I covered my head with my arms, smacking into the oil-slicked ground. My vision blurred from the impact as discomfort radiated up my arms and my knees. My heart rate spiked, fluttering in my neck, until it reached a threshold. Then something happened. My pulse began to plummet, a wave of calculated calm washing over me like a drug.

What was that? My title at work?

Snap out of it. Take stock. You hit something.

I stood, ignoring the cold prickles of pain from my scraped hands, and surveyed the scene.

A dull stoplight loomed overhead through a layer of fog that rolled in from nowhere, emitting specular red strobes. My bike laid on its side, handlebars splayed upwards. Whatever hit me struck with enough force to tear the tire from the spokes. The tire had landed a short distance away, bent in half from the impact, wobbling back and forth on the asphalt like a ship in a storm.

But I wasn’t looking at the bike. I was looking at the crumpled form beside it. It took a moment to recognize it for what it was. A body. My skin lost all warmth as I realized what had happened. I wasn’t under attack. Someone, or something, had thrown a whole-ass person and I’d just happened to get in the way.

A slight chill went through me as I considered a new possibility. I quickly pulled up my quest notification. It still indicated east. Good. Not my target.

My earlier hope felt foolish now. This was the second case of violence I’d had a front row seat to in less than a day. I snuck a look around the corner and saw nothing but an abandoned street, then made my way to the body to investigate

Within a foot of him, the sharp scent of chemicals caught my nose. His skin was raw and angry, covered with red splotches that laid bare bits of muscle and bone beneath. Half of his face had been melted away. A single gray eye blinked and looked up at me.

Acid.

Nausea gripped me and I held a hand over my mouth, trying not to vomit. It’s not that I was an idiot, but I had clearly been unprepared for the sort of situation I was getting myself into. I just hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

This is low threat?

My one test case of Probability Spiral was indirect, minimally violent when you considered the person I used it on had a gun to my head. Any damage caused was brought on by his own actions. If this was the result of another user, then they were basically my polar opposite. I pulled my phone and keyed in 911—

Stop. A voice told me. My voice.

It’s a burner. It’s fine for minor indiscretions, setting up payment and services from students for what amounts to petty misdemeanors. But you called home with it earlier. Even if it took them a while to access the call history, they could potentially trace it to the gas station you bought it from, pull the footage. Then it’s just a matter of running the image through facial recognition.

No. I couldn’t call the police. But I couldn’t just leave him there, either. I bent down, shining the light from my phone on his pants, confirming none of the acid had made its way onto them, then began rifling through his pockets. He groaned when I accidentally jostled him. Keys. Wallet. Drivers License, Dorian West. No cash in it, just pictures of his kids. My hand settled on something in his side pocket and I removed it.

A knife. Not the compact sort. It was long with a wooden sheath, and an overly ornate handle trimmed with burnished silver. But now that I was looking at it, and looking at his pocket, it was far too large to have fit there comfortably.

Weird. But irrelevant.

Valuable? Maybe. But taking a weapon from a crime-scene seemed like a terrible idea. I tossed it aside. Dug around in his pockets until I found a cellphone. I swiped up, and when facial recognition failed, it gave me the emergency option at the bottom left.

I called 911 and masked my voice while I gave the operator a location, then left the phone face-up next to the man’s burned and withered ear. Grimly, I realized that they would, in all likelihood, not get to him in time. Not if things had been as chaotic as the SWAT officer who chased me into the garage made things seem.

Bad for him, but not necessarily for me. It meant I’d have plenty of time to make an escape. At some point, I’d made the decision to flee. The body had firmly jolted me out of the previous manic state and fear for my life was kicking in. I didn’t know enough about my class, my skill, or what I was up against. I was open to investigating before discovering the magnitude of the threat. Having now seen it second hand, there wasn’t much point in putting myself in this level of jeopardy. The reward wasn’t a small amount of money, but I wasn’t willing to die for it, or curious enough to get my face burned off.

I eyed the knife. It didn't look like much, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little protection, and it wasn’t like this guy was using it. I took the knife from the ground and slid it out to check out the blade. It was long and pointed, more like a dagger. It felt good as I hefted it in my hand before I, then I slipped it back in its sheathsheathe and , nestlednestling it into the kangaroojoint pocket of my hoody.

Oh. Apparently we were doing unbound System loot now. That was a sure sign this guy was another User and a strong indication the scenario I was in involved PVP. No way that could possibly go badly. I glanced at the man on the ground with a bit of suspicion.

I wasn't particularly impressed. The description pretty much could have just said knife and gotten the same point across.

Readjusting my hood, I gave one last forlorn look to my fallen bike and left it behind, jogging back down the street towards home.

Then someone screamed. A woman’s voice, pained and shrill. “I'll kill you and your mother, you bastard.” She screamed out, voice echoing from almost a block away.

I felt myself deflate. Because the voice sounded familiar, yet I couldn’t place it.

And now I had to look.

My palms started to sweat as I crept down the alley. Every footstep seemed unconscionably loud, grit and gravel crunching under my feet. I found myself silently wishing that I'd worn softer shoes. The voices grew louder until they crescendoed. A man cackled, so loud and over the top it might have been funny if I'd heard it in any other context.

