《Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG》 Chapter 1 Ever heard something repeated so many times it begins to lose meaning? It doesn¡¯t even take that many repetitions. The syllables begin to bleed, fricatives and sibilants blending together into a phonetic puddle that holds less meaning than white noise. If the repetitions continue, you can watch someone repeating the word, observe the movements of their lips carefully, and still not be able to make it out, the original sound and form utterly lost to you. This phenomenon has a name: semantic satiation. And for me, that word is ¡°sorry.¡± I¡¯ve heard it so many times across my life that it has lost all significance beyond the enmity it invokes. Whether it¡¯s your situation, your mother¡¯s drinking problem, or one of life¡¯s little tragedies, someone will find a way to be sorry for it. And, there is no word in the English language as useless as ¡°Sorry.¡± Which was why, as my only friend blubbered in my arms and I tried in vain to avoid the tears and snot streaming from his face, I was determined not to apologize. Platitudes helped nothing. It was better to be useful. ¡°Those assholes. They can¡¯t do this to me. I¡¯m gonna sue them into the ground.¡± I held my tongue, biting off a sharp response before it was spoken aloud. I knew my first responses had a tendency of coming out harsh, something he wouldn¡¯t respond well to. So, I opted for a simple denial. ¡°No you won¡¯t, Nick.¡± We were both students at Talmont high. Ironically, not too long ago I hated Nick. He used to be part of the upper social stratosphere. The chic, sophisticated, athletic, and techno-savvy group that looked down on everyone else, oozing with confidence and self-assured pedantry. Not to mention he looked the part: wavy brown hair, near-colorless blue eyes, and outweighed me by at least eighty pounds of pure muscle. Which is why we likely made a bizarre sight. Him, bulging, oversized, yet clinging to me in the abandoned computer lab as if the slightest breeze could blow him away. It was a butchered horse collar tackle that did him in. Couldn¡¯t get his balance right after the hit. His leg snapped backwards, ending his career with a made-literal fall from grace. Now he walked with a metal reinforced brace and a single crutch. He hadn¡¯t taken the adjustment well, wasn¡¯t able to accept the end of his tenure at the apex of the school¡¯s hierarchy. He turned against the skid. Hit the gym just as hard and chased more girls than he ever had on the football team. Which led us to this unfortunate series of events. ¡°Everyone¡¯s seen it man. Everybody. Someone taped an elephant with a tiny trunk and googly eyes to my locker this morning. Someone¡¯s gotta pay for that.¡± Nick wiped at his eyes angrily. I was about to comment that I hadn¡¯t seen it, but stopped when I realized that wouldn¡¯t matter. At school I existed outside the hierarchy. There was no individual group or clique that I belonged to and, as such, I was effectively no one. And, to be honest, I liked it that way. ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°there¡¯s no positive outcome going that route. At best, you win, get some mild to moderate revenge, and watch in horror as the civil case starring your junk goes viral. Basic Streisand effect. At worst, you fail and just come off as¡­ a loser.¡± I was going to say impotent, but figured that was not the word he needed to hear right now. ¡°There needs to be consequences for this shit. If it was some girl, heads would be rolling¡ª¡° I rolled my eyes as he ranted. It was blatantly untrue¡ªthe number of girls at the school with leaked nudes was astronomical and rarely resulted in any significant fallout. ¡°Let me ask you something. Say you wanted to send something out and wanted to make sure it couldn''t be traced back to you. How would you do that?¡± ¡°Snapchat.¡± Another eye roll. ¡°No, that can be traced back to you. You''d use Signal, or Echo, or Vigilant. Shit that''s untraceable by design. Which I guarantee you is what those asshats are using. The ones at the top of the chain at least.¡± He clung to me tighter. I felt a squish as his nose smeared against my shoulder and fought the urge to push him away. ¡°Then what am I supposed to do, Matt? I can''t be invisible like you. This is gonna follow me.¡± I let the shot slide without taking it personally. He wasn''t wrong, and he was upset. Being good looking and popular had its perks, sure, but the downside is you never really learn how to keep your head down. ¡°Skip the pointless lawsuit and go on vacation,¡± I said. ¡°What? Just disappear?¡± ¡°Just a week. The school board won''t stop you, and they''ll probably be relieved that you''re gone. Starve them out and the vultures will move on.¡± ¡°What if I come back and they haven''t?¡± ¡°They will.¡± I reiterated. ¡°Trust me.¡± I must have put too much emphasis on the last half because he looked up at me, suspicious. ¡°You know something.¡± I hesitated. The person I had in mind was Jinny Stiles. I¡¯d never spoken to her, but when you''re socially persona-non-grata you''re good at picking things up. She belonged to the same social group Nick had. Popular. Pretty. She¡¯d been head over heels for her college boyfriend, ducking parties to hang out with him every weekend. Her friends started making jokes about weight gain. Then she disappeared for a month and came back with a dead-eyed smile and a flat stomach. No more ducked parties for the boyfriend. And if I''d noticed, there was no way the rest of them hadn''t. They might torment Nick. But they''d eviscerate Jinny. Tall poppy syndrome beat punching down on a cripple any day. It wasn''t really my style to air out someone else''s dirty laundry, but it''s not like it''d been told to me in confidence. I settled on a compromise: partial information. ¡°Stiles¡¯ number is up. Could hit any day now. Better you''re not here when it does.¡± Nick¡¯s eyes bulged. ¡°Jinny? Why? She''s nice. She''s the only one who still talks to me.¡± I grimaced, ignoring the fact I was actively being left out of that statement. ¡°Just take the week, Nick.¡± Nick stared at me. I could tell the direct command had rankled, bothered him. He was used to calling the shots. I was about to rephrase when he deflated, stepping away. ¡°You creep me out sometimes,¡± Nick said. ¡°Thanks.¡± ¡°No, really. Where do you even get this shit? It''s like you have a split-personality. You talk like you''re some savvy socialite one minute, then start sweating when some flabby freshman with braces asks you for directions.¡± I shifted uncomfortably. ¡°You''re leaving out the part where I''m usually right.¡± ¡°Yeah. I know.¡± Nick grunted, limping towards where he''d left his crutch leaning against one of the many desks. ¡°Hold it.¡± I held out a hand. ¡°You have something to tide me over while you''re gone?¡± ¡°Who said I was going?¡± He did. With his body language. The way he pulled into himself, feet facing the door. Surrender, clear as if he had screamed it. Of course, I didn''t say any of this. I pushed my hand towards him. ¡°Come on, cough it up.¡± Nick smiled and some of his usual cockiness came back. ¡°Glad you remembered, because I caught a haul.¡± He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. There were underlined subheadings with names and phone numbers. And, true to his word, many more than usual. ¡°Five essays, three SATs, and there''s a partridge in the pear tree my friend.¡± He tapped the name at the bottom of the list. I whistled. ¡°LSAT. Damn. Really making your ten percent.¡± My fee for the law school admissions test was five times what it was for the SAT. Largely because the test was hard, filled with fuck-you questions and a general pain in the ass. ¡°How''d you snag that?¡° ¡°Friend of a friend.¡± ¡°You talked to them about expectations?¡± He waved my concerns away. ¡°Yeah, they know about the code, the voice changer, and to expect a blocked caller.¡± ¡°Nick.¡± ¡°I promise.¡± He sounded annoyed. But the last thing I wanted was another freak out. ¡°Okay, just making sure. Enjoy your vacation.¡± Nick hobbled away from me, then stopped. He cast a worried glance my way. ¡°Matt. This thing with Jinny.¡± I shook my head. ¡°It''s gonna get out one way or another.¡± ¡°Sure.¡± He bit his lip. ¡°But if it doesn''t, promise you''re not going to help it along?¡± I had no plans to. Talmont would almost assuredly do it for me. But if it somehow didn''t come out before the end of the week, well, then things got a little more complicated. What it boiled down to was that, despite his faults, I cared about Nick. That was rare for me. And I didn''t care about Jinny, or the fact that Nick cared about her. Maybe you think that makes me a horrible person. That''s fine. I never claimed otherwise. I gave him a false smile. ¡°Won''t raise a finger.¡± ///// There¡¯s a certain art to walking around unnoticed. The first mistake most people make is literally keeping their head down. You don¡¯t want that. It sends the wrong signals: small, weak, vulnerable. In a naturally hostile environment¡ªhigh-school, for example¡ªyou might as well be carrying a flashing bother-me sign for any given observer with elevated testosterone. Instead, you want to keep your gaze focused downward at the floor at around a 45-degree angle. Keep to a wall, but don¡¯t walk too close. Wear clothes that suit the surroundings, nothing too bright or flashy. Most importantly, don¡¯t make eye-contact. I wish I had a better excuse for what I am. Why I don''t feel things the way other people do, why empathy is so hard for me. Some trite, tidy backstory would go a long way in explaining my shortcomings. That I was bullied mercilessly. That my village was set on fire and my parents slaughtered. But none of that is true. I live in a city, not a village, and no one would bother to raze it. My family is poor, but we get by. My siblings are all alive and well. And God is just someone whose house we visit on holidays. The reality was that I was bored. I wanted a break from the monotony. I wanted something to happen. Good or bad, it didn¡¯t matter. I was such a fool. My first mistake was not looking up on my walk home from school. I had a lot on my mind, specifically which college to attend. It should have been a shoe in. I had a partial scholarship to Berkeley which made it almost affordable, and I was interested in engineering, so the choice seemed clear. But there was a wrinkle. I didn''t have to listen to the late night raving and see the litany of empty bottles to tell you that the double initial organizations and group meetings weren''t doing anything for my mother¡¯s problems. Yeah, I know. That shouldn''t matter. It''s my future, not hers. But I didn''t like the idea of leaving my little sister and brother alone to deal with the fallout. Iris and Ellison¡ªmy siblings¡ªwere still too young to understand the considerable level of upkeep my mother required. So I had the option of choosing selfishly, and taking my almost-free ride to Berkeley. Or, I could stay local and see what financial aid I could scrounge up from the local dregs. Maybe something in the surrounding metroplex, maybe something in Oklahoma where I could drive home easily if something happened. Not that I had a car. Maybe I could save up for one, or find a way to tap into my meager savings for the down payment. But that would mean working like a slave for my last few semesters, trying to scrounge up tuition. The only other alternative was doubling down now. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. But how? I had two part-time jobs already, not including my extralegal testing and responsibilities at home. Taking another job would mean reducing my already meager four or five hours of sleep a night to two or three. The prospect alone made me feel tired. That''s the downside of being poor. There aren''t any good options. It was too much to consider, too much to even comprehend. If I felt like rolling the dice I could look into investing my money, but the only option that would possibly yield enough to make it worth while in such a short period of time would mean going with her. Someone I knew from personal experience to be both flaky and unreliable. Maybe that''s why I missed the meteor, hurtling downward. Perhaps my mind was so preoccupied with the possible tangles of my future that I couldn''t even be bothered to notice the nascent horrors of my present. ¡°Matt!