Apocalypse Reborn: The OP Bestie and Her Revenge

Ten years. They wired my brain and treated me like a lab rat for their superhuman trials. I finally broke out. I stepped right into a zombie apocalypse. The first thing I saw?

My old best friend pressed herself into a corner. Her own husband stood over her, demanding her rations. "Everyone else coughed up their stash.

Stop acting so selfish over some chocolate." Cora flinched. Her fingernails dug into her palms. "I just wanted to save it for Finn." A girl nearby scoffed. "God, Cora.

You always use the kid as an excuse when you want a snack. It's totally pathetic—" The group glared at Cora like she disgusted them.

I ripped my stuffed backpack off my shoulder and hurled it.

It slammed against the back of the girl's skull. "Is that enough?" I stepped out of the shadows. "Say one more word, and I'll kill every single one of you." Chapter 1 Foilwrapped chocolate bars spilled across the cracked pavement. "Who the hell did that?!

Do you have any idea who you're talking to?" the girl shrieked, clutching her head. Nobody answered. Every eye in the group locked onto the scattered candy.

Heavy swallows echoed in the dead silence. "Chocolate. A whole damn bag of it…" "I scanned it with my psychic perception! It's real! Not an illusion!" They swarmed.

Hands grabbed, elbows threw punches, a chaotic scramble for sugar and calories. They ignored the girl's outrage.

She bit her lip, grabbed the arm of the tall man next to her, and shook it back and forth, "Grant, look at them!" Grant scowled. "Enough.

Back off." His voice dropped as he gave the final order. "All supplies go into Harper's inventory. She distributes everything.

Did you all conveniently forget the team rules?" The scrambling stopped instantly. Hands slowly backed away from the prize. Harper smirked.

She strutted forward, snatching the candy bars right out of their gripping fingers. A faint blue light pulsed in her palm. A pocket dimension.

Through the entire frenzy, Cora didn't even glance at the food. Her pale face drained of all remaining color.

She just stared at me fixedly. "Echo?" The name cracked in her dry throat. "Is that you?

You're alive?" I reached out, my hand moving on pure muscle memory to pat her shaking back. "Is that my name?

Echo?" "You don't remember?" She grabbed my shoulders, her fingers digging frantically into my arms and chest to check for broken bones, crying and laughing all at once. "The orphanage director said someone adopted you!

I begged him for a name, but he kept his mouth shut. I looked for you everywhere, Echo.

I couldn't find a single trace…" I stood completely still, letting her panicked words wash over me. Of course she couldn't find me.

For ten years, they locked me inside a blacksite underground bunker. They pushed my physical limits, forcing genetic mutations.

My brain had been opened countless times, injected with countless chips and serums. They scrubbed my memories clean. Bled out every ounce of my humanity.

I didn't even know what to call myself. I only held onto one fragile, fractured image. Before the lab doors slammed shut, I had a best friend named Cora. She loved me.

Cora kept her hands on me, desperately checking my pulse, scanning my skin for injuries. Grant stepped right into my personal space.

His dark eyes dragged over my bloodstained clothes, silently demanding an explanation for the loot. "I passed through downtown," I met his stare. "Grabbed it on the way." Grant narrowed his eyes, a muscle feathering in his jaw. "Just grabbed it?

Do you have any idea how infested—" He never finished the sentence. Cora spun around, throwing her arms out wide to shield me from her husband. "Grant, this is my best friend.

The one I always talk about. She means everything to me." She glanced back over her shoulder. "Echo, this is my husband, Grant.

We tied the knot five years ago." After introducing us, she looked at Grant with pleading eyes. "Just let her come with our squad!" Grant sealed his lips tight.

Silence stretched, heavy and absolute. Harper popped up from behind him, crossing her arms. "Look, Cora. I'm just gonna say it. We run an elite squad here.

Dragging your powerless, ordinary ass around already drags us down." She shot me a dirty look, her lips curling into a sneer. "Now you want to pack another dead weight?

Are we trying to reach Base T or run a damn charity?" Chapter 2 Cora’s expression went icecold. "Harper, if you're freezing her out, hand over her chocolate." Harper's face flushed red with anger.

She turned around and clung to Grant's arm. "Grant, look at her!

Why is Cora always siding with outsiders?" Grant silenced them with a sharp slice of his hand. "Enough." "She handed over her supplies. She bought our protection.

Cora, your friend rolls with us. The decision is final. I don't want to hear another word." Cora’s eyes crinkled into a bright, relieved smile.

