District Twenty-four was on fire, and Grey thought that was the least of its problems. Cars sat empty and dented in the city’s streets, the stop lights above dark and swinging aimlessly. The sounds of war echoed and bounced between the skyscrapers and stores, great roars followed by the snap and boom of gunfire. He saw windows shattered, boarded up, and broken again. He saw bodies as lifeless as discarded toys, bent and broken in ways they should never have been able to.

“A wasteland,” the dark-skinned man beside Grey muttered. He was tall and lean, clad in urban camouflage military gear. A steel shield hung over his back, and a sword sat on his hip. His name was Kamaru. He seemed capable.

“Doesn’t even feel real.” This was from Rose, a woman with short hair and a lithe build. Grey had learned she had already worked for the government before this whole thing, so he had marked her as a threat.

He paid close attention to their conversation, mentally noting their body language and conversational clues. His interview with Agent Wells had shown him just how weak his social skills were, and for his plan to work, he couldn’t give himself away so easily.

Besides those two, there were two others in their small team. The first was Lazarus, a short man with pale, scarred skin. He spoke little, but he carried himself confidently, his steps betraying him as a fighter. Grey had made special note of him. The final member of their group was the leader, Agent Wells.

She wore her suit still, though body armor now sat over it. Her face was impassive as she regarded District Twenty-four’s destruction, and although she hid it well, he could feel her attention on him. She knew something. The situation was too complicated to find out what, however. Besides leading this team, Wells was also an advisor to the agent leading the forces here. Their team’s goal was to help stabilize the city’s condition and eliminate as many Dungeons as they could.

Evacuation teams consisting mostly of first responders were in the midst of scouring the city, but many had failed to return at the appointed times. Grey suspected they never would.

He breathed in, smelling the smoke in the air. He had coffee nearly everyday in a shop a block from here on his way to work in the dark of morning. Some part of him felt a pang at that, but the time before the Game hardly mattered.

On the edge of his senses, he felt something. It spread across his skin like a shock, and if he focused, he felt as though he could step through a tear in the space around him. They must be near a Dungeon. Thankfully, he didn’t need to expose his Evolution just yet.

Lazarus spoke up, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “There’s a Dungeon.”

“Where?” Wells had stopped her surveying of the area. “Which way?”

The pale man nodded. “The right. It’s close.”

She shook her head. “I’d rather we set up a base first, somewhere to gather other people.”

“Let me go,” Grey said. “I’d rather work alone anyways.”

“Some Anomalies are too powerful for one person alone.” She stopped for a moment, thinking. “There’s a coffee shop near here. A place called Caffiend. Do any of you know the place?” She met eyes with Grey.

She had read up on him. “I do,” he said.

“We will set ourselves up there. Rose, go with Grey and scout the Dungeon. It must be the source of all of those.” Wells nodded back at the beetle-like monsters they had encountered earlier.

Grey looked up at the sky above. The sun had already started to lose its war against the dark, and winged silhouettes flapped above the city like watching demons, waiting to descend on unprepared victims. The apocalypse indeed.

It was too early to abandon the ARA completely. He had plans to build, variables to control, and assets to find yet, and he didn’t fancy doing it all on his own. Wells had her own game, however, one he was loathe to play.

He nodded at the agent and turned down a street, Rose at his side. One of the bug creatures was waiting for them. It was a bit larger than a dog and covered in a hard reddish exoskeleton. Black eyes sat on either side of its head, its mandibles sat vertically between its eyes like a mockery of a normal bug.

His spear lifted it off the ground, and he smashed the spit-roasted beetle against the ground, causing a crack to run through its armor. Rose finished it with a touch of her hand that delivered a wracking shock.

Grey pulled his spear free, nodded at her, and continued. It was far from the last monster they met, and by the time they reached the Dungeon, the area was crawling in them. The pair was left unbothered, however. Something else had gathered their attention.

Four men in body armor were cutting the monsters down in the middle of the street. Upon spotting them, Grey led Rose to an alley that looked out at the Dungeon’s doorway. The other group carried motley weapons including a shotgun, a baseball bat, and an axe. They were decently trained and clearly Returnees, and the bugs fell before them like wheat at harvest time.