¡± A woman¡¯s voice. What? I¡¯d done nothing to draw attention to myself. Still, Sai Park, a Korean student with long silky hair and nice figure¡ªdespite the obviously padded bra¡ªstood staring at me. Her phone was held limply in her hands. She was barely in uniform, plaid skirt rolled up just above her knee and her simple dress shirt adjusted to wring maximum style from the drab, conservative garb. A bright orange kerchief hung around her neck. Exactly the sort of person I didn¡¯t want to see me. My heart jumped. My mouth dried at the prospect of even talking to her. Mouth open, horrified, she pointed behind me. Someone screamed. Then another person, then another. I spun around to look. The street was usually bustling with activity, but foot traffic was frozen. Everywhere I looked people were staring at the sky, frozen, hands over their mouths. Finally, I looked up. My first, stumbling thought was that the freak occurrence of nature that was going to end my life had a tail, which didn''t make sense for something that close. But like all forces of nature, it didn''t have to. To my left, I saw a man and woman cling to one another. A group of girls from my high school huddled against the walls of a nearby bank, trying to make themselves small, like prey cowering before a predator. There was a deafening crash as an SUV slammed into a parked car, driver trying desperately to flee. A million thoughts went through my mind before I landed on one: It was over. All of it. I knew, in that moment, what death looked like. It was inevitable. I could be on a jet right now, breaking the sound barrier, and still end up in the blast of that thing. I turned around to look for Sai, but the space where she was standing was now empty, like she¡¯d never been there to begin with. Mouth dry, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called home. It took a couple tries before I got through. My little brother¡¯s voice carried over the line. ¡°Hello?¡± He sounded bewildered. I watched the meteor glow brighter and brighter blue, growing larger by the second. ¡°Hey Ellis. You and Iris okay?¡± ¡°Matt, I''m scared.¡± His voice quivered. ¡°Mom won''t let me watch the news, but I can hear it from the kitchen. They''re saying the world¡¯s going to end.¡± ¡°Come on, pal.¡± I forced a laugh that I could only hope sounded more authentic than it felt. ¡°It''s the news. They''re always saying that.¡± ¡°I guess.¡± ¡°Trust me. It''s all gonna be fine,¡± I lied. I couldn''t see any reason not to. ¡°If you say so.¡± He sounded less confident than I felt. ¡°Love you, kiddo. Put mom on, will you?¡± ¡°Ok.¡± ¡°Wait, El?¡± ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°Tell Iris I love her too, please?¡± ¡°Fuck.¡± It was the first time I''d heard my brother swear. ¡°Language!¡± I said. But he was already gone. ¡°Hello?¡± My mother''s voice slurred. I gritted my teeth. No reason to stick to sobriety when the world was ending, but I had to wonder if she''d started drinking before or after she''d picked the kids up. ¡°Hey mom,¡± I said. ¡°Where are you, Mathias?¡± Mom sounded more alert now, for all the good it did. ¡°I''m surprised I got through.¡± I swallowed. How long did we even have? Minutes? An hour? Did it look so large because it was close, or was it just that massive? ¡°Where are you?¡± She said again, voice panicked. As if it mattered. ¡°Halfway. Off of Lincoln and Third.¡± Funny that I remembered the street names at a time like this. A cop habit my father had ingrained in me. ¡°You need to get to shelter. Get inside.¡± ¡°How bad is it?¡± Silence. ¡°They¡¯re saying it''ll be worse than a nuclear attack.¡± I cocked my head. I knew that voice. Was that understatement? She was actually playing it down. ¡°They talking about it knocking the earth off its axis? It looks... really big.¡± I don¡¯t know why I asked. Morbid curiosity, I guess. ¡°Get inside, Matt.¡± ¡°I will.¡± I didn''t bother pointing out that our shabby two-bedroom apartment wouldn''t offer much protection. A bomb shelter would fare just as badly. There was no getting away from something like this. ¡°I called to say...¡± The words ¡°I love you,¡± spoken so easily to my brother and sister, died in my throat. I cleared it, then shook my head. ¡°It doesn''t matter.¡± ¡°Don''t give up. There''s always a chance. We could be the outliers.¡± My mother once lived her life by measured statistics and numbers. But she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than me. When have we ever been the outliers? I stifled a bitter laugh. Still, I needed to say something. ¡°... Sorry for being so cold lately.¡± A short pause. ¡°I deserve it.¡± ¡°Maybe.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have to agree with me.¡± ¡°But looking back, I wish I hadn''t been. Cold, I mean.¡± ¡°Matt, I¡ª¡° Three short beeps followed by silence. I looked at my phone and saw the call had ended. I tried a few more times and got a pre-recorded message saying the lines were busy and to reduce calls to emergency only. Well, that was that. The meteor was imminent. Strangely, I didn''t feel fear. I felt resignation and relief, that the struggle was over. I didn¡¯t have to go home, ignore my siblings, study until my head hurt, pass out, then drag myself to Dunkin¡¯s for the early bird shift. My worries had all been rendered moot. I studied it, watching it grow larger and larger, and realized with grim amusement that it seemed to be headed straight towards me. As if in a hypnotic state, I began walking, trying to calculate the trajectory. It led me to the little garden outside of Emerson Square, where I took a seat on a park bench next to a tan-uniformed blonde girl who looked to be in middle school. She held a bag stuffed with cookies and had begun to dig into them. I took a seat next to her. ¡°Spare a few?¡± I asked She eyed me for a moment before her gaze returned to the sky. ¡°Five dollars.¡± ¡°Thin Mints?¡± ¡°Yup.¡± Amused, I pulled out my wallet and counted out three dollar bills before I came up dry. ¡°What does three get me?¡± ¡°Savannah Smiles.¡± ¡°Oof.¡± Still, I handed her the money, and she took it without looking, automatically handing me a box. ¡°We¡¯re gonna die, aren''t we?¡± The girl asked. She sounded small, resigned. A man sprinted by us carrying a gallon of water. It was strange how calm she was. Maybe the reality hadn''t sunk in yet. ¡°Yeah. We¡¯ll have one hell of a view though.¡± The temperature grew from hot to sweltering. I tore open the packaging and tossed the oblong cookie into my mouth, nearly gagging as I chewed. ¡°Christ, it''s like candied Lysol.¡± ¡°They''re a bargain for three.¡± ¡°If you say so. Did you get through to your folks?¡± I asked. ¡°Don''t have a phone.¡± ¡°Try mine.¡± I handed it to her. She took the phone, glanced over at me, as if unhappy with the unevenness of the exchange, then slid me a box of Thin Mints. ¡°Thanks.¡± I tossed the box of lemon abominations in the nearby trash can. One hell of a shot, but of course everyone was a little too preoccupied to notice. She dialed, held the phone to her ear, then handed it back. ¡°Any luck?¡± ¡°No.¡± A swarthy woman tripped hard nearby, landing on the flats of her hands and her knees before rolling onto her back. She took one look at the sky and began shrieking and moaning with an almost biblical fervor. We both looked at her in annoyance. ¡°Noisy,¡± the girl said. ¡°Straight out of a Lifetime special,¡± I commented. It was close now. All sound disappeared, like I was underwater. I could feel the heat. Wind began to roil around us as the pavement boiled, tossing my dark hair in my face, covering my glasses. I stood and walked forward, leaving the Girl-Scout behind and forgotten. A handful of people joined me in the square. An older woman in business casual stood on the fringes, phone out, recording the moment. A muscled man with salt-and-pepper hair was chuckling to himself, the sound low and mean. It would be seconds now. The glowing blue rock took up my entire vision, dwarfing the skyline. I held my arms outstretched. Well, come on you bastard. Do what you came here to do. A nearby building toppled. A hundred yards above, the meteor exploded into a massive wave of indigo ash that swallowed everything as the shockwave sent me flying. ///// I was plunged into a darkness deeper than the blackest night. I¡¯d expected my life to flash before my eyes. Now that it was happening, it felt more like a slow painful crawl. I saw Iris, signing to me, trying to catch my attention earlier that morning while I ignored her so I wouldn''t be late. I saw Danielle Espinosa, asking me to the solstice dance¡ªand me, focused so hard on perfecting my response, mulling over the problematic consonants to avoid a stutter, until she took my silence as rejection and stormed off. Finally, I saw the day that cemented in my mind that heroes were fools: my father¡¯s police cruiser through dusty blinds, pulling up in front of the rundown house at the end of the street. A neon violet square filled my vision. It was painful to look at, eye-searingly bright. There were three ascending notes that sounded almost like a phone jingle. Text scrolled, almost too fast for me to read: The scroll stopped. There wasn¡¯t an option for no. Just a ¡°YES¡± option in capital letters below the scroll of text. I was confused. There was no straightforward explanation for what I was experiencing. I didn''t have hands, or eyes for that matter. But I focused on it. The text began to scroll again. No system message notification this time. Just direct text. It reminded me of a question off one of those Freudian mealy-mouth surveys therapists pour over to psychoanalyze you, where there''s no correct choice. Only, again, my options were limited. hovered below the text, the only option. If I had a mouth, I would have laughed. Again, there was only one answer highlighted. I started as a wall of text filled the screen. A feeling of unease washed over me. The trolley problem was ethics 101. And frankly, it was highly hypothetical and stupid. But this version was wrong. There were supposed to be five people tied to the main track, one person tied to the sidetrack. This was a darker, more nihilistic version of the dilemma. Anger started from somewhere deep within me. It brought me back to the original question: Why was there only one answer? Was the system just assuming I would make that choice? The core issue with the original trolley problem that was raised over and over was a simple one: Agency. If you did nothing, you were merely a tragic witness to the deaths of five people. The series of events that brought about their deaths were already put into motion, but that blood was ultimately not on your hands. You didn¡¯t cut the trolley¡¯s brake lines. You didn¡¯t tie those people to the tracks. Things got complicated when you pulled the lever. By pulling the lever, you left the realm of passive observer and became an active participant. No longer a mortal, but a self-appointed god. You weigh the worth of five lives and decide that they are worth killing one person for. And unlike the death of the five, you are directly responsible for that death. The text disappeared then reappeared, the letters tripling in size, bright red. It didn¡¯t matter. The most important aspect of test taking was to pick an answer and move on. Time was the enemy, not the question. And it wasn¡¯t like I had a choice. I focused on the option, trying not to think about the implications of why I didn¡¯t have a choice, and it disappeared with no fanfare. A panoramic picture came into focus line by line, as if drawn by invisible brushes. It had a storybook quality. A pastoral town washed in oranges and reds by a rising sun peeking halfway over the horizon. It was a drawing of a fantasy world. There was a knight in silver armor cleaning a tarnished shield. A wizard, complete with a pointy hat and