Cora locked the bathroom door behind her.

She leaned over the marble sink, gripping the edges so hard her knuckles turned white. She turned the faucet on full blast.

The freezing water rushed over her hands. She stared into the mirror, but all she saw were the flashes of the refugee camp. The smell of rotting flesh. The sight of people dying in agony because there wasn't a single dose of antibiotics left in the city.

She looked down at her hands. They were smooth. The massive, jagged scar that had torn through her left palm in her past life was gone.

She closed her eyes and focused.

In her past life, she had awakened a hydrokinesis ability. The military had classified it as a low-level support skill. It was weak, but it was something.

She pushed her focus to the tips of her fingers.

The water running from the faucet stuttered. It was a microscopic pause, but it happened.

Cora's eyes snapped open. She curled her index finger upward.

A single drop of water, the size of a marble, broke away from the stream. It defied gravity, floating silently an inch above her palm.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

The ability had come back with her.

It was tiny, but it meant she wasn't completely defenseless. She flicked her wrist. The water droplet shot forward, hitting the mirror with a soft, wet tap, harmlessly splattering tiny droplets across the smooth glass.

A wave of dizziness hit her. Using the ability this early drained her physical energy fast.

She grabbed a towel, dried her hands roughly, and walked back into the dorm room.

She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk, bypassing the textbooks, and pulled out a black notebook with a combination lock.

She spun the dials, flipped past the old class notes to a blank page, and grabbed a thick black marker.

She wrote the first word in all caps: FOOD & WATER.

She drew a massive star next to it. She remembered the taste of moldy dog food. She knew exactly what hunger did to the human brain. It turned people into animals.

She wrote the second line: MEDICAL SUPPLIES.

Antibiotics. By the second month of the apocalypse, a single pill was worth more than a gold bar.

She wrote the third line: WEAPONS & DEFENSE.

She needed distance. She couldn't fight infected hand-to-hand, not with her current physical strength.

Cora stared at the list. The ink bled through the paper. She had the knowledge, but she hit a massive, physical wall.

Money.

She opened her laptop and logged into her Bank of America account.

Balance: $3,050.00.

She let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

She had one other card—a black Visa tied to a small emergency account her parents had established before the crash. Harlon didn't know it existed. But when she checked that balance, the number staring back at her was barely four thousand dollars. Combined with her main account, it wouldn't even cover a single pallet of MREs, let alone the arsenal she needed. The trust fund was still the only real answer.

Her eyes drifted to the framed photo on her desk. It was a picture of her parents. Standing behind them was a man in a tailored suit with a fake, tight smile. Her uncle, Harlon.

When her parents died in a car crash, they left behind a ten-million-dollar trust fund. Harlon controlled every single penny of it.

In her past life, she never saw that money. When the world ended, those millions just became useless code on dead servers.

Her brain worked in overdrive, calculating how to pry a massive chunk of cash from a greedy Wall Street shark legally.

Her phone buzzed on the desk.

An iMessage from Hailee lit up the screen: Do you want me to grab you an organic salad from Whole Foods? Love you!

Cora's jaw clenched. She typed back: No thanks. I'm good.

She tossed the phone onto her bed. It bounced on the mattress and slid toward the edge of the pillow, teetering on the edge.

Cora lunged forward to catch it before it hit the floor.

The second her fingertips brushed the cold metal casing of the phone, the air around her hand warped.

It didn't make a sound. There was no flash of light. The phone just ceased to exist in the physical space.

Cora froze. She stayed bent over the bed, her hand still hovering in the empty air. Her heart stopped beating for a full second.

She dropped to her knees. She ripped the blankets off the bed. She crawled under the frame, sweeping her hands over the dusty floorboards.

Nothing.

She sat back on her heels, forcing her breathing to slow down. She closed her eyes and reached inward, trying to find that weird mental pull she had felt the moment the phone vanished.

Deep inside her consciousness, a space opened up.

It was massive, roughly the size of a basketball court. The air inside was gray and completely still.

