Survival with My Toxic Bestie

Ten years into the collapse of the world, after surviving death more times than I could count, I finally found my long-lost best friend.

She had managed to get herself a capable boyfrienda man with real powerand they were practically attached at the hip.

But that was also the exact moment I saw the floating text.

[Oh thank god, the high-maintenance drama queen is finally getting killed off! Shes been clinging to the Male Lead forever and stalling the main romance. Im so sick of her!]

[Good riddance! Shes lazy and entitled. People like her don't deserve to survive the apocalypse.]

[Is anyone else still mad about the time she forced the Male Lead to go out at night just to find her a sheet mask? I wanted to punch the screen...]

[And now that her redshirt best friend has shown up, the drama queen keeps fighting with the Male Lead over her. She almost got him killed. Hes completely out of patience with her.]

[Can the Female Lead just show up already? I'm here for the apocalypse power couple!]

The "drama queen" these bizarre, glowing comments were talking about was my best friend, Cassie.

And according to them... Cassie was destined to be abandoned by her boyfriend, left behind to become nothing more than rations for the infected.

But I couldn't help but think they had gotten one crucial detail wrong.

I was the number one ranked Awakened on the continent.

It didn't matter how high-maintenance my best friend was. I had enough power to maintain her.

I had been surrounded by a swarm of the dead, hovering on the precipice of my own end.

To make matters worse, some girl had decided to take advantage of my bleeding out. She was going to cut the bio-core out of me and steal my abilities for herself.

I played dead. The second the girl leaned in, her hand reaching for my chest, a blinding arc of lightning erupted from my palm.

It took exactly one second. Then, she stopped breathing.

I shoved her off, tossed her smoking corpse down the stairwell to distract the screeching infected, and dragged my battered body out the fire escape.

I ran for half a month before I finally reached another quarantine zone.

My abilities were completely drained. My physical endurance had hit absolute zero.

I collapsed in the dirt on the side of the road. Through the haze of unconsciousness, a familiar voice cut through the static in my brain.

"Cole, look! There's someone over there!"

"Go help her. Please, Cole, you have to!"

I know that voice...

"Are you trying to get Cole killed, Cassie? We're just scavenging the perimeter. There's a swarm coming. If we don't move right now, we're all dead meat!"

"Yeah, seriously Cassie, read the goddamn room before you throw a tantrum!"

"Cole, you're not actually going out there, are you? Man... that girl looks dead anyway."

The people with them were furious, their voices thick with contempt.

Listening to the commotion, I fought the heavy pull of exhaustion and forced my eyes open.

Because I had heard a name that anchored me to the earth.

Cassie.

My best friend.

Scraping together the very last dregs of my strength, I rolled over and pushed myself up on my elbows, lifting my heavy head.

Across the ruined overpass, a group of five or six people stared down at me, weapons drawn.

The man at the front was built like a tank, radiating an oppressive, heavy energy. One look and you knew he was an Awakened.

But I didn't waste a single second looking at him. My eyes locked entirely on the woman shrinking against his side.

Compared to the girl I used to know, she was darker from the sun. Thinner.

But she wasn't bleeding. She was alive.

A tidal wave of absolute, terrifying joy crashed through my chest. I opened my mouth to call out to her, but the world tilted, and I slammed hard into the asphalt. My body had finally quit.

Right before the dark took me, I heard her scream, her voice tearing at the seams.

"Bella!!"

They saved me.

By the time I woke up, the sun had set.

Cassie had her arms locked around my neck, sobbing so hard she couldn't catch her breath.

"You're alive, oh my god, you're alive! You're really here!"

I patted her back, my throat tight.

I was just about to tell her it was okay, when suddenly, those bizarre, glowing comments began to materialize in the air above us.

I read them. Over and over again, the neon letters scrolling through the dark room, until the horrifying truth clicked into place.

We were living inside a dystopian romance novel.

Cassie was the character they loathedthe spoiled, toxic side-piece. Lazy, demanding, brainless.

And my sudden appearance? I was just the catalyst. The doomed redshirt whose sole narrative purpose was to die and trigger Cassie's inevitable, fatal downward spiral.

