I had not slept for almost a full day. I simply could not. The timer had been ticking toward zero for months and now it was only minutes away. I sat in my room beside the window with the lights off, watching the quiet street outside. My automated AR rested across my lap, pulled straight out of my dimensional storage. My finger hovered near the trigger while my eyes moved between the road and the glowing timer floating in my vision. The neighborhood looked completely normal. A few cars passed by. Birds landed on the power lines. It felt like the calm before a storm that refused to arrive.
Midnight came.
The timer hit 0.
My heart pounded as I waited for something to happen. Sirens, explosions, screams, anything. But nothing came. Hours passed slowly. The sky outside darkened and then gradually turned orange as the sun rose. Twelve hours had passed since the countdown ended and the world was still perfectly normal. I was so tense that when someone suddenly knocked on my door I jerked violently and nearly fired the rifle by accident.
"Ben? Ben, wake up. Breakfast is ready."
My mother's voice.
I quickly placed the rifle back into dimensional storage and opened the door, forcing my breathing to slow. We sat at the table eating breakfast like any other morning. My sister played with a spoon while my dad read something on his phone. I looked at the timer again and froze.
The interface had changed.
The numbers were now glowing red.
Instead of counting down, the time was increasing.
SURVIVAL MODE: 13 HOURS 07 MINUTES
My mind raced. Maybe the first person had just been infected somewhere. Maybe the virus had leaked but had not spread yet. Maybe we were already infected and simply did not know it. I stared at my little sister while she laughed and tapped her spoon against the table. My father's voice suddenly snapped me out of my thoughts.
"Ben, are you even listening?"
I quickly nodded. "Sorry. Just had some bad dreams last night."
Everything outside continued as normal. Sarah had school that morning like usual. She waved when she passed our house. She was only twelve years old after all. The world still felt safe.
Later that day I took Eva with me to the bunker. I parked a short distance away and walked down the hidden entrance path, carrying her in my arms. We used the stairs to reach the third underground floor. I avoided the elevators completely even though three of them were installed. If something malfunctioned I did not want to be trapped. For now only the third floor of the bunker was powered. Cameras and security systems were active, but everything else remained offline to save energy.
I sat in the control room scrolling through news channels from around the world. Nothing unusual appeared anywhere. No outbreaks. No panic. No emergency alerts. After hours of watching the screens, doubt began creeping into my thoughts.
Was I becoming impatient?
Was I actually hoping the apocalypse would happen just so I could prove I was right?
Was the timer some kind of hallucination?
But that idea made no sense. The dimensional storage existed. I had used it thousands of times. That alone proved the interface was real.
For the next two days my routine continued. I called my parents constantly, sometimes every thirty minutes, asking if anything strange was happening. They laughed and told me to relax. I kept checking the news again and again. Nothing. It felt like everything had reset back to the beginning. All I knew was that some kind of outbreak was supposed to happen. I just did not know what kind.
I stopped eating food from outside entirely just in case. Eva still drank baby formula and ate packaged baby food that I personally checked. Every small precaution felt necessary now.
I even tried one last time to convince my parents.
But when I saw the same worried looks on their faces again, I simply sighed and changed the subject.
There was only one thing left to do.
Wait.
26th September 2003
Two weeks had passed since day zero. The timer had switched to survival mode, but the world outside still looked perfectly normal. No riots, no emergency alerts, no collapsing cities. Sometimes I wondered if the outbreak was something small. Maybe just a harmless disease like chicken pox or a seasonal flu that got exaggerated somewhere.
The thought made me sigh quietly as I leaned back on the sofa. Eva slept beside me, curled up against my side while cartoons played silently on the television. My parents had been working overtime recently. I had tried giving them money several times, but they refused every time. Dad said they did not want to burden me. Mom said they were doing it for Eva's future.
I was flipping through different news channels again when I heard a soft knock on the front door. Dad would not be home until six in the morning because of the night shift, and Mom would not be back until after one. That meant only one person would be knocking this late.
I opened the door and saw Sarah standing there. She smiled the moment she saw me. "Hey Ben. Dad's having a birthday thing tonight. Nothing big. Just us. Do you want to come over?" My first instinct was to refuse. I had spent the last two weeks doing nothing but watching the news and waiting for something terrible to happen. But then I saw the hopeful look on her face. Honestly I was wasting away sitting inside all day anyway. So I picked up Eva and nodded. "Sure. Why not."
