The hotel conference room reeked of burnt coffee and old carpet, but it was the only quiet place they could gather.
They sat in a circle. Ten survivors, all still breathing—but barely holding it together. Shadows of the collapse still clung to their faces.
Trey was pacing. Nia hugged her knees on the couch. Luke sat backward in his chair, chewing the skin on his thumb. Valeria kept glancing at the door.
Leila finally stood in the middle.
"You're all here because we weren't supposed to be."
She looked around. Their eyes met hers one by one, some skeptical, some scared.
"I had a vision. Before it happened. The pier collapsing, people screaming, the metal snapping, the water swallowing everything. And all of you—dying. Every one of you. In a very specific order."
The silence grew dense. Cody rubbed his forehead like trying to erase what she'd said.
Brooke Spoke First
"We can't ignore it. You told me things before they even happened, Leila. You knew. We survived, but so did Eva once."
Trey scoffed.
"Eva? You mean that lunatic from the first collapse?"
Leila snapped:
"She wasn't a lunatic. She tried to warn people. Just like I did. And they died anyway."
Omar pulled out his phone and opened an article.
"Eva watched all her friends die one by one. Some of them in the exact order they were meant to die in her vision. She tried to save them. It didn't matter. They died anyway."
The Order
"Then what's the order?" Isabel asked, her voice tight. "If we're gonna die… how do we know who's next?"
Leila walked to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. Her hand trembled as she wrote:
Trey
Brooke
Nia
Omar
Luke
Kai
Isabel
Valeria
Cody
Me.
She stepped back. The room went cold.
"This was the order I saw. One by one. Horrible, gruesome… fast."
Cody's Rage
"So we just sit here and die?" Cody barked, standing up. "No. This is insane. You think some cosmic force is hunting us like it's a game? I say we leave. Split up. Go home."
"That's what they did last time," Brooke said, shaking her head. "Didn't work."
Valeria exhaled shakily.
"How do we stop it?"
Leila turned to her.
"I don't know yet. But Eva survived longer than anyone. If she figured something out, we need to find her."
"Wasn't she… committed?" asked Kai.
"Yeah. And if she's still alive, she might be the only one who knows how to cheat death again."
The Quiet Between Breaths
The air in the room thickened, like something was already watching them. Waiting.
Omar leaned back in his chair, staring at the names on the board.
"So Trey dies first."
Everyone turned to Trey.
He was pale, sweat clinging to his temples.
"Then we better not waste any time."
End of Chapter 18