Beside her, Harper’s face darkened as she rolled her eyes at me. I let my mental probe wash over Harper.

Less than three cubic meters of spatial capacity, it was the most basic spatial ability. I could kill her with a wave of my hand. My gaze drifted back to Cora.

The kill would definitely upset her. I swallowed the violent impulse. For now. Just like back in the orphanage, Cora talked enough for the both of us.

The miles blurred past as she filled in the tenyear gap. She hit college, started dating Grant her sophomore year, and slipped a ring on her finger right after graduation.

The virus hit two months ago. Grant manifested a rare metalmanipulation ability. And Harper? Just a stepsister from a blended family. No blood ties.

Cora let out a heavy sigh, her shoulders dropping. "They’re incredibly close. Honestly, I get a little jealous sometimes.

After you vanished, I was always so entirely alone." Her voice softened, taking on a warm, maternal glow. "I have a son. Finn. He’s four, just started preschool.

When the outbreak hit, he was at a summer camp out on the coast. I begged Grant to get him, but he couldn't find him in the chaos.

Grant managed to reach the camp director on a static radio channel. They flew the kids out early to Base T. That's our destination.

You'll get to meet him once we breach the gates." Cora rested her chin in her hands, her eyes sparkling. "Finn knows all about you, Echo.

I tell him stories about us at the orphanage all the time. He knows you love paper cranes. The sweet kid folded hundreds of them.

Said he's saving them for Auntie Echo." I stared at her beaming smile. I felt my stagnant brain slowly, slowly, rippling a little. A pulse of actual feeling. "Okay," I murmured.

I uncurled my fist. Three foilwrapped chocolates sat in my palm. Cora’s eyes blew wide, her breath hitching. "Saved these for Finn," I smiled.

Later, Cora jogged over, shoving two soft rolls into my hands. "Eat up, Echo." After ten years of genetic splicing, my body ran on pure efficiency.

I didn't need calories to survive. But meeting her glowing, expectant gaze, I took the bread.

Cora plopped down shouldertoshoulder with me, tearing into her own roll. "Where the hell have you been all this time? How did you even find me?" Silence thickened in my throat.

I stared blindly at the warm, crusty bread in my hands. Ice coated my veins. But the cold experimental building surfaced in my mind.

There were countless precise instruments and researchers in white coats coming and going. "Inject Subject 09 with the experimental serum!" "Crank up the chip's voltage!

Break her!" Chapter 3 "Code red! She's breaching the tank!" CRACK. My psychic surge shattered the reinforced glass.

When sanity finally clawed its way back into my skull, the silence was deafening. The lab was empty. Many corpses were lying haphazardly on the floor.

I grabbed a discarded lab coat, pulling it over my shivering frame.

I stared blankly out the reinforced window into the wasteland. "Cora…" I muttered to myself. "I need to find Cora…" I blinked away the bloodsoaked memory, focusing back on the woman sitting beside me. "I was in a… restricted facility.

No outside contact." I kept it vague, my voice perfectly flat. "When I got out, I wanted to see you.

So I tracked you down." "Echo~" Cora threw herself into my arms, nuzzling against my shoulder. "I knew it.

I knew you still loved me." She pulled back, rolling her eyes. "Grant swore some rich family adopted you. He kept saying you were living the high life and just cut me off.

Total bullshit. He just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand us." She was right. Who could understand? For ten years, not even the world's top geneticists understood.

The stimulation brought by overdoses of brainstimulating serums was enough to cause a person to die from pain. A hundred injections. I survived every single one.

Out of a hundred test subjects, I was the only one left breathing. Through the thick observation glass, their muffled voices always bled through. Subject 09 is a gift from God.

There was no God in that bunker. There was only one fractured memory keeping my heart beating. A voice in the dark.

Echo, we’re going to be best friends until we're a hundred years old. I had to make it to a hundred. I never break a promise.

I shifted my weight, letting Cora lean comfortably against my side. Then I stood up. Through the dim campfire light, Grant's gaze locked onto mine. Heavy. Calculating.

He took a slow step toward me. He was sizing me up. Analyzing the threat. I didn't flinch. I let my psychic energy coil in my palm, sharp and invisible.

A mental blade, ready to slice. A blaring siren shredded the dead silence. "Incoming! Zombie horde!" The barricaded factory doors groaned, steel warping under immense pressure.

