It was in anatomy lab when she first found out.
Julyah Anderson had just pulled off her gloves, antiseptic still faintly fresh on her fingers, when her phone vibrated against the stainless steel tray at her side. She'd been expecting some kind of reminder. A spam message, probably. But it was just one notification from the airline hotline.
One click.
One blink.
One silent scream that never left her mouth.
Flight 609 from Geneva to Toronto has been declared missing over the Atlantic. No trace found. No survivors.
Her parents were on the flight. Dr. Marcus Anderson and philanthropist Helena Cruz-Anderson. They were coming back from a global medical conference. Celebrating her. Eagerly waiting to hear about her final exams, how proud she must have been that her daughter would graduate in just a few months. They'd called her the day before, Julyah remembered. Just three days ago.
The next time she saw them, they were in closed caskets and she could no longer smell antiseptic on her hands, only the crushing weight of white roses. H
er parents' funeral was an overcast day and offhand condolences and rain, slick and soaking through her shoes. She was Grace. Composed. So strong for someone so young. They said so in whispers. But no one saw her hands shake under her sleeves. No one noticed her eyes darting away from their faces. Never quite meeting their eyes.
She was 23. Nice looking, in a soft way. Almond-shaped eyes, long dark lashes, delicate pink lips that were rarely ever loud. Thick, black hair she was usually careful to pin back into a small bun under her white lab coat. Gentle. Quiet. Unassuming. Kind, especially. Hardworking, the most. No one particularly noticed her in class beyond her exam scores and test results. She was never really one to speak up or give her opinions or challenge her professors.
Until everything she had ever known was reduced to a clause in a last will and testament.
The lawyer had her verify it. Check and cross-check it all, take the time to read the careful handwriting with which her mother had written and rewritten each line over the course of several weeks. Her parents had no other children. No surviving siblings. She was all that remained. They had left everything to her. Not just their names and philanthropic accolades, not just their family homes. But their empire.
*$47.8 million in accessible liquid assets and offshore holdings
*Anderson Medical Holdings, including majority voting interest in three different hospitals
*A ten-bedroom luxury mountain villa in the middle of the Selkirk Mountains with no roads in, only a private airstrip and hiking trails
*Various trust funds and long-term investments and real estate holdings in four countries
*And an heirloom bracelet, which had been handed down for generations of her family, with a note written by her mother in her own hand that simply said: "This bracelet once saved our ancestors. It will protect you too."
She wore it now. Cold and heavy and feeling inexplicably foreboding on her wrist, like it had known all along.
She fell asleep that night in her childhood bedroom, once so warm and full of laughter, now so quiet and full of ghosts. And in her sleep, it all came crashing down.
She dreamed of fire and ash.
Of cities swallowed by walls of water.
Of mountains crumbling under smog-choked skies.
She dreamed of hunger, a bottomless hunger that twisted through her ribcage, a pain that outstripped even her lungs and she found herself bartering away the heirloom bracelet for a single piece of dry, stale bread.
And then—impossible.
The bracelet moved. The world stopped. Inside it, a hidden pocket of space waiting to be opened. A magic beyond anything she had ever read about or imagined or believed. A space she could open at will. Inside: endless shelves of food, of clean water that never ran out, of seeds that did not rot, and preserves that never expired. Safety.
And in that space, in that dream, there was him.
Adrian Blackwood.
Older than she. Late thirties, she guessed. Tarnished by war and the weight of leadership. He wore battered tactical gear and a scar that traced across his jaw and eyes, so hard and black and sharp like knives—calculating, assessing. But she remembered his bearing best. How he had stood before her, arms steady and strong, back unbent even as the world was torn from under him.
He was the one who found her.
The one who kept her breathing when her lungs failed her.
The one who fought for her, with every last scrap of him, to her dying breath.
She did not know him. Not in any real sense. Not in this world, at least.
But her heart had known his.
She awoke coughing in her dorm room, sweating, the bracelet hot against her wrist.
"Adrian…" she murmured in the dark.
The next morning, she withdrew from the university.
She'd only had one semester left. Her professors were incredulous. Her classmates gawked in stunned silence as she signed the forms and put her student ID up on the wall without a word.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" her favorite professor had asked, as warm and kind as he could make himself. "You're practically across the finish line, Julyah."
But she didn't hesitate.
"Yes, sir. I'm sure."
Because she now knew.
There were two weeks. Two weeks before the end of the world.
And she wasn't going to waste a single second of it.
Adrian Blackwood, 35 years old, ex-military, current up-and-coming political leader, his reputation already etched in stone, with a bluntness no one was quite sure he was even entitled to and the will of iron that had gotten him where he was now—was out there somewhere. Could be meeting constituents on television. Could be in a backroom preparing for the next election. Or could already know. He had to know. Knew about the earthquake in China. The cyclone in Bangladesh. The blackout in Venezuela. The volcano in Mexico. The wildfires in Australia. Was probably reading about the rocket launch in India in the middle of the night. He was out there, looking for the pattern, calculating.
She had twelve days. Twelve days to prepare, to gather everything she could, to stockpile, to research, to plan.
And on the thirteenth, she would go missing. Drive up into the mountains with everything she owned, to that far-off family villa they all had forgotten was even a thing, disappear from the world.
Two days before the apocalypse, she would go missing.
This time, she would not starve.
This time, she would not be defenseless.
This time, she would be ready.