Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

Ethan dropped lightly from the lower oak branch, his boots hitting the paved courtyard with a soft thud as he raised both hands calmly near his shoulders, offering zero physical resistance.

A stocky, middle-aged officer wearing the gold oak leaves of a major stepped through the tense ring of riflemen, his heavy service pistol drawn and leveled squarely between Ethan’s eyes. ”Identify yourself! Who are you, and how the hell did you breach the outer wall without tripping the high-voltage wire?”

Ethan looked straight past the dark gun barrel, his voice completely level and unhurried. ”I’m not here for a fight. I’m looking for whoever is in charge of this district.”

The major stared at him narrowly, visibly caught off guard by the intruder’s utter lack of panic despite having twenty assault rifles aimed at his heart. Before the officer could bark another question or order his men to cuff him, the encrypted tactical radio clipped to his shoulder strap crackled to life with a deep, authoritative voice.

”Stand down, Major. Bring him up to my office immediately.”

The major stiffened into a posture of respect, pressed his transmit button to acknowledge the order, and lowered his pistol half an inch before gesturing sharply toward the main three-story administrative building with his barrel. ”You heard the commander. Walk. Keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t try anything clever, or my men will turn you into a sieve before you hit the pavement.”

Ethan lowered his hands slowly to his sides and followed the armed escort squad across the brightly lit compound. As they marched up the wide concrete steps and through the reinforced double doors of the headquarters, he quietly tested the edges of the spatial restriction with his mind. Unlike the Blackscale Drake’s tyrannical Space Seal~which locked down all dimensional movement entirely like frozen amber~this field didn’t actually stop him from sensing space, accessing his Survival Space, or even using short-range skills inside the compound. It functioned purely like a one-way lobster trap: anyone could teleport in, but nobody could teleport out past the perimeter wall.

Someone inside this military headquarters possessed a high-level Space Ability specifically tailored for area containment and imprisonment. That fact alone made playing along the smartest tactical move for now.

On the second floor of the administrative building, heavy double oak doors opened into a spacious, wood-paneled command office. A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a crisply pressed general’s uniform stood with his hands clasped behind his back before a massive wall-sized tactical map of Silvermont. Polished gold stars gleamed beneath the recessed ceiling lights on his epaulets.

When the escort guards stepped backward into the hall and pulled the heavy doors shut, the man turned around slowly. A jagged, deep scar ran from the arch of his left brow all the way down to the corner of his chin, giving his otherwise composed, aristocratic face a severe and intimidating edge.

”You’re a Space Ability User?” the man asked, his deep baritone resonating in the quiet room.

”Yes,” Ethan replied simply.

”What is your name?”

”Ethan.”

The general gestured smoothly toward a leather armchair positioned in front of his mahogany desk. ”I am General Nash, the commanding officer in charge of the North City Military District. Have a seat.”

Ethan sat down comfortably, keeping his posture relaxed while his dark eyes tracked every micro-expression on Nash’s scarred face.

”Tell me, Ethan,” Nash said, leaning back slightly against the polished edge of his desk and folding his arms. ”Did you slip into my compound tonight looking for someone specific, or were you responding to the shortwave radio recruitment broadcasts we’ve been sending out across the city?”

”I heard the broadcast a few days ago and decided to come see for myself if the military was actually still standing,” Ethan lied without a single flicker of hesitation in his pulse.

Nash studied him in silence for three long seconds before nodding slowly. ”A cautious man. I can respect that. Since the sky turned red and the old world fell apart, my regiment has been sweeping the urban districts for surviving citizens~particularly high-potential Ability Users who can help us construct a permanent, self-sustaining bastion for humanity.”

He turned halfway and tapped a gloved knuckle against the center of the city map. ”Our primary objective is expanding the deep nuclear fallout shelter directly beneath this military complex. We already have independent geothermal and diesel power, surgical facilities, and enough armed personnel to maintain absolute order.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow slightly. ”And that spatial net covering the courtyard outside?”

