October 1st.
East St. Louis, Illinois.
06:47 AM. Day 1.
Blue light stabbed my skull like a rusty icepick.
It wasn't death. It was worse. It was a rewind.
I bolted upright, gasping, dragging in air that tasted of black mold and the chemical funk of the Sauget incinerators instead of pulverized concrete and zombie rot.
My hands flew to my throat. Intact. No hamburger meat. No arterial spray.
I looked down. My legs were tangled in sweat-stained thrift-store sheets. I kicked them, hard. They moved. The paralysis was gone. The cold numbness that had severed my spine at T-7 was just a phantom memory, fading into the migraine pounding behind my eyes.
"Oh, you sadistic cunts," I whispered.
I was back.
The alarm clock on the milk-crate nightstand glowed red: 6:47 AM.
Day Zero.
My heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm, trying to pump blood for a body that was currently being eaten alive in a timeline that no longer existed. Runners had been tearing Yana apart. Travis was dead. I had died screaming while a Shambler chewed on my trap muscle.
And now, I was sitting in my underwear in a shithole studio apartment in East St. Louis that I hadn't seen in six weeks.
`[REGRESSION PROTOCOL: COMPLETE.]`
`[WELCOME BACK, ARCHITECT. TRY NOT TO DIE LIKE A BITCH THIS TIME.]`
The text floated in my vision, a jagged red script burning against the water-stained ceiling.
"Root," I muttered, rubbing my temples. "Go fuck yourself."
I swung my legs out of bed. My muscles felt weak. Soft. Human. The User Corpse Cold—that eighty-degree ice that usually ran through my veins—was gone. I was just Jack Monroe, 34-year-old construction manager, with a hangover from a life I hadn't lived yet.
I stumbled to the bathroom. The mirror showed the reset: steel-gray eyes, clear skin, no Decay Sight overlays flickering death-timers over my own reflection.
Yet.
I gripped the porcelain sink until my knuckles turned white. I had thirty days.
Thirty days before the Server Wipe. Thirty days to turn a bankrupt industrial site in the armpit of Illinois into a fortress, or I'd be erased along with eight billion other souls.
I didn't shake. I should have, but I didn't. The roadmap was carved into my skull.
1. Timeline: I knew every zombie evolution trigger. I knew when the Pus-Bomber would melt the eastern wall (Day 15). I knew when Miller would try to put a bullet in my brain (Day 22).
2. Blueprint: The Silo. Sector 7 coordinates.
3. Ruthlessness: No saving everyone. No heroics. No "kumbaya" bullshit.
I walked to the kitchenette and started the coffee. Black sludge. No sugar.
I cracked my laptop open. The screen flared to life.
`[SYSTEM ACTIVATION: 17 HOURS 12 MINUTES.]`
The countdown timer appeared unbidden in the corner of my vision, overlaying the browser window. The Administrator was watching.
I ignored the blue bastard and logged into my brokerage account. I had $12,000 in savings. It wasn't enough to build a doghouse, let alone a bunker.
But I knew the future.
I pulled up the futures market. Medical supplies. Tyvek suits. Broad-spectrum antibiotics. The "Mystery Flu" in Singapore hadn't even hit the main news cycle yet. By noon, the panic buying would start. By 6 PM, the CDC would announce emergency protocols.
I leveraged everything. Max margin. Short-term calls on pharmaceutical distributors.
BUY.
I sat back, sipping the bitter coffee. That trade would be worth 500 System Points by midnight if I converted the cash to resources fast enough.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
VANESSA - EX-WIFE
> Jack. Divorce papers. You're late on the settlement. Stop being a deadbeat prick and sign them.
I stared at the screen. In the first timeline, the Committee of Ashen Renewal had zombied her glass office tower in Downtown St. Louis during Week 2. She'd died screaming in an elevator, clawing at the doors while her coworkers chewed on her designer heels.
I had missed her distress ping because I was optimizing the kill-funnel angles on the Gutter.
I typed back:
> Coldwell Industrial. Sauget. 8 AM. Bring work boots. Cash work. $40/hour.
She'd bitch. Then she'd show up, because Vanessa was two months behind on her own rent and too proud to beg her yoga friends for a loan.
This time, she wouldn't die in an elevator. This time, she'd scrub decon tanks until her soft hands bled. She'd hate me, but she'd breathe.
I grabbed my gym bag. Hammer. Pry bar. Protein bars. Burner phone.
I caught my reflection in the dark laptop screen. For a second, a ghost flicker overlaid my face—a faint, orange text that hovered over my forehead.
