The rats in Sector 4 didn't run from people anymore. They watched.
Kieran leaned his forehead against the cold, condensation-slicked tiles of the subway tunnel, trying to breathe without coughing. It was a losing battle. A spasm seized his chest, wet and rattling, forcing him to double over. When he pulled his hand away from his mouth, his glove was stained with a dark, foamy red.
"Three days," he whispered to the darkness. That was the doctor's estimate. Three days until your lungs turn to soup.
He picked up his mop. He wasn't dead yet, which meant he was still on the clock.
Kieran Valis was twenty-four years old, but he looked forty. His skin was the color of old parchment, his eyes sunken deep into dark sockets. He worked for the Transit Authority of New New York, scrubbing the grime off the hyper-train platforms deep underground where the sunlight never touched. It was a job for the "Unregistered"—people who didn't have enough social credit to live in the filtered air of the Upper Domes.
The tunnel smelled of ozone, urine, and the distinctive metallic tang of the dirty bomb residue that still coated the lower city walls like black mold.
Ding.
The announcement chime echoed through the empty station. The robotic voice was cheerful, a stark contrast to the flickering fluorescent lights.
"Attention, citizens. The planetary alignment is complete. The Global Council wishes you a productive day. Remember: Order is Prosperity."
Kieran scoffed, wringing out his mop into a bucket of gray water. "Order is prosperous for you," he muttered. "For us, it's just quiet starvation."
He moved to the next patch of grime. He didn't hate the world. Hate took energy, and he was running on fumes. He just felt a heavy, numb exhaustion. He had spent his whole life keeping his head down, following the rules, paying his taxes, and what did he get? Terminal radiation poisoning and a minimum-wage job cleaning up after the people who poisoned him.
Suddenly, the rats scattered.
It wasn't a noise. It was a pressure.
The air in the tunnel grew heavy, static electricity prickling Kieran's skin. The hair on his arms stood up. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed angrily, glowing brighter and brighter until they were blindingly white.
"Power surge?" Kieran shielded his eyes, dropping the mop.
The ground lurched. Not a shake, but a drop. It felt like the entire planet had just missed a step on a staircase.
Then, the sky tore open.
Deep underground, Kieran shouldn't have been able to see the sky. But the ceiling of the subway station didn't matter. The rock, the steel, the miles of concrete—it all became transparent, rendered as ghostly wireframes for a split second.
Through the ghost-ceiling, Kieran saw it. A massive, geometric tear in the fabric of space, hovering over the city like a judgmental eye.
Blue light flooded the world.
It wasn't natural light. It was data. Streams of binary code, runes, and mathematical equations poured down from the tear, passing through buildings and people alike.
[Planetary Synchronization: 100%] [Initiating System Integration.] [Welcome, Humanity, to the Grand Game.]
The voice boomed inside Kieran's skull, bypassing his ears entirely. It was a voice of absolute authority, cold and genderless.
Kieran fell to his knees, clutching his head. The pain was excruciating. It felt like someone was rewriting the neurons in his brain with a hot needle.
"What... is... this?" he gasped.
Across the station, a homeless man who had been sleeping on a bench began to float. A golden pillar of light enveloped him. The man's dirty rags dissolved, replaced by shimmering plate armor. A sword of pure light materialized in his hand.
[Subject 4892: Awakened.] [Class: Paladin of the Morning Star.] [Rank: B.]
Kieran watched, his vision blurring, as the homeless man looked at his hands in wonder, his sores healing, his posture straightening. He looked like a god.
Then, the blue light found Kieran.
He looked up, expecting the same warmth. Maybe this was it. Maybe the universe was finally balancing the scales. Maybe he would be healed.
The beam hit him.
It didn't feel like a blessing. It felt like acid.
"ARGH!"
Kieran screamed as his skin began to blister. The blue light turned a sickly, corrupt gray the moment it touched him. The System voice returned, but it wasn't smooth anymore. It was stuttering. Glitching.
[Scanning Subject: Kieran Valis.] [...Process...ing...] [Error. Error. Error.]
