The Only Girl Not Reborn

When the rest of the world woke up with memories of the apocalypse, I became the only outlier.

My parents, who had always loved me more than anything in the world, didn't hesitate to liquidate every single asset we owned, handing every last cent over to the Global Defense Coalition.

Even my boss, a man so notoriously cheap hed squeeze a dime until it bled, suddenly open-sourced all of our companys highly classified proprietary tech. He went on national television and said we had to carry the weight of this alongside the rest of humanity.

It was as if someone had pressed a massive, invisible "Unite" button on the entire planet. Everyone was violently, desperately preparing for a coming catastrophe.

Everyone except me. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I was a stranger in my own reality.

The exact moment my parents realized I didn't possess these "reborn" memories, the look in their eyes completely fractured. It was a gaze so complex and utterly terrifying that it made my pulse hammer in my throat, yet I couldn't put a name to the emotion behind it.

From that day forward, my life went dead silent. They never spoke another word to me.

Just like that, I was thoroughly and completely abandoned by the entire human race.

1.

Brrrring.

My alarm jolted me awake.

April 3, 2026. The morning sun was pouring through the blinds, bright and completely ordinary.

I was just reaching out to swipe off the alarm when a text popped up from my boyfriend, Gavin:

"Jo, I messed up. I'm so sorry. I can't live without you! Please, just give me one more chance? For the next three years, I swear I won't leave your side for a single second!"

I stared at the screen, entirely dumbfounded.

Why on earth was Gavin sending me something like this? We were still deeply in the honeymoon phase. We hadn't even had a fight, let alone broken up!

Before my brain could even process his text, an audio message from my mom chimed in:

"Joanna, your father and I are on our way to your apartment right now. We're going to be together, sweetheart. All of us. We are never, ever being separated again!"

Hearing the hysterical, sobbing crack in my mothers voice only deepened my confusion.

What the hell had happened overnight?

It wasn't just my parents and my boyfriend acting like they'd lost their minds. My company's Slack channel was exploding.

"I'm drafting an itinerary to backpack across the globe. Whos coming with me?"

"I'm in! Ive been a corporate slave my whole life and I haven't even seen the Pacific Ocean. I'm actually going to live this time!"

"A vacation? Are you kidding me? You selfish cowards, the world is on the brink and you're only thinking about yourselves..."

Two distinct factions were ripping into each other in the general chat.

I sat up in bed, eyes wide, totally paralyzed by the sheer absurdity of it. Our company policy explicitly forbade non-work-related chatter in the main channels. If anyone so much as posted a meme, our tyrannical boss, Mr. Wallace, would usually swoop in and dock their bonuses.

Why were my coworkers acting so recklessly? And was Wallace just sleeping in? Why hadn't he intervened?

Through the fog of my confusion, the doorbell rang.

My parents were here.

I practically sprinted to the door, desperate to ask them what was going on. But before I could even get a word out, my mother lunged forward, wrapping me in a suffocating embrace, weeping so hard her whole body shook.

My dad, a man who treated emotional vulnerability like a physical allergy, had eyes that were bloodshot and brimming with tears. "Joanna, listen to me. We're selling the house. We're giving the funds to the federal emergency mandate, and we're moving into this apartment with you."

"This way, we can do our part for the survival effort, and we get to stay together!"

I physically recoiled, the words tearing out of me: "Dad, are you insane?"

"If you missed me, you could have just come to visit! Why would you sell the house? What about your retirement?"

The second those words left my mouth, my mother's sobbing stopped. Instantly.

Her expression morphed with a whiplash-inducing speed. She looked at me with a bizarre, almost panicked scrutiny.

The warmth drained from my father's face, leaving behind something cold and hardened.

"Joanna, what are you talking about?"

"You're the most educated person in this family. You've always been the rational one. You know perfectly well that right now, humanity has to stand united. We have to give everything we have to the state. Otherwise, none of us are going to live to see retirement."

"How could you say something so selfish?"

I felt like the floor was tilting.

None of this made any sense.

"Dad, I literally don't understand a word you're saying!" I cried. "Are we at war? Did the country get attacked? Even if we are, the government doesn't need the money from our suburban three-bedroom!"

In the next heartbeat, the look in my parents' eyes shifted from confusion into something else. Something resembling pure, unadulterated dread.

When they spoke, their voices were hoarse, trembling with a probing terror.

"Joanna..."

"Do you really... not remember anything?"

2.

Their deeply unsettling reaction was making my skin crawl.

"What am I supposed to remember?!" I demanded, throwing my hands up. "I'm going to be late for work. Just tell me what's going on, stop with the cryptic nonsense!"

My dad stumbled backward. Two full steps.

My mom desperately tried to reach out to me, to say something, but my dad grabbed her arm and yanked her back. "Are you out of your mind? You can't talk to her!"

"You're the one who's out of your mind, she's our daughter! She just hasn't fully acclimated to the Return yet, her memories just haven't"

My mom shoved him away and fiercely grabbed both of my hands.

"Jo, sweetheart, did you forget? We are all Returners. Three years from now, the end of the world happens. We all died. But we've been given a second chance. We've been sent back."

"Our only chance at survival is to pool every single resource we have and face this together!"

I stared at her. A beat of total silence passed before a sharp, incredulous laugh punched its way out of my chest.

"Did you guys really drive all the way over here at eight in the morning to pull this ridiculous prank on me?"

I glanced at my phone. 8:50 AM. If I didn't leave right now, I was actually going to be late. And Wallace never hesitated to dock pay for tardiness.

"Look, I have to go to work. Whatever this is, we can talk about it tonight."