I slid down against the wall and leaned over. It was like having a front row seat to a portal to hell. A half dozen bodies in worse condition than the earlier man littered the road. Their features were raw, slowly erased by a bile-like liquid that covered a large chunk of the ground. It seemed to be bubbling but not burning through the concrete itself, which honestly wasn't much in terms of comfort.

A car was burning from the engine block upwards, the entire front caved in, a driver splayed lifelessly through the half-shattered windshield. A quick check on my quest showed I was right on top of the target location, but it gave no further information.

And then, at the center of the carnage, I saw her.

Daphne Verner.

She was Erin’s daughter. The manager of the hedge fund who had pulled my mother off the straight and narrow. They came over to our house occasionally for dinner. Back when we had a house. Daphne was reed thin. Glasses. Acne everywhere. I didn't really like her at first. She was stand-offish, and tended to give off the air she was constantly looking down on you. Only, that was mostly just her face. Eventually, we discovered we played some of the same games and bonded. Of course, then everything went to shit.

Daphne looked very different now. It wasn't a glow up. It was more of a hulk up. Biceps easily bigger than mine, body lithe but packed with muscle, like a professional swimmer. Her hair was tied up in a severe bun. She was wearing a long, blue cardigan jacket and athletic wear. She was bent over, panting and in pain. In her right hand she held a claw hammer, invoking an image of Home Depot Thor.

Okay, so if her being here wasn't enough, given the sudden appearance of muscle mass, either her life was completely different from when I'd known her or Daphne was clearly a User.

And she was losing. Her opponent was a male in his late thirties, wearing a tight black shirt with no sleeves despite not having much muscle to show off. He darted around her, bare handed, driving a fist into her side and darting away. He giggled maniacally. There was a blue glow that settled around Daphne and she seemed to gain a second wind, forcing herself to a standing position.

It was just in time. Wife-beater guy held out an arm and a flock of birds seemed to phase out of the blackness of his shirt, turning green.

Daphne threw herself to the side, dodging as the birds impacted the pavement in green splatters. Some of the splash-back must have touched her because she cried out and impacted the passenger panel of a nearby truck, leaving a massive dent. I winced.

This was a bad matchup. I considered her for a moment. Low mobility, built, outlasted a dozen other people judging from the bodies—If I didn't miss my guess, Daphne was some sort of tank-role with only melee to speak of.

As opposed to her opponent, who was effectively a mobile, ranged DPS.

Wife-beater guy turned his back to me for just a moment. All at once, it was like I had x-ray vision. Organs that I'd only seen in biology textbooks became clear. I could see his heart, lungs, kidneys, liver. For a second, I thought it was some unforeseen aspect of my class. Then I looked down at the knife in my trembling hand. That title was really doing work.

Gains additional utility when used from behind, huh?

Whoever was writing the item descriptions needed to be fired.

Daphne took cover behind the burning car as Wife-beater guy threw out another flock of acid birds. Only, this time, instead of flying in a straight line, they curved in a hairpin turn. She pressed herself against the metal, but I watched, helpless, as two impacted her side. Daphne screamed out, falling to the ground and rolling on her side.

Wife-beater guy closed on her. It was over. Unless she had something up her sleeve, she was going to die. I moved up, taking cover behind a mailbox. What could I do?

What should you do?

The question struck me. This wasn’t my problem. I’d come out here to scout. To get an idea what I was up against. Now, I had that information: I was a small fish in a vast, terrifying ocean. People were literally dying in the streets handfuls at a time. For what the system had referred to as a low priority, local bounty. What typical bullshit.

It’s not like we were ever truly civilized. Not really. Things had always been bad. But there was at least a veneer of civility. A pretense of a system to hold things in check without ever truly fixing anything.

And now there was a new system. I had hoped it could be a new start, a redistribution of power and society. But as I looked over the charred bodies on the street, at Daphne, writhing on her back, I saw only chaos.

Winner Takes All

Primary Objective: Use Your Newfound Abilities to Win the Game and Escape.

Reward: ???

A dry heave snuck up on me. I could only suppress my terror for so long. I had to get out of here. The safety of the alley was so close. I almost left. Then I heard a voice. It sounded so small, so weak. Different than I’d ever heard her.

“Please… I just want to go home.”

Fuck.

Thoughts raced through my mind a mile a minute, searching for a justification.

Okay. If this is a small threat, I don't want to see a big one. There’s a blockade. I need to get my family out. If I don’t, good chance they’ll get caught in the crossfire when things escalate. Chances are high we’ll need someone, a coyote, maybe. That will cost money. More than we have.

This is an opportunity.

I snuck a glance over at Wife-beater guy. He was fast, but he was walking with a limp. There was a dark section below his sternum, soaking the shirt. It was impossible to see the color on fabric that black, but there was a good chance he was bleeding.

He spun around, and I ducked back down behind the post box I’d slowly made my way to.

Okay. Both of them are hurt. This is actually the perfect time to act. But how?

I looked around for anything more practical to use as a weapon. I didn’t trust the knife, or my ability to get up close and use it properly. Scanning the street, my eyes landed on a dark object that had skittered a foot from a nearby body. Black and asymmetrical.

Of course. This wasn't a fantasy world, this was the South. There was no honor system or requirement to play fair. People would take any advantage they could get.

Gun.