Rise of the Phoenix - Apocalypse Rebirth

Chapter 1 - Back to the Past

May 15, 3031 - Country C, City F

Aria Li woke up with a soft gasp, the scene of being eaten and dying a second time still fresh in her mind.

Realizing the unnatural quiet environment she's in, all her senses went on alert. Only after confirming there were no other breaths, live or otherwise in the dark room did she relaxed her guard.

Aria: Where am I?

The room was dark and quiet so she knew she was somewhere safe without zombies or humans. Feeling something pushing against her hip, she found out she was laying on something flat and hard, she groped her hands under and pulled out a mobile phone. Sensing the movement of a user, the phone woke up, it's dim screen showing a picture of a flower with the time and date.

Saturday, May 15, 3031 - 1:05AM

Aria: What?! Why is the date 3031 instead of 3039? December 15, 3033 was when the zombie apocalypse happened. So this is 2.5 years before the zombie apocalypse?

Midway thinking about the timeline, the female voice she heard earlier spoke.

Voice: Hello, my name is S3943 and I was the identification and copy system nucleus that you removed from Doctor Edward Xiang. The other two nuclei that you removed from the Zombie King were my brothers. S3944 and S3945.

Voice 2: Hello! I am S3944. I am the summon system nucleus from the Zombie King.

Voice 3: Hello! I am S3945. I am the mech system nucleus from the Zombie King.

Aria: You, S3, the one that ends with the number 3, tell me what's going on.

Voice (S3): We three siblings were originally assigned to your world to help in this apocalyptic evolutionary event. After many years, we luckily found our way closer to one another through our hosts but unfortunately S3945's host got turned into a zombie in the first week of the Zombie Apocalypse in City B. The host was a military person but was too unlucky to be bitten by his superior thus dying early without being able to utilize the mech ability.

S3944 was a lot luckier, the host he chose used to be the president of a huge conglomerate. The host was powerful and very influential but there was an internal betrayal and he was purposely injected with the virus and imprisoned for study. The host zombie somehow activated S3944's summon ability instinctively and broke out of the science facility and quickly amassed a large following throughout Country C.

S3944 noticed S3945 was nearby and was also a pitiful zombie. The host was somehow sensitive to that and consequently consumed that zombie, resulting in owning the two systems nuclei.

I, S3943, chose the scientist host. He intelligently utilized the identification and copy ability to create the majority of the advancement findings within the years after the zombie apocalypse. He was able to acquire the space ability after one of his experiments was successful.

However, in the end all three of us siblings were consumed by zombies so all of us failed our mission.

Aria: ... So what are we doing here?

S3: We don't know. Since all three of us failed our mission, we should've been brought back to the company with a failed status and reassigned to another task world.

Aria: Different world. Wow, what a way to discover there are other intelligent life in the universe. Of course, she shouldn't be that surprised, since zombies and magic also exist.

Aria: The date is May 15, 3031. Did we go back in time or is this a parallel universe or parallel timeline?

S4: S3944 here. I've just checked and it looks like we went back in time to over 2 years before the Zombie Apocalypse.

Aria: So what's next? Is the Zombie Apocalypse still going to occur on November 30th, 3033? Would us being back here cause a butterfly effect that would speed up the timeline of the apocalypse?

S3: Yes. Since the butterfly effect doesn't affect natural events. Everything that happens in nature like earthquakes, plant mutation, tsunamis, meteor showers, and so forth will occur at their specific time without fail. Changes that you make to the timeline due to your actions won't prevent the earth's history from going exactly as planned. You may be able to change your future and others through your actions and that is okay since we all operate under the belief that everyone has a choice to make whether or not they relive the same event hundreds or thousands of times.

---------------------- Author's Notes -----------------------

"Back to the past" or "Rebirth"? I am on the fence about this type of wording. From all the rebirth zombie stories I've read, due to the main protagonist's "rebirth", it created a butterfly effect where the ZA happened earlier which is unbelievable honestly. How can one person's existence make a natural phenomenon OR an intentional event occur earlier in the time line?

Unless the people or organization who was supposed to release the zombie virus is in direct contact with the main protagonist's life, then that's more believable. But a student/teenager or a young adult that starts off having some family issues that involves illegitimacy or being abandoned by her family right off the bat.

So I feel like "back to the past" reflects better since this is basically going back in time before things happened, not a rebirth where technically EVERYONE was reborn but only the main protagonist can remember her past events.