Chapter 2

"I will send you the intelligence in batches over the next 48 hours. As for right now, I have some personal matters to attend to."

Without waiting for Uncle Harris to respond, I hung up and tossed the encrypted phone back into the safe.

There were less than fifty hours left until the lethal fungal plague enveloped the entire globe.

Outside, the sun was bright, and Wall Street elites were still screaming over a few percentage points of stock fluctuations. But to me, this prosperous island of Manhattan was already a massive open-air graveyard.

In the apocalypse, cash was too rough to even wipe your ass with.

I had to use the shortest possible time to convert the tens of billions in my accounts into extreme firepower, an impenetrable fortress, and a mountain of survival supplies!

"Frank," I said, turning to the man who was already on standby.

"Boss. What are your orders?"

"Dismiss all outsourced security teams. Give them three months' severance and tell them to get the hell out of the city. From this second on, no outsiders are allowed in this penthouse."

"Understood, Boss. What about supplies and fortifications?"

"Initiate the highest-tier combat readiness protocol!"

My eyes sharpened like a blade. "Empty out the three largest warehouse supermarkets in New York! Tell them I will pay ten times the hazard and confidentiality fees. As long as they can airlift every single crate of supplies via heavy transport helicopters to our dome helipad by midnight tonight!"

That absolute despair from my past life—being so starving that I caught and ate a raw sewer rat—I never wanted to experience that again.

Not even for a single second!

As my orders cascaded down, my billionaire "superpower" materialized into the most terrifying execution speed.

Just two hours later, the deafening roar of helicopter rotors echoed above Manhattan!

A fleet of twelve civilian heavy-lift helicopters, moving like a well-disciplined line of worker ants, relentlessly airdropped shipping-container-sized loads of supplies onto my 15,000-square-foot, climate-controlled rooftop garden.

Tens of thousands of crates of military MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat).

Three tons of premium Tomahawk steaks flown in directly from Australia.

Mountains of Iberian black-label cured ham.

Enough pristine Alpine bottled water to last a century.

And even two entire racks loaded with Domaine de la Romanée-Conti fine wine!

Under Frank's direction, intelligent transport logistics robots categorized and packed the supplies into every single cold room and storage vault, not leaving an inch of wasted space.

Holding a glass of red wine, I looked down upon this insane, apocalyptic hoarding operation. A sick sense of satisfaction swelled within me—this was the ultimate cure for "insufficient firepower phobia."

Meanwhile, on the completely opposite end of Manhattan, in the grimy, overcrowded slums of Downtown.

CLANG!

The heavy iron door of the holding ward was pushed open.

Elena and Eric, bruised, battered, and dressed in rags, were violently tossed out onto the street like two bags of rotting garbage.

Last night, the military assumed they were exposed to the mutant and aggressively subjected them to blood draws and high-pressure interrogations.

Once cleared of infection, the unlucky "reborn duo" were casually thrown into an overnight holding cell meant for lower-tier street thugs and junkies.

After just one night, their miserable state was beyond words.

Eric’s two front teeth had been punched out by a massive inmate, and half of his face was swollen like a purple balloon.

And Elena—the high-and-mighty manipulator from the previous life—was left with disheveled hair, her expensive silk dress reduced to mere torn rags, her skin covered in bruises.

Her eyes gleamed with pure terror and venomous resentment.

"Mark... I’m going to kill Mark! That miserable bastard! How dare he treat me like this!"

Elena broke down sobbing on the dirty street. They had maxed out whatever payday loans they could to barely scrape together their bail money.

"Shut up!" Eric spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva through his missing teeth, his eyes flashing like a viper.

"This is all Mark's fault! I don't know why the military showed up early in this life, but the doomsday countdown will never change! Two days left!"

Dragging their busted bodies, the two limped back to their only hideout in this parallel universe—a dark, basement-level apartment.

There wasn't even a heater. Starving, the two couldn't even scrape together fifteen bucks to order cheap takeout, leaving them to sit on a moldy mattress, swallowing dry spit.

...

In sharp contrast to their misery, I was currently running my hand over a cold metal gun barrel, absolutely relishing the feeling of supreme power and security.

"Boss, just pulled these prime goods from the black market arms dealers. What do you think?"

Frank grinned, pointing to three massive, matte-black metallic beasts.

They were M134 Miniguns!

And not just any version—these were the fully automated sentry-turret variants, equipped with independent power supplies and thermal-imaging tracking modules!

"These three beauties fire at a rate of 6,000 rounds per minute. They can shred an elephant into meat paste in seconds," Frank patted the gun casing.

"I’ve wired them into the AI fire-control system in our bulletproof command center. They're mounted at the only private elevator shaft, the fire exit doors, and the rooftop access."

Aside from heavy firepower, the structural fortifications were flawless.

My most loyal men used top-tier welding to completely permanently seal the shafts of all external elevators leading to the safehouse. All the floor-to-ceiling windows were reinforced with an extra layer of 50mm tungsten-steel composite armor plate over the existing blast glass.

To prepare for the inevitable city-wide power grid failure during the apocalypse, I dropped a staggering a hundred million dollars on the dark web to acquire a compact, industrial-grade nuclear fusion battery.

I even threw thousands of volts of high-tension electrical grids across the building's exterior overhangs.

CLUNK—!

As the final, three-ton blast-proof titanium vault door sealed shut with a low hum, the entire penthouse echoed with a calm automated voice:

[Fortress air-tightness test: Complete.]

[Internal air-filtration and circulation system: Online.]

[24/7 automated defense network: Activated.]

Standing in front of the massive screen in the armored command center, overlooking warehouses bursting with ultimate luxury and a panoramic view of my killing fields, I completely bid farewell to the naive softness of my past life.

From this second forward, this hundred-meter-high penthouse was a doomsday island that not even a nuclear warhead could easily crack.

And I would be the Wasteland Tyrant, sitting on my iron throne, controlling it all!

Just then, breaking news flashed across the television monitor.

On screen, a usually composed anchorwoman looked visibly panicked.

"Interrupting our broadcast with breaking news. Multiple horrific attacks resembling ‘rabies’ have occurred in Downtown Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn over the last hour. The NYPD is urging citizens to remain indoors..."

The zombie virus had begun its distributed outbreak.

In the corner of my surveillance grid, a drone feed picked up movement.

On the screen, a starving, resentment-fueled Elena and Eric, wearing hoodies, were quietly creeping into the territory of Harlem’s most ruthless mafia gang.

"That bastard Mark is loaded, right? Once the apocalypse hits and order collapses, his building is a mountain of gold!"

Eric hissed viciously through his broken teeth to Elena. "We're taking out a loan from the mob! I don't care how high the interest is! We'll trade the cash for guns and ammo, hire some mercenaries! I am personally going to chop Mark into pieces, sleep in his bed, and eat his steak!"

I slowly swirled the Romanée-Conti in my glass, a mocking sneer curving my lips.

Borrowing mob money to buy guns to attack me?

Come on then. I’m just worried you won’t die fast enough.