“The smell of old paper filled Chloe Gates's lungs as she woke up with a violent gasp in the dead-quiet public library. Her phone screen lit up with a severe weather alert for October 25th, but she knew it wasn't just a storm. It was an engineered apocalypse, the gentle whisper before a global scream orchestrated by a shadowy organization. In her past life, this day marked the beginning of a starving, freezing hell. She remembered gnawing on mushy tree bark in the wasteland of Central Park, and the sickening crack of her own ribs when a man beat her for a piece of scavenged meat. But the deepest trauma came from Jacob Daniels, the elite security chief of the Haven Group. When the deadly blizzard hit, he was the one who locked the compound gates, ignoring her desperate pleas as he left her outside to die. "Are you alright? Should I call someone?" The voice belonged to Jacob himself, standing right in front of her in the library, offering a hypocritical courtesy that mocked her agonizing death. She had died a naive, trusting victim, crushed by a merciless system while the rich and powerful survived. Why should she freeze in the snow again while they profited from the end of the world? Looking down, a silver hexagram glowed faintly on her wrist-her infinite sub-dimensional storage unit had traveled back with her. With twenty-four hours left and an eight-million-dollar trust fund, Chloe walked out of the library. This time, she was going to buy the world.”