beard, was haggling with a fruit merchant in a smock. Meanwhile, an elven ranger with multiple golden rings piercing his pointed ears put arrows into a target at a practice range. I didn¡¯t understand the question at first. When I realized it was asking which person in the picture I identified with the most, a manic, horrible thought clicked into place. Willing it, I scrolled back up to the original system notifications, reading them again. This wasn¡¯t a test. I wasn¡¯t being graded for my ethics. This was a character creation. What kind of half-assed dream had I stumbled into? I scrolled back down to the most recent question, my mind racing. As the text flashed by, a million terrible scenarios popped into my head. I¡¯d read novels with similar premises. A protagonist dies, killed by a truck, or a mugger, or a god damned meteor, and when they awaken, they are transported into another world. That was how it worked in fiction. But discounting the much more likely scenario that this was all simply the manic work of a dying mind, I realized I didn¡¯t want to go to another world. I had a handle on this one, grim and hopeless as it was. And the devil you know is always better than the devil you don¡¯t. It was a panicked thought. Dumb. Delusional. Even fanciful. Unlike me. The only answer was listed below the question, and looking at it sent a cold chill through me. I searched the image. The wizard, ranger, and knight were still going about their business. But there was something I¡¯d missed the first time. In the deep shadows cast by the rising sun next to one of the buildings, a man reached out towards the camera as if to grab it from afar. He was almost invisible, and had no definable features, other than the hand. But he held it out towards the other figures, and for a reason I could not quite describe, I feared for them. Reflexively, I focused on the option and the data screen disappeared. And then I woke up in the worst place possible. Chapter 2 Bright, fluorescent lights blinded me. The blackness was banished, surrounded by white. Something hard gripped my face, shoving air into my mouth, my nose. I gagged, coming awake with a massive gasp followed by a violent series of coughs. Bits of dull-blue dust exploded from the inhalation ports of the oxygen mask like a dragon¡¯s exhale as I hacked, my lungs tight and dry. Wait, oxygen mask? The disorientation twisted into full-blown panic. No. This couldn¡¯t be happening. I looked down at myself, at my body. The IV, the monitor, the bed. The ambulance ride that must have brought me here. We didn¡¯t have insurance, and doing some frantic math in my head I realized I was looking at from anywhere between $2,500 to $10,000 minimum. Shit. Shit. I couldn¡¯t afford it. We couldn¡¯t afford it. Even the lowest number would wipe out my meagre profits from Nick¡¯s tip sheet and the highest would put us on the street. There was... something that happened. My memory was fuzzy. A natural disaster? A meteor? It slowly came back to me. That¡¯s right. It had exploded before impact, showering the city and street with massive plumes of dust that reminded me of the immediate aftermath of the oil refinery in Beirut. And I¡¯d been thrown from the resulting blast. Experimentally, I leaned forward and winced, a sharp pain emitting from my chest beneath a thick bandage. Cracked rib. I had green-purple bruising all over my side and my shoulder throbbed from where I must have landed. I struggled to my feet and wheeled the IV stand towards the window. I¡¯d expected to see husks of collapsed buildings as far as the eye could see. But the Dallas skyline was intact. The Bank of America plaza building had collapsed, damaging some nearby structures but at least from this perspective, everything else looked mostly whole. That was almost worse. The disaster had been a freak incident, unlike anything I¡¯d ever heard of. There would be an inevitable compensation fund, but that would take time, and there had been clear examples in the past when it had taken an upward of a decade for lawmakers to establish anything remotely approaching a working solution. Then, as if to punctuate my rising panic, the text box appeared. I slapped the message away, retreated until my back slammed against a wall. Panic mingled with anxiety and I began to hyperventilate. Head between my legs, I tried to come to grips with how bad the situation was. The only thing that could possibly make my current circumstances worse had happened: There was actually something wrong with me. Hallucinations. And not the fun, walls are slightly shifting and why did I leave the remote in the fridge kind. It was a hard delusion, tied to the dream I¡¯d had the previous night. They¡¯d want to keep me overnight for observation. It had to be a psychological issue, which would take time to diagnose and evaluate, and that was how ten thousand dollars turned into a hundred. Hurriedly, I crawled to the foot of the bed and checked my chart. Below the listing of blood pressure and notes there was a bullet-point list detailing my condition: Severe smoke inhalation. Fractured rib. Dislocated shoulder. Exposure to an unknown substance. But I almost cried with relief when I found the field listed as M. Unidentified Adolescent. They didn¡¯t have my name. That cinched it. I had to get out. Now. It took a few painful moments for me to remove the IV. My head pounded under the intensity of the lights. My half-folded clothes and belongings were in a plastic bag placed haphazardly on a nearby seat. I got the feeling that whoever placed them there had been called away which was likely the reason my name and information hadn¡¯t been lifted from my wallet. The text box reappeared as I struggled back into my ruined clothes. I tried to push it away again but it shifted, moving out of my reach but remaining in my sight. I turned away from it, refusing to acknowledge the delusion when it moved to stay in my eye line. It scrolled slowly, as if it knew I couldn¡¯t help but read it. That stopped me flat, one-leg in to putting on my pants. For the first time I doubted what I was seeing was merely a product of a damaged mind. There were few things I took less stock in than astrology. Unless my subconscious was being ironic. Could a subconscious even be ironic? Apparently, the answer was yes. But Rene Magritte wanted his joke back. ¡°Could have told you that,¡± I muttered. My pants were on. My shirt was ruined, but hopefully the hospital would be too busy for anyone to notice. In my haste, my eyes lingered on the underlined title and the text expanded. I tried not to think about the fact that I did feel strangely calm. I was panicking, yes, but it was strange that I wasn¡¯t still hyperventilating on the floor, folding to the ever growing external pressure. I dealt with pressure well, until it grew so excessive and overwhelming that I broke down completely in a series of escalating panic attacks. Yet somehow, I was coping. I glanced at it and immediately regretted doing so after reading the first line. ¡°Fuck off!¡± I swiped at it, but it danced away and the text continued to scroll. <¡ªwhich is further augmented, making them adept at identifying traps and avoiding ambushes. However, the difficulty accepting good things at face value will also increase.> ¡°Accept my ass.¡± Okay, no. Any doubts that this was a delusion suddenly faded as my mood further soured. No one was better at mocking me than I was. And this was feeling increasingly like a cruel joke. In fact, most of this wasn¡¯t adding up. There was radar, satellites, thousands of telescopes pointed at any given section space at any given time. Something that big just slipped past everything? There was no way. It wasn¡¯t just the text box. This whole thing was the delusion. There had never been any meteor, any impact, any ambulance ride. This wasn¡¯t happening. In all likelihood I was strapped to a gurney somewhere, drooling¡ª I stopped myself just shy of dissociating completely. If I went down that road there was no coming back. I needed to accept what was closest to reality, and reject the clearly fantastical elements. Namely, the text box that still danced in my vision. Really, subconscious? The old protagonist unlocks OP class at the beginning of the story and steamrolls trope? You going to give me an evil eye and let me trade my soul to the devil for a demonic army next? Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. That almost sounded like a direct response to my thoughts. Maybe, if I could learn to warp the hallucination I could minimize it, lessening the effect. At the very least ensuring I didn¡¯t have half-assed RPG text popping up in front of my face at the worst possible time. I focused my thoughts to a laser point, trying to direct them at the text box and sneered. So what is it? Necromancer? Blood-bender? Vampire? Death Mage? Dude-who-kills-everything-he-touches? I was about to spit an expletive laced negative, then bit it back. It took me a moment to realize why. My paranoia had wrapped back around on itself. I¡¯d been beating my head against the wall over the last year trying to cram in all necessary knowledge to be able to crush the MKAT, and some of that knowledge came back to me now. Every psychological disorder that I studied featuring hallucinations¡ªschizophrenia, psychosis¡ªhad one thing in common. They always started small. Maybe you¡¯d find the house wasn¡¯t like you¡¯d left it, or you¡¯d hear inaudible voices. You started out wondering if the aliens were after you long before they actually arrived. None of that had happened to me. So what had happened to my ramp up? I reread the text again. This time, when I focused on the Ordinator class text there was no expanded information. The so-called system had given me all the information it was willing to. And unlike in my dream, there were two options. I didn¡¯t buy it. Any of it. But it was like Pascal¡¯s Wager. In the most likely scenario that the system was a delusion, saying yes or no was a net zero. Maybe selecting yes in this case would be buying into the hallucination, giving it more power. But things were already this bad. Alternatively, if the decimal level possibility that this was real somehow happened to be the case, and I said no, I was actively fucking myself out of a clearly stated benefit. All that assuming that in this wackass scenario, the system could actually be trusted. Damn, my head hurt. I gave it one more second, then made my choice. The response was immediate. Wait, what contract? No one said anything about a contract. There wasn¡¯t a damn EULA. I waited but nothing happened. What the hell? I expected a wall of text with tritely named starter abilities. Instead I got the mouthful that was ¡°Probability Spiral.¡± Before I could focus in on the ability to expand the description there was a stampede of footsteps approaching from the outside hallway. With dawning horror, I watched through the frosted glass window facing the hallway as a dozen black figures moved across my view with military precision, holding shapes that could only be one thing. Rifles. My skin prickled, goose flesh forming on my arms. What was happening? I pressed my back to the wall, waiting, listening. There was a bang that rattled the floor and startled me. They¡¯d just broken in to the adjacent room. A muffled voice yelled something indistinct. I crawled to the adjoining wall and pressed my ear against it. ¡°¡ªPut it down.¡± The voice was gruff, harsh. A controlled yell. My father would have called it cop voice. ¡°I can¡¯t!¡± I heard someone yell back, panicked. ¡°Put the weapon down now!¡± ¡°Please!