We walked across the street to Joel's house around six in the evening. Joel was not home yet, so Sarah put on a movie she had borrowed from a neighbor. Some action movie with loud explosions and car chases. Eva slept peacefully against my chest the entire time, completely unfazed by the noise, listening to the steady rhythm of my heartbeat.
After a while the front door opened and Joel finally walked in. He gave me a short nod that looked more like tolerance than friendliness. He was clearly not thrilled that I was there, but it was his daughter's invitation so he did not say anything.
He realized after a moment that he had forgotten to bring a birthday cake. Sarah laughed and gave him a watch as a small gift instead. While everyone was distracted I reached casually into my pocket and handed her a compass. To them it looked like I had just pulled it out normally. In reality I had summoned it from my dimensional storage.
We went back to watching the movie until Joel's phone rang. His brother Tommy was calling from jail and needed someone to bail him out. Joel stood up immediately and grabbed his keys. Before leaving he looked at me from the doorway. "Do not leave Sarah alone until I get back," he said. His voice sounded rough, but it made sense.
After he left, Sarah and I continued watching the movie quietly. Eva woke up after a while and started squirming in my arms. It was feeding time. I could have easily pulled baby formula from my dimensional storage, but I had already done the compass trick earlier. Doing it again might make Sarah suspicious. So I stood up and told her I would be back in a minute.
I crossed the street to my house, heated some milk, mixed in the baby formula, and returned with the bottle. Eva relaxed immediately when I started feeding her, her tiny hands gripping my shirt while the movie continued playing in the background.
We kept watching the movie, but after a while I noticed Sarah was not really paying attention to the screen. Her eyes kept drifting away, and her smile looked forced. Something about her mood felt heavy. I decided to break the silence with some small talk. "So… how's school going?" I asked casually. She shrugged a little. That was all it took for the conversation to open.
She started talking about Joel, about how busy he had been lately with construction work. She never mentioned her mother, and I could tell that topic was off limits, so I did not ask. Instead she talked about how worried she sometimes felt about her dad. "He works too much," she said quietly. "And he never really listens when I tell him things."
I leaned back in the chair and nodded slowly. "Yeah… I get that." My voice came out softer than I expected. In a strange way, I understood exactly what she meant. Adults were always busy with their own problems. Most of them never took the time to really listen to their kids.
Sarah kept talking, explaining how sometimes it felt like nobody cared what she thought. I could see the frustration in her eyes. For a moment the situation felt oddly familiar. I had spent months trying to convince my own parents that something terrible was coming, and they had brushed it off like it was nothing.
After a while she started talking about something else. "You know the neighbors across the street?" she asked suddenly. "Dad hates their cookies." I raised an eyebrow. "Their cookies?" She nodded. "Yeah. I went over there today and they gave me one. It was so hard I thought I might break a tooth." She laughed a little and continued, "Later I saw the same cookie in their trash can outside. It looked like a rock." I chuckled quietly at that. The movie kept playing in the background, explosions flashing across the television screen while Eva slept peacefully against my chest.
Then Sarah glanced toward the window. Her expression changed slightly. "It's awfully quiet over there tonight," she said. I followed her gaze without moving much. The neighbor's house was visible through the window, but everything looked dark. No lights. No movement. "Yeah," I replied absentmindedly, resting my head against my hand. It had been about an hour and a half since Joel left to pick up Tommy. I was starting to think about ordering some food. Pizza maybe. Something simple to pass the time until he came back.
"I might go check over there," Sarah suddenly said.
"Hm?" I muttered, still half lost in my thoughts.
"Maybe I'll just look outside for a minute."
That sentence snapped me out of it instantly. I straightened in the chair. "Wait… what?"
She looked confused by my reaction. "Just outside. Why?"
I opened my mouth to answer but hesitated. I did not actually know why. Nothing had happened. Everything was normal. And yet something inside my chest felt tight. My instincts were suddenly screaming at me for no clear reason at all. The quiet outside did not feel normal anymore.
"I don't know," I said slowly.
But the uneasy feeling in my gut kept growing stronger.