Nobody tells you what dying feels like.

They write poems about it. They make movies. Old men whisper about it on their deathbeds like it's some grand, peaceful journey — a slow dimming of lights, a long exhale, a gentle goodbye.

They're wrong.

Dying feels like being ripped out of your own skin.

One moment I was standing at a crosswalk in downtown Seattle, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, watching the light turn green. The next — nothing. Not darkness. Not silence. Just nothing. The kind of nothing that has no edges, no sound, no weight. The kind of nothing that makes you realize how loud being alive actually was.

Then came the light.

Not a warm, welcoming glow. Not a tunnel. Just a blinding, violent white — like someone had taken the sun and shoved it directly into my skull.

And then — a voice.

"Three hundred souls confirmed. Initialization complete."

I blinked. Once. Twice.

I was standing in what looked like an enormous warehouse the size of a football stadium, except the walls were made of something that wasn't quite glass and wasn't quite air. They just... shimmered. Three hundred people stood around me, all wearing the same expression — wide eyes, slack jaws, the specific look of someone whose brain is trying to reboot after a hard crash.

Some were crying. Some were screaming. Some were completely silent, staring at their own hands like they'd forgotten what hands were supposed to look like.

I did none of these things.

I looked around slowly, cataloguing exits, counting heads, mapping the room.

Old habit.

A massive holographic screen flickered to life above us, cold blue light washing over three hundred confused, terrified, newly dead faces.

"Welcome, Players. You have been selected for participation in the APEX SURVIVAL PROTOCOL. Each of you died in the real world on this date. You have been granted a second chance at life. The condition is simple — survive. The last player standing will be returned to the living world, fully restored. All others will pass on permanently."

"You have sixty seconds to review the item selection interface. Choose wisely."

"The game begins now."

Sixty seconds.

Around me, the panic was instant and total. People shoved. People screamed. A woman to my left dropped to her knees and started praying. A teenage boy punched the air and yelled something about finally getting superpowers. A man in a business suit stood perfectly still, tears streaming silently down his face.

I didn't panic.

I pulled up the holographic interface in front of me — a glowing list, hundreds of items scrolling past like a menu at the world's most insane restaurant. Superpowers. Abilities. Combat enhancements. People were snatching them up like Black Friday shoppers.

Mind Control. Taken. Pyrokinesis. Taken. Super Speed. Taken. Healing Factor. Taken.

I scrolled past all of it.

All the way to the very last page.

At the very bottom, almost like an afterthought, sat a single item — small, unassuming, easy to miss.

A gold coin.

Label: ENDLESS WEALTH.

I didn't hesitate for even half a second.

I grabbed it.

The boy standing next to me — Nathan Voss, my class monitor from back in college, the kind of guy who was always the smartest person in any room and made sure you knew it — stared at me like I'd just eaten dirt off the floor.

"Seriously, Marcus?" he said, his new ability already glowing faintly in his palm. "That's really what you picked? Money?"

I looked at him calmly.

"Yes."

He shook his head slowly, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. The smile of someone who has already decided they've won.

"You're going to die first," he said.

I smiled back.

"I'll see you at the end, Nathan."

He laughed. Turned away. Forgot about me almost immediately.

That was his first mistake.

In every war ever fought, the most dangerous enemy was never the strongest one.

It was always the one nobody was watching.

My name is Marcus Reel. I am Player 99. I have no powers, no combat ability, no special strength.

I have something better.

I have unlimited money — and I've had my entire life to learn what that actually means.

This is how I won the apocalypse.