¡± The man sobbed. ¡°Help me¡ª¡° I jumped at the sudden explosion and held my hands over my ringing ears. Bits of detritus rained down on my head. Still stunned, I looked up to see a hole torn in the plaster. It wasn¡¯t until I looked over to the opposite wall and saw the squashed copper bullet lodged there that I realized what had happened. He was begging for help and they killed him. Holy shit. Someone just died. My heart jackhammered in my chest. Somehow, this was different than the meteor strike. That had been too hard to fathom. Comparatively, the police shooting my next door neighbor¡ªa man who had likely been injured in the same event I had¡ªfelt far more visceral and real. The text screen disappeared as soon as the violence started. Maybe my mind was too occupied to hallucinate. None of that mattered right now. What mattered was that I needed to get out before the SWAT team finished up in the room. I scrambled to my feet and snuck to the door. I was about to pull it open when an almost tangible blanket of anxiety stopped me. It was the same exact feeling you get when you enter a room and conversation grinds to a halt, every head turning to stare at you, silently challenging your decision to grace their presence. It¡¯s probably SWAT. They¡¯ll have someone posted outside. Maybe multiple people. If someone asks me for my ID, I¡¯m screwed, and there goes my plan of never being here. It was my voice, but it was different than usual. Paranoia applied and turned outward rather than inward. Strange. But running through it again, it wasn''t unwarranted. I needed a distraction. Something to buy me a moment. Of course. It was a hospital. There had to be doctors on the way, and they''d be allowed to work as soon as the guy next door was ¡°secured.¡± Okay. I leaned my head against the door. Then something else came to me. Wait. Why aren''t they using subsonic ammunition? More importantly, why was he shot? ¡°Drop the weapon.¡± Answered with ¡°I can¡¯t.¡± He didn''t sound insane, just distraught and terrified. It''s an emergency situation so the hospital would be filled floor by floor. I''m at least six floors up so I wasn''t the first one rescued. Maybe they started picking up the people around the fringes first, then made their way inward, which would mean I was likely one of the last. More importantly that means everyone¡ªand specifically my neighbor was more than likely a victim of the blast. What if the fallout changed us¡ª Fuck, I was losing it. I''d entertained the delusion and now my mind was fraying. Two figures in white coats sprinted toward my neighbor. As soon as I heard raised voices I moved. The door clicked open and I turned the opposite way, catching snippets of furious dialogue, one-sided. The black orb-like cameras were placed in obvious locations, and I somehow knew where they were pointed. I weaved a zigzag path around them, making sure my exit left no evidence. I dared a look up at the convex mirror mounted above the upcoming cross-hallway. I caught a glimpse of myself. My dark hair was matted and my brown eyes were wild. Worse, I saw behind me. A single SWAT guy trailed me, head cocked to the side, speaking quietly into his radio. My face flushed. Dammit, not now. I''m so close. I kept my pace even despite my pounding heart, moving with confidence. I made it past the computer desk at the front without turning a head. There was a ding and the elevator doors closest to me opened. It was going up, not down, but I didn''t have the luxury of being picky. Three women in business casual walked out and I squeezed between them. ¡°Hey!¡± A deep, gruff voice. The SWAT guy. It had to be. I slammed my hand down on the ¡°close door,¡± button and backed away. SWAT guy was caught behind the three women and pushed one of them aside, trying to get to the elevator before it closed. The last thing I saw was his outstretched hand. Thing was, I knew this hospital. I knew the floor I stepped out at was the ICU. And I knew it had a back stairway that led out to the parking garage. I accidentally looked at the woman at the floor desk and felt a jolt of alarm as her eyes went to my ruined shirt. ¡°Hey, sir?¡± I blew past her, walk blasting into a run. ¡°Sir you can''t be back there!¡± I''d reached the stairway and the door had nearly closed when I heard her call out one final time, ¡°He went that way!¡± SWAT guy had found me. If I pushed this any farther they''d be able to charge me with attempting to elude an officer and resisting arrest. Still, there was a chance. I flew down the stairs two at a time, clinging to the unevenly painted guardrail. In seconds footsteps pounded behind me. I shouldered through the heavy door and into the garage, my side stinging from the impact. Needed to hide before¡ª ¡°Not one more step.¡± The deadly ire in his tone spoke volumes and I knew before I turned around that the barrel of the rifle was pointed at my chest. I held my hands up. No need to make things worse. ¡°Okay.¡± ¡°You''re one of them.¡± The anger in his voice took me off guard. ¡°I... don''t know what you mean.¡± I said, but the truth was I could guess. He lowered his rifle, and unbuckled his helmet, taking it off his head. His face was twisted in an expression that was the very picture of hatred. A scar ran vertically across a nose that had been broken one too many times. ¡°Wanna guess how many friends I''ve lost today?¡± He seethed. ¡°Too fucking many.¡± SWAT guy dropped his helmet to the floor with a clatter, then brought his rifle back up. His finger was no longer on the guard, but on the trigger itself. Reality began to dawn that he had no intention to arrest me. ¡°What the hell?¡± My voice cracked. ¡°I''m just a kid, man. Please. I don''t even know what you''re talking about.¡± ¡°Yeah you do. The people closest to the impact came back wrong, changed. And you''re one of them.¡± I watched his eye down the barrel of the scope and realized he was aiming for my head. My mouth was dry. Suddenly my mind shifted, and everything recontextualized. None of this was really happening to me. My arms, my legs, my chest, none of them were mine, none of them were under my direct control. I was someone else, far away. But in that moment, in the stillness, I realized something had changed. I didn''t want to die. I wasn''t willing to let it happen like I had before. ¡°Please. Don''t.¡± His finger tightened on the trigger. Time slowed down, dilating exponentially. I could see it in his face. He wouldn''t change his mind. And he had already made the call. He was too far away for me to reach. Every car I might take cover behind was too far to be viable. I had no real options besides one that that wasn''t real at all. The me that was not me reached out with a single hand. Mentally, I called out for the ability right as he pulled the trigger. Probability spiral. Chapter 3 There was a slight distortion that left my hand like a tiny heatwave. Nothing happened. SWAT guy smiled and pulled the trigger. There was an ear shattering crack and the gun exploded. A flare ejected out the side closest to SWAT guy¡¯s arm, detonating. A squib. He shrieked and fell, slapping at the growing flames on his shredded arm. I gawked at the scene. Holy shit. Either the rifle had malfunctioned on its own, or something else had tipped the scales. Probability spiral¡­ I staggered to the side, gasping. It felt like I''d run two marathons, back to back. Whatever it was, it hadn''t come free. Still, it would only be a matter of seconds before the SWAT guy recovered. He''d pull his sidearm and the small victory I¡¯d managed would be wasted. I took off running, fighting exhaustion as his swearing followed me, his screams of pain echoing off the concrete ceiling of the garage. ///// My paranoia started whispering a few blocks from our apartment. What if they''d identified me from earlier footage? What if they were waiting for me? I slipped into a nearby Waffle House with a view of the east apartment entrance and took a seat at a booth. My leg bounced uncontrollably and I had a hard time focusing on anything. My escape had been too easy. Inconsistencies in the events came into focus that had been disguised in a wash of adrenaline. I''d been so confident I knew which way the cameras were pointing. Why? Where had that surety come from? The hospital cameras were encased in a black orb. I was losing it. Life wasn''t a Marvel movie. People didn''t develop powers from meteors. The mounted TV flickered as the channel was changed, giving a report of shots fired at Baylor hospital. Apparently, the cops had continued making their rounds. But the news was reporting it as a possible active shooter situation. I cocked my head. That didn''t make any sense. Normally, the news was informed on this sort of thing. The police must have been on an information blackout. ¡°Hon? I said, what can I get you?¡± I jumped, swiveling in my seat to face a waitress who couldn''t be bothered to tie her apron. ¡°Coffee.¡± Then, after a second. ¡°Decaf.¡± No need to be any jumpier than I already felt. ¡°Just the coffee.¡± Statement, not a question. I was analyzing the waitress¡¯s tone, looking for tells. More paranoia. I needed to get home so I could take my meds. ¡°You okay hon?¡± ¡°Yeah. Sorry. Lot on my mind.¡± She nodded sympathetically. ¡°Last few days have been rough on all of us. I''ll get that coffee.¡± The wording stuck with me long after she''d left. Last few days? Of course. This wasn''t the day of the impact. Few. What did few mean? At least two, probably three. I watched the news, waiting for a date stamped report. March 22nd, 2024. Okay. Two days. What the SWAT guy said made more sense now, at least in terms of timeline. Know how many friends I''ve lost today? I squeezed my eyes shut. The aroma of coffee filled my nose. I could feel the waitress''s shadow lingering before she left me to my drink. My stomach twisted. ¡°For the second day in a row, police and federal authorities have yet to explain the blockades spanning state lines.¡± My eyes shot open. The scene on the TV rotated between various major highways. Checkpoints backed up traffic indefinitely as a deluge of squad cars and SUVs served as hastily erected barriers blocking off roadways. There was a shot of thousands of people pressed together at DFW airport, with a slow pan to a nearby display that read, ¡°All departures suspended indefinitely.¡± The hits kept coming. We were locked in. And the violet notification light was still hanging in my vision like a stuck pixel. ///// I eased the apartment door shut. The hinges squealed at the last moment, giving me away. Small footsteps pattered as Iris swung out from the kitchen, small hand clinging to the dividing wall to prevent her socked feet from slipping on the hardwood floor as she leveraged herself towards me. Iris was thirteen, but her outfits always made her look much younger. A simple denim jumper covered a white cloth shirt. Her blonde hair was cropped short, tufts of it frizzed out over too-long ears. She tackled me in a tight hug. I saw Ellison peek out from the hallway and give me a tentative wave. He¡¯d gotten the best of our parents¡¯ features. Our father¡¯s electric blue eyes and our mother¡¯s wavy chestnut hair. ¡°Hey Ellis.¡± ¡°Where have you been?¡± Ellison asked. There was a notable strain in his voice. ¡°Is it bad?¡± I asked. ¡°Dark orange. More sandstone than clay. Where have you been?¡± ¡°Hospital.¡± When his eyes widened, I hurried on before he could assume the worst. ¡°Relax. Got out before they got my information.¡± ¡°Are you hurt?¡± Iris watched my lips intently as she finished the sign, closed hands with two index fingers pointed at each other. ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± I said, signing and speaking out loud. ¡°Just bumps and bruises.¡± And broken ribs that didn¡¯t hurt and a dislocated shoulder that was somehow fully functional. But that was filed under the category of things I didn¡¯t want to think too closely about. ¡°You guys okay?¡± Iris nodded. ¡°More disturbed than anything else. Mom called us both into the living room onto the couch with her and held onto us, then started crying uncontrollably.¡± I winced. ¡°Sorry I wasn¡¯t here. How long has she been orange?¡± I asked. ¡±Since the meteor.¡± Iris signed, her movements emphatic. ¡°She feed you guys?¡± ¡°We¡¯re fine. We made sandwiches.¡± Ellison answered before Iris could sign. Irritation flooded me and I looked towards the end of the hallway. Really? I was gone for two days and she couldn¡¯t be bothered to reheat a lasagna? Of course she couldn¡¯t. What was I thinking? Stolen story; please report. I stalked towards the hallway and Iris clung onto my arm, slowing me, sliding a foot across the ground. ¡±Don¡¯t make it worse.