The hidden wall door creaked open, its ancient gears grinding like bone against stone. Raven stepped back, arms loosely at her sides, as the sealed room revealed itself inch by inch. Red light spilled across the floor and into the darkness beyond. The air that drifted out was stale, laced with a faint chemical sharpness that stung her nose. She took a slow step forward, eyes narrowing.
Inside, the room was packed floor to ceiling. Not with weapons. Not with gold or prototypes or hidden supercomputers. But with thick white bags, stacked in uneven towers, each one wrapped in plastic and stamped with black markings.
It hit her all at once.
Cocaine.
Lots of it.
Her lips parted for a moment, the beginning of a laugh catching in her throat. But instead of laughing, she just sighed and rolled her eyes.
"Of course," she muttered. "Arms dealer, war profiteer, black-market genius... and naturally, drug kingpin. Checks all the boxes."
The bags were labeled with gang symbols she recognized. International syndicates. Smuggling groups. Some even had her father's corporate shell logos stenciled faintly along the seams, barely visible through the dust.
Raven crouched down, peeled open one of the bags, and let a small handful of the powder spill between her fingers. The grains sparkled under the flickering red light. She stood and wiped her hand on her pants with a slow exhale.
People might've expected her to destroy it. Burn it. Trash it. Make a speech about cleaning up the world or leaving no poison behind.
But she just turned away.
Let the addicts use it.
Let them drown in it.
Let them choke.
Raven wasn't here to be a savior. She wasn't interested in pretending the world could be cleaned up. If people wanted to poison themselves to cope with the end of everything, so be it. Let them numb themselves into obsolescence. That was less competition for supplies. Less noise. Less human garbage clogging up the ruins of civilization.
She closed the door slowly behind her, letting the lock hiss back into place.
In a few more days, none of that would matter anyway. Not money. Not drugs. Not power. Not fake ideas of justice. The only thing that would matter was who had food. Who had clean water. Who had enough ammunition to protect it. And then, not long after that, the world would change again.
Because the real currency would become something else.
Zombie nuclei.
Raven had seen it before. In her last life, it started slow—a few rumors, a few scavengers who noticed that killing mutated zombies seemed to make some people... different. Stronger. Faster. Harder to kill. Soon there were whispers of trades happening. Nuclei for rations. Nuclei for shelter. Then for weapons.
Then it became everything.
And with it came the next plague: people with abilities.
No one knew exactly why. But the more the apocalypse ground on, the more freaks started to show up. Some could control fire. Others warped shadows. Some just healed from anything and started wearing bone armor like ancient kings. And every single one of them were dangerous.
Too dangerous to ignore. Too unstable to negotiate with. Most of them died quickly, either to each other or to bullets in the back of their skulls when they got too greedy.
And yet, like cockroaches, they kept coming.
Just like the survivors.
Just like the addicts. The scavengers. The raiders who cried about morality after murdering a dozen people for half a can of soup. Every time Raven put one down, another showed up. Crying. Demanding. Guilt-tripping.
They always talked about sharing.
About fairness.
About rebuilding.
But when it came down to it, they'd trade you for a lighter and shoot you for your socks.
Raven walked slowly back toward the tunnel that had first brought her in. Her boots echoed softly through the now-empty halls, the air thinner somehow without the weight of all the firepower pressing around her. She stopped at the edge of the warehouse one final time and looked back.
The racks were empty. The shelves cleared. The tanks gone. The blueprints taken. Her legacy—rescued from the hands of a man who never deserved it.
Her father could rot in whatever hole he was hiding in. The world he helped break was about to bury him.
She adjusted her coat and began climbing the ladder out of the vault. Each step felt more final than the last, like surfacing from the grave of her childhood. The wind hit her face when she emerged, crisp and bitter, thick with city rot. The sun had fully set now. The sky overhead was bruised and cold.
She made her way back across the parking lot, weeds brushing at her boots. The Ironhowl X4 waited where she left it, hulking and dark like a patient animal.
Raven popped the door and slid into the driver's seat.
The engine roared to life.
Raven could feel her body changing in this second life she wondered how long it would be before her own twin abilities awakened again. Because one thing is for sure, no one would be happy when they did.
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