REBORN BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

The ash tasted like copper. Lena choked, her lungs on fire. The sky above New York was black and red, a funeral shroud of smoke. Buildings that had stood a hundred years were burning skeletons. They called it a fever at first. A flu. Then they stopped naming it. Lena lay on the broken concrete of the Brooklyn Bridge. Blood soaked her jacket. She hadn't been shot by monsters. By people. That was the irony. In the end, people became worse than monsters. "LENA!" His voice cut through the screaming. Ethan. She lifted her head. Saw him running through the ash, dark hair matted with soot, black shirt torn. Ethan Cross. The man who had saved her a hundred times in three years. The man she loved more than survival itself. He dropped beside her, hands pressing hard over the wound in her stomach. "No. Stay with me. Look at me, damn it. You don't get to leave me now." His voice broke. Ethan never broke. He was dominant, cold, unshakeable. A billionaire before. A warlord after. Now just a man losing everything. "You have to go," she whispered. Blood on her teeth. "You said horde from the east. At sunset." "I am not leaving you." His hands were covered in her blood, shaking. "We live together or we die together. We had a deal." She remembered that deal. Year one. In an abandoned supermarket. Sharing one stale protein bar on the floor, promising they'd never split up. She touched his cheek. Even covered in blood and ash, he was beautiful. That hard jaw clenched so tight trying not to shatter. "I love you," she said. "I love you too," he said, fiercely, desperately. "So fight. Breathe for me! Lena, BREATHE!" Then came the sound. Moaning. Dragging footsteps. Hundreds of them. The infected. Behind them, raiders with guns, firing wildly. Ethan looked over the hill of abandoned cars. Too many. The bridge was the last route to the safe zone. Now it was a trap. He screamed — raw, animal rage echoing off burning buildings — and picked her up. Her whole body screamed in pain, but he held her tight against his chest and ran. Strong. So strong. But not fast enough with her weight. A bullet whistled past his ear. Lena felt a sharp, white-hot pain in her back. Second shot. Ethan stumbled but didn't fall. He held her tighter. "Put me down," she begged, tears mixing with blood on her face. "Save yourself." "Never. I would rather die here with you than live one second without you." He reached the edge of the bridge. Nowhere else to go. The river below was black and churning, filled with debris and bodies. The horde was behind them now. Twenty feet. Ten. He looked down at her, and his eyes held a love so intense it hurt more than the bullets. He brushed the hair from her face. "If this is how we go, we go together." He kissed her forehead as the cold hands of the infected grabbed them, as the world went white with pain. Then nothing. Silence. --- Lena gasped. Clean air. Not ash. She sat bolt upright, clawing at her chest, expecting blood. Nothing. Her jacket was clean. Her body was whole. Her hands were soft, not calloused from three years of holding a knife. Where was the fire? Where was Ethan? She was in a bed. Soft. White sheets. Sunlight through a real window, not a boarded-up slit. Sunlight. She hadn't seen real sunlight in three years. The ash cloud had blocked it. She looked frantically around. Her old apartment. The tiny one-bedroom in Manhattan with the broken AC and the little plant she could never keep alive. The plant was alive. Green. On the windowsill where she left it three years ago before everything fell apart. No. This wasn't possible. Was she dead? Was this a dream? She scrambled out of bed, her legs working. No pain. She ran to the bathroom mirror. A girl stared back. Long dark hair, clean. No scar on her lip from the knife fight last winter. No hollow cheeks. She looked twenty-five again. Not twenty-eight. Not hardened. Not broken. Her phone buzzed on the charger. A normal, loud, ordinary sound she had forgotten existed. Shaking, she picked it up. The date made her knees give out. She collapsed to the cold tiles. MAY 12, 2023. Three years before. Three years before the outbreak. Before the world ended on August 9, 2026. "Oh my god," she whispered. She died. She remembered dying. Ethan holding her as the horde came. White light swallowing the bridge. And now she was back. Reborn. Before the apocalypse. Second chance. Memories slammed into her like a truck. First coughs on the news in June. Hospitals overflowing in July. Government lying on TV. Power grid failing in August. Supermarkets empty. Stock market crashing. And the day Ethan Cross appeared at the survival camp with food and guns and took charge — and saved her life when she had given up. Ethan. Ethan was alive. Right now, in this timeline, alive in his penthouse, running Cross Industries, the dominant CEO everyone feared, not knowing her, not knowing that in three years he would love her enough to die with her on a bridge. She had a second chance. To save him. To save everyone she lost. She had to find him. Warn him. Make him remember. Make him love her again before the end. But first — become strong. Last time, she was weak. The girl who needed saving. Died because she was weak. Couldn't hold a gun properly the first year. Cried every night. Not this time. This time, she would be ready when the world ended. Stockpile food and water. Train her body. Learn to shoot. Build a shelter. Buy land. She would not be a victim. She would be a survivor. Her phone buzzed again. A news alert. She looked down and her blood ran cold. Her heart stopped. > MYSTERIOUS FEVER REPORTED IN QUEENS - DOCTORS BAFFLED - 3 CASES ISOLATED. It was starting. Exactly as she remembered. The very first case. The one they ignored on TV. That became millions. That became the end. It was already beginning. Earlier than she thought. The clock was already ticking — fast and loud. Lena stood slowly, using the sink to pull herself up. The terror in her chest turned into something sharp and cold and determined. Steel. She wiped her tears away, hard. She looked at her reflection. No longer the dying girl on the bridge, helpless and bleeding out alone in ash. She was the girl who came back from the end of the world. And she knew exactly how it ends. And how to change it completely. And she had very important work to do. Starting right now, before it was too late again for everyone she loves dearly. To be continued...