¡± I knew she was right. In that moment, though, right and wrong didn¡¯t matter. I felt so trapped, so damn strangled by this place. So, I stood and seethed. I reached up slowly to my forehead, feeling the spot on my forehead and finding the vein standing out on my skin. Shit. My meds. ¡°Okay,¡± I said finally, and Iris released me. ¡°I need to take some time. Do either of you need anything?¡± ¡°Not right at this minute. Got any money?¡± Ellison watched me knowingly, dark locks swinging across his forehead. ¡°I was washing Mr. Oliver¡¯s truck this morning¡ª¡± ¡°El, you know I don¡¯t like you working for him.¡± Ellison rolled his eyes. ¡°Not the point.¡± ¡°I¡¯m serious. He¡¯s the landlord, and he already tried to accuse you of stealing change from his car.¡± To say nothing of the fact that Ellison probably did. But the theft didn¡¯t match the man¡¯s explosive reaction and threats of eviction that terrified us for weeks. ¡°Wait, what do you need money for?¡± ¡°If you¡¯d let me finish, I would have told you by now,¡± Ellison snapped. ¡°Oliver¡¯s paying me tomorrow when he has cash on hand¡ª¡° ¡°Never work without knowing when you¡¯ll be paid¡ª¡° ¡°I did know. He said it upfront. But the point is a bunch of neighbors saw me washing his car. A whole bunch. The dust from that thing,¡± Ellison held up a fist and splayed his fingers, pantomiming the explosion. ¡°Got everywhere and it¡¯s thick. Everyone needs their car cleaned, and Tommy¡¯s down the street is price gouging. So, the opportunity is there, but I don¡¯t have the capital for it.¡± I did my best to ignore the lingo that undoubtedly stemmed from our mother. ¡°What about the twenty I gave you two weeks ago?¡± ¡°Snacks. But most of it went to Iris¡¯s new backpack.¡± Fuck. I¡¯d forgotten. Iris was mostly homeschooled due to inadequate support for deaf children in the local public school and bullying, but she was in a self-study group with other deaf children. As it turned out, sharing the same disability didn¡¯t count much for common ground, as Iris¡¯s backpack had been torn off her shoulders by an older boy and summarily tossed in a storm drain. ¡°How much do you need?¡± ¡°Twenty-five if you have it.¡± I snorted. ¡°What, are you outsourcing?¡± ¡°I need a jug and the Optimum is forty and tax.¡± ¡°If you¡¯re going for quantity just buy the Megs. It¡¯s half that. And it¡¯s not like any of our neighbors are getting valet parking. You¡¯re not waxing and detailing. Just clean the dust off their beaters.¡± ¡°Recurring business be damned.¡± Ellison sighed. ¡°Beggars can¡¯t be choosers,¡± I shot back. Three dollars would tide him over. Ellison always lowballed what he actually had. I opened my wallet and stopped, finding it empty. A low groan escaped me. ¡°What?¡± ¡°I bankrupted myself for shitty Girl Scout cookies.¡± ¡°Excuse me?¡± Ellison repeated again, voice monotone. ¡°Sue me, the world was ending.¡± Iris shifted so she was in both of our vision. ¡°Let me help.¡± ¡°Do... you have it?¡± Ellison asked uncomfortably. ¡°I¡¯ll break open November,¡± Iris signed. Her eyes were bright, as if she was happy to offer a solution. ¡°No,¡± Ellison said immediately. I shared an uncomfortable look with Ellison and turned back to Iris. ¡°You just broke October to get the water turned back on.¡± ¡°That was months ago.¡± Barely two months. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. Iris had a thing for cute porcelain piggy-banks, a relic of the past that had made a semi-ironic return in recent years. Iris¡¯s first bank had been a Frosty the Snowman lookalike she named January. I remembered October as fragments of a smiling jack-o-lantern, shattered amongst currency on the floor. My mother¡¯s goal had been to use the device to teach Iris the importance of saving, while making it difficult to ¡°borrow¡± those savings back. Yeah. It hadn¡¯t exactly worked out that way. I hated moments like this. I crouched down to her level. ¡°Okay. If Ellison¡¯s windfall is as big as he¡¯s making it out to be, he¡¯ll pay you back. If for some reason it doesn¡¯t and he can¡¯t, I will. You can¡¯t keep doing this kiddo.¡± My chest tightened when she shook her head, indicating she didn¡¯t need to be paid back. As much as I disliked my mother, there was no question we were cut from the same cloth, as was Ellison. We were mercenaries of a modern age, money and survival our only objectives. But Iris was different. Iris was the best of us. ¡°It won¡¯t take long, Iris. I¡¯ll have it back to you by the end of the day.¡± Ellison said. But I could hear the regret in his voice. I stood back, conflicted, looking between my sister and brother. I was proud of them. But I hated that our discussions were closer to business meetings. I hated that they had to operate like this. A chill went through me. If I died in the parking garage, would they be breaking November for me? Every dollar Ellison earned today going towards cremation, funeral costs? And what would the rest of their lives look like after my death gave mother an excuse to dive even deeper into the well? More desperation, fueled by white bread sandwiches and snack packs. It was exactly why I couldn¡¯t commit to fucking off to Berkeley. Not that I even could now. Trapped. And you¡¯ll always be trapped. The ceiling lowered. Just a slight, subtle shift but a clear early warning sign. I thanked Iris and walked hurriedly to my room. Meds. I needed my meds. I threw open the door. My bed was unmade the way I¡¯d left it. A layer of dust on my dresser stood out to me in glaring detail. The ceiling felt even lower, threatening now, as if it might descend and crush me. I grabbed a cluster of orange white-capped bottles and shook them into my unsteady hands. I tossed the pills back, doubling a few of the doses to make up for the time I¡¯d spent unmedicated in the hospital. Then I sat down on my bed with my hands on my knees and waited. It was too late. Everything was catching up to me. The meteor. The close call in the hospital. The barricades. My mother¡¯s condition. Ellison. Iris. College. Trapped. Can¡¯t breathe. I could feel the ceiling just above my head now. As much as I knew it hadn¡¯t moved, it felt like if I straightened up from my slouch my head would hit it. And I knew, if I looked up to check, I¡¯d see patterns in the striations. Gape-mouthed faces staring out from the plaster, leering, laughing, dying. It¡¯s just the stress. I repeated it over and over in my mind, trying to force the mantra to take root. You¡¯re having an anxiety attack. There were a million things I should have been doing. Checking with Dunkin''s to make sure I still had a job. Contacting the numbers on Nate¡¯s tip sheet. Deciding what I needed to do about the very real possibility that I was finally cracking under the pressure and my mental health had finally come back to finish the job. It didn¡¯t matter. I was too far gone. There was only one solution when it got this bad. I lowered to the floor, careful not to look at the ceiling, and slid myself under the bed. My hands closed around the metal slats that lined the frame vertically, my fingers wiggling between bar and mattress. It was a tight fit, too tight to turn my head in any direction other than sideways, staring beneath my simple brown comforter towards the door. And yeah, I know how this looks. A child in everything but name. I don¡¯t blame you if you judge me for it. I judge me for it. At this point you¡¯re probably wondering if I¡¯m even who I claim to be. If I¡¯m an imposter. But everything you¡¯ve heard is true. This is how it started. This is who I was. I considered the blinking notification in the bottom right for what felt like hours before finally focusing on it. The curiosity was killing me. And now that I had time to think, there were really only two possibilities. Either what I¡¯d experienced at the hospital was real, or I¡¯d lost it completely. If I was losing my mind, it was far gone enough that entertaining the delusion didn¡¯t really matter. The window expanded and the first notification scrolled. Chapter 4 The titles were far from my favorite thing, but I had to start somewhere. I pulled up the title menu¡ªthe way everything was spaced gave the impression there was space for dozens of titles, though I still only had two. Jaded Eye was currently set as primary. That¡¯s right. I¡¯d mouthed off to the system and accidentally equipped the title before everything hit the fan. I read the description again: It still felt like such an obvious swipe at me. ¡°Trite yet tragic,¡± was a hell of a way to describe someone¡¯s personal apocalypse. But the resulting effects were what I was interested in. Adept at identifying traps and avoiding ambushes. Okay, in for a penny, in for a pound. If there was anything to this, there were two events where the title could have potentially helped me. When I nearly opened the door and realized they would have men posted outside, it was like my mind had done a backflip to get me to stop. Considering the level of panic I was experiencing, having just indirectly witnessed a killing, I¡¯m not sure I would have stopped without something influencing the decision. But the cameras were far more compelling. As far as I knew, I had no idea how CCTV surveillance worked. Never read an article, never had any reason to research it. But somehow I was able to discern, clear as day, the direction the cameras were most likely facing. Would that fall under the ¡°identifying traps,¡± category, maybe? Come to think of it, I¡¯d felt the same psychological force holding me back when I¡¯d made the decision to stake out the apartment first. I focused on the original title. Born Nihilist. A prompt appeared, warning me I¡¯d be locked into the title for six hours. Jaded eye had theoretically saved me several times. But if I was going to figure any of this out, I needed to experiment. Strange that this title didn¡¯t mention any drawbacks. Maybe it was because the benefit wasn¡¯t as good as Jaded Eye? Other than a general lack of panic, I couldn¡¯t remember much of a difference in perception at the hospital before that original switch. I confirmed. And then, everything shifted. When I was little, my father took me kayaking in the open ocean. We only ever went the one time, partially because¡ªafter I tipped it¡ªwe lost the kayak, but mainly because of everything that happened after. We spent over an hour treading water in the grasp of an unannounced undertow, watching the shore grow farther and farther away. At some point I got tired and slipped off my father¡¯s back, and was pulled under into the ocean. I held my breath until my lungs were at the point of bursting, spasming, heaving in desperation. Then someone pulled me up. My father. He¡¯d managed to get the attention of a nearby boat and I was lifted into it, in shock and shivering. But the moment I realized we were in the boat, a feeling of relief so complete and raw washed over me, and I fell straight to sleep. That was what it was like, when the title switched. The terrifying, spiraling panic attack worse than any I¡¯d experienced vanished with a steady ebb, slowly fading away. The critical part of my mind wondered if it was just the meds kicking in, but I knew it wasn¡¯t that. The relief had never come this quickly, this easily. There was something to this. In for a penny, right? I opened the notifications and scrolled. No new titles were unlocked, but there were plenty of messages. Why? I hadn¡¯t accomplished much. I¡¯d used my only ability once and the most exciting thing I¡¯d done was run away. The question was answered by the next notification. Primary objective complete ¡ª Escape the hospital. Secondary Objective Complete¡ªEscape without resorting to direct violence or receiving further injury. Tertiary Objective Failed ¡ª Escape without being spotted. Wait. How did that even work? I shifted into an old theory-crafting mindset, one left long forgotten from back when I had time for games. I remembered a new notification popping right as the bullet pierced the wall. Were quests organic, forming to serve my current needs? Or was I being directed? If it was