”My personal Ability,” Nash replied frankly, making no attempt to disguise it. ”SS-Rank Space Imprisonment. I keep it anchored to the perimeter walls twenty-four hours a day. Any spatial fluctuation that crosses the boundary without my personal mental authorization triggers the command alarm. While inside my domain, you can walk around freely, but you cannot fold space to cross back over the outer boundary without my explicit permission.”

He fixed Ethan with a steady, measured stare. ”Think of it as a necessary security lock in desperate times. As long as you harbor no hostile intentions toward this base, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Ethan remained silent for a brief beat, appearing to weigh the explanation, before asking, ”If you’re recruiting capable people, can I see this underground shelter for myself?”

”Certainly,” Nash agreed, standing up straight and adjusting his cuffs. ”Walk with me. However, you will remain at my side during the tour. Certain deep research sectors are strictly classified, and I do not tolerate uninvited guests wandering where they don’t belong.”

Nash led him out of the office to a heavy industrial freight elevator at the end of the hall, swiped a magnetic security keycard, and pressed the lowest sub-basement button. The reinforced steel cab descended deep into the bedrock for nearly three full minutes before the heavy doors finally slid open with a loud pneumatic hiss.

Ethan stepped out onto a raised steel observation platform and paused in genuine surprise.

The subterranean cavern was gargantuan, easily the size of several football stadiums hollowed out beneath the earth. Thousands of civilian survivors occupied the sprawling concrete floor below, which was bathed in artificial daylight by endless rows of high-output LED strips bolted to the rock ceiling. Off to the west, construction crews were hammering together neat rows of two-story wooden barracks, while logistics teams pushed carts of supplies or welded scrap armor plates. In a cleared central plaza, dozens of children were actually chasing each other and playing, their bright laughter echoing strangely off the massive blast-proof concrete pillars.

More impressively, the entire eastern quadrant had been converted into terraced agricultural fields. Rich, dark soil had been hauled down and arranged into long beds bursting with lush green vegetable leaves. Several dozen workers moved slowly between the rows, their hands glowing with soft emerald or earthy brown light as they used their Abilities to force the crops to mature at ten times their normal speed.

”This is our primary agricultural sector,” Nash explained with a note of unmistakable pride in his voice. ”We currently house five registered Plant-type Ability Users. With their daily output, we’ve managed to harvest enough fresh produce to feed the entire underground population without touching our canned war reserves.”

Ethan’s sharp gaze swept methodically across the terraced fields. For all the blood and monsters rotting on the surface, this underground bunker appeared to have achieved a miracle close to pre-apocalypse civilization.

Then, sixty yards away near the concrete irrigation ditch, his eyes locked onto a familiar silhouette.

Rose was squatting beside a tall row of staked tomato vines, her slender fingertips glowing with a faint green aura as she coaxed a cluster of pale yellow blossoms to swell into green fruit.

Ethan’s chest tightened involuntarily. She’s alive.

Yet as he watched her for another three seconds, a cold knot formed in the pit of his stomach. Something about her movements was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

She worked with the rigid, repetitive precision of an assembly-line machine, shifting from one plant to the next on her knees without wiping the sweat from her brow or glancing at the workers beside her. Her face was completely slack, devoid of warmth, grief, or exhaustion, and her dark eyes stared blankly through the leaves as if her soul weren’t even inside her body. She looked nothing like the vibrant, gentle woman who had worried so fiercely about Sofia.

Ethan forced his breathing and facial muscles to remain completely still. He couldn’t afford to stride down there with an SS-Rank general standing two feet away and armed sentries lining the steel catwalk. If he tipped his hand now, Nash would lock down the entire cavern before Ethan could figure out how to break the perimeter seal.

Instead, keeping his hands casually near the railing, Ethan subtly channeled a microscopic thread of spatial energy down through the soles of his boots, imprinting an invisible Space Anchor Point onto a cracked piece of gravel at the dark base of the agricultural ramp.

Then he calmly turned his head away.

”Well?” Nash asked, watching him closely. ”What is your verdict, Ethan? Would you consider joining our administration? A capable Space Ability User would be treated like an officer down here.”

”It’s an impressive operation,” Ethan said smoothly. ”Give me a night or two to think it over.”

