A Future Forged in Fury

Chapter 1

Aris

The creature’s shriek echoes off the rusted husks of cars. It’s a sound like tearing metal and breaking bone, a symphony I know better than my own name. I press my back harder against the crumbling concrete wall, the rough surface snagging on the tattered remains of my jacket. My breath comes in shallow, useless little puffs. My leg is a mess of torn muscle and shattered bone, a hot, wet weight I can no longer feel. Five years. Five years of running, of fighting, of watching everyone I ever knew get torn apart by things that shouldn't exist.

The locket digs into my palm. It’s cold, smooth silver against my grimy skin. I don’t need to open it. I know the face inside. Patrick Croft. His perfect smile, the arrogant glint in his eyes. The man I loved. The man whose ambition burned the world to ash.

Another one of them, a Chimera with slick, oily skin and too many joints in its legs, scrambles over the hood of a dead taxi. Its head twitches, sniffing the air. It smells the blood. My blood.

“You did this,” I whisper, the words a ragged prayer to the ghost in the locket. My voice is a stranger’s, cracked with dehydration and disuse. “It was all you.”

There’s no escape. The alley is a dead end. My rifle is empty, its weight a useless burden slung over my shoulder. The last bullet went into the thing that took my leg. It wasn’t enough.

It’s never enough.

The first Chimera lunges. I don’t scream. I’ve forgotten how. There is only the flash of hooked claws, the stench of rotting meat and ozone, and the final, crushing weight of failure. My fingers tighten on the locket, a final act of defiance. My world goes dark.

I gasp.

The air is clean. It fills my lungs without a trace of smoke or decay. It smells of lavender. My eyes fly open. A smooth, white ceiling greets me. Sunlight, pure and warm, streams through a window, painting a golden rectangle on a pale gray wall.

I’m lying on my back. In a bed. The sheets are soft, impossibly soft, and they smell clean. I sit up with a jolt, a motion that should send agony shooting through my leg. But there’s no pain. I look down, expecting to see the mangled ruin of my limb. Instead, my legs are whole, unscarred, resting under a soft blue comforter.

My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, wild drumbeat. Panic claws at my throat. This isn’t right. This is a dream. A hallucination from blood loss. Any second now, I’ll wake up in the alley, in the teeth of that thing.

I throw the covers back and scramble out of bed. My feet hit a plush rug. I’m wearing silk pajamas. I run a hand through my hair; it’s clean, falling softly around my shoulders, not matted with filth and blood.

My gaze sweeps the room. My old apartment. My old life. Everything is exactly as I remember it from before. The stack of medical journals on the nightstand. The framed print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the wall. The half-empty mug of tea I left from… when?

A phone buzzes on the bedside table. My phone. Not a cracked, scavenged burner, but a sleek, top-of-the-line smartphone. The screen lights up with a name that makes my blood run cold.

Patrick Croft.

I stare at it, frozen. My hand trembles as I reach for it. The screen is perfect, unbroken. A miracle. I swipe to unlock it, my fingers clumsy. The date is displayed at the top of the screen. October 17th. Six months. I’m six months before Day Zero. Six months before Aethel Corp’s ‘miracle vaccine’ was released, rewriting human DNA and turning millions into monsters.

A choked sob escapes my lips. It’s not a dream. This is real. The lavender scent, the soft rug, the impossible date on my phone. I stumble into the attached bathroom and stare at my reflection in the mirror. My face is younger. Unlined by terror, unscarred by shrapnel. There are no hollows under my eyes, no haunted, feral look in their depths. I look… soft. Weak.

I turn on the tap and splash cold water on my face, the sensation a shock to my system. I drink straight from the faucet, gulping down clean, untainted water until I’m choking.

It’s real. It’s all real. I died. And now I’m back.

The phone buzzes again, this time with a text message from Patrick.

*Patrick: You alive over there? Pick up.*

I walk back into the bedroom on unsteady legs and pick up the phone. My thumb hovers over the call button. I can hear his voice in my head, the smooth, confident cadence that used to make my heart flutter. The voice that charmed governments and investors, the voice that lied to the entire world.

I press the button.

“There she is,” his voice purrs through the speaker, a sound I haven’t heard in five years. It’s exactly as I remember. Polished. Condescending. “I was starting to think you were ignoring me, Ari.”

I can’t speak. My throat is tight, my tongue a lead weight in my mouth.

“Ari? You there, sweetheart?” he asks, a hint of impatience creeping in. “Don’t tell me you’re still stewing over our talk yesterday.”

