Michael had been running laps around the block that morning, sweat dripping down his neck, when the system flickered awake in the corner of his vision. It had been quiet for weeks, nothing but the occasional reminder about calorie intake or subtle warnings about poor sleep habits. This time it pulsed with an alert that made him stop mid-step.
System Update: Outbreak Collapse Projection 1,823 days.
He leaned against the chain-link fence bordering a neighbor's yard, heart thudding harder than the jog had earned. He blinked once, twice, but the numbers didn't change.
One thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-three days. Just under five years.
He pulled the sweat-soaked hem of his shirt across his face and let out a low laugh. It wasn't joy. More like disbelief. All this time he had assumed the system was some paranoid survivalist tool, feeding him warnings to keep him on edge. Now it was giving him a countdown. Not a vague "soon" or "sometime." A date carved into stone.
"Five years," he muttered. "That's all I get."
A lawnmower roared to life somewhere down the street. A dog barked in response. The world carried on like it had every other Saturday, parents sipping coffee on porches while kids skated down the pavement. Nobody else knew the clock had started.
Joel stepped out from his driveway just a few houses down, coffee mug in hand. He raised a hand in greeting.
"Pushing yourself early, huh? You trying to win a marathon I don't know about?" Joel called out.
Michael forced a smirk, wiping his face. "Something like that. Trying to stay sharp."
Joel chuckled and shook his head. "You already put the rest of us to shame. Sarah says you look like you stepped out of one of her action movies."
At the mention of Sarah, Michael felt the knot in his chest tighten. She came skipping out a moment later, backpack bouncing, clearly on her way to a friend's. She was thirteen now, tall for her age, with Joel's stubborn chin and her mother's bright eyes.
"Mr. Kane!" she called, waving. "When are you gonna teach me how to fight like in the movies?"
Michael gave her a mock salute. "When your dad says you're ready."
Joel rolled his eyes. "Which means never."
They laughed, and for a moment the image of their easy lives clashed hard with the timer still pulsing in Michael's vision. Five years. In five years, Sarah's laugh would be gone, Joel's porch would be abandoned, and this street would be overrun by something humanity wasn't ready for.
He jogged the rest of the way home, shut the door, and went straight to the small study he had turned into a planning room. Maps pinned across corkboards, shelves stacked with labeled boxes, notebooks filled with coded entries. At first glance it might look like an old soldier clinging to habit, but to Michael it was survival.
Now the system had given him the final piece.
He sat down heavily in the chair, pulled out a notebook, and wrote in crisp block letters: T-1,823.
The next five years had to be built carefully. Too much stockpiling too soon and the neighbors would notice. Too many weapons and Joel might get suspicious. And Joel was sharp he'd ask questions Michael wasn't ready to answer.
So the first year would be subtle. Stock food and water in hidden places, rotate supplies so nothing expired. Use the system's scavenging prompts to pick up things most people ignored iodine tablets, spare batteries, filters.
By year two, he'd need secure caches off-property. He knew a few storage units that wouldn't ask questions if you paid cash. An abandoned shed on the far side of town might work as well.
Year three would be about terrain. He would map every backroad, every creek, every safe path leading out of town. He would know which bridges would bottleneck traffic, which neighborhoods could be barricaded, which woods would give cover.
Year four would be about allies. Carefully. He couldn't tell Joel everything, but he could plant seeds. Suggest hunting trips, offer advice on gear, get Sarah comfortable with basics without ever revealing why.
Year five… that was the hard one. The final stretch when he'd have to turn plans into something real. Routes, weapons, fallback points. A way to keep Joel and Sarah alive when the day finally came.
The system chimed again. Warning: Mutation reports detected South American fungal studies inconclusive. Source flagged.
Michael scribbled the note down, jaw tight. He had seen snippets of those studies in obscure journals, dismissed by most as fringe science. But the system wasn't wrong. If mutations were already appearing, the clock wasn't just a guess. It was a certainty.
That evening, Joel stopped by with two beers. They sat on the porch steps, the cicadas humming in the summer heat.
"You ever think about the future?" Joel asked after a long silence.
Michael studied him. "All the time."
"I mean… Sarah's starting high school soon. Feels like yesterday she was in diapers. Don't know where the years go." Joel took a swig, staring at the bottle like it held answers. "Sometimes I think about her college years, her moving out, starting her own life. Guess I'm just getting old."
Michael let the words hang. Joel saw a daughter stepping into the world. Michael saw five years carved down to zero.
"She's lucky to have you," Michael said at last.
Joel gave him a sidelong look. "You always talk like you know something the rest of us don't."
Michael just smiled faintly. "Maybe I do."
Later that night, alone in the study, Michael stared at the countdown again. 1,822 days. Already one day gone.
He whispered to the empty room, "Five years too short."