Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Snatched the Tycoons' Billion-Fortress Right Away

The crisp cracking sound of my cervical vertebrae being forcibly torn apart still echoes wildly in my mind.

A dark green, highly concentrated sulfuric acid-like viscous liquid corroded my eyeballs, and I could almost feel the mutated creature's barbed tongue licking my brain matter.

"ah--!"

I sprang out of bed, clutching my neck tightly with both hands. There was no slime, no fangs, only a linen duvet cover soaked with cold sweat.

My heart pounded in my chest like a heavy pile driver. I gasped for breath, my gaze sweeping across the dimly lit Manhattan apartment, fixed on the frantically vibrating iPhone on the bedside table.

A name was flashing on the screen: Nicole.

The time displayed is: November 15, 2024, 9:00 AM.

Fifteen days before the apocalypse! I actually crawled back from the ruins of New York, torn apart by spore storms and gravity anomalies!

The phone rang shrilly, like a death knell. In my past life, this very phone call was the catalyst that led me into the abyss.

I took a deep breath and pressed the answer button.

"Evan! I'm warning you for the last time!" Nicole's impatient, shrill voice pierced my eardrums instantly. "If you don't sell that lousy house in Brooklyn today and buy me that $100,000 limited edition Birkin bag, the wedding next month is off! My best friend's fiancé just gave her a Porsche, and you expect me to carry an old bag to church? What kind of man are you?!"

What did I do at this time in my past life? I begged her humbly like a dog, and even actually contacted a vampire broker on Wall Street to mortgage my property. But when the apocalypse broke out, she immediately pushed me into the mutant swarm, just to buy herself a few seconds to escape to the helicopter.

A surge of violent rage, mixed with the smell of blood, instantly shot from the depths of his heart to the top of his head.

"A $100,000 bag?" I sneered, my voice chilling as if I'd just crawled out of a pile of corpses. "Nicole, is that bag big enough to hold your rotten skull that exploded after being parasitized by spores?"

There was a sudden pause on the other end of the phone.

"Are you crazy? Evan, you dare to curse me? You believe I'll tweet you out of the blue right now and cause your social death..."

"No need to wait until next month, the wedding is canceled now." I interrupted her screams without mercy. "Take your vanity and go find a good spot in Central Park to die, you bitch."

"Beep—beep—"

I hung up immediately and blocked the number completely. The instant the screen went black, a cold, mechanical voice pierced my mind.

[Host's mind reconstruction detected; behemoth-level infrastructure system activated.]

[Currently bound world: Multidimensional Cataclysm Line.]

[Countdown: 359 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds.]

A holographic blueprint emitting a faint blue light was projected directly onto my retina.

I stared intently at the screen in front of me, my mind racing. The tactics of those post-apocalyptic survivalists who frantically hoard canned food and bottled water were utterly laughable in the face of the impending disaster.

When the gravitational storm uproots the Statue of Liberty, and when the Tier 3 spore behemoth crushes the air-raid shelter with a single stomp, tens of thousands of tons of supplies will only turn into garbage in the ruins.

What I need is not supplies, but an invincible fortress that can withstand multidimensional natural disasters!

The blueprint rapidly expanded under my mental control, locking onto the Alaskan ice sheet. There, a red coordinate was flashing wildly.

"The Eden Project." I spat out those words through gritted teeth.

That was the underground fortress that my villainous boss from my past life—Victor, the heir to the Sterling Group—secretly built at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. Inside were hydroponics gardens that could sustain ten thousand people for a hundred years, miniature nuclear reactors, and ten-meter-thick tungsten steel armor.

Driven by a fervent desire to seize the fortress, I grabbed the Ducati's car keys and rushed out of the apartment.

The roar of the motorcycle engine shattered the false tranquility of a New York morning. I twisted the throttle to the floor, the wind whipping across my face like knives, yet I felt my blood boiling.

Twenty minutes later, I kicked open the rusty iron door of the abandoned Brooklyn subway station.

The strong smell of Monster Energy Drink and cheap marijuana hits you immediately.

In front of a computer screen filled with scrolling green codes, a man weighing over 300 pounds suddenly spun around in his swivel chair, still clutching half a half-eaten Mexican burrito in his hand.

"Evan? Are you crazy! This door is reinforced with titanium alloy!" Chuck, the geek best friend, stood up angrily, his eyes wide and bloodshot.

I strode over, slapped his burrito away, placed my hands on the keyboard, and stared intently into his eyes.

"Help me hack into the Sterling Corporation's internal network, bypass the quantum firewall, and gain central control of the 'Eden' fortress."

Chuck was stunned, then burst into laughter as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world.

"Are you out of your mind? That's Victor's private bunker! It's surrounded by former Navy SEAL mercenaries, and even the internet is physically isolated! You want me to go there and die?"

He shoved me aside and yelled at the door, "Get out! I'll pretend I didn't hear you for our sake, but if you act up again, I'm calling the NYPD!"

I didn't move, I just stared coldly at his furious face.

“In fifteen days, the sky will tear apart. Multidimensional gravity storms and mutated spores will destroy all of North America.” My voice was eerily calm.

"Still spouting this Hollywood post-apocalyptic script?! Get out!" Chuck grabbed a baseball bat from the table.

Without fear, I stepped forward to face the stick and uttered a sentence, word by word:

“I know your mother’s pancreatic cancer has metastasized to her bones. Manhattan Presbyterian Hospital has given her an ultimatum: she has less than two weeks left.”

The baseball bat froze in mid-air. Chuck's face drained of color instantly, and his entire body trembled violently.

"How...how did you know? I even encrypted my medical records on the dark web..."

“I also know that you’ve been frantically searching the black market for even the slightest chance of cryonics.” I approached him, my eyes sharp as knives.

"At the very bottom of that multi-billion dollar fortress, there are three military-grade cryogenic chambers. That's your mother's only chance to survive."

A deathly silence pervaded the abandoned subway station. Only the frantic hum of the server chassis fans could be heard.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Chuck's eye muscles twitched violently. He threw down the baseball bat and grabbed my shoulders tightly with both hands, his nails almost digging into my leather jacket.

"There really is a freezer compartment inside? If you dare to lie to me, I swear I'll rip your guts out!"

"If I'm lying to you, we won't even have the right to go to hell in fifteen days." I looked directly into his bloodshot eyes, a crazed smile curving my lips.

Chuck whirled around and slumped into his swivel chair. His fingers flew across the keyboard like phantoms, and the green code on the holographic screen instantly transformed into a torrent of red attacks.

"Physical isolation requires implanting a Trojan chip on-site. How do you plan to get in?" Chuck roared without turning his head.

"You don't need to worry about that. I was a low-level engineer there in my past life." I looked at the system countdown flashing on my retina.

Fifteen days.

I will devour Victor's billion-dollar fortress, skin and bones!