora flipped the phone to silent and shoved it in her pocket.

The taxi descended into the dark tunnel approaching Grand Central. The shadows swallowed the back seat. Cora's eyes adjusted to the dark, cold and sharp.