And right in the center of that void, her iPhone was floating, perfectly suspended in nothingness.

Cora's pulse pounded in her ears.

She focused her mind on the phone in the gray void and whispered, "Out."

The phone instantly materialized in her palm. The metal was still cold.

She needed to know the limits. She grabbed a thick, heavy macroeconomics textbook from her desk. She touched the cover. It vanished. She grabbed her desk lamp. Gone. She grabbed the heavy wooden chair. Gone.

She closed her eyes and looked into the space. The book, the lamp, and the chair were floating exactly as they had been the moment she touched them. There was no dust, no air movement. Time didn't exist in there.

She pulled them all back out. They dropped onto the floor with loud thuds.

A wave of exhaustion hit her brain, but she couldn't stop the massive, genuine smile that broke across her face.

She had the ultimate vault. Now she just needed to fill it.

She sat back at her laptop and opened Google. She searched for the most volatile, high-risk financial trends in the current market.

Cryptocurrency ICOs.

Harlon was an old-school, conservative hedge fund manager. He hated anything he couldn't physically touch or legally manipulate. He despised crypto.

Cora opened a Word document. She typed furiously, creating a garbage business plan for a fake company called "Future Assets." She stuffed it with buzzwords: decentralized finance, blockchain, Web3 integration.

She deliberately left massive, glaring holes in the financial projections. She made it look exactly like a scam designed to steal money from dumb, rich kids.

She saved the file, picked up her phone, and dialed Harlon's private number.

It rang six times before he picked up.

"Cora," Harlon said. The sound of wind brushing against a golf cart speaker echoed in the background. "Is your fever gone?"

Cora pitched her voice up. She made herself sound frantic, arrogant, and completely unhinged.

"I need money, Uncle Harlon. I found an angel investment opportunity. It's going to change the world. I need to liquidate one million dollars from the trust right now."

The wind noise stopped. Harlon's voice dropped an octave, turning sharp and condescending.

"Did the meningitis fry your brain? You are not touching a dime for some internet scam."

"I'm eighteen!" Cora yelled into the receiver, playing the part perfectly. "It's my money! You can't keep treating me like a child!"

She heard Harlon take a deep, angry breath.

"You will pack a bag and come to the estate in Connecticut immediately," Harlon ordered. "We are going to have a serious talk about your financial future."

Got you.

"Fine. I'll be there tonight," Cora snapped, and hung up.

She stripped off her sweatpants and pulled on a thick, dark hoodie and jeans, hiding her weight loss and pale skin. She shoved her laptop and her ID into a black backpack.

She opened the dorm door and walked right into Hailee.

Hailee was holding two Starbucks cups. She jumped back, her eyes widening as she took in Cora's clothes.

"Cora? What are you doing? You're sick!" Hailee said, her voice dripping with fake concern.

Cora stepped around her, not even making eye contact.

"I have to go home to deal with my inheritance," Cora said flatly.

Hailee froze. Cora didn't look back, but she knew exactly what expression was on Hailee's face. Panic. The fear of losing her invisible ATM.

Cora walked out of the building. The crisp October wind hit her face, clearing the last bit of the fever fog from her brain.

She walked out to the busy intersection, raised her hand, and hailed a yellow cab, paying the driver upfront in crisp, untraceable cash to take her to Grand Central Terminal.

She sat in the back seat, watching the crowded streets of New York blur past the window. Thousands of people walking, laughing, drinking coffee. None of them knew they were dead walking.

Her phone buzzed. A massive block of text from Hailee, asking a dozen questions about the inheritance.

Cora flipped the phone to silent and shoved it in her pocket.

The taxi descended into the dark tunnel approaching Grand Central. The shadows swallowed the back seat. Cora's eyes adjusted to the dark, cold and sharp.

The taxi pulled up to the massive wrought-iron gates of the Bullock estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. The sun was just starting to set.

Cora handed the driver a twenty-dollar bill and stepped out.