According to the floating text, the Male Lead would only feel a twinge of guilt after Cassie was torn apart. It would leave a poetic little scar on his heart.

A scar that the Female Lead was meant to heal.

The comments were still rolling by.

[I'm a sucker for a power couple. The Female Lead and Male Lead are endgame! He manipulates water, she controls lightning. When they team up, it's game over for the zombies!]

[Right?! And the angst is delicious. The Female Lead accidentally kills some random redshirt and gets PTSD, and then she and the Male Lead grow together and heal each other. Its peak romance!]

[Hurry up and introduce the Female Lead, author. I can't stand another chapter of this whiny ex.]

Lightning abilities?

I furrowed my brow in the dark. Just like mine?

"Bella, why aren't you saying anything?" Cassie noticed my rigid silence and reached out, pinching my cheek gently. "Are you scared?"

I snapped out of it, focusing on her face.

She was looking at me, smiling through her tears.

It was the same bright, painfully earnest smile from a lifetime ago...

My eyes stung. I reached up and pulled her tightly against my chest.

"No," I whispered into her hair. "I'm just... really happy."

Cassie had flaws. I had always known that.

Before the world ended, she came from old money. Her parents had wrapped her in velvet and treated her like royalty.

So naturally, she was a perfectionist.

She liked her meals plated perfectly, her dresses immaculate, and she expected the world to be her friend.

In the beginning, I couldn't stand her.

Because I was a bitter, jagged thing, and I envied her.

I envied her glowing skin, her sprawling house, her effortless existence.

But one afternoon, she walked right up to my desk.

I looked up, defensive and guarded, and she held out her hand.

"Hi, I'm Cassie. Do you want to be friends? I think you're incredibly cool."

Half an hour earlier, I had been forced to stand in the hallway for the entire period because Id talked back to a teacher.

She leaned in, lowering her voice like we were co-conspirators. "Actually, I hate Mr. Davis too."

I was too cynical to admit out loud that I agreed. I just sat there, staring at her.

Cassie took my silence as a resounding yes.

She clapped her hands together. "Perfect! We're best friends now."

I thought she was too fragile. The kind of girl who would get a papercut and immediately well up with tears.

I found her exhausting. If something had the slightest flaw, she tossed it.

I thought she had absolutely no sense of boundaries, buzzing around my ear every single day with her endless chatter.

I wasn't an idiot. I knew girls like her didn't keep girls like me around as real friends.

Until the spring semester of eighth grade, when I got hit by a car.

I was an orphan, bouncing between my aunt and uncle's house. When the doctors told them I might never walk again, my relatives deliberated for a few days before deciding I was too much of a burden. They packed my bags for a rural group home.

I had completely given up. I was entirely hollowed out.

But the light that forced its way back into my dark little room wasn't the sun. It was Cassie.

She came to the hospital.

She chattered endlessly by my bedside.

And when visiting hours were over, she promised she'd be back the next day.

She never broke that promise.

For the next three months, she didn't miss a single day.

It wasn't until much later that I found out she had emptied the trust fund her grandparents had set up for her, just to cover the surgical bills my aunt had refused to pay.

She stood in the hospital hallway and screamed at my aunt and uncle.

She told them I was a human being, and you don't just throw human beings in the trash.

She was so incredibly self-righteous...

But lying in that bed, I realized that her entitlement and her stubborn perfectionism were actually sort of beautiful.

We became real friends.

Honestly, if Cassie was high-maintenance and spoiled, my unconditional enabling was the root cause.

People who knew us would always say, "Keep indulging her like that, Bella. What are you gonna do if she never finds a guy who can put up with her? Keep her as a pet for the rest of your life?"

I'd be staring down at a college business plan, not even bothering to look up. "I wouldn't mind."

Cassie would just laugh, clutching her stomach. "You guys really think you can drive a wedge between me and Bella? Keep dreaming!"

My startup was just getting off the ground, barely finding its footing, when the apocalypse tore the world apart.

We got separated during the initial evacuation panic.

I looked for her. I spent years turning over the ashes of dead cities looking for her.

I never imagined that when I finally found her, ten years would have slipped through our fingers.

And the glowing text hovering in the room was telling me that I was about to lose her permanently.

