Elias did not sleep. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, a knife in his lap and his eyes on the door. He listened to the night. Lena finally cried herself into an exhausted, fitful sleep on the bare sofa, her breaths hitching.
The sounds of the city changed. The usual, distant hum of traffic faded, replaced by more sirens. Not the urgent wail of a single ambulance, but the overlapping chorus of many. Police. Fire trucks. They were heading downtown.
He checked the news on his laptop, the screen's glow the only light in the room. The "outbreaks" were now official. A "global mass psychogenic event." Experts on screen argued—was it a social media contagion? A secret Russian weapon? A side effect of a new solar flare? They were scrambling for a lie the public would believe.
He knew the truth. Mana, the energy of the System, was saturating the atmosphere. Human brains, never meant to process it, were short-circuiting in different ways. Some were euphoric. Some were paranoid. A tiny fraction, those with the right latent genes, were unconsciously drawing the energy into their bodies, causing the first, uncontrolled displays of power, the floating, the glowing. They were the first, accidental Awakened. Most would burn themselves out or be killed by the terrified people around them before tomorrow was done.
His phone buzzed. A text from the burner. Sam.
Sam: People outside. They are yelling. Sounds bad. Light in sky.
Elias's blood went cold. He typed fast.
Elias: DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. Barricade the unit door from inside. Use the heavy crates. Stay quiet. I will come at first light.
Sam: Okay. I see the map. I know the way to Site Bravo.
Good kid. He was focusing on the mission, not the panic.
Elias put the phone down. He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to remember.
Tomorrow. Integration Day.
He saw it in perfect, terrible clarity.
3:07 PM. The blue boxes would appear in everyone's vision at once. A wave of disorientation, then panic, would sweep the globe. The System's tutorial voice, a calm, gender-neutral chime, would explain nothing useful.
3:15 PM. The first Gates, small and unstable, would rip open in places of high emotion and population. A school. A mall. A stadium. The first creatures, low-level things like Gremlins and Ash Rats, would spill out, confused and hungry. The screaming would start for real.
3:30 PM. The first human deaths by monster. The first murders by humans who got a violent Class and decided to test it. The collapse would be faster than anyone thought possible.
And at 3:07 PM, he needed to be at Site Bravo, the Genesis Seed in his hand, ready to claim it and the land beneath it as his own.
A low groan came from the couch. Lena was stirring, caught in a bad dream. "No… stop…" she mumbled.
Elias got up and walked over. He knelt beside her. In the dim light, she looked like a kid again. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Lena. Wake up."
Her eyes flew open, wide with terror from the dream. She saw him and scrambled back, pressing herself against the cushions. For a second, she didn't recognize him.
"It's me," he said softly. "It's Elias. You're safe."
The fear in her eyes didn't leave. It just changed. "I dreamed… I was buried. I couldn't breathe. And you were there, but you were just… watching."
The accuracy of the dream was uncanny. A memory-echo, maybe, bleeding from him to her through their shared blood and proximity. Another side effect of his paradox.
"It was just a dream," he lied. "The world is scary right now. Your brain is processing it."
"Is that what all of this is?" she asked, her voice fragile. "My brain processing? Because it feels real, Elias. It feels so, so real."
"It is real," he said, no kindness left in his tone. "The dream is over. This is the waking world now. And it's worse."
He stood up. "Get up. We're leaving. Now."
"Now? It's the middle of the night!"
"The panic hasn't peaked yet. When the sun comes up, and people see the news in the daylight, that's when the real chaos starts. We move now, in the dark. It's safer."
He handed her a heavy backpack he'd pre-packed for her. Water, protein bars, a flashlight, a basic first-aid kit, a multi-tool. "Put this on. We're walking."
"Walking? To where?"
"To get the van. My car is… compromised." He couldn't risk his hatchback being recognized if things went sour. The van was anonymous.
They left the apartment silently. The hallway was dark. The building was eerily quiet. As they stepped outside, the cool night air hit them, carrying a new smell—the acrid tang of smoke. Downtown, an orange glow painted the bottom of the clouds. Something was burning.
Lena gasped, pointing. "Elias, look."
He didn't need to. He'd seen cities burn before. "Don't look. Walk. Keep your head down. Follow me."
