Chapter 3: Nano-Fold Core

Ada's POV

On my way past Costco, I had Robert pull over and let me out.

It happened to be a weekend, and the Costco parking lot had its own special kind of chaos. Shoppers were everywhere, and every one of them was hauling bags.

I pulled the shopping list from my pocket and took a few steps toward the entrance. Then I saw the crowd ahead, packed in layers around something.

Because of what I remembered from my last life — the horror of a city overrun by zombies — I had no wish to join a crowd gawking at anything. I was about to detour around them until I caught a few words: "rabies," "biting."

A chill climbed up my back. I forced my way to the front of the crowd.

A man with grayish-purple skin was crouched on the ground, savagely tearing at a woman he had pinned down. Pain and terror had her screaming. A great deal of blood was pumping from her neck. The people around them stood frozen where they were.

Slowly, the man raised his head and looked straight at me. The whites of his eyes were pitch black. His jaw was chewing, slow and mechanical, as though he was doing the most ordinary thing in the world.

Then two uniformed officers pushed through the crowd, rushed to the front, and fired a Taser into the man's chest. He convulsed violently for a moment, then went still.

Three people in white coats climbed out of an ambulance behind them. They did not speak to one another, just loaded the man and the injured woman into the ambulance quickly. Through a gap in the crowd, I glimpsed one of them quickly drawing a tube of blood from the man and tucking it into a black medical case.

"Everyone, this is a sudden public health incident. Due to the involvement of classified government matters, all recording is prohibited. Please hand over your phones for inspection." The officer turned and announced this to the still-shaken crowd.

The moment I saw the ambulance crew's unusual efficiency, I had already wiped my phone clean. The officer flipped through it for a while, found nothing, nodded politely, and handed it back.

I walked toward the Costco entrance with my face composed, as if nothing had just happened.

Judging by how fast the police had arrived and how practiced the others were, the virus had been spreading earlier than I had known. The news had simply been contained to keep the public from panicking. And if the authorities did not spread the word, that meant they were confident they could contain the disaster.

But why did the zombie virus break out uncontrollably a month later?

I opened my phone and scrolled through the news from the past two weeks. Then an unremarkable notice caught my eye:

"In late November there will be a strong geomagnetic storm, with an anomalous particle deposition event in the upper atmosphere. Communications satellites and ground power infrastructure may be disrupted during this period."

I stared at the words "particle deposition" and sank into thought.

I remembered that in my last life there had indeed been a strange dust-fall. Red dust, from no one knew where, had covered every street in the city. It vanished quickly, though, so few people looked into it.

The next day, the zombies sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain, and then they took humanity's home from us. A handful of the infected could be isolated, but the red dust drifted everywhere — and with Black Friday coming, the streets grew more crowded by the day.

It was no wonder the virus latent in people's blood broke out all at once. An outbreak on that scale was far beyond anything any containment measure could have anticipated.

I frowned, puzzled. I had been out shopping and also covered in the red dust myself, yet I had awakened a gene module instead. Could it be that the eerie dust-fall had not brought only disaster?

More thinking would not give me a definite answer. I pulled my thoughts back and turned to the plan that mattered more right now.

I went first to Costco's dry-goods section and had the staff haul out twenty 25-pound bags of vacuum-packed rice, twenty bags of all-purpose flour, and twelve cases of soybean, canola, and olive oil. I also stocked a dozen-odd cases of salt, sugar, powdered milk, and pasta.

Then, in the fresh section, I bought vacuum-packed frozen rib-eye steaks, pork shoulder, and pork leg, two cases each of canned tuna and canned beans and tomatoes, and the whole row of MRE emergency ration packs.

The medical-supply aisle took the longest. I put the entire row of anti-inflammatory drugs into my cart, then surgical consumables, hemostatic gauze, and sutures. I checked the quantity of every item twice.

Suddenly, someone tapped my shoulder. From his clothes, he looked like a supervisor at the store. Before he could speak, I got my introduction in first.

"Reyes Supply Company. We hold emergency storage contracts with several private clinics, and we provide catering to partner firms over Thanksgiving."

The supervisor did not question the identity I had just invented — or perhaps the sheer volume of my purchases had blinded him.

He led me into his office to arrange delivery. Some of the goods were already being packed, and everything would begin arriving at the self-storage unit starting the next day. I paid the deposit without haggling, and he cheerfully promised that all of it would be delivered intact within three days.

With most of the supplies arranged, I came out of the office and began thinking about contacting nearby farms to stock up on more fresh produce and meat.

There was a young stocker coming toward me, pushing a cart. As he passed, he tripped on a small dip in the floor, and the load on the cart swung heavily toward me. I dodged on instinct, but I had already lost my balance and could only throw out a hand to grab the shelving beside me.

A sharp pain shot through my palm. A small, unnoticed crack in the shelf had cut my hand open, and blood ran quickly from the wound. Ignoring the pain, I steadied myself, clutched the injured hand to my chest, and looked around for something to stop the bleeding.

A low, steady vibration spread out from my chest. A flicker of light passed at the edge of my vision and was gone.

"Valid biometric signature detected. Nano-Fold Core activated. Host confirmed: Ada Reyes. Enter the folded space?"

My mind went blank for an instant. Slowly, I looked down. My accidental movement had pressed my hand right against the pendant my mother had left me. Blood had spread a bright red film over its dark gray titanium surface.

What was going on? Had I just imagined that voice?

"Host did not respond. Defaulting to not entering the folded space. Accept the tutorial mission? Reward on completion: one static storage unit.

"Time inside the unit is completely frozen, capacity is unlimited, and contents remain in the state in which they are stored."

It was not my imagination. Startled, I cupped the pendant in my hands and examined it. The voice was indeed coming from it. I glanced at the stocker, who was apologizing; apparently only I could hear it.

"I accept," I said under my breath. The young man thought I was speaking to him and scratched his head, grateful and embarrassed.

"Beginner mission: deliver the core component to the resting place of its original owner within twenty-four hours, and bury it in the grave soil."

The original owner had to be my mother. Had mom known what this pendant really was?

I had not brought her flowers in over half a year. She was buried in St. John's Catholic Cemetery. The last time I went, Frank had followed me half drunk; I put down the flowers and left at once, not wanting that drunk to disturb her rest again.

I looked down at my palm. The bleeding had stopped. I took a tissue from my bag and pressed it to the cut, then looked up at the young man still standing there at a loss.

"I'm fine. Go on with your work. Don't worry about it."

He finally let out a breath, apologized once more, and turned to pick up the spilled goods.

"Thank you, Mom," I said silently, gripping the warm pendant. "Thank you for the hope you had left us."