In a dark cell, a flickering bulb buzzed overhead, casting weak light across the damp concrete walls.
A man lay on the top bunk bed with his eyes closed.
At first glance, he seemed asleep. He was still as stone, his limbs were relaxed. However, his chest was rising and falling in quick successions, and his forehead was coated with beads of sweat.
Rust-stained bars divided his world from the corridor outside, though no one passed. No guards. No footsteps. No sound except the unsteady sound of his breath and buzzing bulb.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. And a sharp gasp escaped his lips. In his attempt to scramble from bed, he lost balance and crashed to the ground with a loud thud.
"Shit," he hissed, clutching his ribs as he lay sprawled on the cold cement floor, chest heaving, skin damp with sweat.
His cellmates bolted up from their beds and rushed towards him.
"Boss, are you alright?" one with porcupine hair asked, frowning.
But the man didn't answer. He was too busy trying to breathe through the sudden storm inside him.
"I'm alive?" He mumbled in disbelief.
"Boss?" a bald guy with long, curly mustache chimed in.
The man still didn't respond. After a while of silence, confusion, and disbelief, he let out a boisterous laugh.
His deep baritone voice echoed off the cold cement walls like a crack of thunder in a dead sky. Loud, jagged, and filled with something dangerous.
The men around him froze.
"Boss…?"
He dragged a hand down his face, still grinning, though it didn't reach his eyes. "I'm alive," he whispered again, the disbelief shifting into something else.
Hunger.
"I got another chance."
The inmates exchanged confused looks.
"What chance? Boss, what are you talking about?"
He finally sat up, slow and deliberate, like a predator testing its limbs after hibernation.
His dark eyes swept the cell, landing on each of his companions one by one. There were four of them in this cell with him – brutish men with wary gazes and twitchy hands. They'd followed him since forever.
He was the king of the underworld until he was betrayed by one of his own.
"What day is it?" He asked.
"March 3rd."
He tilted his head. "What year?"
The men glanced at each other. They didn't understand why their boss was acting strange but keeping him waiting was not an option.
"2028."
"Hahahaha!" he laughed again, raising to his feet this time.
He was broad, muscular, and tall, standing between 6'7 – 6'8, with a presence that seemed to suck the air out of the cell. His shadow stretched long against the wall under the sputtering bulb, making him look even larger. Even more dangerous.
March 3rd, 2028.
Thirty days before the end.
His grin was sharp enough to cut steel.
He clenched his fist. Just then, he noticed his fingers were empty. The man frowned and raised his left thumb.
"My ring…?"
His men all stared at him. One of them, a scare-faced guy, bold enough to challenge him, crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned on the frame of the bunk bed.
"De Warden, you're not making sense. You hit your head from the fall? Maybe you're—"
"I died," De Warden snapped, annoyed.
He opened his palm and showed them the faint, red burn circling the base of his thumb. It was the mark left behind by his spatial ring.
"There's a countdown right now. And if I'm not mistaken, it started this morning. We have a month before the world turns to hell."
Everyone gasped, and even the scar-faced guy couldn't help pushing himself off the bed frame.
This was serious.
His boss shouldn't know about the countdown. He had been unconscious for the past two days.
And one thing about his boss, he didn't make jokes.
A heavy silence followed.
Then Porcupine hair asked, uncertain. "So… what now?"
De Warden looked at them all. They had died with him too. The only people he trusted in his previous life and remained loyal until the end.
He pointed at the gate.
"Inform the others. We're breaking out."
"Tonight?"
"Tonight. We don't wait. I need that ring immediately."
He clenched his fists.
His men exchanged looks again, but this time, they didn't question him.
They nodded.
Meanwhile, Jenna had no idea what was coming.
….
By the time Jenna got home, it was 10 PM. She didn't expect the traffic to be so bad, or rather, five years in the apocalypse had messed with her sense of time, direction, and patience.
In the end-of-days wasteland she clawed her way through, there was no such thing as rush hour traffic…just the rush to survive.
Arriving home, the living room was empty, much to her relief.
She didn't have the luxury of time to waste explaining where she went or why she just returned home.
First thing first. She needed to see her siblings. Those children died in the early days of the apocalypse.
In her previous life, she failed them as their big sister, but this time, she would see to it that they lived as long as she lived. They would not starve, fear anything, or live the kind of life they lived under her uncle's family anymore.
Jenna rushed up the stairs with the urgency of someone who had something to prove to herself.
When she reached the second floor, she turned left toward the East Wing, where originally, the guests lived. But after her parents died in an accident and her uncle clamined her father property, Jenna and her siblings were thrown out of the West Wing, while her uncle and his family took the West Wing for themselves.
Jenna's heart thudded against her ribs as she stood before the door to the twins' room.
She knocked but no sound came from the other end. She couldn't wait anymore and pushed the door open.
Entering the room, she found the children had fallen asleep.
Her brother, Stanley slept in the middle, both arms wrapped protectively around the twins.
Jenna stood there, her breath catching in her throat as she watched their calm, peaceful faces.
On her way home, she'd thought of how she'd react when she saw her siblings again. Now that she was standing before their bed, she couldn't find the best reaction.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached forward and gently brushed a lock of hair from Zuri's face. The little girl stirred but didn't wake up. She had lost too much weight.
She looked pale and overly small. Jenna remembered that the child was sick.
Unlike Gumi, Zuri was the weakest one among the twins since birth. She had a medical condition, which made her fragile and more prone to fatigue, fainting spells, and dangerously low oxygen levels under stress.
The doctors had warned that she shouldn't be emotionally or physically stressed.
But unfortunately, her uncle's family didn't seem to understand that language. They repeatedly provoked the child, making sure she never got better. And in the end...
Jenna shut her eyes. Not able to protect her siblings was the pain and regret that stuck to her forever.
But now, things were different.
Gone were the days her siblings would suffer again. Not under her watch. She'd rather burn the world down and die with everyone than watch her siblings suffer the same fate for a second time.