Reese Reed ran for his life.

Horrible screams echoed out of the auditorium, but the wails assaulting the air sounded like ones of loss, not pain.

He kept running.

He hadn’t seen what the monster had done to the other people in the auditorium—judging from the screaming, which he could hear even all the way outside, it was nothing good—as he had leapt onto the stage, slammed on his invisibility ability and dashed out the back door—only briefly thrilling as his body vanished—then kept going, headed for the woods around the school.

The main door had been choked with students trying to get out while the idiot administrators tried to keep them in, and so for now he was alone outside as he ran.

The sound of a gunshot stopped him dead in his tracks, his feet twisting up and the weight of his backpack slamming him face-first into the grass.

Dazed, spitting grass, he got to his knees and looked over his shoulder to see Cal, the school police officer, charging after him, gun raised.

Reese’s invisibility must have dropped.

That bastard, he thought. Cal Winston was a hick, through and through, but surely he wouldn’t shoot at a student, even one that popped out of nowhere.

Then he realized, no, he hadn’t been shooting at him.

He’d been shooting at something else. The monster.

A fact Reese discovered rather unpleasantly as he spotted said monster barreling down upon him.

He frantically brought up his ability list and tapped reckless. He vanished just as Cal fired again.

Whatever that monster was, bullets didn’t seem to hurt it.

Another shot, and Reese actually saw it spark off the monster.

Then he felt the bullet hit him.

Reese Reed lay on the ground, heaving. He was covered in sweat.

He couldn’t believe everything he had just experienced.

Suddenly learning the system took on a whole new level of importance.

After the ricocheted bullet had hit him, Reese had been frozen in shock.

The monster—either not seeing Reese since he was invisible or having never been after him in the first place—had passed right by him and disappeared into the woods.

Cal had stopped chasing at that point, returning to the auditorium, giving up his pursuit to, presumably, help the wounded.

Reese was fairly certain the officer hadn’t even registered him being there, so focused on the monster had he been.

Reese really didn’t like Cal, even though he was his father’s favorite, but in this circumstance couldn’t blame the man.

What had just happened was insane. Even Reese, who was rarely shaken by anything, was literally still trembling, minutes later.

After Cal had gone back inside and the monster was out of sight, Reese had finally jolted into action, taking off into the woods himself— toward the school parking lot, the opposite direction the monster had gone.

Now, he felt like he’d aged a decade.

His dad always said teenagers acted recklessly and like nothing could hurt them, and on some level, he’d agreed. Now he understood, on a deep and very personal and immediate level.

He could die at any moment. He’d been shot.

If he had been running a little slower or a little faster, if he had abandoned his backpack in the auditorium—if any number of variables had been different—he might be dead instead of merely shaken and exhausted.

He’d already been resolved to level up, but now he realized his life depended on it.

He turned his head, looking at his backpack, the broken laptop sitting next to it.

Luckily the bullet that had hit him had only taken out his computer, and not any of his internal organs.

He hadn’t believed he was uninjured until he’d found the bullet lodged in the laptop’s SSD.

Good thing too. He’d been about to strip down in search of where the bullet had hit him, thinking he was in shock and couldn’t feel it.

But though it had gone through a thick History textbook and into the laptop compartment, it had finally spent all its energy and stopped.

Just an inch or two more, and it would have been in his spine.

He’d stopped running a little inside the trees surrounding the school, then immediately begun searching for a wound. After not finding one and discovering his laptop destroyed, he’d collapsed to the ground in exhaustion and relief. Which was still where he was.

He let his head roll back and stared up between the trees at the bright blue sky.

“Get up, Reed,” he urged himself. “You’re fine. No time to waste.”

Reluctantly, he forced himself to get to his feet. He wobbled unsteadily, vision briefly fuzzing and ears ringing as his blood pressure equalized.

His dad had wanted him to be a doctor, and he’d always thought that was the path he was going to take. He’d already been accepted to Yale thanks to his exemplary grades and extracurriculars—and a smidge of his father’s influence.

Now however, he realized he could be so much more. He could be a hero. He could stop… What had the message called them? Foes?

He brought up the message log and read through the first one, taking his time instead of just locking on to ‘cultivation’ and ‘immortal’ and becoming overly excited like an idiot five-year-old.

Yes, the eternal foes. Whatever they were.

It didn’t seem likely that the monster that had attacked was one, but who knew.

Either way, he was going to get stronger. He was already on that path.

He checked the leaderboard.

He was now ranked sixteen. He’d slipped again.

“Still in the top twenty,” he reassured himself.

He still had plenty of time.

Hopefully.

He took several deep breaths to try to calm himself. When it was clear this wasn’t going to work, he put his broken laptop back in his backpack, swung the bag over his shoulder, and headed toward the parking lot, where several police already were, trying to calm and care for the mass of students.

There was a female police officer near the tree line. He didn’t recognize her, which meant she was likely from the county sheriff.

She was on her radio, facing away from him and toward the parking lot.

Reese paused in the woods, listening to her conversation. She was distressed about something.

“That’s insane,” she told whoever she was talking to.

“That’s the orders,” came the voice from her radio.

“These kids don’t need to be at a police station! They need to be home with their parents. Or at the hospital.”

“You can leave any injured ones to be taken there. Round up the rest who aren’t injured and bring them in.”

“Look, I’m here. I’m seeing it. It’s nothing. They have crazy hair. Big deal.”

“Not my call. This is direct from on high. I’ve got twenty FBI agents getting all up in my business, and their commander breathing down my neck.”

The female officer sighed and looked up at the sky.

“Look,” the voice on the other end of the radio said placatingly, “they aren’t telling me anything, but from what I can gather, I think they’re worried about this thing being contagious. Least, that’s the impression I get.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

But to Reese’s ears, the woman didn’t sound so certain.

She sighed and rubbed her face, then triggered her radio. “Fine. But only if they aren’t hurt.”

Reese slowly backed up deeper into the woods as his long gray beard fluttered in the gentle breeze of the late spring afternoon.

As soon as he was out of sight, he quickly brought up the alteration screen, hoping the change wasn’t permanent.

He tapped on the option he’d tapped before—which stood out as it was denser and darker than the ones around it. The beard vanished and he let out a sigh of relief, but still brought out his phone and activated the front camera to be certain.

Yep, back to scruff.

More like peach fuzz, if he was being honest. But he was blond, so maybe not. His dad could grow a beard, not that you’d know it from his twice-a-day shaves—so Reese assumed his would come in eventually.

Though Reese no longer had any signs that the police would be looking for, he decided to walk home. It was only a mile and a half, and though his dad was Mayor, Reese wasn’t sure his father would be able to get him out of whatever quarantine the FBI put him in.

His dad had power and influence, but he was still only the mayor of a small town in rural New York State. This wasn’t greasing the wheels to get his admittedly smart son into Yale. The FBI was a whole different league.

As he was walking home through the woods, a new system message popped up in front of Reese. He paused to read through it, this time taking in every word.

When he finished, he scoffed and dismissed the message, then continued walking, planning his next move.

Yes, that monster was just a taste of what was to come, according to the message. And if that was so comparatively weak, the world had a long way to rise if it hoped to fend off what was coming.