Soon enough, they had reached the doorway. “Rose,” Grey said. “You have to tell Wells and the others.”

“Shouldn’t we talk to them? I can’t leave you alone here.”

Grey shook his head, making a forlorn expression he had seen Kamaru use earlier that day. “I’ll be fine. We can’t know if they’re friendly or not without approaching, and I would rather have back up. Go, they can’t have gone far. The coffee shop is only a few blocks over. I’ll watch.”

She swallowed and nodded. “Alright,” she said. “Be safe, I’ll be back.”

Her shoes pounded on the blacktop behind him, and he waited until she rounded the corner before standing from his crouch. Talking was still foreign to him, but he found he could manage it if he held a certain person’s mannerisms in his head. By now, the group was talking outside of the Dungeon, the bugs slaughtered or retreated.

One of them, a burly man in with the shotgun, flipped something into the air. Its silver luster caught the sunlight, but Grey could make out the triangle shape all the same. A Key. He made a decision.

The group entered the Dungeon. Grey slipped through a tear in the space behind them. He looked around. He was in a tunnel, its dirt walls packed tight. There was little light, but he could see enough, spotting the men in front of him.

“What do you think, is this a Gold?” one of the men asked. Grey named him Bat for his choice in weapon.

“Definitely not,” the burly man with the shotgun said. “A Gold was what Rand and the others ran into. Never came back either, you hear? No, the Golds are the death sentences.”

Grey wanted to smirk. Golds were indeed challenges for even large groups, and the ones here were only Rank F. He crept closer, preparing to start Chi Breathing.

“How much will we get for the Silver, then?” This was from Bat again.

“I don’t know, Boss seemed pretty desperate for these things.”

Grey stiffened. Someone else was gathering Keys? He had not been the only to receive information about the future. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were, but he was sure Wells and now maybe this “Boss” were part of the number. He smiled. A Game needed players, no?

Battle plan started.

The low light will make this fight messy, he thought. I have to keep a body between me and the man with the gun at all times. I have to avoid being tied up or grappled.

He launched his spear into the back of Bat, Chi Breathing rumbling through his whole body. His dagger plunged into the neck of the man at Bat’s right, and he yanked the blade through, painting the dirt wall beside them red. Then a weight crashed into his shoulder, a third man pinning him against the wall.

He snapped his head down into the bald man’s nose. Once. Twice. Snapped his head back and cracked his nose. When the man stumbled back and started to grow rock armor over his body, Grey swept Bat’s weapon from the ground, cracking the aluminum bat into a knee, a ribcage, a head, on and on until the moans and screams and gurgles had stopped.

Crack! The sharp sound of gunfire filled the tunnel with a brief flash, and Grey thrust his arm out, redirecting the pellets with Minor Telekinesis. One still managed to find its way into his arm, cracking his armor and filling the limb with a roaring fire. He stumbled. Blood ran from his nose, his mind foggy from strain, but he stumbled forward, grabbing the barrel of the gun and ripping it upwards. It jumped in his hand as its shot unloaded into the tunnel’s ceiling. Dirt rained down, falling into his eyes and blurring his vision.

His shoulder rammed into the burly man, and he ripped the shotgun away, taking it in a two-handed grip and hitting the man with its stock. Then again. Hit him and dropped him to his knees. Hit him and elicited a pained shout. A fifth time. A wet snack. Then a small, pained whimper like that of a frightened dog. The warm barrel rested against the man’s skull a moment later.

“Please, don’t. I have-”

“Who do you work for?” Grey spoke through gritted teeth, his breath coming in heavy puffs. His brain seemed liable to bounce free of his skull, and his shoulder… Fire, pain, heat. Some sort of pain-inducing Evolution, maybe?

“I don’t-” Light flared in the man’s hand, his Evolution coming to life. Grey bit the inside of his lip.

He hit the man again and again, the wet smacks bouncing down the tunnel. The light cut out. The barrel returned right after and pressed the man’s skull against the dirt wall. Grey could hear the chitter of the beetle monsters approaching.

“Tell. Me.”

“His name is Hector. He’s the leader of the Hunters.”

