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Kinsey Elliott's eyes snapped open.

Water violently splashed over the edges of the freestanding marble tub as she thrashed upward. She gasped for air, a desperate, tearing sound, her hands clawing at her own throat. Her lungs burned. They felt like they were filled with battery acid, a phantom pain from the toxic rain of the wasteland that still seared her nerve endings.

She scrambled over the slick porcelain edge. Her wet, bare feet hit the polished marble floor, and she slipped. Her kneecap slammed into the hard stone with a sickening crack. A dark purple bruise began to bloom instantly under her pale skin. The pain was sharp, but as she pushed herself up, her body felt... different. Tighter, more densely coiled, humming with a strange, thrumming energy she didn't recognize. The jump had altered her physical baseline.

She didn't care. The sharp, grounding spike of physical pain was a lifeline.

Kinsey crawled toward the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. Her trembling fingers grabbed the heavy velvet curtains and yanked them apart.

Blinding, golden sunlight hit her face. She flinched, throwing a hand over her eyes.

When her vision cleared, she wasn't looking at a frozen, ash-covered wasteland. She was looking at the bustling, vibrant skyline of Manhattan. Yellow cabs looked like tiny insects crawling along the concrete veins below.

Her chest heaved. The erratic hammering of her pulse against her ribs slowly began to steady. She looked down at her left wrist.

The jagged, infected slave brand from the year 2039 was gone. In its place, a faint, glowing silver Mobius strip was embedded in her skin.

She pressed her thumb against the mark.

A deafening hum vibrated in her skull. Instantly, a massive, boundless quantum folding space matrix expanded in her mind. It was cold, sterile, and infinitely empty.

Kinsey pushed herself off the floor. She limped over to the bathroom vanity. Her eyes locked onto the solid gold mouthwash cup sitting next to the sink. She grabbed it. The metal was heavy and cold against her palm.

She focused her mind. Take it.

The gold cup vanished. It didn't blur or fade; it simply ceased to exist in her hand. In her mind's eye, she saw the cup sitting perfectly still on a sterile shelf within the quantum matrix.

A harsh, ragged breath escaped her lips. The future technology was real. She had actually made the timeline jump.

Kinsey looked up. She stared at her reflection in the massive vanity mirror. Her face was flawless. Her cheeks were full, her skin hydrated, her eyes bright. She looked nothing like the starved, hollow-eyed corpse her uncle Clemence had pushed into the freezing abyss fifteen years from now.

A surge of pure, unadulterated hatred boiled in her stomach. It tasted like copper in the back of her throat.

Kinsey balled her right hand into a fist and drove it straight into the mirror.

Glass shattered outward in a violent explosion.

She didn't feel the pain. She only felt the intoxicating rush of impending revenge.

Kinsey turned her back on the ruined mirror. She bypassed the pastel dresses and pulled down a sharp, aggressive black Tom Ford tailored suit.

As she slipped the heavy fabric over her shoulders, her posture changed. The feral, desperate survivor of the wasteland was buried deep. On the surface, she was once again the cold, untouchable heiress of the Elliott family.

She picked up her iPhone from the nightstand. The screen lit up.

Thirty days. Exactly thirty days until the global ice age hit.