Our talk yesterday. My mind scrambles, trying to piece together the memories of a life I haven’t lived in years. I was his lead researcher. His girlfriend. I had raised concerns about the regenerative agent in Project Chimera. I told him the cellular replication was unstable, unpredictable. He’d dismissed me. Smiled that perfect smile and told me not to worry my pretty little head about it.

“No,” I manage to say. My voice is thin, reedy.

“Good,” he says, his tone brightening. “Because we’re on the verge of something monumental. The final simulations are running. My data is flawless. We’re about to save the world, Ari. Can you feel it?”

I feel a cold, bitter bile rise in my throat. Save the world? He was about to end it. For profit. For fame. For the sheer, narcissistic thrill of being hailed as a god.

“I need you to finish those supplemental reports today,” he continues, his voice all business now. “The board wants to see final projections by tomorrow morning. I know you had some… minor reservations, but I’ve ironed them out. Leave the big picture to me.”

Minor reservations. I had shown him data predicting catastrophic mutations in sixty percent of test subjects. He’d buried it. He’d told me my models were flawed, that I was being overly cautious. He said my work was good, for an assistant, but his intuition was better.

“Okay, Patrick,” I say, and the sound of his name on my own lips feels like poison.

“That’s my girl,” he says, the condescending warmth returning. “Oh, and don’t forget the Aethel Corp Innovation Gala is next week. I’ve already had your dress sent over. It’s blue. The one I like. I need my brilliant number two looking her best when I accept my award.”

My brilliant number two. The woman whose research he stole, repackaged, and presented as his own.

“I’ll be there,” I say, my voice flat, devoid of the emotion he expects.

He pauses. For a second, I think he hears it. The change in me. The five years of apocalyptic hell simmering just beneath the surface.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks. “You sound… off.”

“Just tired,” I lie. “Worked late.”

“Of course you did,” he says, and I can almost hear him smiling. “My dedicated little scientist. Get some rest, but get those reports to me by five. Ciao.”

He hangs up. The line goes dead.

I stand in the silence of my pristine, sunlit apartment, the phone clutched in my hand. My body feels alien. Too soft, too clean, too weak. But the mind inside it is a weapon forged in five years of fire and blood and loss.

He doesn’t know. He sees the quiet, compliant Dr. Aris Thorne, the girl he could manipulate with a charming word and a handsome smile. He has no idea who he was just talking to. He’s talking to a ghost. A survivor who knows every mistake he’s about to make. A woman who remembers the names and faces of everyone who will die because of him.

I open my hand and look down at my palm. The faint outline of the locket is still imprinted on my skin, a phantom from a future that I will not allow to happen again.

I walk back to the mirror. I look at the woman staring back at me. Her eyes are not the eyes of a lovestruck assistant. They are the eyes of a soldier. A predator.

Patrick Croft thinks he’s on the verge of his greatest triumph. He thinks he’s about to become the savior of humanity.

He has no idea he’s already a dead man.

He just unleashed hell on earth. This time, I’m not just going to survive it. I’m going to expose him. I’m going to dismantle his empire, piece by piece. And then I’m going to make him pay for every single life he destroyed.

This isn’t a second chance. It’s a hunt.

Chapter 2

Aris

The phone call with Patrick ends. The silence in my apartment is a physical weight. I drop the phone on the bed as if it’s contaminated. My hands don’t shake. My breathing is even. The panic from before is gone, burned away by a purpose so cold and clear it feels like a shard of ice in my chest.

I sit at my desk, the sleek laptop a relic from a forgotten civilization. My fingers fly across the keyboard. Logins, passwords, security questions I haven’t thought about in five years. Mother’s maiden name. First pet. Street I grew up on. Ghosts of a dead girl.

I find my financial advisor’s number. I dial.

“Thorne Capital, this is Michael,” a cheerful voice says.

“Michael, it’s Aris Thorne.”

“Dr. Thorne! To what do I owe the pleasure? Calling to celebrate the Aethel stock surge?”

My stomach twists. “No. I’m calling to liquidate.”

The cheerful silence on the other end is deafening.

“Liquidate?” he finally says, his voice a few octaves lower. “Aris, your portfolio is up seventeen percent this quarter. Liquidating now would be… financially irresponsible.”

“I’m aware of the tax implications, Michael. Sell everything. My stocks, my bonds, my 401k. All of it.”

“All of it? Aris, is everything alright? This is your entire life’s savings. If you’re in some kind of trouble…”

“The only trouble I’m in is having my assets in the public market. Once it’s liquidated, I want the full cash balance wired to this account number.” I read him the details for a newly created shell account.

“That’s an international account with very high fees,” he says, his voice laced with professional concern. “And it offers very little federal protection.”