Grey frowned. He could learn what the Hunters were from someone else. “Where is he based?”

“The casino on the northside of town. It’s called… uh, I’m sorry I can’t remember. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

“Why does he want these?” Grey withdrew a Key from his Inventory.

“Oh, it’s called Gilded! Gilded.” The barrel of the gun pressed harder. “I don’t know why he wants them, okay? I don’t know, he was just paying for them. Paying well. Please-”

A flash and a bang filled the chamber, and then there was silence. Grey dropped the gun, staring at the beetles charging him. He ripped his spear free from the corpse of Bat, recovered the Keys they had on them, and used Dungeon Walker to appear in the alley once more.

Minor Telekinesis pulled the pellet from his shoulder. He put a bandage over the wound it left and used a towel from his Inventory to clean the blood from his face. For a moment, he simply leaned against the brick wall of the building to his right, resting his mind. He’d need food, something to fill the caloric drain left by Chi Breathing.

Some time later, he heard heavy footsteps in the alley behind him, and quelling his growing nausea, he turned to face the members of the ARA. His team. Rose, Agent Wells, and Kamaru jogged up to him. Lazarus must have stayed behind.

“You’re hurt?” Rose asked, nodding at his cracked armor.

“Yes,” he said, faking a small smile. “One of those beetles caught me off guard, but I’m fine, all things considered.” The real part of him wondered how he’d missed such an obvious giveaway. Deflecting that shotgun blast must’ve really drained him,

The armor was shoddily made anyways. There hadn’t been books in the desert on armor crafting, so he had done the best he could after months of trial and error. He knew there was much better out there.

“Interesting,” Agent Wells said. “Have the men you and Rose spotted exited the Dungeon yet?”

“No.” He shrugged. “At least, I haven’t seen them.”

“Hm. This seems to be a Silver-Ranked Anomaly. Did they look strong?”

Rose shrugged. “They killed the monsters out here, but if the other Anomalies have told us anything, the ones inside will be much stronger. They might have died.”

“Shouldn’t we save them?” Kamaru asked. “They might still be alive?”

“Our goal is not to save Returnees adventuring of their own will. It is to save innocents and close down Anomalies. I’ll mark this one and correspond with our other teams here in the city. Once we get the green light, then we can venture in.” Wells watched him closely, her amber eyes locked onto his. “Kamaru and Rose, head back to the shop and help Lazarus reinforce. Grey and I will watch a little longer.”

The other two trotted off, and Wells stepped close to him. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered him one, taking one out for herself. He shook his head. She shrugged and lit hers.

“How old are you?” she asked, smoke blowing from her lips.

He curled his nose at the smell. His father had smoked his whole childhood. “Twenty-six.” He hadn’t celebrated his birthday in the desert, but it had passed all the same.

She looked at him. “Huh, I’d guessed twenty-four. I’m twenty-eight myself, but,” she took a puff, “it feels like my life has only started.”

He nodded. He felt much the same, not that he would share it with her. “Yes, the Tutorial changed a lot.”

“Did you have a girlfriend before all of this? Or a boyfriend, maybe?”

He shook his head. “A girlfriend, but nothing serious.”

She turned her head, eyeing the doorway to the Dungeon. “I know you asked for your family’s safety. Did you look for this person, too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not the same as I was.” He shrugged.

She laughed. “I feel much the same. I was similar, no doubt, but this…” She waved her hand around, leaving a trail of smoke behind her cigarette. “This isn’t what I wanted. Working for the government, being another cog in the system. But then, that was before hellish monsters started picking off humanity like flies. And before I got superpowers.”

Grey couldn’t tell how much of her was an act. Was fake. He nodded. “It’s certainly different.”

“You were in IT before this?”

“Software engineer.” His eyes tracked a few of the bug creatures that had spilled from the doorway once more.

“And you worked here?” She flicked the ash from her cigarette.

“You already know,” he said.

“I do.” She shrugged. “What else is conversation but acting interested in things we already know?”

“I guess.” She didn’t want his answer, just his reaction.

She turned, starting to walk back down the alley. “Guess they died, after all. Strange, it looked like a weak enough Dungeon, especially for four people.”