[Subject Vitality: Critical (0.2%).] [Subject Spirit: Broken.] [Subject Destiny: Null.]
The golden light ignored him. It swirled around him, repulsed, like oil trying to mix with water.
[Assessment: Waste Data.] [The System does not accept broken vessels.] [Action: DISCARD.]
The words hung in the air, glowing in jagged red text.
Kieran laughed. He couldn't help it. Blood bubbled up his throat, spilling over his lips.
"Discard?" he wheezed, staring up at the invisible judges. "I'm... trash? Even now?"
The floor beneath him dissolved.
The concrete didn't break; it simply ceased to exist. A square hole, perfectly pixelated, opened up beneath his feet. Kieran fell into darkness.
He tumbled through the void. Above him, he saw the subway station shrinking away, a glowing island in a sea of black. He saw the homeless man—the new Paladin—raising his sword to cheer, surrounded by angels. He saw the world celebrating its salvation.
And he was falling away from it all.
"So this is it," Kieran thought, the darkness wrapping around him like a cold blanket. "I die in the dark. Just like I lived."
He closed his eyes, waiting for the impact. Waiting for the end.
But the darkness wasn't empty.
As he fell deeper, the silence began to whisper.
...reject... ...unfinished... ...glitch...
Kieran's eyes snapped open. He wasn't falling into hell. He was falling into a junkyard.
Below him, endless mountains of gray shapes loomed. Broken swords the size of skyscrapers. Twisted carcasses of dragons made of static. Floating islands of corrupted code. This was the place where the System dumped the things that didn't work. The cutting room floor of reality.
[Warning: Entering The Abyss (Layer 0).] [Atmosphere: Corrosive.] [Mana Density: Error.]
Kieran slammed into the ground.
He didn't break his bones. He splashed.
He landed in a pool of black liquid that felt like liquid nitrogen. He thrashed, gasping for air, but the liquid forced its way into his mouth, down his throat. It burned like fire. It tasted like metal and ozone.
He dragged himself onto the jagged shore, heaving, vomiting up the black sludge. His body was on fire. The radiation in his lungs was warring with the foreign substance he had just swallowed.
[System Alert!] [Unauthorized Foreign Data Detected in Body.] [Attempting to Purge...] [Purge Failed.]
[Data is overwriting Host DNA.]
Kieran convulsed. His veins turned black, visible through his pale skin. The radiation sickness—the thing that had been killing him for years—was being... eaten. The black sludge was consuming the sickness, but it was consuming him too.
He looked at his hand. His fingers were flickering. One second they were flesh, the next they were wireframe, then raw code, then flesh again.
"What am I?" he choked out.
The red text appeared again, but this time, it wasn't the voice of the System. It was something else. Something ancient and angry that lived in the code.
[Congratulations, Subject.] [You survived the drop.]
[Class Generated: ERROR.] [Trying closest match...] [Match Found: The Decompiler.]
Kieran lay on his back, staring up at the swirling gray sky of the Abyss. He felt... different. The pain in his chest was gone. The weakness was gone. In its place was a cold, hungry void.
He reached out a hand toward a rusted metal bar sticking out of the ground nearby.
He didn't want to pick it up. He wanted to know it.
His vision shifted. The world turned into a grid of green lines.
[Object: Rusted Iron Bar.] [Durability: 12/100.] [Structure: Simple.] [Option: DECONSTRUCT?]
Kieran clenched his fist. "Deconstruct."
The iron bar shattered into sparks of light. The light flowed into his hand, absorbed into his skin. He felt a tiny surge of power—not mana, but raw existence.
[Material Absorbed.] [Iron +1.] [Repairing Host Body: 0.01% complete.]
Kieran stood up. He looked at his hands. They were steady. For the first time in years, they didn't shake.
He looked around at the infinite wasteland of broken gods and deleted monsters. He wasn't a Paladin. He wasn't a Hero. He was the garbage man of the universe.
And the universe had a lot of trash to clean up.
Kieran smiled, and his eyes flashed with the color of a blue screen crash.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's see what else I can break."