The Doomsday Archive

Shen Lie is an archivist at the city funeral home, dealing with death certificates every day. Until, on a gray, rainy night, a row of filing cabinets appeared out of nowhere in the records room. The papers inside told him that humanity had been wiped out 37 times. There had been heroes every time, vaccines every time, and a base called “Hope” every time. And every time, civilization still turned into a cloud of spores on the seventh day. The archive held nothing but accounts of failure. The first failed vaccine killed 300,000 people. The second forced awakening left every test subject brain-dead. In the 37th era, the last chronicler died outside Ash City, clutching this archive. Now it was in Shen Lie's hands. His sister was on the death list. Her cause of death read: “Remained in the infected zone. Not granted evacuation clearance.” Someone he knew had died seven times in the archive, and each time, the manner of death was different. And tomorrow morning at six, the first man-eating Rotter would appear at the head of Liberation Bridge. Shen Lie crossed his sister's name off the list. He didn't know if doing so would make the apocalypse come sooner. He only knew that every one of the standard answers from the previous 37 times was wrong. This time, he would write his own. 【38th Era, Chronicler: Shen Lie.】