The sky turned red at 3:17 PM.
Not sunset red.
Blood red.
Ethan Cole stood on the rooftop of what used to be the most powerful financial tower in New York, watching helicopters fall out of the air like dying insects.
Seven years ago, he had owned three companies.
Five years ago, he had been on magazine covers.
Three years ago, he warned them.
No one listened.
The Collapse wasn't a single event.
It started with an AI logistics system failure.
Then energy grids destabilized.
Then market panic.
Then food shortages.
Then riots.
Then the creatures came.
They weren't zombies.
They weren't aliens.
They were humans—mutated by unstable biotech nanoviruses released during emergency medical trials.
The governments called them "Variants."
People called them monsters.
Ethan called them inevitability.
Below him, the streets burned.
His former business partner, Daniel Reeves, was probably already underground in a fortified private bunker.
The same Daniel who sold Ethan's company shares during the second market crash.
The same Daniel who called him "paranoid" for predicting supply chain collapse.
The same Daniel who locked him out of their emergency energy vault project.
Ethan laughed quietly.
He had predicted 82% of the Collapse timeline correctly.
He just lacked time.
And power.
A shriek split the air behind him.
One of them had climbed the tower.
Its bones protruded through torn skin, eyes glowing faint blue—an effect of the biotech stabilizer gone wrong.
Ethan didn't run.
There was nowhere left to run.
The world had already ended.
As the creature lunged—
The rooftop exploded in white light.
Not from impact.
From the sky.
Everything froze.
The monster stopped mid-air.
The flames below halted.
The wind died.
And a voice—mechanical, distant, emotionless—spoke inside his head.
[Global Stability Index: 12%]
[Collapse Threshold Reached.]
[Candidate Identified: Ethan Cole.]
[Regression Protocol Available.]
[Do you accept?]
Ethan didn't hesitate.
"Yes."
Darkness swallowed him.