"Your girlfriend," Lily repeated, her voice shaking violently now.
"She barged in here, slapped this cash on my desk, and said she was taking it. She said her name was Sunny Game."
Donovan’s mind raced. Sunny Game. The name meant absolutely nothing to him. He was Donovan Fallon. He didn’t do relationships. He didn’t do romance. And he certainly didn’t have a girlfriend running around underground auction houses taking stuff under his name.
He would have heard of her before, so why did she appear now?
"What did she look like?" Donovan demanded.
"She was beautiful," Lily admitted, clearly hating the words as they left her mouth. "Young. Wearing a black dress. And she had this... this bright, fiery red hair."
Donovan frowned.
He didn’t remember someone like that.
Donovan froze.
The image of the woman in the hallway instantly flashed in his mind. The one holding the faded wooden box against her chest. The one who had smelled like cheap soap and pure panic.
Perhaps one of my many stalkers.
"So does that mean she was not your girlfriend?" Lily beamed as Donovan’s eyes finally settled on her.
Donovan frowned as he looked at her overly excited face and her shining eyes. This might actually work in his favour.
"My girl likes to play pranks. I am sorry she behaved rudely to you." He quickly apologised and turned to leave the room.
"Wait...!" Lily called out, clearly having a lot more to say.
But Donovan didn’t want to linger anymore; he also had other things he needed to get from the auction that was going to start now.
He didn’t like what that stranger did, but perhaps he didn’t care enough to find her.
***
"Achoo!"
Sunny violently sneezed, nearly dropping her cup of instant noodles onto the dingy motel carpet.
She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, sniffing loudly. Someone is definitely cursing my name right now. Probably that pirate lady.
She brushed the thought away, slurping a mouthful of spicy noodles as she fell back onto the lumpy motel mattress. She stared up at the water-stained ceiling, but she wasn’t seeing peeling paint.
All she saw were stormy grey eyes and broad shoulders in a tailored black suit.
"UGHHHHHH!!!"
She kicked her legs in the air, a muffled squeal escaping her lips.
I saw him. I actually saw him! And he smelled so good!
Oh my god, if I didn’t have to run for my life, I would have just let him step on me.
[...]
She rolled around on the bed, burying her flushed face into a scratchy pillow.
The reality of transmigration was finally sinking in. She wasn’t just reading words on a screen anymore. Donovan Fallon was a real, breathing man, and she was breathing the same air.
"I am very convinced the author didn’t do his description justice, because ughhhh he is so fucking fine." Sunny moaned into the pillow.
[Warning: 29 Days, 21 Hours until the Gates open.]
The glowing blue system screen rudely materialised right above her pillow, ruining her fangirl moment.
Sunny groaned, rolling over and sitting up on the edge of the bed. The system was right. She didn’t have time to sit around kicking her feet over a handsome man.
The apocalypse was less than a month away, and while she had successfully stolen his cheat item, an empty spatial domain wouldn’t stop her from getting eaten by monsters.
She would have come a day before the apocalypse, but she figured the reason why she was brought to a month before the apocalypse was because of the nature of Donovan’s heroic fate in the book.
All his cheat items were important for his safety and the world’s safety during the apocalypse.
The main purpose of the system is to force Donovan to survive without the artefacts.
"Which brings me into the story! Since I would be the one saving him, and not the other way around." She stuck her tongue out and wagged it naughtily.
Yes, that dick is going to be mine soon.
Then she frowned, but not just yet; he doesn’t have to see me now, until during the apocalypse.
She set her noodles on the wobbly nightstand and reached under the collar of her black dress.
Her fingers brushed against the cold silver metal of The Eyes of the Moon. It was no longer tarnished. It glowed with a faint, pulsing luminescence, feeling strangely alive against her collarbone.
Alright. Ten thousand square feet of frozen time. Let’s see what I am working with.
She closed her eyes, focusing her mind on the pendant exactly the way the novel described Donovan doing it. She pictured a door opening.
Instantly, the sounds of the noisy Koria streets outside her motel window vanished. In the novel, Donovan used this space to hoard literal warehouses’ worth of food, weapons, and medical supplies. Time was supposed to be frozen inside.
She felt a strange pulling sensation behind her navel.
Her consciousness detached from the motel room and plunged directly into the artefact. Her heart raced at the sudden feeling of being moved.
But that all calmed down the moment she opened her eyes.
Expecting to see a massive, endless concrete warehouse floor, and even shelves. She expected a sterile, grey void ready to be filled with instant noodles and bottled water.
Instead, her jaw dropped.
There were no walls. There was no floor.
She was standing on what looked like a mirror made of dark glass, stretching infinitely in every direction. Above her, there was no ceiling. Just a vast, swirling expanse of deep, violent blues and purples, speckled with silver light.
It was breathtaking. It was completely alien.
But more than anything else...
Sunny wrapped her bare arms around herself, her teeth instantly starting to chatter. Her breath plumed in front of her face in a thick white cloud. The temperature in the domain was absolute zero.
She shivered violently, staring out at the endless, freezing expanse.
"Damn," she whispered, her voice echoing softly into the void. "It’s like the sky, but very cold..."