The stench was the last thing he remembered.

It was a thick, gagging miasma of rot, filth, and viscera—the singular perfume of the undead. After ten years, you never got used to it. And as he was buried under a hundred of them, the smell becoming a liquid presence forced into his nose and mouth, Jack knew he never would.

Then came the sound, a symphony from hell. The endless, guttural groans, the wet crunch of bone, the sickening tear of sinew. It was the soundtrack to his nightmares for a decade.

Now, the nightmare was real.

He felt his body being pulled apart like a rag doll. Pain, white-hot and absolute, erupted from everywhere at once until it was just a single, overwhelming reality. His fire axe was long gone. His last bullet had been spent minutes ago.

This was it.

But the physical agony was nothing compared to the ice-cold steel of betrayal twisting in his gut.

Just seconds before, he had been on the wall, ready to trade his life for a few more minutes for the women and children of the settlement. Mark, the leader he’d pulled from a fire in the early days, the man he called brother, had placed a hand on his shoulder. he'd said, his voice thick with sorrow.

And Jack had believed him.

He had turned to face the tide of death, ready to make his last stand.

Then came the shove.

A single, powerful thrust from behind. Mark’s face, in that last fleeting moment, was not one of grief but of cold, ruthless calculation. The look of a chess player sacrificing a pawn.

Jack tumbled from the three-meter-high wall, a perfectly thrown piece of bait, into the densest part of the horde. He saw the shock on the faces of the other defenders, followed by a silent, horrified acceptance. He saw Mark’s back as he turned and walked away without a second glance.

"NO—!"

A volcano of rage and hatred erupted from his chest. Why? After ten years of bleeding for you, why does it end like this? Why does a hypocrite like you get to live?

I refuse to accept this!

It was his last thought before the world dissolved into a cacophony of pain and darkness.

***

Silence.

A dead, oppressive silence.

No groans. No stench. Not even the whisper of wind.

Jack’s eyes snapped open.

He was staring at a familiar, faded ceiling, a rock band poster still tacked to one corner. The air was stale, thick with the scent of old beer and dust. This wasn't the cramped, moldy barracks of the settlement.

He shot upright, his body moving with a fluid ease he hadn't known in a decade. There was no pain. He looked down at his hands. They were clean, with the light calluses of a man who worked with tools, not the web of jagged scars that mapped ten years of bites, cuts, and burns.

He wore a faded t-shirt, not the gore-caked combat fatigues he’d died in.

Where was this? The afterlife? A hyper-realistic dream?

A terrifying, ecstatic suspicion bloomed in his mind. He scrambled out of bed, his heart hammering, and stumbled into the tiny bathroom. He flicked the switch.

Click.

A weak incandescent bulb flickered to life, flooding the small space with light.

Power.

His breath hitched. For ten years, aside from the diesel generator that ran for two precious hours a day, he hadn't seen such a luxury as a stable power grid.

He looked in the mirror.

A stranger stared back. It was him, but ten years younger. His face was unlined by starvation and constant fear. The ugly scar that ran from his temple to his jaw—a gift from a raider’s knife in Year Three—was gone.

He was whole.

His hands shaking, he turned the faucet. Clear, clean water rushed out. Not the iodine-tinged, recycled water of the settlement. Clean water. He plunged his face into the stream, the cold shock a desperately real anchor in a sea of impossibility.

This wasn't a dream.

He was back.

He lurched back into the bedroom and snatched the old smartphone from his nightstand. The screen lit up, displaying a date he would never forget.

Friday, May 14th.

One month. He was back a full month before the virus was first reported. Before the world ended.

Boom.

The realization hit him like a physical blow. The ten years of hell, the blood and fear, the faces of the dead, the final, gut-wrenching betrayal—it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a future he had already lived. And died in.

The hatred from his final moments surged back, a black, venomous tide. Mark's face. The shove. It coiled in his gut like a serpent of ice and fire. He wanted to scream, to smash this fragile, peaceful world that had no idea what was coming. He wanted to find Mark right now and tear him limb from limb.

His fists clenched, knuckles white, his entire body trembling with a rage that threatened to shatter his sanity.

Then, something new appeared.

A line of crystalline blue text burned itself into his vision, hovering in the air like a heads-up display.

[Intense survival instinct detected… Soul resonance reaching critical levels…]

Jack froze, his rage momentarily eclipsed by the hardened caution of a survivor facing the unknown.

[Overwhelming resentment confirmed as primary emotional catalyst…]

[Forcibly binding Apocalypse Survival System…]

[System successfully activated.]

He didn't flinch. In a world of walking dead and cannibalistic raiders, text in his vision barely registered on the weirdness scale. He watched, his mind racing, categorizing this new factor. Threat, or opportunity?

[Novice Mission Issued: Emotional state is dangerously unstable, bordering on psychotic break. Drink one full glass of ice water to forcibly calm your mind. Time Limit: 5 minutes.]

The absurdity almost made him laugh. Calm down? Who could possibly calm down after cheating death and being handed the chance for ultimate revenge?

But he didn't hesitate.

Whatever this was, a gift from God or a deal with the devil, it was the only thing he had. He moved to the small kitchenette, pulled an ice tray from the freezer—a forgotten luxury—and filled a glass.

He didn't just drink it. He drained it in one long, furious pull, the arctic shock a welcome anchor in the storm of his emotions. It was like dousing a forge fire with liquid nitrogen. The rage didn't vanish, but it cooled, hardening from a chaotic inferno into a solid core of icy purpose.

He slammed the empty glass onto the counter.

[ Mission Complete! Novice Gift Pack awarded! ]

[ Reward: Dimension Warehouse (Initial Space: 1000 cubic meters). Mental command activated. ]

[ Reward: Infinite Credit Card. No credit limit. No repayment required. Invalidated after global systemic collapse. Spend to your heart's content! ]

Jack’s breath caught in his throat. A thousand cubic meters? A space ten meters by ten meters by ten meters. A personal, weightless, invisible warehouse. In the apocalypse, logistics were life. The ability to carry unlimited food, water, and ammunition wasn't just an advantage; it was godhood.

And the card…

A soft thump sounded on the counter.

Lying there, sleek and black and utterly real, was a credit card. It had no numbers, no name, just a simple, stylized silver circuit-board pattern on its matte surface.

He reached out, his fingers tracing the impossible object. It was cool to the touch. Solid.

Warehouse, he thought, focusing his will on the card.

It vanished from his fingertips. He could feel it—not a physical sensation, but an awareness. An empty, waiting void in his mind, and in it, a single, solitary black card.

Appear.

The card was back in his hand.

A slow smile spread across Jack’s face. It held no joy, no warmth. It was a predator's smile—cold, sharp, and full of terrible promise.

The shock, the disbelief—it was all gone, burned away by the singular, glorious purpose that now filled him. This wasn't just a second chance to survive. It was a second chance to dominate.

He thought of Mark, smug and safe in his pre-apocalypse life. He thought of the raiders, the petty tyrants, the monsters both living and dead that would soon inherit the earth.

This time would be different. This time, he wasn't a sheep fighting for scraps.

He held the black card in his hand, a key to a future of his own making. The world had one month of peace left.

For everyone else, it was a countdown to the end.

For Jack, it was a head start.

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