`[MORTALITY INDEX: 94%. DAYS REMAINING: 29]`
"Yeah, fuck you too," I muttered.
I slammed the laptop shut.
The Coldwell Industrial site squatted like a corpse in the industrial wasteland of Sauget. The chain-link fence sagged, the windows were shattered eyes staring blindly into the acid rain, and weeds clawed through the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. The air smelled of sulfur and burnt plastic.
It was perfect. No security cameras. A bankrupt holding company that wouldn't notice a squatter until the world ended.
Vanessa's white Prius crunched over the gravel at 8:02 AM.
She stepped out, dodging a puddle of iridescent sludge. Blonde bob perfect despite the drizzle, pencil skirt hugging hips that used to tangle in my sheets, designer flats sinking into the mud.
"Jack?" Her face twisted in disgust. "This dump is your 'cash work'? The mediator said you were having episodes, but this is meth-head territory."
"Construction?" She laughed. It was a thin, brittle sound that cracked in the damp air. She smoothed her pencil skirt, a gesture of corporate armor that meant fuck-all here. "Jack, I work in Human Resources at a Fortune 500 firm. I don't dig ditches. I'm here for the check you owe me, not a career change."
I looked at her. Really looked at her.
"If you were doing so well, Ness, you wouldn't be here for a five-hundred-dollar alimony check."
Her jaw tightened. "I have expenses. The apartment—"
"The apartment you're two months behind on?" I interrupted. "The lease on the Prius you can't cover? You're drowning, Vanessa. You're a mid-level HR drone in a glass tower you can't afford, maxing out credit cards to look like you belong on the executive floor."
I reached into the duffel bag at my feet and pulled out a pair of stained, steel-toed boots. I threw them at her feet. They landed with a heavy, wet thud in the mud.
"Put them on."
"Jack, I am not putting my feet in those disgusting—"
"You are labor," I cut her off, stepping into her space. I could smell her expensive perfume—Chanel, bought on credit. "I'm not hiring Vanessa. Vanessa is a liability. Vanessa cares about appearances. Vanessa dies next week screaming in an elevator shaft because she was too proud to take the stairs."
I pointed at the boots.
"If you want inside the fence, you're Paige."
Her mouth opened, then closed. "Paige? Who the fuck is Paige?"
"Paige is a janitor," I said. "Paige doesn't have an ego. Paige scrubs toilets and mixes concrete and survives. Vanessa has pride. Paige has a pulse."
I held out a roll of cash—thick enough to cover her back rent and then some.
"I'm hiring Paige. $40 an hour. Cash today. Scrip tomorrow."
She stared at the money. Then she looked at the boots. Then she looked at the rusted, hulking silhouette of the factory behind me. The corporate mask slipped, revealing the desperate woman underneath.
She kicked off her designer flats. They sank into the slurry.
"Fine," she whispered, stepping into the dirty boots. "Paige. Whatever. Just give me the damn money."
"Good," I said. "Paige starts by moving those cinderblocks. Welcome to the bottom, darling."
Three more vehicles rumbled up behind her.
Travis was first. A lifted F-150, engine roaring. He stepped out, a mountain of a kid in a tight tank top. 240 pounds of gym-sculpted protein. He grinned, a babyface on a Hulk body.
"Yo! Craigslist ad said 'heavy lifting, no questions'?"
Miller pulled up next in his personal cruiser. Off-duty sheriff from the county. Belly spilling over his belt, cop-stache twitching with suspicion. He didn't look like a laborer; he looked like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Helen rolled in last in a battered Tacoma, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lip. Her eyes were pale, assessing the site with surgical precision.
My labor pool. Willing or starved.
"Shelter construction," I stated, my voice flat. "Bunker system beneath the site. You work, you earn cash today, scrip tomorrow when the banks close. Fail to show, you're on your own when the flu mutates."
Miller spat a stream of tobacco juice at my boots. "Sheriff doesn't take orders from a washed-up construction manager with a Savior complex. I ran your plates, Monroe. You're nobody."
"Then starve topside when the Shamblers start walking on Day 4," I said.
He froze. His hand twitched toward his hip. Off-duty carry. He was armed.
"Labor starts now," I said, turning my back on him.
The grind began.
Travis bulldozed stacks of concrete like they were styrofoam. Paige whimpered as the rough edges of the blocks chipped her manicure. By 10 AM, her hands were bleeding.
Helen set up a triage station on a sheet of plywood, rasping CDC protocols between drags of her cigarette. Miller swung a sledgehammer at half-speed, muttering about "libtard delusions" and "warrants."