They burst open. A rotting, screeching tidal wave of infected poured into the warehouse. The squad jolted awake, scrambling for their weapons and firing up their powers.

Six awakeners in total. Grant packed midlevel metal manipulation. The rest? Lowtier rookies. Their energy reserves drained in minutes. The defensive line crumbled.

Three infected lunged straight for Harper and Cora, jaws snapping. "Grant!!" "Grant!" At Harper’s hysterical screech, Grant moved on pure instinct.

He hurled a metal spike, pinning the zombie attacking Harper to the concrete. A split second later, realization hit him. Cora had screamed too.

His head whipped toward us, panic finally breaching his stoic mask. Just in time to watch. The rusted rebar in my grip punched clean through two rotting skulls in one brutal thrust.

Black blood sprayed the floor as the bodies crumpled at my boots. Cora clung to the back of my jacket, her skin ashwhite, chest heaving. "Echo! Are you bitten?

Are you hurt?!" "I'm fine." I wiped a smear of infected blood off my cheek with the back of my hand. Dozens more swarmed over the barricade, sprinting straight for our blind spots.

Grant gritted his teeth and said, "Move! We need to drive out of here, now!" Chapter 4 Dawn broke.

We finally outran the screeching horde, holing up in a gutted suburban house to breathe. I scanned Cora's erratic mental fluctuations. She was hurting.

I reached out, my fingers wrapping around her trembling hand. "I've got you," I said, holding her gaze. "I'll protect you." Cora lifted her head.

The scene in the factory was obvious. Two women in danger. Grant chose his stepsister. "Harper holds the inventory," Cora whispered, her voice cracking. "She's the priority asset.

I get the logic. I do.

It’s just— It’s just—" She asked me between sobs, "Echo, am I a very selfish person?" I shook my head. "You're perfect." In my warped, fractured mind, Cora was the only good thing left in this rotting world.

My bioparents dumped me on the orphanage steps when I was four. I didn't speak. They took me to the hospital for a checkup, only to find out I had autism.

After being adopted by the orphanage, the other older kids bullied me. Until Cora.

Three years older, she chased them across the asphalt, swinging a jagged brick like a feral animal. "Back off! Don't you dare touch her!" When I was nine, the darkness crept closer.

The director dragged me into his office after hours. He claimed a doctor needed to run a physical. Two strange men waited inside. They locked the door.

They ordered me to drop my dress. "She's a mute. Completely safe." Crash. The heavy oak door splintered open.

Cora charged in, swinging a heavy, rusted iron shovel from the groundskeeper's shed at the director and those two men. "Get your filthy hands off my Echo!

I'll kill you!" Metal crunched against bone. Blood sprayed the desk. The police sirens wailed minutes later. They hauled the director and his sick friends away in cuffs.

Later that night, sitting in the cold dark, Cora gripped my icy fingers. She stroked my tangled hair, her breathing still ragged. "Don't be scared, Echo.

Whenever the monsters come, you just scream my name." I swallowed hard, mimicking the exact cadence of her voice from all those years ago. "Don't be scared, Cora.

Whenever the monsters come… you just scream my name." She froze. Her lower lip trembled violently.

A massive, shuddering breath racked her ribs. "Echo—" The syllable barely left her mouth. A heavy shadow eclipsed the morning sun. I tilted my head up.

Grant stood over us, flanked by the rest of the squad. They formed a tight, suffocating semicircle. Muscle memory kicked in.

Cora instantly shifted her weight, blocking their line of sight to me. "What's going on?" Harper crossed her arms, a sickeningly sweet smile on her face. "Cora, look.

I get that you blindly trust your little childhood friend, but seriously?

You don't see the massive red flags here?" Cora’s brows snapped together. "What are you talking about?" Harper shot a sideways, loaded glance at Grant.

Grant didn't say anything, but just used his ability to form a metal spike in his hand. A scrawny guy with a ratlike face stepped forward, sneering. "Think about it, Cora.

The streets are crawling with biters. We bleed just to scavenge a stale can of beans. Yet she waltzes in here, zero scratches, carrying a twentypound bag of premium chocolate?

Surviving solo for two months?" He pointed a dirty finger right at my face. "She claims she's a vanilla human. No powers. Bullshit.

The math ain't mathing." Cora’s grip on my fingers tightened into a vice.

Her knuckles turned dead white. "Spit it out," Cora hissed. "What exactly are you accusing her of?" Chapter 5 Grant stepped forward, his voice dropping low. "Cora, I know she means a lot to you.

