The warehouse behind her was empty, hollowed out to its steel bones. Raven didn't look back. Her boots echoed across the concrete as she descended back into the tunnels beneath NYU, the red-tinted glow of her System notifications fading behind her eyes.
"Time to head on to my next target."
The ladder groaned beneath her weight as she dropped back into the sewers. The air was cooler here, more still. Water trickled faintly down the sloped center of the passageway, catching the on shine of her flashlight. She turned east, towards her next goal, the Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Development Wing of New York State University. NYU develops some if the most experimental medicine on the east coast, and among this, they are especially famous for poison development.
It wasn't just about stealing exotic plants. This next target was about survival and maybe a few exotic plants that Raven can store inside or on her body to fight with and poison others as they remain blissfully unaware of how they died.
Most of the world thinks of plants as food or decoration. But she knows better. With the right modifications, they became healers, killers, even sentinels living man eating plants. The greenhouses above held bioengineered seeds—some outlawed, some experimental, some too volatile to risk putting into mass production. That was exactly what made them perfect for her use.
She would take them all.
As she moved, her thoughts drifted to her last life. The days before, she escaped the labs. Before, she even had a name worth remembering.
The Red Blood Raiders had sold her to an experimental science lab. They called themselves researchers. But in truth, they were butchers in white coats. They injected her with concentrated samples of the zombie virus. Watched her rot from the inside out. Documented her fevers, her hallucinations, her pain.
But she never turned.
Her body adapted. Fought. Transformed her from a normal woman into someone who could heal and become immune to the zombie virus thanks to her plant control powers.
By the time she escaped, her immune system had rewritten itself at the genetic level. Something in her had changed. Something that could never be reversed. She would return to that lab in this life and have her revenge for what they did to her. Raven will find out their goals and who they worked for.
Now, with her plant powers awakening in sync with her Technomancer powers, she knew it wasn't just immunity. It was an evolution probably brought on by the system or her rebirth perhaps both.
Now, she would never be infected. She would never turn into a zombie. This is another threat against her eliminated.
And she would grow these abilities into weapons far faster than in her last life.
Her boots splashed lightly as she turned another corner. She moved like a shadow through the damp corridors, eyes sharp. Every step forward took her closer to the greenhouses and further into her memory.
The apocalypse didn't give birth to the Red Blood Raiders. They were a symptom. A local infection. A garbage cult of sadists with trucks and stolen rifles.
The real power structures that emerged were far more insidious.
First came the military remnants. Bases fortified with leftover government authority, radio networks, food caches, and men who still wore their rank with pride. That didn't last long. The politicians who tried to lead them were weak. Arrogant. Unprepared for the feral tide of zombies. In most places, their own soldiers executed them before the three moths passed.
Then came the corporations. Private armies. Armored compounds. Billion-dollar war budgets suddenly redirected toward building gated kingdoms. They weren't trying to save the world. Just themselves and carve out a piece of land to create a dictatorship in the process.
And in America? Raven chuckled once things got crazy.
"The U.S. has more ammo than the rest of the world combined," she whispered. "And more guns than people."
Three hundred million firearms minimum. A population that didn't need permission to shoot. Gun stores looted by civilians who already owned five rifles apiece. And so came the establishment of civilian bases and a semblance of order between these three types of forces. Of course, this excludes the raiders and other gangs, all mutually hunted by all three forces.
In Europe, the unarmed died screaming. In the U.S., they fired back with surplus M4s and homebrew IEDs.
It wasn't justice. It was gun lovers paradise.
And eventually, even overseas, things stabilized. Survivors awakened. Powers blossomed. Bases formed around the strong, the cunning, the merciless. Humanity clawed its way back into relevance—one stronghold at a time.
But none of that mattered if you didn't have food. Or medicine.
Raven would have both.
Ahead, she spotted the junction she'd been waiting for. A faded plaque, half-submerged in moss and time, marked the connection to the old greenhouse utility tunnel. She stepped forward, felt the vibrations of humming power lines next to her.
Just like the last entrance, a vertical shaft waited ahead. The ladder was rusted, but intact. Raven climbed it, ignoring the sounds of protesting metal beneath her boots. At the top, a sealed panel met her palm. She pushed it open with a sharp exhale and hoisted herself up through it.
The room above was dusty and forgotten. An old cleaning supply closet, with rusted shelving and a stack of broken chairs, filliing the space. The door was sealed behind drywall—sloppy, brittle, and faded by time. Raven stepped back, adjusted her balance, and drove her shoulder through the barrier.
It gave way with a hollow crack.
She stepped into the hallway beyond.
The air was warmer. Humid. Slightly perfumed with something synthetic—automated greenhouse control systems, likely. Down the corridor, huge glass enclosures stretched from floor to ceiling, domed and pressurized, each containing its own climate system. Jungle. Desert. Alpine. Biolabs thriving under perfect calibration.
The Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Wing.
Raven inhaled slowly.
Most of the plants were controlled remotely. Automated misting, lighting, soil rotation. COVID had cleared the staff, leaving behind only silence and machines.
She raised a hand, palm resting on the glass.
"Perfect," she said.
She already knew which plants held antiviral properties. Which vines produced neurotoxins. Which flowers could sedate a bear or melt the inside of a lung.
Raven scanned the corridor, eyes moving across access ports and security panels.
One more score before her awakening.
She turned and moved silently toward the first greenhouse, eyes locked on the bioengineered jungle just beyond the glass.
Everything she needed was growing in neat rows.
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