the second possibility, I wasn¡¯t sure I liked it. From one use? There was likely an exponential ramp, but if it was that easy to level, I could power it up with minimal effort. It was one advantage of the ability¡¯s low profile I hadn¡¯t realized until just now. Again, I focused on the ability, and again, I got no further explanation than the original flavor text. I opened the skill point screen. Strength: 3 Toughness: 4 Agility: 5 Intelligence: 8 Perception: 5 Will: 6 Companionship: 1 <> There was a confirmation prompt at the bottom, so any changes I made were temporary until I locked them in. I increased intelligence, just to make sure it wasn¡¯t capped at 10. The number rose to 13 before I dialed it back down to 8. I was tempted to leave it at thirteen, dumping all available points into it. My intellect had always been my best trait. The annoying thing was, the existing stats were more or less accurate. Working out at the school gym had fallen by the wayside in recent years. I was still fast on my feet, but not that fast. There were no tool tips or expanded information for any of the stats. Which rankled. It wasn¡¯t like I could pull up a wiki. Not to mention, I still had no idea what I was building towards. Was the system meant to just integrate into my daily life, or was there a larger goal? I knew, subconsciously, how deep I was in. I was embracing the system because it served as a distraction from the real worries¡ªworries that had dulled since the title change, but still rattled around in my head. I pulled up the feat screen and was immediately floored. Dozens of options, if not hundreds. Most were yellow, which I took to mean common traits. They scaled everything from the classics, like Fire Resistance I, to more obscure entries, like Collector I and Archivist I. An even larger number were grayed out, and there the names got more questionable and cryptic: Vampire. Explosive Tendencies. Synecdoche. I couldn¡¯t focus on anything that was grayed out for an explanation of what they did. Further annoying me, there was no description of the unlock condition for most of them either. I scrolled down to the bottom and found a dozen blue tinted perks that were class specific for the Ordinator. And my stomach dropped. The first Ordinator feat in the list was Assassin I. As I scrolled through the perks, my suspicions were confirmed. I think, up to that point I¡¯d assumed the system was serving a greater purpose. That users would be up against a greater threat. That there was a point in all this, delusion or not. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. But no. I knew what it was. The Ordinator was clearly a PVP class. And nearly all of the class specific abilities had something to do with screwing over other users. Siphoning experience party members received. Sneak attacks. Manipulation. That was unsettling to say the least. There were a half-dozen perks at the bottom that were gray and blue, class specific but completely locked. I read through the available ones again, until I found the perk that was absolutely the right choice. The only choice. Double-blind. My door opened, startling me out of the single-minded focus. I smelled her before I saw her. The scent of gin clung to her like cheap perfume. She staggered over. I could only see half of her, a pleated blue skirt that reached her ankles and bare feet. ¡°You didn¡¯t come to tell me you¡¯re back,¡± she said. Her voice was distant, vaguely sing-song. ¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯ve been worried sick this whole time. Grieving.¡± ¡°Did you even look for me?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± Mom said. She didn¡¯t sound sure about anything. ¡°The first day. Hospitals wouldn¡¯t tell us anything. No one by that name admitted, blah blah. You hurt?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Good... that¡¯s good.¡± There was a grunt and mattress squeaked as she lowered herself down to sit on the floor, back to me. Her legs were folded up under her and she was leaning slightly to the side. Ellison had been too kind in his estimation. This wasn¡¯t dark orange on the warning scale. This was early red at the very least. ¡°I almost died,¡± I said finally. ¡°We¡¯re all dying, Matthias. Just a matter of time.¡± No, I mean someone almost shot me. But before I could get the words out, she spoke. ¡°I need... to tell you something.¡± This was irregular. Mom didn¡¯t confide in me, wasn¡¯t the type. And she was oddly lucid, for how far gone she sounded. ¡°How bad is it?¡± I asked. ¡°It''s nothing like that. We need to talk about the trial.¡± Great. Here came the rant. The ever evolving story of how badly her bosses at the hedge fund had screwed her. How they¡¯d pulled the classic scumbag move and scapegoated the secretary. The executive assholes at Quad Sigma had been double dipping in both legitimate and illegitimate markets and hung her out to dry when they got caught. She¡¯d been indicted with money laundering, insider trading, embezzlement, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, and human trafficking. She cut a deal with the DA to turn on her bosses and most of the charges went away. After she testified, everything was wiped off her record except for the insider trading and money laundering, two charges that, while smaller, guaranteed she¡¯d never work in finance again. And then came the civil suits. ¡°We really don¡¯t have to talk about it,¡± I said, trying to prevent the downward spiral towards a meltdown this would inevitably trigger. ¡°I know the story.¡± ¡°No. You know what I¡¯ve told you.¡± A sinking feeling gripped me. She continued, ¡°When you hung up¡ª¡° ¡°I didn¡¯t hang up¡ª¡° ¡°Fine. When we got ¡®disconnected.¡¯¡± She raised her arms. I couldn¡¯t see it but knew from experience she was making air quotes. ¡°I almost lost it completely. Only Ellison and Iris kept me from it. The brink. And it wasn¡¯t just the thought of losing you. It was the guilt.¡± ¡°What guilt?¡± ¡°You do so much for this family, Matthias. Make sure the bills get paid. Cover the rent when I¡¯m short. Look after the children when I¡¯m too sick. I hate that I¡¯m so useless.¡± ¡±You¡¯re not useless.¡± The words reached the tip of my tongue. But I didn¡¯t say them. I¡¯d said those very words enough times to know how little they mattered. ¡°It came to me, right before the meteor hit. That I had this beautiful, hardworking boy, trying to make up for my failures. And I hadn¡¯t even had the decency to tell him the truth.¡± Mom twitched. A silent sob. Her voice grew heavier. ¡°That I lied to him. And everything he did for me, for his family, was based on a lie.¡± The serenity of Born Nihilist was shattered as I realized where this was going. ¡°Stop. I don¡¯t want to hear this.¡± ¡°I have to tell you, I have to tell someone.¡± Her voice cracked. ¡°Please don¡¯t.¡± I tried one final time. The many theories and doubts about her story I¡¯d entertained over the years began to compound, and the last thing I wanted was confirmation. But I was trapped in the confessional and as per usual, what I wanted didn¡¯t matter. Her voice was a whisper. ¡°I did it. Everything they said I did.¡± Even expecting something along those lines, it still floored me. I heard her blow her nose. ¡°It was my way in. I talked to my manager, Erin, asked to pick up more hours. Said I was willing to do anything, even if it was maintenance work. Iris was having trouble at school and I wanted to take her out, get her enrolled somewhere that would better meet her needs. The next day I was meeting with someone on the top floor. They knew about my background in web design, said they needed a prototype for alternative market purposes.¡± ¡°And you just didn¡¯t ask questions?¡± ¡°No, I did. They were very vague at first. Had me work on things in segments. I didn¡¯t figure it out for almost a year.¡± ¡°But you did figure it out eventually.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°And you kept going.¡± ¡°We needed the money.¡± ¡°No we didn¡¯t.¡± I growled. The bedframe squeaked as I squeezed the rails in my grip. ¡°We had Dad¡¯s pension and the money you made legitimately. It was enough.¡± ¡°To live on. To eat. But not to thrive.¡± ¡°Oh. So that¡¯s why we¡¯re thriving now.¡± My voice was cold, hard. Mom shivered. ¡°I know I fucked up.¡± ¡°Jesus Christ. And the human trafficking? The little girl they found? How did you even justify that? Collateral? The cost of doing business?¡± ¡°No!¡± The sudden increase of volume echoed. ¡°I would never¡ªI... didn¡¯t know about that. Any of it. They were running a shell game. Used key names for it, rotated the names.¡± I slid out from underneath the bed. Her hair was frizzed, her dark eyes sunken into her head. For some reason she¡¯d applied makeup, which was running down her face, making her look like a bad caricature of a grieving woman. Other than an initial pang, I felt no sympathy looking at her. ¡°Well. You did it. You told me. Now I know and your conscience is clear.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not¡ª¡° ¡°Then what was the point? What was the point of destabilizing this...¡± I waved my hand towards the wall, ¡°... this house of cards we live in?¡± ¡°Because now we can start fresh.¡± Her eyes were wide, filled with a manic mix of hope and desperation. ¡°We can start over, be a real family again. It¡¯s not working because I lied. And now the lie is gone.¡± My eyes went to the ankle monitor on her leg. Some lies are important. Some keep us grounded, others shield us from truths that are too terrible to face. The thought that my mother had been wrongly convicted, and that while the alcoholism was entirely her fault, she was not entirely to blame for our downfall? That was a necessary lie. And I could already feel the foundation crumbling. But I didn¡¯t say any of that. I couldn¡¯t even look at her. The words were torn from my mouth, full of spite. My fists tightened at my sides. ¡°Instead of changing anything, let¡¯s just keep doing exactly what we¡¯ve been doing. Which means letting me, and Ellison, and Iris handle the real problems and crawling right back into the bottle you came from.¡± Mom reeled like she¡¯d been slapped. I¡¯d gone too far. I knew it. But in the moment I didn¡¯t care. She gave me one final look of disappointment. ¡°Oh Matthias. You work so hard. But here¡¯s the thing they don¡¯t tell you. That trash they peddle? The nose to the grindstone, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense? That¡¯s all bullshit. They don''t let people like us rise. So we have to steal it from them. We have to cheat. Maybe someday you''ll understand.