“That’s the point,” I say. “I want you to initiate the sale today.”

“It will take a few days to settle. I have to advise you against this, Aris. This is madness.”

“Your advice is noted. Just get it done.” I hang up before he can argue further. He thinks I’m throwing away my future. I’m trying to buy one.

Next, I open an encrypted browser. My fingers move with a muscle memory I thought was long gone. I find the forums, the dark corners of the web where preppers and engineers trade schematics and supplies. In my first life, it took me two years of scavenging to find a working water purification system. Now, I buy three industrial-grade units with a few clicks.

My shopping list is precise. Heirloom seed banks from a specialized vault in Norway. Technical manuals for everything from field surgery to hydroponic farming, all downloaded onto encrypted drives. Medical equipment that will be priceless in a world without factories: autoclaves, surgical steel instruments, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and centrifuges. No guns. No ammo. Those will be plentiful. Knowledge is the currency of the new world.

I pay with untraceable crypto, routing it through a dozen anonymous wallets. The deliveries are scheduled for a series of private storage units I’ve rented under a fake name. It’s a fortune. Everything I have. It feels like nothing.

Once the logistics are handled, I move to the most important part of the plan. I still have a flicker of hope. A stupid, naive part of me that died in that alley thinks maybe, just maybe, I can stop it before it starts.

I compile a data package. The specific research notes Patrick buried. The predictive models showing catastrophic mutation rates. I strip my name from the metadata, scrubbing it clean until it’s an anonymous ghost. I send it from a secure email address to one man: Ben Carter, a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist known for taking on corporate giants.

The subject line is simple: ‘The End of the World is Scheduled for April.’

He responds in twenty minutes.

*Carter: Who is this?*

*Me: A source. Read the attachment. Run the models. Aethel Corp is about to unleash a plague.*

*Carter: These are serious allegations. We need to meet.*

My heart gives a small, painful leap. He’s listening.

We agree on a coffee shop downtown. I wear a simple gray hoodie, a baseball cap pulled low. I use a burner phone. I watch him walk in, a man in his late forties with tired eyes and a rumpled suit. He scans the room, and I give a slight nod toward my corner booth.

He sits down, placing a small audio recorder on the table between us. “You can’t be serious,” he says, his voice a low rumble. No greeting. No small talk.

“Deadly serious,” I reply, keeping my voice even. “Project Chimera isn’t a vaccine. It’s a mutagen. It rewrites DNA. For sixty percent of the population, it will be a death sentence. For the rest… it creates monsters.”

He stares at me, his journalistic skepticism a palpable force field. “The data you sent me… it’s compelling. But it’s just data. It could be faked. I need a source. A name.”

“The source is Aethel’s own internal research. The name you want belongs to a dead woman. Giving it to you would get me killed before this conversation is even over.”

“Then give me something else,” he presses, leaning forward. “Leaked internal memos. A whistleblower who’s willing to go on record. A paper trail. Anything.”

“The trail has been erased. The man in charge, Dr. Patrick Croft, is an expert at burying his mistakes. The data is all I have.”

He leans back, a sigh of frustration escaping his lips. “Ma’am… people send me conspiracy theories every day. Aliens in the White House, secret societies running the stock market. A biotech company intentionally engineering a plague to… what? Sell the cure?”

“There is no cure,” I say, my voice dropping to a whisper. The words feel like acid. “That’s the point. It’s population control disguised as a public health miracle.”

He shakes his head slowly, a look of profound pity in his tired eyes. It’s a look I’ve never seen before. No one ever pitied me in the hellscape. They feared me.

“I can’t print this,” he says softly. “Without a verifiable source, a human being to attach this to, it’s just a wild story. My editor would laugh me out of the building. I’d be ruined.”

“So your career is more important than billions of lives?” I ask, the ice in my chest cracking.

“My career is my credibility! Without it, I’m just a crackpot shouting on a street corner. No one listens. Nothing changes. You want to stop this? Give me something I can use. Give me proof.”

“The proof is coming in six months,” I say, my voice hollow. “But by then, it’ll be too late.”

I stand up, my chair scraping against the floor. His face is a mask of professional regret.

“I’m sorry,” he says. And I know he means it. But his sorrow is useless.

I walk out of the coffee shop and don’t look back. I drop the burner phone into a storm drain. It’s over. The world doesn’t want to be saved.

I stand on the street corner, the city buzzing around me with a life it doesn’t know is temporary. People hurry past, laughing, talking on their phones, living in the final sun-drenched moments of a world on the brink of collapse.

On a massive digital billboard across the street, an advertisement flickers to life. It’s Patrick. He’s smiling that perfect, camera-ready smile, wearing a pristine lab coat. The Aethel Corp logo gleams beside him.