I watched the text scroll by, keeping my expression entirely blank.

I slipped into the role of an exhausted, unawakened survivor, quietly integrating into their safe zone.

And slowly, the reality of Cassies life came into sharp focus.

She genuinely loved Cole, and for his part, Cole was willing to indulge her. He accommodated her moods.

But her complete lack of survival skills and demanding nature rubbed everyone else in the compound the wrong way.

I had no doubt in my mind: the second Cole got hurt, or the second he stopped loving her, Cassie would be thrown to the wolves.

I was lost in thought when I heard her voice drifting from the hallway.

"Cole, please, can't you spare one extra ration for Bella? She's practically skin and bones. Shes been out there starving all these years."

Her voice dropped to a plea. "You know I've been looking for her."

Cole sounded irritated, put upon. "We've already given her twice the standard allowance. If I show her more favoritism, the other guys are going to riot."

The comments flared up, practically vibrating with excitement.

[Yes! Keep whining, drama queen. Dig your own grave.]

[The Male Lead is getting so sick of her shit.]

[I cannot wait for the chapter where she finally gets eaten!]

[+1]

[+1]

My jaw clenched. I deliberately kicked a chair leg, making a loud scraping noise.

Cole instantly went rigid, his hand dropping to his weapon as he peered into the room.

Cassie's face lit up. "Bella!"

"Why are you out of bed?" She rushed over, looking me up and down. "Are you feeling better?"

I forced a smile. "I'm fine."

Standing in the doorway, Cole gave me a flat, dead-eyed nod, then turned and walked away.

He was arrogant. Ten years into the nightmare, men like him had stopped seeing the Unawakened as actual people.

Even as his girlfriend's best friend, to him, I was just dead weight. A useless mouth to feed.

Once he was gone, Cassie squeezed my hand. "Don't be mad at him. He's just stressed. I'll yell at him for you later."

She dragged me around the safe zone, pointing out the meager gardens and the reinforced walls.

She told me about the last few years. What she'd seen. Who she'd lost.

And then she asked about me, pressing for every detail.

We sat on her cramped bed talking deep into the night, until she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. She slumped against my shoulder, breathing softly, fast asleep.

The floating text was instantly mocking.

[Does this high-maintenance brat not realize her only value is warming the Male Lead's bed? Now she's not even going back to his room? Just hanging out with the redshirt?]

[Shes literally asking to be abandoned.]

[I'm so ready for the Female Lead to make her grand entrance!]

[Here, sharing some fanart of our badass Female Lead to cleanse your eyes from this boring friendship.]

I stared at the empty space in the room, my eyes narrowing.

Two illustrations popped up in the glowing chat.

It was a sharp-featured girl with a tough, pragmatic look.

But... she looked terribly familiar.

Right before I drifted off, I bolted upright in bed.

I remembered where I had seen that face...

Half a month ago. The girl who had tried to cut out my bio-core while I was bleeding out. The one I had fried to a crisp.

That was the Female Lead?

But I had already killed her...

Before I could fully process the implication, a piercing siren shattered the silence of the night.

Someone was sprinting through the halls, screaming at the top of their lungs: "Swarm! The dead are at the gates! All Awakened to the perimeter! Non-combatants to the bunkers!"

Cassie jolted awake, instantly gripping my hand tight enough to cut off circulation.

"Don't be scared, Bella."

"Stay right behind me. We'll find Cole. He'll keep us safe."

She yanked my arm to pull me off the bed... but I didn't move.

Instead, I reversed our grip, my fingers wrapping firmly around her wrist.

Cassie looked back at me, confused and trembling.

I looked her dead in the eye. "You stay behind me. I'll keep you safe."

She blinked, stunned.

But there was no time to argue. She swallowed hard. "We need to get to the mineshaft."

The infected swarm was a tidal wave of rot.

Some of the evolved ones could bypass the electric fences and infiltrate the compound itself. They were smart enough to hide in the shadows, meaning the Awakened would have to clear the zone street by street even after the main horde was repelled.

During the chaos, the Unawakened were herded into an old subterranean mine.

We ran through the dark compound, sprinting toward the heavy steel doors of the shaft.

