Chapter 3 : The Empty Warehouse

The old cold-storage plant was sitting at the end of a crumbling access road. It was basically a giant gray concrete box the size of a football field, with shattered windows and weeds choking the loading bay.

Leo stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Pigeons. Rust. That specific smell of old dampness and ancient machine oil. He looked out at forty meters of bare concrete under a steel roof that actually looked like it would hold up.

"Fifteen thousand a month," the agent said behind him, jingling a set of keys. "Honestly, nobody wants the place. No heat, no staff, the roads are a mess. You sure you don't want something a bit nicer?"

"I'll take it for a year," Leo said, not bothering to turn around. "Paid upfront. Cash."

The jingling stopped.

"Also," Leo added, "I want the locks changed today. No one comes here without my permission."

"Of course, Mr. Hart. Absolutely."

A year, Leo thought. He actually thinks I'm renting this for a year.

In forty-four days, this road would be underwater and the agent would be dead-either drowned or starving. Leo didn't feel bad about it. He just felt a vague, practical regret that the man wouldn't be alive to spend the money.

The agent left with the check. Leo waited until the sound of the car completely faded away.

Then he walked to the middle of the empty floor and just stood there.

Last night's test.

The night before, back at his apartment, he had tried something he thought would work. He'd pressed his hand against a stack of water bottles in the kitchen and tried to multiply them without storing them first.

(Error: Target not in Stasis Space.)

He'd been wrong. The multiplier only worked on things already in the space. That meant everything he wanted to duplicate had to be stored first, and anything too big for the space was just dead weight until he cleared some room.

Fine. I'll clear room.

He closed his eyes and looked inward at the glittering wall of water bottles-one million of them, stacked in perfect, endless rows.

Take them out. All of them.

For a second, the warehouse was silent.

Then the air shuddered.

Bottles began pouring out of nowhere. They crashed onto the concrete in a massive, roaring cascade, tumbling and stacking into walls. Column after column of clear plastic rose toward the ceiling. The sound was like a landslide, then a waterfall, then a thousand people cheering at once.

Leo stood in the center of the chaos and didn't blink.

When the noise finally stopped, the floor was gone.

In its place was a forest of blue-white plastic, towering in neat rows across the entire north half of the warehouse. Sunlight from the broken windows hit the bottles, scattering glittering fragments across the walls.

(Ding! Stasis Space capacity: 0% occupied.)

Leo let out a slow breath.

One million bottles. Half a million liters.

He walked down the nearest aisle, trailing his fingers over the cold plastic. Every bottle was identical. Every label was perfect. Every cap was sealed.

In my last life, I saw men kill each other over a single one of these.

He stopped. He turned slowly, surrounded by walls of water, and felt something strange settle in his chest. It wasn't joy or triumph. It was something colder than that, and it fit him much better.

It was certainty.

His phone rang.

Trent 🍻 flashed across the screen.

Leo let it ring three times before answering. "Yes."

"Bro!" Trent's voice was loud and easy. "Where've you been? Sienna says you've been ghosting her. You okay? You sound weird."

"I'm busy."

"Busy? With what, work?" A short laugh. "Come on, man. Take a break. Listen, about the Maldives trip-I was thinking we upgrade to the overwater villa. It's like forty grand extra, but you've got the money, right? You can just put it on the card. We'll pay you back."

Leo looked at a wall of bottled water.

"When?"

"When what?"

"When will you pay me back?"

There was a pause. Trent's laugh sounded thinner this time. "Oh, you know. Whenever. Come on, man, don't be weird about it. We're brothers."

Brothers.

"I'll think about it," Leo said.

"Awesome! I knew you'd come through. Love you, man!"

The call ended.

Leo looked at the screen for a long moment. Then he opened his notes and added a line under Trent's name.

Embezzlement? Check the shared business account.

He had suspected it in his last life, in the days before the flood, when the numbers didn't add up and Trent always had an excuse. Back then, he had chosen not to look.

This time I look.

The cooldown timer ticked down in the corner of his vision.

(Multiplier cooldown: 00:03:42...)

Leo walked back to the loading bay, where a rented truck was idling. Marcus Webb's driver stood by the cab, rubbing the back of his neck.

"That's the last pallet," the man said. "Sixty cases of military-grade MREs, like you asked. Surplus stock, still sealed. Boss said you'd sign."

Leo signed.

The driver climbed back into the cab and drove away without asking where all the water had come from. Leo suspected the man had seen the bottles through the open door and decided that was now his own private nightmare.

Leo laid his palm on the nearest case.

Store.

The case vanished. So did the next. And the next. Sixty cases slid into the dark pocket, each holding twelve meals.

Seven hundred and twenty meals.

He frowned. Multiplied by ten thousand, that would be over seven million packages-far more than the space could hold. The system would choke on it, or worse, refuse.

Smaller stack. Fit the output to the room.

He pulled most of the cases back out onto the warehouse floor and left exactly sixty individual MREs inside the Stasis Space.

(Multiplier cooldown: 00:00:09...)

He waited, counting the seconds with his pulse.

(Ding! The 10,000x Multiplier is ready.)

Select stack: MRE, x60.

(Multiplying: MRE x60 → x600,000.)

(Confirm?)

Confirm.

The dark space in his mind erupted.

Brown-wrapped packages poured out in a silent avalanche, packing themselves into the void, row on row, tier on tier, filling the vast darkness with the plain, unglamorous shape of pure calories.

(Multiplication complete. MRE: 600,000.)

(Stasis Space capacity: 88% occupied.)

(Multiplier cooldown reset: 23:59:59.)

Leo stood perfectly still.

Six hundred thousand meals.

He did the math without meaning to. A single person could survive on three MREs a day. Six hundred thousand meals meant two hundred thousand days of food for one man, or a thousand days for two hundred people.

And I have forty-three more multiplications ahead of me.

His lips curled into a cold smile.

The wall of water bottles gleamed behind him in the afternoon light.

He turned to the warehouse, to the vast empty floor beyond the aisles, and he pictured it full. Steel beams stacked to the ceiling. Crates of ammunition. Tanks of fuel. Pallets of canned food standing in rows like soldiers.

The world is going to drown, he thought. And I'm going to be the only man in it who is never hungry, never thirsty, and never afraid.

His phone buzzed.

Sienna 💕: Babe, Trent said you're upgrading the villa!!! You're the BEST!!! I love you so much 😭😭💕

Leo looked at it for three seconds.

Then he did something he had never done in his old life. He opened Sienna's contact, pressed his thumb on Block, and watched the screen turn gray.

Not yet, he thought, and unblocked her again. She's still useful. I'll let her keep spending.

The bigger she builds, the harder she falls.

He slid the phone into his pocket and went to find a pen.

There was a lot of work to do.