”Of course. My aide will show you to a private officer’s quarters upstairs, with hot running water and hot meals while you decide.”

Ethan nodded politely and turned back toward the elevator. Yet as the heavy steel doors slid shut, blocking out the underground farm, he couldn’t shake the chilling image of Rose’s hollow eyes. This bunker was too quiet, too obedient, and far too dependent on unseen strings. To a desperate survivor, it looked like sanctuary. To Ethan, it felt like a gilded cage.

At midnight, after confirming through his spiritual perception that the guards patrolling the third-floor guest quarters had moved to the far end of the wing, Ethan slipped out of bed.

Without opening his hallway door, he locked onto the coordinate he had planted earlier and activated short-range Space Teleportation. He had paid close attention to Nash’s exact words~his Space Imprisonment only triggered an alarm if someone tried to cross the outer boundary of the base. Jumping internally between floors inside the net went completely undetected.

A heartbeat later, Ethan materialized in the pitch-black shadows at the base of the underground agricultural ramp.

The massive cavern was deserted now. The artificial sun-lamps had been switched off for the night, leaving only dim amber emergency bulbs casting long, skeletal shadows across the rows of tomato vines.

Rose was no longer in the field.

Moving like a ghost, Ethan swept past the silent tool sheds before spotting a row of small, windowless wooden dormitories built against the far rock wall of the farm sector. A thin sliver of pale light bled through the warped floorboards beneath the last door on the left.

Ethan glided over, eased the wooden latch open without a sound, and slipped inside.

The room was bare except for three narrow iron cots. Two were empty; on the third sat Rose, her posture ramrod straight on the edge of the thin mattress, staring unblinkingly at the concrete floor between her bare feet.

”Rose,” Ethan called out, keeping his voice to a low, urgent whisper as he stepped into the dim light.

Slowly, mechanically, her chin lifted. Her dark eyes settled directly on his face, reflecting the bare bulb overhead, but there was not a single spark of recognition, relief, or life behind her pupils.

”Who are you?” she asked, her voice flat and hollow like a recorded message.

Ethan froze in place, a wave of cold fury washing through his veins. He had braced himself to find her beaten, starved, or threatened with a weapon~but this was far more insidious. Someone had reached inside her skull and wiped away everything that made her who she was.

She’s being mentally controlled, he realized, his jaw clenching hard.

He didn’t waste another second trying to reason with a puppet. Stepping forward, he gripped her cool wrist and pulled her directly into the isolated sanctuary of his Survival Space, where she couldn’t harm herself or alert the guards. A split second later, he locked onto the secondary anchor in his guest room and teleported straight back upstairs, arriving silently on the carpet beside his bed.

Ethan stood in the dark room, his mind racing as he checked on her inside his internal space. Bringing Rose inside the pocket dimension had completely cut her off from the outside world’s dimension~which meant whatever was controlling her had just lost its leash.

At that exact moment, five hundred feet beneath the rock floor of the agricultural cavern, inside a sealed bio-laboratory unmarked on any standard map, a woman in a pristine white lab coat suddenly snapped her eyes open.

Cradled against her chest was a jagged, fist-sized crimson meteorite that pulsed like a beating heart. Dozens of tiny, constellation-like points of red light glowed beneath its glassy crust~each one representing a collared mind in the shelter above.

Right before her eyes, one of the brightest crimson stars flickered wildly and snuffed out into total darkness.

The woman slowly pushed her silver-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose, her pale brow furrowing as she stared down at the dead coordinate on the stone.

”How strange,” she murmured, her voice echoing in the sterile room. ”The psychic tether wasn’t killed... it was severed cleanly from this dimension.”

Her long, pale fingertips brushed caressingly across the rough surface of the red meteorite. A sudden, eerie crimson glimmer flashed deep within her own pupils, mirroring the stone’s light. Then, a slow, predatory smile curved across her painted lips.

”So, an interesting little mouse has slipped into my shelter.” She lifted her gaze toward the heavy steel blast door of the laboratory. ”Let’s see just what you’re capable of before I open your head.”