Double-Blind CH1+2

AN: This is a new project. During hiatus, I was blocked and started writing something a little less intensive than Monarch for fun. I've never written a LITRPG and thought I'd try my hand at it. Basic description: What if a LITRPG took place in the real world, and fantasy elements started to blend over. It's darker in tone. Main influences are Code Geass and a bit of Mr. Robot. You guys are the first to read this so I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Chapter 1.

Have you 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 a child’s first cries. 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 have heard it and its analogues so many times across my life that it has lost all significance beyond the enmity it invokes.

Mother with a drinking problem?

Sorry kid.

Sister with fetal alcohol syndrome?

Sorry it worked out this way.

A father who decided to take one more call on his way home that just happens to be a domestic with boil-over potential?

Sorry for your loss.

And on it goes. There is no word in the English language as useless as, “Sorry.”

Which is 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. There was a way to put this that he would understand, and I knew my first responses had a tendency of coming out harsh.

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. Chased more girls than he ever had on the football team. Which led us to this unfortunate series of events.

“Everyone’s seen my junk 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—“

I rolled my eyes as he ranted. It was blatantly untrue—the 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, Leo? 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 week 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 gossip-hawks 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, much 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. “Leo. 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. The gossip-hawks at 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. “I’m small, weak, vulnerable.” In a naturally hostile environment—high-school, for example—you might as well be carrying a flashing fuck-me-up sign to 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. A murdered sibling, perhaps. A malevolent god, come down from the heavens to grace me with the power I now hold.

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 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—my siblings—were 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 alternative was doubling down now.

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 meagre four or five hours of sleep a night to two or three.

Just 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 it 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.

“Leo?” 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 stood 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 teased and 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 the prospect of even talking to her. Where had I gone wrong?

Mouth open, horrified, she pointed behind me.

Someone screamed. Then another person, then another. I spun around to look. This street 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 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 a woman cling to each other. A group of girls from my high school pressed themselves 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 she was standing was 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 brothers 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?”

“Leo, 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, Leo.” 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, Leo?” 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 engrained in me.

“You need to get to shelter. Get inside.”

“How bad is it?”

Silence. “They’re saying it's going to 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, Leo.”

“I will.” I didn't bother pointing out that our shabby three-bedroom apartment wouldn't offer much protection. A bomb shelter would fare just as badly. There was no getting away from something like that.

“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 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.”

“Leo, I—“

There was a click. I looked at my phone and saw the call had ended. I tried a few more times and got the 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 the doughnut shop 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 heading 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.

“Can I have some?” 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 trashcan.

She dialed, held the phone to her ear, then handed it back.

“Couldn't get through?”

“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.

“You’d think it was coming for her personally,” 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. And a hundred yards above, the meteor exploded into a massive wave indigo ash that swallowed everything and a shockwave that 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 and ignoring her so I wouldn't be late. I saw Danielle Espinosa, asking me to the solstice dance—and me, focused so hard on perfecting my response, mulling over on the problematic consonants to avoid a stutter, that she took my silence as rejection and stormed off. And last, I saw the day that cemented in my mind that heroes were fools: my father’s police cruiser through dusty blinds, pulling up at 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:

<System Message: Flauros initiative enabled. System is online.>

<System Message: Error. Core actors not found. Recalibrating>

<System Message: Analysis of user failed. User does not fit into existing schema. Activating backups.>

<SYSTEM MESSAGE: USER. ARE YOU THERE?>

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.

<WELCOME, USER.>

No system message notification this time. Just direct text.

<ARE YOU A SHEEP OR A WOLF?>

It reminded me of a question off one of those Freudian, mealy-mouth surveys therapists pour over later to psychoanalyze you, where there's no correct choice. Only, again, my options were limited. <WOLF> hovered below the text, the only option.

<WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOUR LIFE FOR SOMETHING GREATER THAN YOURSELF?>

If I had a mouth, I would have laughed. Again, there was only one answer highlighted.

<NO>

I started as a wall of text filled the screen.

<THERE IS A RUNAWAY TROLLEY BARRELING DOWN THE TRACKS. AHEAD, ON THE TRACKS THERE IS ONE PERSON YOU LOVE TIED UP AND UNABLE TO MOVE. YOU CAN PULL THE LEVER TO DIVERT THE TROLLEY TO THE SIDE TRACK. HOWEVER, YOU NOTICE THERE IS A PERSON YOU DO NOT KNOW TIED TO THE SIDE TRACK>

A feeling of unease washed over me. The trolley problem was ethics 101. There’s a wash of criticism and general issues with it. And frankly, it was highly hypothetical and stupid. But this version was wrong. There was 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.

<PULL THE LEVER>

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 break 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 participate. No longer a mortal but a self-appointed god. You are weighing the worth of five lives and deciding that they 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.

<PULL THE LEVER>

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 up 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

<WHO ARE YOU?>

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, harebrained 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, as 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.

<WHO ARE YOU?>

The only answer was listed below the question, and looking at it sent a cold chill through me.

<I AM THE HAND IN THE SHADOWS>

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.

<System Notification—>

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 thousand.

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.

<System message: CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE AWAKENED THE AQUARIUS CLUSTER.>

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?

<THIS IS NOT A HALLUCINATION.>

Apparently, the answer was yes. But Rene Magritte wanted his joke back.

<FOR YOUR REBELLION IN THE FACE OF IMMINENT DEMISE, YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE TITLE: BORN NIHILIST.>

“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.

<BORN NIHILIST: Augments the user’s existing proclivity to remain calm and rational, even in the worst of situations>

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.

<YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE TITLE: JADED EYE.>

I glanced at it and immediately regretted doing so after reading the first line.

<JADED EYE: A trite yet tragic event has twisted the user’s ability to see the world through a clear lens—>

“Fuck off!” I swiped at it, but it danced away and the text continued to scroll.

<—which 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.”

<Confirmation: The title Jaded has replaced Nihilist as a primary title. The primary title can be rotated every six hours.>

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. We have 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—

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.

<Congratulations: Between the confluence of your answers in the maw and your titles, you have unlocked an alternate class.>

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?

<Alternate classes can be powerful. Their strength is in their utility. But be wary, they are not as uncommon as you might think.>

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?

<System Notification: You have unlocked Ordinator as a primary class. Do you wish to proceed?>

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—schizophrenia, psychosis—had 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.

<YES | NO>

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.

Fuck, my head hurt.

I gave it one more second, then made my choice. The response was immediate.

<Confirmation: User has accepted the contract.>

Wait, what contract? No one said anything about a contract. There wasn’t a damn EULA.

<Notification: User has chosen Ordinator as a primary class.>

<Notification: User has reached Level 1.>

<Ability unlocked: Probability Spiral, Level 1.>

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.

“—Put 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—“

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 brass 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—a man who had likely been injured in the same event I had—felt 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 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 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—and specifically my neighbor was more than likely a victim of the blast. What if the fallout changed us—

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—

“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. “I surrender.”

“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.

“You 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 fuck?” My voice cracked. “I'm just a kid, man. Please. I don't even know who 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.