Marcus Chen had knocked on 847 doors in his ten years as a debt collector. He remembered the number because he'd started keeping track after door number thirty-two—the one where a middle-aged woman had thrown a coffee mug at his head.
Today would be door 848.
The apartment building in South Boston smelled like mildew and defeat, the kind of place where dreams came to die slowly. Third floor, unit 12C. According to his tablet, the occupant was Jennifer Larson, thirty-two, single mother of two, three months behind on a medical loan. $4,700 outstanding. His commission: $94.
He'd make more money if she agreed to a payment plan. He'd make nothing if she wasn't home, which honestly, he was hoping for.
Marcus raised his hand to knock, then paused. Through the thin door, he could hear a television—some cartoon with high-pitched voices. A child laughed. His hand stayed suspended in the air.
*Just do your job,* he thought. *You have your own debts.*
$80,000 in student loans. $15,000 spread across four credit cards. $40,000 in medical bills from his mother's cancer treatment—bills that had kept coming even after she died. Marcus Chen understood debt intimately. He understood that the system was rigged, that people like Jennifer Larson and people like him were just numbers in someone else's profit margin.
He also understood that understanding didn't pay the bills.
He knocked. Three times, firm but not aggressive. Professional.
Footsteps approached, hesitant. The peephole darkened. A long pause.
"Ms. Larson? My name is Marcus Chen. I'm with Bright Future Collections. I'd like to speak with you about—"
"Go away." Her voice was tired, not angry. Resignation, not defiance.
"I understand this is difficult, but—"
"I said go away. I'll call the police."
Marcus sighed, pulling out his phone to log the failed contact attempt. He'd try again next week. Maybe she'd—
The sky turned blue.
Not the normal blue of a clear autumn afternoon. This was *wrong*—an electric, pulsing blue that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Marcus looked up just as the first pillar of light punched through the ceiling.
He had exactly one second to think *what the hell* before the building shook like God had picked it up and dropped it.
The door to 12C flew open. Jennifer Larson stumbled out, a child clutched in each arm, her face white with terror. "What's happening? What's—"
The second pillar of light came through the floor.
It was beautiful and terrible, a column of pure azure energy that rose from the floorboards and pierced the ceiling as if the building were made of paper. Where it touched, reality seemed to... crack. The air shimmered. Marcus's vision blurred.
And then the words appeared.
They weren't on a screen. They weren't projected. They simply *existed*, floating in his field of vision in crisp white text against a translucent blue background:
```
[SYSTEM INTEGRATION INITIATED]
[Scanning entity: Marcus Chen]
[Age: 34 | Species: Human (Homo Sapiens) | Status: Conscious]
[Compatibility analysis in progress...]
[WARNING: Planetary Integration Event Detected]
[Your world has been selected for incorporation into Universe 7-Delta]
[All sentient beings age 15+ will receive System access]
[Initializing...]
```
Marcus stared at the words. His brain, trained by a lifetime of forms and bureaucracy, processed them with mechanical efficiency even as his survival instincts screamed that something fundamental had broken in the universe.
"Do you see this?" he said, turning to Jennifer. She was still holding her children, but her eyes had that distant look of someone reading something invisible. "The words. Do you—"
"Mommy, what's happening?" The older child, maybe six years old, was crying.
```
[Compatibility analysis complete]
[Processing optimal class assignment...]
[Analyzing personality matrix...]
[Analyzing life experiences...]
[Analyzing karmic balance...]
[Class assigned]
```
Marcus held his breath. Around him, the building continued to shake. Somewhere below, someone screamed. Car alarms wailed from the street. But all of that faded into background noise as new text appeared:
```
[Class: DEBT COLLECTOR]
[Rank: F]
[Type: Support / Non-Combat]
[Predicted Survival Rate: 0.3%]
[Welcome to the System, Marcus Chen]
[Good luck. You're going to need it.]
```
F-rank. Support. Non-combat. 0.3% survival rate.
Marcus had spent ten years being told he was worthless in various creative ways, but this was a new low. Even the apocalypse thought he was trash.
