SERA POV
The screaming woke me up.
My eyes snapped open, and everything hurt. My head felt like someone had smashed it with a hammer. My whole body ached. The air smelled weird—like smoke and dirt and something rotten.
Where was I?
I tried to sit up, but my arms shook so bad I almost fell. Above me was brown cloth, torn and dirty. A tent? Why was I in a tent?
More screaming outside. People crying. Someone yelling about water.
"Easy, dear. Don't move too fast."
A woman appeared beside me. She looked tired, with messy gray hair and dark rings under her eyes. But her smile seemed kind.
"Who are you?" My voice came out scratchy and weak.
"Dr. Helena Voss. I was your professor, remember? At the university?" She touched my forehead gently. "You're safe now, Sera. You're in New Haven."
Sera. That was my name. Dr. Sera Vance. I was twenty-nine years old. I had a doctorate in ancient cultures. I lived in an apartment with too many books and— Everything stopped.
I couldn't remember anything else. Not yesterday. Not the day before. Nothing for... how long?
"What happened?" I grabbed Helena's arm. "Why can't I remember? What's going on?"
Helena's face went serious. "What's the last thing you do remember?"
I closed my eyes, searching. "I was... making food. In my kitchen. I was making pasta and reading about Roman aqueducts. Then..." Nothing. Just blank empty space where my memories should be.
"What day was that?" Helena asked quietly.
"Thursday. It was Thursday night."
"Sera." Helena took my hand. Her fingers were cold. "That was four days ago. Today is Monday. And the world ended on Friday."
"What?"
"The Pulse happened three days ago. Every computer, every phone, every car—everything electronic just... stopped. All at once. Everywhere." Her voice shook. "Planes fell from the sky. Hospitals went dark. Cars crashed. Billions of people died in hours, Sera. Billions."
I looked at her. This had to be a nightmare. A horrible, crazy nightmare.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
"Look outside."
I didn't want to. But I had to know.
Helena helped me stand. My legs wobbled like a baby deer. We walked to the tent opening, and she pulled back the flap.
I stopped breathing.
Outside wasn't my city anymore. It was hell.
Tents everywhere, packed together like a refugee camp. People in dirty clothes walking around looking lost. Some were crying. Others just sat on the ground looking at nothing. In the distance, I could see tall buildings—but they were dark. No lights. No change. Just dead buildings of glass and metal.
"San Francisco," Helena said. "Or what's left of it. We're calling this town New Haven. About fifty thousand of us survived here."
Fifty thousand. In a city that used to have almost a million people.
"How?" I asked. "How did I get here? What happened to me?"
"We found you two days ago. You were asleep in the wasteland outside the city. You had burns on your skin and you weren't breathing right. We thought you'd die." Helena stopped. "Sera, what were you doing out there? Where did you go for those three lost days?"
"I don't know!" My voice came out too loud. People nearby turned to stare. "I don't remember!"
But that was wrong. I did remember things. Just not the last four days.
I remembered my doctoral paper about ancient Rome. Every word, every page, every reference. I knew the exact recipe for bread from 1400s England. I remembered how medieval blacksmiths made iron and how ancient Greeks built temples and how the Egyptians moved those giant stone blocks.
I remembered everything I'd ever learned. Like it was all written in my brain in beautiful, clear letters.
"Your mind is still working," Helena said, watching my face. "That's good. We need that. We need you, Sera."
"Need me for what?"
"To help us survive." She pointed at the camp. "Nobody knows how to live without power. Without computers. Without modern treatment. We're trying to remember history, but you—you actually know this stuff. How people lived hundreds of years ago. You can teach us."
My head spun. This was too much. Too big.
"I need to sit down."
Helena led me to a wooden box outside the tent. Somewhere close, a baby cried. A man shouted about food running out. The sun felt too hot on my skin.
"There's something else," Helena said carefully. "When we found you, you kept saying something in your sleep. The same words, over and over."
"What words?"
"You said: 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to kill them all.'"
Ice shot through my chest.
"I didn't... I wouldn't..." But even as I said it, something felt wrong. Like my own words were lies.
"Do you remember anything? Anything at all from those three days?" Helena leaned closer, looking into my eyes like she was searching for something hidden.
I tried. I really tried. But there was just darkness and— Wait.
Something flickered in my mind. Not a memory. More like a feeling. A terrible, crushing feeling of guilt so heavy it made me want to throw up.
And pain. My hands suddenly hurt, like they were burning.
I looked down at my hands.
They were normal. Clean. No burns or scars, even though Helena said I'd been found hurt.
But for just a second—less than a heartbeat—I saw something impossible.
Glowing lines on my face. Like circuits. Like electricity running under my skin in patterns that looked almost like... technology.
I blinked, and they were gone.
"Sera?" Helena's voice sounded far away. "Are you alright? You look pale."
"My hands," I whispered. "There was something on my hands."
"What do you mean?"
I opened my mouth to explain, but footsteps stopped us. Heavy boots running fast.
A man in homemade armor burst around the tent corner. His face was terrified.
"Dr. Voss! You need to come quick!" He was breathing hard. "The scavengers brought something back. Something that shouldn't exist anymore."
"What is it?" Helena stood up fast.
"A laptop. And Doctor—" The man's voice shook. "It's turning on."
Helena's face went white. She looked at me with a face I couldn't read. Fear? Recognition?
"That's impossible," she said. "Electronics are dead. Everything is dead."
But we all heard it. From somewhere across the camp. A sound that made my heart stop.
The startup chime of a computer starting up.
And in that moment, I knew three things with total certainty:
One: That machine shouldn't work.
Two: Helena wasn't shocked. She was scared.
Three: This had something to do with me.
My hands started burning again.