She looked up at the sprawling, English-style brick mansion. It was bought and paid for by her parents' blood, but Harlon treated it like his own kingdom. Her stomach churned with disgust.

She pushed open the heavy oak front door. The blinding light from the Swarovski crystal chandelier in the foyer made her squint.

Her Aunt Wanda was sitting on the velvet sofa, flipping through a copy of Vogue. She wore a silk robe. When she heard the door, she looked up.

Wanda's eyes dragged up and down Cora's cheap hoodie. Her upper lip curled in a sneer.

"You brought those hospital germs into my house," Wanda said sharply. She didn't say hello. She turned her head and yelled toward the kitchen. "Maria! Bring the Lysol spray to the foyer!"

Cora ignored her. She walked straight toward the grand staircase.

A figure stepped out onto the landing, blocking her path. Her cousin, Dustin.

He was spinning a Porsche key ring around his index finger. His eyes were bloodshot, his face puffy from too much alcohol and not enough sleep.

"Look who's back," Dustin sneered. "Run out of allowance already? Coming to beg my dad for a handout?"

Cora stopped on the bottom step. She looked at Dustin's face. In her past life, she had watched this exact man shove a pregnant woman down a flight of concrete stairs just to steal a single can of spam.

Cora stepped up, closing the distance until she was inches from his face.

"Move," Cora said. Her voice was a low, dead whisper. "Or I will take those car keys and shove them so far down your throat you'll choke on the metal."

Dustin's smirk faltered, but his ego wouldn't let him back down immediately. "Are you out of your damn mind?" he spat, raising a hand as if to shove her back down the stairs. But as his eyes locked onto the absolute, dead-eyed certainty in hers, his hand froze in mid-air. The suffocating aura of a killer washed over him, bypassing his bravado and striking pure, primal fear into his gut. He actually flinched, taking a hasty, stumbling step back until his spine hit the wooden banister.

Cora bumped her shoulder hard against his chest as she pushed past him. She walked down the second-floor hallway and went straight for the heavy double doors at the end.

She didn't knock. She grabbed the brass handles and shoved the doors open. They hit the walls with a loud bang.

Harlon was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk, a lit cigar clamped between his teeth. Cora's grandmother, Myra, sat in a leather wingback chair near the fireplace.

Myra slammed her teacup down on the saucer. She struck the floor with the tip of her cane.

"Where are your manners, girl?" Myra barked. "You burst in here like a wild animal!"

Cora turned around, pushed the doors shut, and locked them with a loud click. She dropped her backpack onto the Persian rug and sat down in the chair opposite Harlon.

Harlon blew a thick cloud of gray smoke into the air. He crushed the cigar into a crystal ashtray and glared at her.

"The answer is no," Harlon said immediately. "I am not funding some imaginary digital coin scheme. You are financially illiterate."

Cora gripped the armrests of her chair. She forced her breathing to speed up, making her chest heave. She played the part of the angry, misunderstood teenager.

"It's the future!" Cora yelled, letting her voice crack. "You just don't understand technology! You want to keep me locked out of my own money forever!"

Myra let out a dry, hacking laugh. "You are exactly like your worthless mother. Always dreaming, never working."

Cora's jaw locked. The muscles in her neck went rigid. She wanted to rip the old woman's throat out, but she kept her face twisted in fake, helpless rage.

Harlon opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a thick stack of stapled papers and threw them across the desk. They slid and stopped right in front of Cora.

"This is an extension of the trust management," Harlon said smoothly. "It locks the principal until you are twenty-five. You get a monthly stipend. Sign it, and I'll forget this little tantrum."

Cora looked down at the papers.

Her heavy breathing stopped. Her hands relaxed on the armrests. The angry teenager vanished, replaced by something entirely different.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, black USB drive. She placed it gently on top of the contract.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Harlon stared at the piece of plastic. His eyes narrowed.

Cora leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk.

"Since you don't like crypto," Cora said, her voice completely smooth and devoid of emotion, "let's talk about tax fraud and offshore shell companies."