We were surrounded by people just like Cassie. Unawakened.

Families clutching children, looking stressed but not completely terrified.

This happened every few weeks. They had complete faith in their powerful leaders to handle it.

But as I watched them, a cold knot formed in my stomach.

These people were completely, dangerously dependent.

I glanced at Cassie, my brow furrowing.

I had been watching her and Cole closely over the last few days. Her "spoiled" behavior, her demandsthey were all within the parameters Cole implicitly allowed.

Some of it, he deliberately encouraged.

He spoiled her in front of everyone. And by extension, he ensured the Unawakened in the camp got slightly better rations and treatment, pulling resources away from the Awakened fighters.

His men resented it, but they didn't aim their anger at Cole. They aimed it at Cassie. She was the scapegoat.

And the Unawakened didn't thank Cassie for the extra food. They thanked Cole.

It made them fiercely loyal to him. It made them work the greenhouses until their hands bled, happily providing for the very man pulling the strings.

Cole was weaponizing Cassie's reputation to solidify his absolute control.

Did... did she realize that?

My grip on her wrist tightened.

In that split second of distraction, the world exploded.

Just as we reached the heavy doors of the bunker, a shadow peeled itself off the wall. An infected, rotting and fast, launched itself straight at Cassie's throat.

She froze, completely paralyzed by terror.

I yanked her arm backward with brutal force, swapping our positions in a fraction of a second.

"Bella!"

Cassie shrieked, but before the sound even left her mouth, I had already driven a hunting knife upward, burying it straight through the creature's eye socket and scrambling its brain.

Down in the damp, crowded mine, Cassie couldn't stop staring at me. Her eyes were shining in the dark.

It was getting ridiculous.

"Stop looking at me like that," I whispered. "I've been surviving out there by myself for ten years. You think I don't know how to handle a knife?"

Cassie threw her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder. "You're so brave. You're so amazing, Bella... You must have suffered so much all these years."

My chest tightened. I reached up and stroked her hair.

I still hadn't revealed my abilities. I knew exactly how men like Cole operated. If he found out I was a top-tier Awakened, he wouldn't let me leave without a war.

And I needed to get Cassie out of here. Soon.

Above us, the muffled sounds of gunfire and screaming echoed through the earth. Sitting in the dark, I watched the floating comments scrolling rapidly across the ceiling, my mind racing.

[Wait, what is happening? The swarm is almost cleared, why hasn't the Female Lead shown up yet?]

[Ive been waiting for the epic 'badass girl saves the Male Lead' scene for fifty chapters! Where the hell is she?]

[Are you guys not looking at the drama queen's POV? Her redshirt best friend didn't die!]

[What? If the best friend doesn't die, the drama queen isn't going to have her mental breakdown and fight with the Male Lead! The entire plot is ruined!]

Listening to their frantic digital chatter, the final puzzle piece fell into place.

In the original timeline, the Female Lead managed to rip out my bio-core, leaving me a crippled, ordinary human. I barely made it to this camp, reunited with Cassie, and then died a pathetic death during this exact swarm.

The Female Lead, now wielding my stolen lightning, would swoop in, save Cole from a fatal ambush, and get recruited into his inner circle. The perfect power couple is born.

Meanwhile, my death would cause Cassie to spiral. She would blame Cole, throwing a massive tantrum and running off into the wasteland just to make him chase her.

But Cole, fed up with her antics, wouldn't go after her immediately.

And by the time he did, there would be nothing left of her to find.

The annoying side-piece is removed from the board.

And me? Just a stepping stone.

But now...

[The story is completely off the rails! What is going on?]

[HOLY SHIT! The author just posted an update. They said the narrative has collapsed, the characters have gained sentience, and they can't control the story anymore!]

[You're burying the lede! The author confirmed the Female Lead is DEAD! SHE'S DEAD!]

[I'm losing my mind. What kind of trash ending is this?]

[Are you kidding? This is amazing. We're in totally uncharted territory now. Its like a blind box. I am strapped in for the ride!]

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I looked at Cassie, who was dozing off against my shoulder, exhausted by the adrenaline crash.

If I was understanding this text correctly...

Our fates weren't set in stone anymore.

We had already broken the mold.