The tagline appears in bold, elegant letters: *Aethel Corp: Building a Better Tomorrow.*

A bitter laugh escapes my lips. It’s a raw, ugly sound.

They won’t listen. You can’t save people who are sprinting toward their own executioner with open arms.

My plan was flawed. I can’t save the world. The world is a lost cause.

But I can save a few. I can build a sanctuary. A fortress. An ark to ride out the coming storm.

I need more than supplies. I need scale. I need resources, manpower, and security on a level I could never achieve alone. I need someone who builds impenetrable fortresses for a living.

My mind flashes to the first year after the fall. The fragmented news reports. The whispers of fortified zones that held out longer than any government facility. Zones built with brutal efficiency and cutting-edge technology.

Vanguard Solutions.

And its formidable, ruthless CEO.

Caelan Huxley.

Chapter 3

Aris

The name hits my mind like a bullet. Caelan Huxley.

Back in my apartment, the city’s oblivious hum a distant mockery, I pull up everything I can find on Vanguard Solutions. The public profile is sterile, corporate. They specialize in logistics, security, and risk mitigation for Fortune 500 companies. The real story, the one I remember from whispered rumors in survivor camps, is that they build black sites. Fortresses for corporations and paranoid billionaires.

I find the number for their headquarters. I know I won’t get through. But I have to try.

A crisp, professional voice answers on the first ring. “Vanguard Solutions, this is Evelyn speaking. How may I direct your call?”

“I need to speak with Caelan Huxley,” I say, my voice steady. I’ve practiced this. Pitch it low, confident.

“Mr. Huxley does not take unsolicited calls. May I ask the nature of your business?” Her tone is polite but impenetrable, a velvet-covered steel wall.

“My name is Dr. Aris Thorne. I’m representing a private investment consortium. We have a proposal for a large-scale continuity project.” I use their language. ‘Continuity’ is the corporate euphemism for apocalypse planning.

There’s a pause. I can hear the soft clicking of a keyboard. She’s looking me up. She’ll find my research history with Aethel. Respectable, but not nearly enough to warrant a direct line to the CEO.

“I see, Dr. Thorne. While we appreciate your interest, all such proposals must be submitted through our acquisitions department. I can give you that email address.”

Dismissal. A dead end. My heart sinks.

“Evelyn,” I say, changing tactics. I let a sliver of the ice I feel seep into my voice. “My clients are not interested in the acquisitions department. They are interested in Mr. Huxley’s specific expertise in subterranean construction and long-term supply chain autonomy. This project has a preliminary budget of nine figures and a timeline that is non-negotiable.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“The proposal,” I continue, pressing the advantage, “includes predictive modeling for cascading infrastructure failures that your current risk-assessment algorithms are not accounting for. Specifically, the fragility of the North American power grid in the face of a cascading viral outbreak.”

The silence on her end is absolute. I’ve said a magic word. Not ‘virus’. ‘Cascading’. It implies I know something about his business. Something specific.

“Hold, please,” she says, her tone no longer polite. It’s sharp.

I wait for three minutes that feel like three years. My hand grips the phone, knuckles white. This is it. The entire plan hinges on this woman’s decision.

“Mr. Huxley’s schedule is quite full,” she says, her voice returning, now laced with a professional curiosity. “But he has a cancellation tomorrow. Ten a.m. Can you be at our downtown office?”

“I’ll be there,” I say, my voice betraying nothing of the tidal wave of relief washing over me.

“Bring your proposal,” she says, and hangs up.

I stare at the phone. Step one is complete. Now I have to walk into the lion’s den.

***

The Vanguard Solutions office is an exercise in minimalist intimidation. Polished concrete floors, black steel beams, and glass walls that offer a panoramic view of the city I’m trying to escape. There are no paintings, no plants. Just function and strength.

Evelyn, a woman with silver hair pulled into a severe bun and eyes that miss nothing, leads me to a conference room. Caelan Huxley is already there, standing by the window, his back to me.

He’s taller than I expected. His suit is tailored perfectly, but he wears it like it’s a temporary inconvenience. He moves with a stillness, a contained energy that screams military discipline, not corporate leadership.

He turns. His eyes are a startlingly pale gray, and they lock onto mine instantly, analytical and unblinking. There is not a shred of warmth in them. He doesn’t offer to shake my hand.

“Dr. Thorne,” he says. His voice is a low baritone. “You have thirty minutes.”

I place my encrypted tablet on the massive black table between us. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Huxley.”

He sits, gesturing for me to do the same. “Evelyn said you mentioned our risk-assessment algorithms. An interesting way to get my attention. Start there.”