But the world went to hell. We can't take risks. Our squad has been moving for almost a month. We specifically took the desolate routes. We barely saw any biters.

Yet the exact same night your friend joins us, a massive horde magically ambushes us at midnight?" Grant tightened his grip on his weapon. "The HAM radio broadcast two days ago confirmed it.

The infected are mutating. They mentioned hightier variants that look exactly like us.

They even talked about an apex predator—a Zombie King that commands the swarms." He slowly raised his hand. The jagged metal spike leveled perfectly with my eye. "I'm calling it.

Your best friend is the apex." Cora didn't even blink. She fired right back. "If she were the apex, she would have ripped my throat out by now!

Do I look infected to you?!" "God, Cora. You are so naive." Harper shook her head, a heavy, patronizing sigh escaping her lips.

She stared at Cora like she was throwing a toddler tantrum. "Cora, step aside," Grant ordered. The metal spike in his grip glinted, sharpening to a lethal point.

Cora rooted herself in front of me. Her voice almost bleeding with strain. "Are you out of your damn minds?!

Grant, when those two biters lunged at me last night, you turned your back! You ran to save your sister! If Echo hadn't killed them, I would be a corpse right now!

How the hell could she be your imaginary Zombie King?!" Grant flinched. A flicker of ugly guilt cracked his stoic mask.

Harper looked aggrieved. "Cora, you aren't seriously blaming my brother for saving my life, are you?" Cora's teeth ground together. "I didn't say that." "If you want your friend to stay with the squad and clear her name, she needs to prove it." Harper lifted a perfectly manicured finger, pointing straight at the barricaded window.

A few infected dragged their rotting feet across the lawn, drawn by the scent of fresh meat. "If she isn't the apex, if she isn't one of them, they'll tear her apart." Harper smirked. "Fair trade, right?" Pure fury ignited in Cora's eyes. "Yeah!

And if they bite Echo, it proves she isn't the apex! But she'll be dead, you psycho!" Tears instantly brimmed in Harper’s eyes. She shrank back. "Grant, look at her.

I just offered a logical solution, and she's screaming at me." "Then let me offer a logical solution." Cora didn't yield a single inch. "You and Echo go stand outside together.

Prove yourself. How about that?" Grant's scowl deepened. "Cora, Harper is your sister. Watch your mouth." Cora's fingers convulsed around mine. A violent tremor shot up her arm.

I squeezed her shoulder gently, searching for the right words, before asking, "Who said I was a powerless human?" "What?!" "You're an Awakener?!" Everyone was shocked.

Grant recovered first. He scrutinized me, his eyes narrowing into suspicious slits. "If you're awakened, what's your elemental class?" My jaw parted.

The words bottlenecked in my throat. My mutation didn't fit their neat little boxes. It tore its way into existence when the lab rats pushed my brain past the absolute human limit.

Years of neon serums and embedded microchips fed it. Mutated it. Even now, it defied classification. Or rather. It became exactly what I commanded it to be.

Chapter 6 The silence stretched. Then, Harper let out a nasty, scoffing laugh. "God, Cora. Your friend is exactly like you. A pathological liar. She doesn't have any powers.

She's just terrified—Ack!" Her eyes bulged with raw terror. Nobody saw clearly how I arrived in front of Harper and grabbed her by the neck. She clawed frantically at my wrist.

Useless. Her air supply cut off. "Grant…" she wheezed, the word scraping out of her crushed windpipe. "Save me…" "Let her go!" Grant roared, surging forward. I ignored him.

I tilted my head, studying the girl choking in my hand. She looked pretty. Almost three months into the apocalypse, and her lips stayed perfectly pink.

Her skin gleamed, completely unblemished. She looked like a pampered pet. Nothing like my Cora. Cora stood tall, but her cheekbones cut dangerously sharp against ashpale skin.

She wore the same grimecaked clothes from weeks of running. She looked fragile. Like a brittle reed ready to snap in the wind. A strange, violent ache ripped through my chest.

An alien sensation. I squeezed harder. Harper's face flushed a deep red. A wet, choking gurgle rattled in her throat. "Drop the metal spike." I didn't yell.

My voice stayed dead flat. "Try me. Let's see what's faster. Your blade, or me snapping her neck." Grant froze. His hidden strike aborted instantly.

Panic and rage warped his features. He whipped around to his wife. "Cora! Tell your psycho friend to back off