The skyline of the financial district loomed ahead, a jagged edge of glass and steel against the bleeding violet sky.
Catrin didn’t wait for Graves to fully park the SUV before she opened the door.
"Keep the engine running," she ordered.
"Mommy, are you leaving again?" Nico asked, a tiny frown on his face.
Catrin stopped, the manic urgency in her chest softening for a fraction of a second. She leaned back in, cupping his warm, chubby cheek.
"Just for a minute, sweetie," she promised softly. "Mommy has to go buy some very special bodyguards for our new house. Stay with Graves. He’s a good listener."
Graves looked like he wanted to argue that he wasn’t a babysitter, but one look at Catrin’s dead green eyes shut him up.
Catrin slammed the door and power-walked toward the sleek, unmarked glass double doors of Aegis Security Solutions.
Aegis wasn’t a mall-cop firm. They were a shadow corporation that provided elite, ex-military contractors to billionaires, politicians, and warlords. In her past life, Julian had tried to hire them when the apocalypse started, but their commander had laughed in his face, claiming their loyalty couldn’t be bought with worthless paper money.
Catrin was going to buy them before the money became worthless.
She walked past the heavily armed receptionist, ignoring the sharp "Ma’am, do you have an appointment?"
Catrin pushed through the mahogany doors of the executive suite.
Sitting behind a massive desk was a man who looked like he was carved out of granite. He had a brutal scar cutting across his left eye, a neatly trimmed beard, and shoulders so broad they barely fit in his tailored suit.
Commander Jax.
He didn’t jump when she barged in. He just slowly closed his laptop, leaning back in his chair.
"You’re trespassing," Jax said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
"I’m investing," Catrin countered, walking straight up to his desk. "My name is Catrin Briar. I am liquidating my ex-husband’s empire, and I need a private army. I want an exclusive, lifetime contract for your top fifty operators, starting immediately."
Jax stared at her for a long moment. Then, he let out a short, harsh laugh.
"Lady, I don’t care who your ex-husband is," Jax said, crossing his arms. "My men don’t do ’lifetime contracts’ for bitter divorcees. We secure international assets. We don’t play bodyguard for socialites."
Catrin didn’t flinch. She just pulled out her black, untraceable military phone and dropped it on his desk.
"Open the photo gallery," she commanded.
Jax raised an eyebrow, but his curiosity got the better of him. He picked up the phone and tapped the screen.
His eyes widened.
It was a live-feed screenshot of the Project Ark mecha-fortress, timestamped from five minutes before she stole it.
"That’s a myth," Jax breathed, his professional composure cracking. "The feds have had Sector 4 locked down for years trying to get that quantum core online. It doesn’t move."
"It does now," Catrin said smoothly. "I bought it. I moved it. And I have the only decryption keys to run it."
She leaned over his desk, resting her hands on the polished wood.
"Look out your window, Commander," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
Jax frowned, turning his chair to look at the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. His eyes locked onto the unnatural, sickly violet aurora bleeding across the sky.
"You’re ex-military intelligence, Jax. You have clearances. You know what that light means," Catrin said. "The atmospheric pressure is collapsing. The meteorites aren’t a theory anymore. They are coming. And when they hit, every single dollar in my bank account, and yours, is going to be toilet paper."
Jax didn’t say a word. He just kept staring at the purple sky.
"I have the only fully operational, self-sustaining mecha-fortress on the continent," Catrin continued. "It has hydroponics, infinite clean water, and automated defenses. I am offering you and your fifty best men a guaranteed spot inside the Ark. In exchange, you work for me. Absolute loyalty. No questions asked."
Jax turned back to face her. The arrogance was gone. He looked at her like she was the most dangerous thing in the room.
"How do I know you actually have it?" he demanded. "How do I know this isn’t a federal trap?"
Catrin smiled. A cold, terrifying smile.
"Because if it was a trap, you’d be in handcuffs, not negotiating for your life," she said. "I am leaving this city in ten minutes. If you want a seat on the only lifeboat that survives this week, you will meet me at these coordinates with your men and your heavy artillery."
She slid a sleek black business card across his desk. It had a single GPS coordinate printed on it. The location of her fifty acres in the mountains.
"You have exactly two hours, Commander," Catrin said, turning on her heel. "If you’re late, the gates lock permanently."
By the time Catrin got back to the SUV, the violet aurora in the sky was visibly thicker, glowing like a bruised vein across the clouds.
"Did you get them?" Graves asked, staring nervously up at the sky.
"They’ll be there," Catrin said, buckling her seatbelt. "Drive. Get us on the highway heading north."
As Graves peeled out of the financial district, Catrin pulled out her laptop. She had secured the fortress. She had secured the military muscle to guard it. Now, she needed the brains to run it.