“Your models are the best in the private sector,” I begin, bringing up the first file. “They account for economic collapse, natural disasters, conventional warfare. But they have a blind spot. They assume a baseline of societal function. They don’t account for a catalyst that removes ninety percent of the population and turns another five percent into predators.”

His expression doesn’t change, but a muscle in his jaw tightens. “That’s a bold and unsubstantiated claim.”

“It’s the core assumption of this project.” I slide the tablet across the table to him. “My clients have tasked me with developing a blueprint for a fully self-sustaining subterranean facility. One capable of housing two hundred individuals for a minimum of ten years, completely isolated from the outside world.”

He picks up the tablet, his fingers swiping through the pages. I watch his face, looking for any crack in the stoic facade. He’s silent for a long time, his eyes scanning the technical schematics, the supply chain logistics, the geological surveys of potential sites I’ve already flagged.

“This is not a proposal,” he finally says, looking up. His pale eyes are narrowed. “This is a finished blueprint. The engineering specs, the geothermal power requirements, the hydroponics, the air filtration systems… this is years of work.”

“My consortium is thorough,” I lie. Five years of scavenging for these exact details in a dead world was nothing if not thorough.

“Who are they?” he asks, the question sharp as a knife. “You list the funding source as a numbered Swiss holding company. That’s not a client. That’s a wall.”

“My clients value their privacy above all else,” I say, keeping my voice level. “Their anonymity is a non-negotiable condition.”

He leans back in his chair, his gaze intense. “So let me get this straight. You, a researcher from Aethel Corp with no independent profile to speak of, walk in here with a plan more detailed than most government continuity bunkers, backed by a nine-figure ghost, and you expect me to build it without knowing who I’m working for?”

“I expect you to recognize the brilliance of the plan,” I counter, my own resolve hardening. “Look at the supply chain projections. I’ve predicted the exact failure points of the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries. The timeline for the collapse of the electrical grid. The contamination vectors for ninety-eight percent of North America’s surface water.”

He swipes to that section, his eyes moving faster now. I know what he’s seeing. He’s seeing data that is impossible to have. He’s seeing a detailed roadmap of the end of the world.

“Your predictions are… specific,” he says, his voice a low murmur. “Uncannily so. Where is this intelligence coming from?”

“It comes from the best analytical minds on the planet,” I say, the lie tasting like ash. “The consortium has resources you can’t imagine.”

“I can imagine quite a bit, Doctor,” he says, a dangerous edge to his voice. He sets the tablet down gently. “What I can’t imagine is why these brilliant minds would send a biotech researcher to hire a security contractor. Why you?”

My breath catches in my throat. This is the question I feared most. The one I don’t have a good answer for.

“Because the primary threat vector is biological,” I say, forcing the words out. “They needed someone who understands the nature of the catalyst.”

He stands up and walks back to the window, staring down at the city below. “The risk is astronomical. Your anonymous clients could be anyone. A rival nation. A terrorist cell. A corporate entity looking to disappear its leadership after committing a global crime.”

My blood runs cold at how close he is to the truth.

“They are none of those things,” I say, my voice tight.

“How would I know that?” he shoots back, turning to face me. “You’re asking me to bet my entire company, my life’s work, on a ghost story. Vanguard does not take jobs without vetting our clients. We don’t build fortresses for shadows.”

“Then don’t see it as a job for them,” I plead, my composure finally cracking. I stand up, my hands gripping the back of the chair. “See it as a job for you. For your people. The proposal includes private wings for your core staff and their families. This isn’t just a shelter for my clients. It’s an ark for anyone smart enough to get on board.”

He stares at me, and for the first time, his analytical gaze softens into something else. He sees the desperation I’m trying to hide. He sees the fire. The raw, terrified certainty in my eyes.

“You believe this is going to happen,” he says. It’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact.

I can only nod. Words fail me.

He walks back to the table and picks up the tablet one last time, his thumb hovering over the screen.

“My company was built on one principle, Dr. Thorne,” he says, his voice quiet. “Eliminating variables. And you… you are the single biggest variable I have ever encountered in my life.”

He looks from the tablet to my face. The silence stretches, thick with unspoken possibilities. My entire future, the future of anyone I might be able to save, hangs in this single moment, balanced on the decision of this one man.

“I need to review this with my internal team,” he says finally, his expression unreadable. “Evelyn will be in touch.”

It’s a dismissal. Not a yes, but not a no.

He doesn’t walk me out. He just stands there, holding the blueprint for survival in his hand, watching me as I turn and leave his office. The steel and glass door clicks shut behind me, and I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.