"Are you alright? Hey, can you hear me?"
I felt the jarring sensation of someone shaking my shoulders, the rhythm rough and persistent. Acting on pure reflex, I forced my eyes open, only to be immediately assaulted by a sky so bright and clear it felt like the sun was trying to blind me. I hissed and squinted, my head throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache.
"Ouch," I muttered, gritting my teeth as I tried to push myself upward. Every muscle in my body felt like it had been tenderised by a heavy hammer, the pain radiating from my joints in sharp, electric jolts.
"Easy there, take it slow," another voice chimed in. It sounded youthful, lacking the gravelly weight of the world I knew. "You just collapsed out of nowhere, pal. No warning at all. You sure you're okay?"
I turned my head toward the speaker, intending to ask where that lunatic of an old man had gone, but the words died in my throat. I froze. I was surrounded by a group of teenagers—high school students, by the look of their casual, pristine clothing. But it wasn't the people that stopped my heart; it was the skyline.
Beyond the crowd, standing tall and proud in the distance, was a silhouette I recognised from the dusty, forbidden history books of my youth. Without a word, I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the protest of my bruised muscles. I pushed past the bewildered teenagers and sprinted toward the edge of the plaza, stopping only when my shins hit a low, decorative cement wall.
"Hey! At least say thanks for the help!" an angry voice shouted from behind me, but I didn't care. I couldn't care. My entire reality was shattering as I stared across the shimmering blue water at a grand, faint-green statue rising miles away.
"This... this is the Statue of Liberty," I whispered, my voice trembling with a mixture of awe and sheer terror. "How the hell is she still standing?"
Back in my world, I had always admired the sketches of the ancient Earth's landmarks. But those were ghosts of a dead era. I would have bet my life—every coin I'd ever earned—that the statue was gone.
I could still see the image pinned to the wall of my cramped room: a grainy, black-and-white poster showing that grand figure flattened against the earth, her torch half-buried in the soil of a scorched island. That was the truth I knew. This... this was a miracle or a nightmare.
"What are you doing over here? Is this your first time in New York?"
I turned to find a girl standing a few feet away. She looked to be roughly my age, wearing a pair of stylish glasses and clutching a stack of textbooks against her chest. She had the look of a diligent, hardworking student—the kind of person I might have been if the world hadn't turned into a slaughterhouse before I was born.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice sounding raspy and foreign in my own ears. I felt like I could trust her, or perhaps I was just desperate for an anchor. "I'm... I'm a bit disoriented. Can you tell me what the date is? What day is today?"
She let out a sweet, melodic laugh, as if my question was the opening line of a rehearsed joke. "Oh, stop being funny," she said, adjusting her glasses. "That's a pretty old-school way to try and get to know me, but I'll let it slide this once." She smiled warmly. "It's the fifth of June. Do you need the year, too?"
"Yes, please," I replied, my face dead serious.
Before she could answer, I looked away from her, scanning the horizon again. My mind was reeling. The world around me was peaceful, brimming with a vibrant, chaotic life and a sense of joy I had never experienced.
It was the Earth I had only heard of in the rambling tales of the elderly—the world before the sky broke. Her answer came like a hammer blow, confirming my deepest suspicion.
"It's the year twenty-thirty," she said, laughing again. "What's next on your list? The time?"
"Yes. Please. The time." I looked back at her, my intensity making her blink. For a second, her smile faltered, but then she took it as a joke again. Two shy dimples appeared on her cheeks, and I noticed a small beauty mark just below the right corner of her mouth. She was beautiful in a way that felt fragile, like a flower that didn't know a storm was coming.
She flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder, a playful glint in her eyes. "It's exactly two P.M. Is that a suitable time for a drink, or are you going to keep playing the mystery man?"
Two P.M. June fifth, two thousand and thiry. I couldn't breathe. It was impossible.
Slap!
Without warning, I brought my palm across my own face with everything I had. I expected the world to dissolve, to reveal the old man's mansion and the red energy of the orb. I thought it was a trick—a cruel, vivid hallucination.
"Ouch! Dammit, that hurts," I hissed, rubbing my throbbing cheek. The pain was sharp, physical, and undeniably real.
"Hahaha! Well, yeah, it usually hurts when you slap yourself!" the girl laughed, though she was now eyeing me with a look of intense curiosity, as if I were a specimen from another planet.
"You look like a foreigner, or maybe you're just really lost. Where did you come from? Are you here for the Expo? The World Cup? Or wait..." She squinted at me. "You look like a student. Are you here for the World Student Forum?"
I looked at her, my mouth dry. I recognised every event she mentioned. They were the very reasons the United States was so densely packed with people of every nationality when the apocalypse finally hit. It was the reason the casualties here had been so catastrophically high; the country had been a beacon for the world, which only made it the ultimate target for the first, most brutal wave of attacks.