¡± With those parting words my mother left, shutting the door behind her. I couldn''t think about her confession. About any of it. So instead, I sat on my bed and pulled up the system screen. It was left open on the perk I¡¯d been considering earlier. I¡¯d had my doubts. Not being able to identify threats was a serious downside. Plus, the deceit would do me no favors if I ever revealed myself to anyone. But I¡¯d come to face the fact that I could not treat this like a game. I couldn¡¯t play a character that was out in the spotlight. The discovery that there was PVP cinched that. PVP always degenerated in execution. If it exists, someone will find a way to use it to rat-fuck someone else. In Eve, it works because there are restrictions and governing forces. But reality is closer to Rust: no rules, no laws, and the closest thing to a natural order is one caveman braining another caveman with a rock. My mother was looking for reconciliation, but all she¡¯d managed to do was reinforce the same lesson I¡¯d learned over and over. People could not be trusted. I hit the confirmation button. ///// Hours later, I¡¯d confirmed I still had my job at Dunkin¡¯s, but my watch had ended at the laundromat. They hadn¡¯t explicitly stated I was fired, but the owner had said he¡¯d let me know when he had hours, which for a part-timer might as well be the reading of last rites. I was looking over Nick¡¯s contact list, trying to decide where to start when the notification popped. It didn¡¯t wait for me to look at it before it expanded out, covering the contact sheet. Bounty at 1403 Vinewood Drive, due north. Threat Level: Low Time Limit: Until a condition is met. Conditions: Neutralize or Terminate. Reward: EXP (S), $10,000 Chapter 5 As I stared at the reward, I knew the system had me. If it was anything other than cold, hard cash, I might have ignored it. But that didn¡¯t change the fact there were several things to be concerned about. Rogue bounty at 1403 Vinewood Drive, due north. Threat Level: Low Time Limit: Until a condition is met. Conditions: Neutralize or Terminate. Reward: EXP (S), $10,000 The first obvious issue: I had no idea what the target was or how to identify them. The low threat level was reassuring, but what was that relative to? The SWAT officer could have easily killed me in the hospital garage, and my first quest didn''t even have a threat level. Also, the local user notification didn¡¯t necessarily imply I was the only one who received the message. In fact, it inferred almost the opposite. Enough users that the system limited the alert to those of us in a small radius, either to make sure we didn¡¯t pile into one section of the city, or because it didn¡¯t want us to all kill each other. Moreover, this was only the second quest I¡¯d received after waking up and escaping the hospital. I had to account for the possibility that there were other users who had been grinding for the last two days. Users who actually knew what a bounty was. Of course, there was the whole issue of how to complete the quest. If I took it seriously, I was hunting a person and might have to hurt them. I stuffed that away to deal with later. It was just easier to treat all this as theoretical. A game I was playing in my head to distract myself from the unpleasant truths that had recently come to the surface. And the cash reward was the perfect carrot. I had other reservations. It wasn¡¯t a stretch to conclude I had to be one of the weakest early on. No direct attacks, weak Strength and Toughness. I was a glass cannon without the cannon. There were potentially feats I could take to counter this, but that would have to wait for the next level. I didn¡¯t regret the decision to take Double-Blind, that still tracked. I told myself that this was a one-time thing. I¡¯d go, try to take a look at the bounty from a safe distance. Maybe use the opportunity to level up Probability Spiral a few times. And if it was easy, and there was no direct competitor, I¡¯d try to snake the bounty. But only if. Afterwards, I¡¯d reevaluate and decide if I was losing my damn mind or if there was something to this. But first, I had stats to distribute. Strength: 3 Toughness: 4 Agility: 5 Intelligence: 8 Perception: 5 Will: 6 Companionship: 1 <> I knew from what little information I could find that the Ordinator¡¯s main governing stat was Intelligence. That made it a safe investment. There was an argument to be made that I should wait until I understood the system better to level, but there was a better argument to be made that a fool often dies laden with resources. So, screw it. I raised Intelligence to thirteen. Then I immediately lowered it back down to 10 with a sigh. Again, the glass cannon-less cannon dilemma. I wasn¡¯t sure what Will did. But Strength would serve as an excellent litmus test for the delusion. I¡¯d maintained the same level of strength¡ªread: not much¡ªsince my early teens. If there was a sudden increase, I would notice it. I raised Strength to 5, bumped Agility to 6, and kept Intelligence at 10. As much as I wanted to increase Perception, it would have to wait for the next level. I focused on the prompt. And my body screamed. It was like every single muscle cramped up at once and started crawling, detaching themselves from my bones and swelling larger. I crumbled to the ground. My right knee¡ªan old soccer injury, raised the level of pain from excruciating to unbearable. I could feel the cartilage shifting, the joint reshaping. And then something happened to my mind. I had clarity. I could detach myself from the pain, and tell myself it was just temporary. I could lie to myself so convincingly that I began to believe it. Memories previously locked away came flooding back. I remembered small details of books I¡¯d read when I was learning to read. Pictures I¡¯d drawn in crayon. Notes I¡¯d scrawled down during my first lectures in high school. Then, the headache. A wild, ravenous migraine that felt like it would never stop until every neuron I had was burned out in the impossible wave of agony. I thought that my mind would break, like I¡¯d suffered a stroke, and it would never be quite the same again. That I¡¯d ruined the only advantage that life had ever given me. And then¡­ it faded. All at once. The pain was so complete it left me feeling hollow, aching, like I was a vessel drained of vitality and was now nothing more than a vacant shell. I pushed myself up and staggered. There was someone looking back at me in the mirror I barely recognized. Dissociative disorder is a topic I studied for the MCAT, but I only understood it in theory. I think you can only truly understand it when you''ve experienced it, a kind of out of body experience in your own skin. Everything looked slightly more distinct and defined. There were round muscles where my shoulders had once been flat, defined mass in my forearms, biceps, and triceps I¡¯d never had before. My clothing fit differently, felt stretched. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. A sudden thrill took me. I flexed in front of the mirror and grinned. Improvements that would have taken months of working out and stuffing in calories I couldn¡¯t afford had been implemented in minutes. Painful minutes, but minutes nonetheless. And then the smile faded as I thought about the implications. If the changes were noticeable to me immediately, they would likely be more than obvious to other people. I needed to be careful. If a couple points increase in Strength had changed me this much, I could only imagine how big the change would be if I had put all five points into Strength. Users who invested heavily in Strength would be incredibly obvious to anyone that knew them. And the stronger I looked, the less I would blend in. So, yeah, I wasn¡¯t touching Strength again any time soon. I¡¯d try Toughness next, see if the changes it brought were any less extreme. If this isn¡¯t a delusion. The little voice that was so insistent before was much quieter now. It was harder to separate the two possibilities, as if the increase in Intelligence had made me more likely to accept what was happening to me. I didn¡¯t know what that meant, and decided there was no reasonable way of knowing. But first, I needed to cover myself. I doubted my mother would be out of her room to notice, but my siblings had just seen me earlier that day. I couldn¡¯t do anything about the extra inch of height, but I could at least wear something baggy to hide my form and nondescript enough that it couldn¡¯t be used to track me down later. I found my father''s maroon hoodie shoved deep in my closet. The white A&M logo had cracked and crumbled off long ago. There was some mild trepidation as I tried it on, preparing myself for the musk of juniper and aftershave. But that scent had long since faded. Probably better not to think too much about that. You might be wondering why I didn¡¯t wear black, and that¡¯s fair. Black is slimming and doesn¡¯t draw the eye. The exception is, of course, the fact that someone wearing black alone at night might as well be flashing a neon warning sign. Gray would have been perfect, but maroon worked to my purposes. Nondescript, and enough color that it wouldn¡¯t draw attention or give me the sort of profile that people would remember. I checked myself in the mirror to confirm. The hoodie was large enough that it covered my more defined muscle mass, but I still filled it out more than before, far more than I would like. I¡¯d spent enough time wishing I wasn¡¯t the physical equivalent of a beanpole that the thought struck me as deliciously ironic, and I couldn¡¯t help but laugh. Then, I immediately winced. Yes, Matt, let them hear you laughing alone. That¡¯s not even slightly alarming. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. ¡°Come in.¡± No answer. Iris. That was good, it meant no one had heard me laughing like an idiot. But it was an obstacle, I needed to go, but the memory of how I¡¯d snubbed her on what could have been the last day of my life stuck firmly in my mind. I reached out and opened the door. Iris looked up at me, and her eyes immediately narrowed. Shit. ¡±What¡¯s up?¡± I signed to her. ¡±Growth spurt?¡± She responded, her fingers moving tentatively, as if she couldn¡¯t quite believe what she was seeing. Well, at least the Strength gain isn¡¯t a delusion. I sighed. Iris was the most perceptive member of our family by far. But a few early missteps due to that perception meant she¡¯d learned the value of keeping a secret. ¡°Yes and no. We can talk about it later. Do you need anything?¡± ¡°Ellis is acting weird. He asked me to let him have the room for a bit, and he¡¯s been in there by himself since you took your nap. I don¡¯t mind, but¡­¡± Iris looked towards our mother¡¯s room, and I understood her concern instantly. Mom always locks herself in when she¡¯s in the middle of a bender. I looked towards the end of the hallway. Iris¡¯s framed paintings lined the walls, accompanied by the occasional family photo. The room that she and Ellison shared was indeed closed. But my brother was twelve. He was getting to the age where he¡¯d need a little extra privacy. I sighed. Ellison really, really needed his own room. ¡°Tell you what,¡± I said aloud, so she could see the confidence in my face. ¡°If he¡¯s still in there when we get back, I¡¯ll talk to him. But it¡¯s not like it is with mom. Sometimes boys just need to be on their own.¡± ¡±Like you, earlier?¡± Iris asked. ¡°Exactly.¡± I smiled at her. ¡°Now, I need to run, but I¡¯ll be back in a couple of hours.¡± She nodded, but I felt her watch me go, eyes boring through my hoodie and into my back. ///// The first spike of adrenaline hit as I navigated my bike¡ªa gray roadmaster with a rusted chain perpetually stuck in a middle gear¡ªout of the apartment complex and immediately crossed the street in front of a police car parked outside the complex. Doing everything you shouldn¡¯t do, I gawked at it, only belatedly realizing there was no one in the driver¡¯s seat and exactly how stupid that had been. That boost to my Intelligence did something, but it wasn¡¯t going to solve my problems for me. I watched enough of the news back in the caf¨¦ to know there was a citywide curfew, and I was five minutes shy of violating it. I had to be more careful. Not to mention, it seemed to be strictly enforced¡ªthere was a sense of disquiet as I navigated past a stoplight that was always backed up a hundred feet with traffic, now empty and desolate. The sense of disquiet grew into something that would have normally been panic¡ªI suspected interference from Born Nihilist. But the doubts that accompanied the panic persisted. What exactly was I planning to do? Some unknown entity had dangled money in front of my face, and I¡¯d just leapt after it. No. I told myself. The plan was solid. I needed further confirmation of what was happening to me, and others like me. I needed an idea of what these other users were capable of. Of what the system wanted from us. I needed context. As I double-checked the system prompt and ensured that I was close, I reached back up and pulled my hood over my head. Between the curfew and closeness to the system announced location, my plausible deniability was fading fast. The purple notification light pinged again in the corner of my vision. Interesting, now that I thought about it, something similar happened at the hospital. Could it detect when I was in motion or under duress? I focused on the notification and it pulled up in a smaller, profile aligned window on the right-hand side. The information for the bounty hadn¡¯t changed, but it had gone up a thousand dollars, and the location had shifted several