He led her through back alleys and side streets, avoiding the main roads. He moved with a predator's grace, his senses stretched tight. Lena stumbled behind him, the backpack awkward on her shoulders.
They saw glimpses of the new world. A looted convenience store, its window smashed, a man running out with arms full of snacks. Two people arguing violently over a gas can. In the distance, the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. Not many shots. Yet.
Lena was crying again, silent tears cutting through the grime on her face. "This is America," she whispered. "This doesn't happen here."
"It does now," Elias said, pulling her into a shadow as a car sped by, its horn blaring. "The old rules are dead. They just don't know it yet."
They reached the storage unit lot. The main gate was locked. Elias didn't hesitate. He scaled it, dropped down on the other side, and opened it from inside. He led Lena to his unit.
He knocked on the rolling metal door in a specific pattern: two short, three long, one short.
A moment later, they heard the scrape of heavy crates being moved. The door rattled up a foot. Sam's face appeared in the gap, pale and scared. He saw Elias and opened the door wider.
Lena stared at the teenager covered in dust and dried blood. "Who is he?"
"Sam. He's with us," Elias said, pushing her inside. He pulled the door down behind them and locked it.
The unit felt like a bunker. Sam had done well. He'd pushed the heaviest crates against the door as a barricade.
"You okay?" Elias signed to Sam.
Sam nodded, but his hands were shaking. Lots of yelling. A big fight in the street. A man was… on fire. But he was not screaming. He was laughing.
Elias's jaw tightened. An early Pyrokinetic. Probably burned out his own brain already. "It's going to get worse. We leave at first light. We take the van and the most critical supplies. The rest we leave. It's a loss we accept."
He turned to Lena, who was looking between him and Sam, utterly lost. "This is Sam. He's deaf. He can read lips and he signs. He's going to be our scout."
"Scout for what?" Lena asked, her voice rising in hysteria. "What are we doing, Elias? Hiding in a storage locker with a beaten-up kid and a bunch of… of survivalist junk? This is insane!"
"Yes!" Elias snapped, his patience gone. The pressure in his head was a drumbeat. "It is insane! The world is insane now! Your choice is to be insane with me, or be sane and dead out there! Which is it?"
She shrunk back from his anger. Sam watched the exchange, his eyes wide.
Elias took a deep breath, forcing the Commander's calm back on. "We have five hours until dawn. We rest. We eat. Sam, show her the MREs. Pick one. Lena, you sleep. Sam, you sleep after. I'll take first watch."
He climbed onto a stack of crates near the door, positioning himself where he could see the thin gap under the door. He held his pistol in his lap.
Lena sat on the floor, her back against a water jug. Sam handed her a brown plastic packet. "Chicken and rice," he signed slowly, sounding out the words with his mouth so she could read his lips.
She took it, her hands trembling. "Thank you."
They ate in silence. The only sounds were the crinkling of packages and the distant, occasional scream or siren from the world outside.
After a while, Lena spoke, her voice small in the dark. "Elias?"
"Yeah."
"You said I died. In your… your vision. How?"
He was silent for a long time. He could lie. He should lie. But he was tired of lies.
"A parking garage. In the Springs. It collapsed during the first tremors from a Gate. You were trapped. You called me. I couldn't get to you in time."
A sob caught in her throat. "Did it hurt?"
"I don't know," he said, the truth a knife. "The line went dead."
She cried then, softly, for the self that had already died in another lifetime. Sam watched her, his face full of a sadness too old for his years.
Elias stared at the line of light under the door. The pressure in his head was constant now. A new, translucent blue box flickered, persistent.
[System Synchronization: 99.9%]
[Integration Imminent: 11 Hrs, 14 Min, 07 Sec]
[Chronicler's Paradox Integrity: 97.5%]
[Warning: Anomalous Temporal Signature Detected in Proximity.]
The last line made his heart freeze. Anomalous Temporal Signature. It wasn't the Null-Chronicler. That was a "Paradox Entity." This was different. Something else from a broken timeline was here. Now.
He gripped the pistol tighter. The night was no longer just about hiding from the chaos outside. It was about hiding from something that the dying world was making manifest. Something that had followed the scent of his paradox through the cracks in time.
He looked at Lena, who had finally cried herself to sleep. At Sam, who was watching the door with the focused intensity of a soldier.
He had brought them into the eye of the storm. And now, the storm was looking back.