"No," he said aloud. "No, this is— I'm hallucinating. Gas leak. Carbon monoxide. That's—"
```
[TUTORIAL QUEST ACTIVATED]
[Quest: First Steps]
Objective 1: Open your Status Window (0/1)
Objective 2: Survive the next 60 seconds (0/60)
Rewards: +100 XP, [System Interface - Basic]
Failure: Death
[Note: Hostile entities are manifesting in your vicinity. We recommend moving.]
```
The wall exploded.
Not from outside in—from *inside* out. Plaster and drywall erupted into the hallway as something pushed through from apartment 12B. Something that definitely hadn't been there sixty seconds ago.
It was roughly the size of a large dog, but that's where any comparison to Earth biology ended. Its body was segmented like an insect's, covered in chitinous plates that gleamed with an oily purple sheen. Six legs ending in serrated claws. A head that was mostly mouth—concentric rings of teeth that rotated like a living garbage disposal.
Above its head, more text appeared:
```
[Juvenile Void Spawn]
Level: 3
Status: Hungry
```
The creature's mouth-head swiveled toward them with a sound like grinding metal.
Marcus grabbed Jennifer's shoulder. "Run."
To her credit, she didn't freeze. She turned and ran for the stairs, children still clutched against her chest. Marcus followed, his mind bizarrely calm in the way it sometimes got during truly terrible collection calls. The part of his brain that handled crisis situations had apparently decided that monster insects were just another Tuesday.
Behind them, the Void Spawn made a sound between a screech and a purr and gave chase.
The stairwell was chaos. People poured from their apartments, some running blindly, others standing frozen in shock, all of them with that distant look of people reading invisible text. Marcus shouldered past an elderly man who was just standing there, tapping at the air like he was using an invisible smartphone.
"Status," the man muttered. "How do I open my status? Is it voice activated? Status! Status Window!"
A blue screen popped into existence in front of the man, and his face lit up with wonder and terror. "Oh my God, it's real. It's all—"
The Void Spawn caught him from behind. Marcus looked away, but he couldn't block out the sound—the wet crunch of chitin on bone, the brief, gurgling scream.
```
[Warning: Party member has died]
[You are not currently in a party]
[This message was sent in error]
```
*Jesus Christ,* Marcus thought. *The apocalypse has bugs.*
He hit the ground floor at a dead run, Jennifer still ahead of him. The front door was shattered, hanging from one hinge. Through it, Marcus could see the street, and his brain tried very hard not to process what he was seeing.
More pillars of light, hundreds of them across the city. Buildings collapsed. Cars overturned. And moving through it all—creatures. Dozens of species, all of them wrong, all of them hostile. A flying thing with too many wings. Something that looked like a bear made of shadow. A swarm of what might have been birds if birds were made of broken glass.
And people. Hundreds of people, running, fighting, dying.
Above it all, in the smoke-filled sky, one last message appeared:
```
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[Welcome to Universe 7-Delta]
[Current Planetary Survival Rate: 94.7% (declining)]
[Good luck]
```
Marcus stood in the doorway, Jennifer beside him, and watched the world end.
Then he took a breath and said the words he'd been avoiding.
"Status Window."
A translucent blue screen materialized in front of him, and Marcus Chen—debt collector, college dropout, professional disappointment—read his character sheet in the apocalypse:
```
═══════════════════════════════════════════════
NAME: Marcus Chen
LEVEL: 1 (0/1000 XP to next level)
CLASS: Debt Collector [Rank F]
RACE: Human
STATS:
- STR (Strength): 8
- AGI (Agility): 10
- VIT (Vitality): 9
- INT (Intelligence): 13
- WIS (Wisdom): 11
- CHA (Charisma): 7
- LUK (Luck): 6
HEALTH: 90/90
MANA: 130/130
STAMINA: 90/90
SKILLS:
- [Debt Sense Lv.1]: Detect existential debts within 10m
- [Minor Collection Lv.1]: Collect objects/currency owed
- [Ledger]: View all detected debts (Passive)
TITLES: None
HUMANITY: 100/100
STATUS EFFECTS: [Shock], [Disbelief], [Impending Doom]
═══════════════════════════════════════════════
```
Marcus stared at his stats. Six luck. *Six.*
"Well," he said aloud, as a Void Spawn scuttled past the doorway and a woman somewhere nearby screamed, "that explains a lot."