I didn't believe a single word of their sci-fi doomsday pitch. I sidestepped them and hurried out the door.

They didn't try to stop me.

As I walked down the hall, I could faintly hear my mother's gut-wrenching wails echoing from inside my apartment. "Why did it have to be this way? God, why did it have to be our little girl?"

Her grief grated on my nerves. Part of me suspected this was some elaborate, manipulative theatrical performance to get me to agree to them selling the house. They had brought up liquidating their assets to play the stock market before. I had vehemently talked them down, terrified they would lose their entire nest egg.

Were they trying this angle again? But I wasn't a child. What was the point of using such an absurd, unbelievable lie?

"Jo!"

Gavin's voice shattered my racing thoughts.

He was standing by the entrance of my apartment complex, frantically waving at me from a distance.

"I already quit my job, Jo! Every single second I have left is going to be devoted to you. We are never spending a minute apart!"

Looking at Gavin's red-rimmed eyes and the desperate, manic devotion swimming in them, I suddenly remembered the text he had sent me.

He had said he wouldn't leave my side for the next three years.

My parents had just said the world ends in three years.

Was Gavin playing along with this "Returner" prank too?

No.

I froze in my tracks, my eyes locking onto his.

"Gavin, did my parents put you up to this? Did they tell you they want to sell the house, and you're helping them gaslight me?"

Gavin blinked, genuine bewilderment washing over his face.

I knew his expressions well enough to know he wasn't acting.

Ping

His phone buzzed. From where I stood, I could see my father's contact photo pop up on his lock screen, though I couldn't read the text.

I took a step toward him.

"What did my dad just text you?"

Gavin didn't answer.

A second ago, he had looked like a man violently, desperately in love with me. Now, his eyes widened in sheer, abject horror. He pointed a trembling finger at me, stumbling backward as if I were holding a loaded gun.

"You... you..."

"You're not one of us!"

He let out a strangled, guttural noise and turned on his heel, sprinting away without once looking back.

I tried texting him. Message Not Delivered. You have been blocked.

I tried calling him. Straight to voicemail.

I opened my phone, intending to reach out to one of Gavin's friends, only to be met with something far more terrifying.

My social media feeds.

Almost everyone I knew, as if part of some massive, synchronized cult, had posted screenshots of digital receipts. They were entirely liquidating their bank accounts, their stocks, their properties, and transferring the funds to a newly formed Global Defense Coalition.

3.

I clicked on a link from one of the screenshots.

It took me to an official, government-backed portal. It was real. The site was clunky, clearly rushed into existence overnight, but it had a public ledger. You could type in a donor's name and see exactly what they had surrendered.

I typed in my father's name.

They had done it. They had actually surrendered their life savings and the deed to the house.

It wasn't a scheme to play the stock market.

They weren't lying.

A shard of ice slid down my spine.

At that exact moment, I saw my parents rushing out of my apartment building.

"Are you really from the future?!" I yelled, running toward them.

But the moment they saw me, it was like they were looking at a ghost. They violently flinched, veering away to avoid coming anywhere near me.

They scrambled into their car. I threw myself in front of the hood, desperate for an answer.

My father didn't even hesitate. He slammed his foot on the gas.

I barely threw myself out of the way in time, scraping my knees on the asphalt.

They hadn't even tapped the brakes. They didn't care if they killed me.

I sat on the pavement, the world spinning out of focus.

Why? Why had the people who loved me mostmy parents, the man I was going to marrysuddenly severed all ties with me?

Just because they were "Returners" and I wasn't?

Brrrring

My phone rang, pulling me out of my shock.

It was my boss, Wallace.

His voice was frantic, breathless. "Where the hell are you? Have you looked at the time?"

"Get to the office right now. We need you to finalize the upload of all our proprietary algorithms to the Global Crisis Database..."

White noise roared in my ears.

Wallace worshipped money. Making him lose a dollar was like drawing blood. Our new algorithm was projected to double our quarterly revenue, and he was just giving it away to an open-source global database?

There was only one logical conclusion left.

The world really was ending.

Half an hour later, scrolling through the news on my commute, I confirmed it. The entire globe was mobilizing to face a crisis three years away.

I scoured comment sections, forums, and subreddits. Not a single person was questioning the concept of waking up with future memories.

That meant it was everyone. Every single human being on Earth was a Returner.

Except me.

Because I wasn't a Returner, my boyfriend and my parents were terrified of me. They cut me off to survive.

But the logic didn't track. Even if I didn't have memories of the apocalypse, I was just one woman. How could one ordinary person possibly threaten the survival of the world?

There had to be another reason they were so afraid of me.

When I got to the office, I played it safe. I didn't breathe a word about my memory gap. I pretended to be one of them. I sat down with the engineering team and seamlessly helped them upload our life's work to the public domain.

At lunch, everyone gathered in the breakroom. The air was thick with a strange, manic energy.

A few people were talking about blowing their savings to live out their wildest fantasies, trying to make up for regrets they carried from their "previous" deaths.

But the vast majority had already enlisted in the colossal, global engineering projects being drafted to prepare for the end.

When there was a lull in the conversation, I took a calculated risk.

I mimicked the exact look of visceral terror I had seen on my mother's face that morning.

"Did you guys hear?" I whispered, keeping my voice shaky. "I... I ran into someone today. A guy. He didn't remember. He wasn't a Returner."

The words hung in the air.

Instantly, the entire breakroom went dead silent. The blood drained from my coworkers' faces.

The atmosphere became so heavy and suffocating it was hard to breathe.

4.

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 nowherenot a single post, not a single articlehad 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."