Chapter 4The Only Girl Not Reborn

I knew it.

Their reaction confirmed my deepest suspicion: there was something monstrously wrong with not being a Returner.

I kept my mouth shut, waiting for them to start whispering, waiting to glean some scrap of information.

The office gossip, a guy who usually never stopped talking, broke the silence with a trembling voice. "Are... are there really people who didn't return?"

"Because if there are, that means—"

"Shut up!"

The tech lead, Diane, cut him off with a voice like cracked ice.

She stood up slowly, her finger raising to point directly at my chest.

"Did you all hear exactly what she just said?" Diane asked, her eyes boring into mine. "She said she met a Returner..."

She paused, her voice dropping to a terrifying hiss. "She said she met a person who didn't remember."

I didn't understand why the singular phrasing was an issue, but the effect was immediate. It was as if a spell had been broken.

Every single person in the room lunged out of their chairs, scrambling backward, putting as much physical distance between us as the breakroom allowed.

I realized I had made a fatal error. I forced a nervous laugh, trying to do damage control. "Guys, what's going on? Are you misunderstanding me? I'm not the one who—"

"Then answer me this," Diane interrupted, her tone lethal. "What was the specific catalyst that wiped out human civilization in our previous timeline?"

I froze. My mind raced, but I had nothing.

The internet forums had confirmed an impending apocalypse, but nowhere—not a single post, not a single article—had mentioned how the world ended.

Were they deliberately censoring the cause of the apocalypse?

Was the entire planet actively conspiring to keep this information from me?

But... why? I was just an ordinary woman. What could possibly make me so dangerous?

My silence was all the answer they needed.

Without another word, my coworkers turned and practically fled the room. No matter what I screamed after them, not a single person looked back.

Ten minutes later, the alert that I was a "Non-Returner" was pushed to every digital device on the planet.

I was systematically erased from society.

My landlord dragged my belongings onto the sidewalk.

Every grocery store, restaurant, and hotel refused to process my cards or let me through their doors. I was banned from every public space.

In fact, I was strictly forbidden from being anywhere near another human being.

A squad of heavily armed, tactical military personnel was assigned to tail me. Their only job was to corral me away from population centers.

I was forced to scavenge through dumpsters in the dead of night just to find scraps to eat. I was thrust into an existence of pure, unadulterated isolation, drowning in a sea of confusion and loneliness that felt worse than death.

"Why?!"

"I don't have the memories, I get it! But I am willing to give everything for the future of humanity, including my life!"

"If I am a threat to you, then just put a bullet in my head right now!"

I stood in an empty, desolate lot, screaming at the squad of soldiers watching me through their scopes from a hundred yards away. "Why are you doing this to me? Why torture me? Why did you make my parents abandon me?!"

They didn't answer. They never did.

A full year passed. I hadn't exchanged a single word with another human being in 365 days.

From my forced exile in the wilderness, I watched massive, monolithic space elevators pierce the clouds, built to harvest resources from other planets. I watched as armadas of interstellar warships blotted out the sun.

And down in the dirt, there was just me. A fragile woman made of flesh and bone, someone who could be taken out by a single stray bullet.

What made me worthy of this global quarantine?

My sanity began to fracture.

Late one night, I snuck back toward the edge of the city limits to rummage through the industrial trash bins.

But this time, I wasn't hoping to find food. And I had finally stopped harboring the delusion that my parents might sneak out to save me out of familial love. I was utterly, totally broken.

I dug through the refuse until I found a jagged, heavy shard of shattered glass. Without a second thought, I drove it deep into the side of my neck.

I thought I was finally buying my freedom.

But the soldiers guarding me wouldn't even let me die.

They swarmed me with terrifying speed, applying advanced, futuristic trauma care.

When I woke up, the wound was entirely sealed, and I had been dumped further out into an uninhabited wasteland.

But something had shifted inside me.

I was no longer drowning in despair. The fear was gone.

I looked up at the sky, obscured by the shadows of a thousand battleships, and let out a dry, raspy laugh.

"I know why you're all so afraid of me."