His Debt Sense pulsed. The skill activated automatically, and suddenly Marcus could *see* things he hadn't been able to see before. Translucent threads of light connecting people to each other, to objects, to places. Some threads were thin and faint. Others pulsed with an intensity that made his eyes water.
And everywhere, floating above heads like price tags in some cosmic pawn shop, he saw numbers.
The elderly man who'd been killed in the stairwell—before he died, Marcus caught a glimpse: **[Unpaid: 47 years of kindness to strangers]**. Jennifer Larson, clutching her children: **[Unpaid: 3 months rent, $4,700 medical debt, 18 years of love given freely]**.
A teenager running past, baseball bat in hand: **[Unpaid: 2 days until college applications due, dreams deferred, potential unrealized]**.
Everyone owed something. Everyone was owed something. And Marcus could see it all.
A Void Spawn burst from an alley, heading straight for a group of civilians trapped against an overturned bus. One of them—a man in a business suit—was already dead, his body sprawled across the pavement. Above his corpse, a tag floated:
**[Collectible: 847 XP (Unspent)]**
**[Collectible: 1x Skill Fragment - Business Acumen (23% Mastery)]**
**[Collectible: 1x Gold Watch (Value: 3,200 SC)]**
Marcus didn't think. He ran toward the body, his hand outstretched, and somehow he *knew* what to do. The skill activated like muscle memory he'd never built.
"[Minor Collection]!"
Light flowed from the corpse to his hand—golden for the XP, blue for the skill fragment, silver for the watch. They dissolved into his palm, absorbed into his body in an instant.
```
[Minor Collection successful!]
[+847 XP (847/1000)]
[+1 Skill Fragment (Stored)]
[+1 Gold Watch (Inventory 1/20)]
[WARNING: Collection performed on fresh deceased]
[Karmic evaluation: Neutral (no debt relationship existed)]
[Humanity: 100/100 (No change)]
```
Power flooded through Marcus's body. The XP integrated itself into his muscles, his reflexes, his mind. He felt *stronger*, more capable. Still weak by any objective measure, but no longer quite so helpless.
The Void Spawn turned toward him, apparently annoyed that he'd stolen its kill's loot.
Marcus looked at the creature. Looked at the threads of debt swirling through the air. Looked at his own hands, still glowing faintly with collected power.
He thought about Jennifer Larson and her $4,700 in medical debt. About his own $135,000 in various debts. About how the entire world economy was just an elaborate system of who owed what to whom.
And now, apparently, he could *collect*.
"Okay," Marcus said, backing away slowly as the Void Spawn advanced. "Okay. I can work with this."
The creature lunged. Marcus dove behind a car. His mind raced.
*F-rank. 0.3% survival rate. Non-combat class.*
He was going to die. Statistically, absolutely, he was going to die.
But Marcus Chen had spent ten years surviving in a system designed to crush people like him. He'd learned to find angles, to exploit loopholes, to navigate bureaucracy that would break stronger people.
This was just another system.
And every system had debts to collect.
He pulled up his Status Window, his hands shaking but steady enough.
"Alright you alien bastard," he muttered. "Let's see what you owe."
Behind him, the city burned. The Integration continued. The apocalypse rolled forward with mechanical inevitability.
And Marcus Chen, F-rank Debt Collector with a 0.3% survival rate, took his first step into a larger world.
One collection at a time.
```
[Quest Complete: First Steps]
[+100 XP (947/1000)]
[Reward: System Interface - Basic (Unlocked)]
[New Quest Available]
[Quest: Survive Day One]
[0/24 hours remaining]
```