blocks to the east. Mentally recalculating, I adjusted my route. As I rode, I detected a surge of emotion. A mingling of unfamiliar feelings that welled in my chest. Curiosity and excitement, mixed with something else. Anticipation, maybe even hope? My legs pumped the pedals, and I picked up speed. It was so easy. I wasn¡¯t winded, wasn¡¯t even sweating. The tiny spark of hope kindled into something more. I¡¯d spent my entire life fighting impossible battles. Losing coin flips. Coming up on the raw side of every scenario. But, as my mother repeated incessantly, there was no such thing as bad luck. The numbers always came up in your favor eventually. Maybe this was the start of better days. Nothing about it was ideal, but for the first time I¡¯d been given an advantage. An edge. Maybe whatever had happened to me could be the first door to a better life. I¡¯d barely formulated the thought when I reached a crossroad. A dark shape blurred, flying through the air, obliterating my front tire and sending me crashing to the asphalt. Chapter 6 I covered my head with my arms, smacking into the oil-slicked ground. My vision blurred from the impact as discomfort radiated up my arms and my knees. My heart rate spiked, fluttering in my neck, until it reached a threshold. Then something happened. My pulse began to plummet, a wave of calculated calm washing over me like a drug. What was that? My title at work? Snap out of it. Take stock. You hit something. I stood, ignoring the cold prickles of pain from my scraped hands, and surveyed the scene. A dull stoplight loomed overhead through a layer of fog that rolled in from nowhere, emitting specular red strobes. My bike laid on its side, handlebars splayed upwards. Whatever hit me struck with enough force to tear the tire from the spokes. The tire had landed a short distance away, bent in half from the impact, wobbling back and forth on the asphalt like a ship in a storm. But I wasn¡¯t looking at the bike. I was looking at the crumpled form beside it. It took a moment to recognize it for what it was. A body. My skin lost all warmth as I realized what had happened. I wasn¡¯t under attack. Someone, or something, had thrown a whole-ass person and I¡¯d just happened to get in the way. A slight chill went through me as I considered a new possibility. I quickly pulled up my quest notification. It still indicated east. Good. Not my target. My earlier hope felt foolish now. This was the second case of violence I¡¯d had a front row seat to in less than a day. I snuck a look around the corner and saw nothing but an abandoned street, then made my way to the body to investigate Within a foot of him, the sharp scent of chemicals caught my nose. His skin was raw and angry, covered with red splotches that laid bare bits of muscle and bone beneath. Half of his face had been melted away. A single gray eye blinked and looked up at me. Acid. Nausea gripped me and I held a hand over my mouth, trying not to vomit. It¡¯s not that I was an idiot, but I had clearly been unprepared for the sort of situation I was getting myself into. I just hadn¡¯t expected it to be this bad. This is low threat? My one test case of Probability Spiral was indirect, minimally violent when you considered the person I used it on had a gun to my head. Any damage caused was brought on by his own actions. If this was the result of another user, then they were basically my polar opposite. I pulled my phone and keyed in 911¡ª Stop. A voice told me. My voice. It¡¯s a burner. It¡¯s fine for minor indiscretions, setting up payment and services from students for what amounts to petty misdemeanors. But you called home with it earlier. Even if it took them a while to access the call history, they could potentially trace it to the gas station you bought it from, pull the footage. Then it¡¯s just a matter of running the image through facial recognition. No. I couldn¡¯t call the police. But I couldn¡¯t just leave him there, either. I bent down, shining the light from my phone on his pants, confirming none of the acid had made its way onto them, then began rifling through his pockets. He groaned when I accidentally jostled him. Keys. Wallet. Drivers License, Dorian West. No cash in it, just pictures of his kids. My hand settled on something in his side pocket and I removed it. A knife. Not the compact sort. It was long with a wooden sheath, and an overly ornate handle trimmed with burnished silver. But now that I was looking at it, and looking at his pocket, it was far too large to have fit there comfortably. Weird. But irrelevant. Valuable? Maybe. But taking a weapon from a crime-scene seemed like a terrible idea. I tossed it aside. Dug around in his pockets until I found a cellphone. I swiped up, and when facial recognition failed, it gave me the emergency option at the bottom left. I called 911 and masked my voice while I gave the operator a location, then left the phone face-up next to the man¡¯s burned and withered ear. Grimly, I realized that they would, in all likelihood, not get to him in time. Not if things had been as chaotic as the SWAT officer who chased me into the garage made things seem. Bad for him, but not necessarily for me. It meant I¡¯d have plenty of time to make an escape. At some point, I¡¯d made the decision to flee. The body had firmly jolted me out of the previous manic state and fear for my life was kicking in. I didn¡¯t know enough about my class, my skill, or what I was up against. I was open to investigating before discovering the magnitude of the threat. Having now seen it second hand, there wasn¡¯t much point in putting myself in this level of jeopardy. The reward wasn¡¯t a small amount of money, but I wasn¡¯t willing to die for it, or curious enough to get my face burned off. I eyed the knife. It didn''t look like much, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to have a little protection, and it wasn¡¯t like this guy was using it. I took the knife from the ground and slid it out to check out the blade. It was long and pointed, more like a dagger. It felt good as I hefted it in my hand before I, then I slipped it back in its sheathsheathe and , nestlednestling it into the kangaroojoint pocket of my hoody. Oh. Apparently we were doing unbound System loot now. That was a sure sign this guy was another User and a strong indication the scenario I was in involved PVP. No way that could possibly go badly. I glanced at the man on the ground with a bit of suspicion. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. I wasn''t particularly impressed. The description pretty much could have just said knife and gotten the same point across. Readjusting my hood, I gave one last forlorn look to my fallen bike and left it behind, jogging back down the street towards home. Then someone screamed. A woman¡¯s voice, pained and shrill. ¡°I''ll kill you and your mother, you bastard.¡± She screamed out, voice echoing from almost a block away. I felt myself deflate. Because the voice sounded familiar, yet I couldn¡¯t place it. And now I had to look. My palms started to sweat as I crept down the alley. Every footstep seemed unconscionably loud, grit and gravel crunching under my feet. I found myself silently wishing that I''d worn softer shoes. The voices grew louder until they crescendoed. A man cackled, so loud and over the top it might have been funny if I''d heard it in any other context. I slid down against the wall and leaned over. It was like having a front row seat to a portal to hell. A half dozen bodies in worse condition than the earlier man littered the road. Their features were raw, slowly erased by a bile-like liquid that covered a large chunk of the ground. It seemed to be bubbling but not burning through the concrete itself, which honestly wasn''t much in terms of comfort. A car was burning from the engine block upwards, the entire front caved in, a driver splayed lifelessly through the half-shattered windshield. A quick check on my quest showed I was right on top of the target location, but it gave no further information. And then, at the center of the carnage, I saw her. Daphne Verner. She was Erin¡¯s daughter. The manager of the hedge fund who had pulled my mother off the straight and narrow. They came over to our house occasionally for dinner. Back when we had a house. Daphne was reed thin. Glasses. Acne everywhere. I didn''t really like her at first. She was stand-offish, and tended to give off the air she was constantly looking down on you. Only, that was mostly just her face. Eventually, we discovered we played some of the same games and bonded. Of course, then everything went to shit. Daphne looked very different now. It wasn''t a glow up. It was more of a hulk up. Biceps easily bigger than mine, body lithe but packed with muscle, like a professional swimmer. Her hair was tied up in a severe bun. She was wearing a long, blue cardigan jacket and athletic wear. She was bent over, panting and in pain. In her right hand she held a claw hammer, invoking an image of Home Depot Thor. Okay, so if her being here wasn''t enough, given the sudden appearance of muscle mass, either her life was completely different from when I''d known her or Daphne was clearly a User. And she was losing. Her opponent was a male in his late thirties, wearing a tight black shirt with no sleeves despite not having much muscle to show off. He darted around her, bare handed, driving a fist into her side and darting away. He giggled maniacally. There was a blue glow that settled around Daphne and she seemed to gain a second wind, forcing herself to a standing position. It was just in time. Wife-beater guy held out an arm and a flock of birds seemed to phase out of the blackness of his shirt, turning green. Daphne threw herself to the side, dodging as the birds impacted the pavement in green splatters. Some of the splash-back must have touched her because she cried out and impacted the passenger panel of a nearby truck, leaving a massive dent. I winced. This was a bad matchup. I considered her for a moment. Low mobility, built, outlasted a dozen other people judging from the bodies¡ªIf I didn''t miss my guess, Daphne was some sort of tank-role with only melee to speak of. As opposed to her opponent, who was effectively a mobile, ranged DPS. Wife-beater guy turned his back to me for just a moment. All at once, it was like I had x-ray vision. Organs that I''d only seen in biology textbooks became clear. I could see his heart, lungs, kidneys, liver. For a second, I thought it was some unforeseen aspect of my class. Then I looked down at the knife in my trembling hand. That title was really doing work. Gains additional utility when used from behind, huh? Whoever was writing the item descriptions needed to be fired. Daphne took cover behind the burning car as Wife-beater guy threw out another flock of acid birds. Only, this time, instead of flying in a straight line, they curved in a hairpin turn. She pressed herself against the metal, but I watched, helpless, as two impacted her side. Daphne screamed out, falling to the ground and rolling on her side. Wife-beater guy closed on her. It was over. Unless she had something up her sleeve, she was going to die. I moved up, taking cover behind a mailbox. What could I do? What should you do? The question struck me. This wasn¡¯t my problem. I¡¯d come out here to scout. To get an idea what I was up against. Now, I had that information: I was a small fish in a vast, terrifying ocean. People were literally dying in the streets handfuls at a time. For what the system had referred to as a low priority, local bounty. What typical bullshit. It¡¯s not like we were ever truly civilized. Not really. Things had always been bad. But there was at least a veneer of civility. A pretense of a system to hold things in check without ever truly fixing anything. And now there was a new system. I had hoped it could be a new start, a redistribution of power and society. But as I looked over the charred bodies on the street, at Daphne, writhing on her back, I saw only chaos. Winner Takes All Primary Objective: Use Your Newfound Abilities to Win the Game and Escape. Reward: ???