At noon, the phones lit up.
"Mystery Flu Spreads - Singapore Airports Shut Down."
Paige dropped a brick. She stared at her screen, her face draining of color. Travis paused mid-lift.
"Told you," I said. "Keep building."
By 3 PM, I saw a shadow slip through the gap in the chain-link fence.
Boyd.
Twelve years old. Gaunt cheeks, eyes too old for his face, ribs showing through a stained t-shirt. A tech prodigy. A future User candidate.
"Food?" His whisper barely cut through the rain.
"Machinery work," I said, pointing to the main building. "Generators and wiring. You eat, you work."
He vanished into the dark guts of the factory without a word. Ten minutes later, a distant humming echoed up from the basement. The kid had a touch.
We poured the foundation for the Mudroom as dusk fell. Knee-high walls of rebar and wet concrete. It looked like nothing. To me, it looked like the only thing standing between us and extinction.
11:47 PM.
The labor crew had crashed in their cars. I stood alone in the half-built Mudroom, watching my breath fog in the chill air.
`[SYSTEM ACTIVATION: 13 MINUTES.]`
My Decay Sight flared brighter. Ghost-blue markers overlaid the eastern wall—the weak point. Red glitch patterns showed where Miller would sabotage the welds in three weeks.
I checked my reflection in a puddle.
`[MORTALITY INDEX: 94%. DAYS REMAINING: 29.]`
"Not this time," I whispered.
Midnight struck.
Blue light erupted across the site like a flashbang grenade.
It wasn't just in my head this time. It was everywhere. The sky tore open with a digital shriek that sounded like God racking a shotgun slide.
Every person in the parking lot jolted awake, screaming as the System integrated with their optic nerves.
AR overlays slammed into reality. The global ticker blazed across the clouds, burning in neon blue:
`[CULL COUNTDOWN: 30 DAYS.]`
`[OPTIMIZE OR OBLIVION.]`
Paige stumbled out of her Prius, clawing at her eyes. "Jack! Jack, what the fuck is this?!"
Travis bellowed in confusion, swatting at the blue wireframes that now hugged the half-built walls. Miller drew his service weapon, spinning in circles, aiming at the sky.
"Augmented reality integration," Helen said, stepping out of her truck. She sounded calm, but the cigarette fell from her lips. "Neurological hijack."
"System Activation," I confirmed. My voice cut through the panic. "Welcome to the Cull."
Two voices erupted in my skull, louder than before.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: USER DESIGNATION CONFIRMED. JACK MONROE. RANK: UNASSIGNED.]`
`[ROOT: OH, LOOK WHO'S BACK. MISS ME, MEATBAG?]`
I grinned. A cold, sharp stretching of skin.
"Store," I commanded.
A blue hologram unfolded over the Mudroom.
MUDROOM DECON BLUEPRINT (COMPLETE) - 300 PTS
GUTTER KILLBOX FOUNDATION - 400 PTS
My arbitrage trade had cleared at 6 PM. I had the points.
`[PURCHASE: MUDROOM DECON BLUEPRINT.]`
A ghost-blue overlay snapped into place over our crude concrete work. It was perfect. Complete specifications for chemical feed systems and pressure cycles mapped in glowing detail.
Travis pointed, his hand shaking. "Boss... I see a building. A whole fucking building made of light."
"That's what we're building," I said. "Follow the blueprint exactly. No shortcuts. We build it right, or we die screaming on Day 30."
Miller leveled his gun at me. "This is some kind of terror attack. You're involved. Hands on your head, Monroe!"
"No signal, Sheriff," Helen said, checking her phone. "Towers are dead. Communication is optimized for System traffic only."
"You're in the game now," I told them. "Thirty days to build a kingdom. Zombies start walking on Day 3. You want to live? You listen to me."
Decay Sight pulsed.
PAIGE: 35% (Terror).
MILLER: 12% (Hostile).
BOYD: 89% (Desperate).
"Day 1 complete," I announced. "Sleep in your vehicles. Dawn, we pour the decon system."
I turned away from them, staring at the ghost-blue silhouette of the Silo.
Day 1. Empire Dawn.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: TERRITORY CLAIMED. SECTOR 1 ESTABLISHED.]`
`[ROOT: LET'S SEE IF YOU'VE LEARNED ANYTHING, ARCHITECT.]`
The rain hammered down. The clock was ticking.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 1
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █░░░░░░░░░ 1/10 Nodes
Next Spawn Event: 2 Days
Users: 1 | Nulls: 5 | Loyalty: UNSTABLE