And now, I was standing in the heart of New York City—the place that everyone in my time knew had suffered the most. I wasn't just on the old Earth. I was at the epicentre of the end, and according to her, the end hadn't even started yet.
I had less than two hours left. One hundred and twenty minutes until the apocalypse would strike with the force of a thousand hammers. I was standing in the heart of a doomed civilisation, breathing the air of a world that was about to be wiped away—a world that, in my time, was nothing more than a collection of half-forgotten myths and tragic cautionary tales.
From the moment the sky broke, the old rules of physics and society would be discarded, replaced by the brutal, systemic laws of the New Earth. What the hell did you do to me, old man?
I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white. This wasn't a game; it wasn't some whimsical journey. Who in their right mind would ever choose to relive these dark, blood-soaked moments?
But then, a new thought pierced through my panic, hitting me with the force of a physical blow. Wait... if I am actually here, at the beginning... I turned around, a sudden, wild surge of enthusiasm bubbling up from a hidden well of hope.
Does this mean I can finally have a Class of my own? Can I change the trajectory of my life before the curse of being Classless even takes hold?
The realisation was ground-shaking. I was standing at the finish line of my dreams before the race had even started. I had a chance to replace a lifetime of stagnation with a future of actual power and purpose. It was the one thing I had always prayed for but never believed could actually happen.
"Hey! Earth to mystery man! I'm talking to you!"
A sharp punch to my shoulder jolted me out of my internal revelry.
"Ouch! That actually hurt!" I complained, rubbing the sore spot. "Why did you hit me?"
"Because you weren't listening," she replied, crossing her arms as if her words were a sacred sermon I had dared to ignore. "Where exactly are you heading? Do you have a group you're supposed to meet? Friends? Colleagues? Anyone?"
"Yes... friends," I said, my mind racing as I tried to calculate my next move. If the history I knew was correct, I needed to be in a specific type of location to maximise my chances of surviving the initial wave. "I should be at Central Park in less than two hours. Is it far from here?"
"Central Park? No, it's not that far," she said, turning and pointing toward the labyrinth of steel and glass towers. "There's a subway station nearby. We can take the train and be there in no time."
"Subway!" I recoiled as if she had suggested jumping into a pit of vipers. In the records of my time, the word 'subway' was synonymous with 'mass grave.' History books told of how humans, driven by a primal instinct to hide underground, had flocked to the tunnels, believing them to be the ultimate safe havens against the atmospheric chaos. It was logical to them; the structures were reinforced and deep.
However, in the opening hours of the apocalypse, those safe havens had transformed into slaughterhouses. I wouldn't step foot in those tunnels, even if it were the only way to reach my destination. I didn't know if the old man's intervention had changed the timeline, but I wasn't about to bet my soul on a subway car.
"No. No subways. Please," I said firmly, perhaps too quickly. "Let's... wait, did you say we? Are you coming with me?"
Her face lit up with a brilliant, infectious smile. "I have to be there anyway for the grand meeting of overseas students," she explained. "But fine, if you're claustrophobic or something, we can walk. We still have about four hours before the forum officially starts. We can talk and explore a bit on the way."
Without waiting for my approval, she turned and began marching in the direction of the park. This girl... she has an incredibly strong personality, I muttered to myself. Suddenly, she spun around, extending a hand with a confident grace.
"I realised I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Isabella Rocher. It's nice to meet you, mystery man."
"Hye..." I started, but the rest of the sentence died in my throat. My mind felt like it had been hit by a sudden frost. "No... no f*cking way!" I blurted out, my eyes widening in sheer disbelief.
"Excuse me?" She pulled her hand back, eyeing me with the same mixture of pity and confusion I used to reserve for the old man.
"Oh, sorry... I'm sorry," I stammered, trying to rein in my spiralling thoughts. The name Isabella Rocher wasn't in any official historical record—those had been largely lost or scrubbed—but it was a name the old man had shouted a thousand times during his "crazy" storytelling sessions.
As I looked closer, the details began to align with terrifying precision. She was exactly as he had described: the sharp, intelligent eyes, the distinct style of her glasses, even the small nevus—the beauty mark—near the corner of her mouth. She was the living, breathing embodiment of a legend I had dismissed as a senile fairy tale.
A cold shiver ran down my spine as I walked silently beside her. Wait a second... if she is real... then the stories were real. He wasn't making it up. The old man wasn't crazy at all. Every tale he had ever told me about the "Great Betrayal" and the "Fallen Angels" suddenly carried the weight of absolute truth. I wasn't just in the past; I was in the company of a historical figure who wasn't supposed to exist outside of a madman's ramblings.