Project Ark was designed to be self-sustaining, but the internal hydroponics and energy grids required a genius to optimize them, especially if they were going to be locked inside for years.
She opened an encrypted browser and typed in a name.
Dr. Elias Thorne.
In her past life, Elias was a legend in the wasteland. He was a disgraced, obsessive bio-engineer who had accurately predicted the mutant spore reaction before the meteorites even hit. The government had locked him in an asylum to keep him quiet. When the apocalypse started, he escaped and built an underground utopia, only to be murdered by warlords who wanted his tech.
Catrin wasn’t going to let him die this time. She was going to buy him.
"Graves, take the next exit," Catrin ordered, typing furiously. "We need to make a stop at the St. Jude Psychiatric Facility."
Graves slammed on the brakes, swerving across two lanes of traffic. "An asylum?! Briar, the sky is turning purple! We need to get out of the city, not go visit crazy people!"
"The crazy people are the only ones who know how to survive what’s coming," Catrin snapped. "Just drive."
Thirty minutes later, the SUV pulled up to the imposing iron gates of St. Jude. The facility looked more like a prison than a hospital, surrounded by high concrete walls and barbed wire.
Catrin didn’t bother with the front desk. She walked straight to the security checkpoint, flashing her black premium card and a heavy stack of hundred-dollar bills.
"I need ten minutes with Elias Thorne," Catrin told the bored-looking guard.
The guard scoffed, pushing the money back. "Lady, Thorne is in solitary. High-risk ward. Nobody sees him without federal clearance."
Catrin didn’t blink. "I don’t need federal clearance. I need you to accidentally leave the door to the high-risk ward unlocked while you go take a very long coffee break. There is fifty thousand dollars in this envelope."
She dropped a thick manila envelope onto the counter.
The guard stared at the envelope. He looked at the violet sky outside the window. He looked back at the envelope.
He slid it under the counter and pressed a button under his desk. A heavy buzzer sounded.
"Down the hall, third door on the left," he muttered, grabbing his thermos and walking away.
Catrin walked down the sterile, fluorescent-lit hallway. The air smelled strongly of bleach and desperation. She reached the heavy steel door labeled Solitary - Thorne, E. and pushed it open.
The room was tiny, padded, and completely devoid of furniture, except for a single metal cot.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by hundreds of frantic, messy equations scribbled on the padded walls in black marker, was a young man. He had messy, overgrown black hair, dark circles under his erratic blue eyes, and was currently chewing on his thumbnail.
He didn’t look up when she entered.
"The atmospheric pressure is collapsing," Elias muttered to himself, rapidly writing a new equation on the wall. "The spore density is going to hit critical mass in exactly thirteen days. The military thinks they can shoot them down. Idiots. They’re going to aerosolize the infection."
"Fourteen days, actually," Catrin corrected smoothly.
Elias froze. He slowly turned his head, his wide blue eyes locking onto her.
"Who are you?" he whispered. "You aren’t a doctor. You smell too expensive."
"My name is Catrin," she said, pulling a sleek tablet from her bag and tossing it onto his cot. "And I’m the only person on this planet who believes you."
Elias scrambled over to the cot, picking up the tablet. The screen displayed the highly classified schematics for the Project Ark mecha-fortress, specifically the hydroponic and quantum core blueprints.
His eyes widened drastically. He looked like a starving man who had just been handed a feast.
"This... this is an isolated, closed-loop bio-dome," Elias breathed, scrolling frantically. "Quantum powered. Self-sustaining. It’s beautiful. Where did you get this?"
"I own it," Catrin said simply. "And I need a chief engineer to optimize the hydroponics so it can feed an army indefinitely. I am offering you a fully stocked, state-of-the-art laboratory inside the safest fortress on Earth. Unlimited funding. Unlimited resources. And complete immunity from the apocalypse outside."
Elias looked up, his hands shaking slightly. "Why me?"
"Because you’re crazy enough to know what’s coming, and smart enough to build a counter-measure," Catrin said. "I am leaving this city right now. You can stay in this padded room and wait for the spores to turn you into a monster, or you can come with me and play god in my basement."
Elias looked at the equations on the wall, then back at the tablet.
A manic, brilliant smile spread across his face.
"Do you have industrial-grade centrifuges?" he asked.
"I have three," Catrin lied, making a mental note to buy them on the drive to the mountains.
Elias stood up, tossing his marker onto the cot.
"Lead the way, boss," he said.
As they walked out of the asylum and climbed into the waiting SUV, Catrin pulled out her phone. She looked at her bank balance.
$1.1 Billion.
She had spent three billion on the fortress, and a few million on supplies and bribes. She still had over a billion dollars left to burn, and only thirteen days to do it.
"Graves," Catrin ordered, pulling Nico into her lap. "To the mountains. It’s time to unpack."