My Selfish Sister: A Second Chance at Retribution? novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Please Select Your System
Maeve is pushed off a roof, wakes on the day two powers are offered, lets Britt take Amplify, takes Shrink, and empties a supermarket.
I died on the morning the rains stopped.
My sister and I had survived five years of storm together, and I fell off the roof of our building at the end of it.
She stood at the edge with her hands still out in front of her, screaming down at me.
"You stole the Amplify System from me!"
"If you hadn't, I could have saved the family across the hall!"
"You're a perfect sister, except for one thing. You're selfish!"
The air tore past me, and then a calm voice spoke inside my head.
"Please select your system."
I was standing in our living room with sunlight on the floor.
Two glowing panels hung in the air between my sister and me.
One read: Amplify System. Makes anything 100 times bigger.
The other read: Shrink System. Makes anything 100 times smaller.
I knew this morning. I had lived it once already, and last time I had been the one left holding Amplify.
My sister, Britt, looked as dazed as I felt, but it lasted only a moment.
Then she lunged. "I want the Amplify System!"
The voice answered her. "Affirmative. The Amplify System is now bound to you."
She turned to me, and her whole face was shining.
That was when I knew she remembered too. She remembered the rains and the roof, and she remembered her own hands.
I felt something in me go cold and very quiet.
"Then I'll take the Shrink System," I said.
"Affirmative. The Shrink System is now bound to you."
A list of terms scrolled through my mind.
The Amplify line ended with: Effects end with the Event.
The Shrink line ended with: Effects end. After that there was an empty space.
I decided the system hadn't finished loading, and I let it go.
Britt was already pouring me a coffee, the way she did every morning, and she pressed the warm cup into my hands before she took her own.
She stared at her own cup hard, and it swelled into a mug as big as a bucket.
"It's real!" she squealed. "Amplify is really mine!"
I watched her bounce on her toes.
This was the sister I had quit school to raise.
In my last life I had stretched a few cases of instant noodles across five years of rain.
Britt had begged me to feed Declan's family across the hall, and I had refused.
They starved in the first winter.
She turned back to me, bright and sweet. "Maeve, now that Amplify is mine, aren't you jealous?"
Her eyes never left my face.
"Your Shrink System sounds kind of useless, doesn't it?"
She was testing me. She wanted to know whether I remembered.
I gave her a lazy smile.
"It's just a system, Britt. You wanted it, so you can have it. I don't care."
I watched the suspicion drain out of her face.
She laughed, hugged me hard, and said I was the best sister in the world.
Then she ran out of our apartment and knocked on Declan's door.
I stood in the hallway and heard it open.
"Britt? What are you doing here?" Declan sounded confused.
She hooked her arm through his, ignoring the way he stiffened.
"Declan, let's talk inside," she said sweetly.
The door clicked shut behind them.
I checked my phone. It was the 14th.
The rains would start in three days.
I knew exactly what Britt would do with that time. She would turn herself into Declan's hero.
I also knew what came after. The moment the building learned what she held, every hungry person in it would come for her.
That was her problem now.
I took my car keys and drove to the nearest Greenmart.
I cleared the shelves of instant noodles, bread, rice and flour.
I took toilet paper, combs, mirrors, blankets and pillows.
I took every packet of vegetable seed they had, and on a whim, a crate of live chicks.
The cashier stopped scanning to stare at my cart.
"Big family?" she asked.
"Just me," I said.
In the parking lot I put my hand on the first fifty-pound sack of rice and pictured it small.
It shrank until it fit in my palm.
I loaded the rest of the cart one sack at a time, and the whole haul fit in two shopping bags.
My bank balance dropped to almost nothing, and I didn't care.
I stood there holding the tiny sack for a long moment.
For the first time in my life, I had spent my own money without leaving a cent for Britt.
My phone buzzed with a text from Britt.
"Declan's mom is out of rice! Buy 100 pounds and bring it home, I'll pay you back after the rains!"
She had said the word rains. Nobody knew about the rains yet.
She wasn't even hiding it from me anymore.
I deleted the text.
Then I turned off my location sharing, and I felt better.
A moment later the phone buzzed again.
"Your dot just disappeared, Maeve. Why would it disappear?"
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