Chapter 1: The Heatwave Reset

In 108-degree heat. My phone buzzed—a text from my boss: Where are you? Why aren’t you at work yet?

The phone jerked in my sweaty grip, vibrating so hard I nearly dropped it. Even the screen felt like it’d been baking on a dashboard. Damn. My thumb hovered over reply, but before I could even start some half-baked excuse, another alert popped up.

I didn’t even get a chance to reply before a new message landed in the company Slack channel.

"Starting today, if you’re more than 10 minutes late, we’ll dock half a day’s pay."

I stared at the message and let out a short, dry laugh. Really? These people still didn’t get it. In twelve hours, everything was going to end. I almost wanted to drop a meme in the chat, something like the dog in the burning room—But honestly, why bother?

9 a.m., 12 hours before the apocalypse.

The boss’s message from ten minutes ago yanked me back to the present.

Blinking, I realized I was sitting on a city bus, vinyl seat sticky against the backs of my legs. Outside, the world shimmered in a heat haze. Somehow, time had rewound. I was back before everything had gone to hell.

Looking around, dazed, I found myself on that same city bus. Time had reset to before the end.

It was like waking up from a nightmare—except the world looked exactly the same. Just a second ago, I’d died of dehydration in the brutal heat. What the hell is going on?

But yeah, just a second ago, I’d died of dehydration in the blistering heat. What the actual hell?

My lips were cracked, the ghost of thirst clawing at my throat. My mind spun—was this really a second chance, or just some sick cosmic joke?

Then the second message came, and it hit me: I’d been given another chance. Holy crap.

After a minute to pull myself together, I bailed off the bus and called a rideshare to the office, fingers shaking.

The wall of heat outside nearly knocked me over as I stepped out. I flagged down the ride, ignoring the driver’s suspicious side-eye at my manic energy. No way was I wasting another second.

I rushed in just in time. I wasn’t about to waste precious minutes arguing with my cranky boss—not when the world was about to end. This wasn’t about some docked pay.

I barely made it through the office doors, heart hammering—not because I gave a damn about the job or the boss’s endless rants about punctuality, but because I knew what was coming. The world was about to burn. And I had unfinished business.

It was because, in my last life, I’d discovered a shelter in the company’s basement.

That memory was so sharp it almost hurt. Down in the shadows, past the buzzing pipes and dusty lockers, there’d been a way out—a lifeline nobody else knew about. Or so I’d thought.

The shelter led straight into a separate building in the business park, which used to belong to a refrigerated shipping company. They’d moved out six months ago.

In my last life, after everything collapsed, I’d crawled into their empty office, desperate for a miracle.

Sure enough, I’d found a renovated cold storage warehouse below.

But I’d underestimated people’s greed and let the company know about it.

The boss slapped me on the back, told me I’d done great, then immediately sent his cronies to kick me out of the warehouse.

By then, the convenience store in the park had already been stripped bare by them.

I watched as they took over the warehouse I’d found—and died of thirst right in front of them.

Now there was no time to prep anything else. I had to secure that shelter first.

My hands shook a little, remembering how fast everything unraveled last time. Not this time. No way. I’d keep my mouth shut and move fast.

After getting into the business park, I meant to head straight for property management, but a few coworkers rushed in at the same time.

They greeted me, so I went to the office with them first, trying not to look suspicious.

The central air hadn’t kicked in yet. The place felt like a steam room.

Sweat trickled down my back, and the air felt thick enough to chew. Everyone was fanning themselves with folders. My coworker, Eric Shin, was grumbling under his breath nearby.

"It rained for two months straight, and now the second it clears up, it jumps to 108 degrees. Is the world ending or what?"

A few people nodded, but someone piped up.

"World ending? Man, you read too much sci-fi. I’ve only heard of ice age apocalypses. Who’s ever heard of a heatwave apocalypse?"