Thando woke up face-down in a daze, groggy and not knowing up from down. He rolled onto his back, hearing snores and grunts around him. He cracked open his eyes.

He immediately shut them.

"Shit."

The former gym was transformed, the ceiling, now coloured a metallic silver, warping and rippling like a lake of quicksilver right above him. He’d seen this effect in movies and heard it described, but seeing it in reality made him feel a pit in his stomach. He knew exactly what had happened. And unfortunately, exactly what it meant.

"Shit, shit, SHIT! Of course this had to happen here, today of all fucking days," he lamented.

But that was all the self-pity he had time for, his thoughts turning to his friends.

I need to find Piet. And the others.

Opening his eyes, he stretched out on the ground, once, twice, then kicked up to his feet.

The room around him had seemingly been designed to confound all his senses. The walls and ceiling were shifting and undulating in ways the laws of physics wept at, to the point that concentrating on any singular part made the space behind his eyes hurt. Light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. At most he could tell that the rough outline of the building hadn't changed yet, which was great because he could see a direct path to the doors. He started making his way out, stepping over the unconscious men he'd come in with.

Nothing I can do for them now.

The scents shifted constantly, from the earthy, outdoorsy smell of a forest, to the sanitized sterility of a hospital, to the rich, warm aroma of a bakery. There was no sound but Thando had felt a slight vibration shake his chest when he woke up and it hadn't abated yet.

The characters had been chosen, now the scene was being set. The thought hurried his steps.

Confusion and worry marred his face. Everyone knew what a Shift was, it’s how Archons got their powers. But these days they were exceedingly rare because of the global ban on fiction and the general societal revulsion towards writers for causing them. The last had happened in 2004, decades before Thando was even born.

"Chan will know what to do. He studies this stuff. Chan will definitely know what to do. Yes, let's find Chan."

The little he knew about Narrative Shifts was derived from general knowledge he'd passively absorbed and the random tips he'd seen on reddit for the off chance he was caught in one. The most important piece of advice rang clear in his head.

Stay calm and find your friends or family.

Narrative Shifts usually took people in already established social groups, be it close friends or family, for plot reasons. These groups were made characters in whatever the plot of that particular shift zone was. Each character was given a different Archetype to fit and your chances of survival were closely tied to how well you fit them. The plot was actively hostile to those who did not. And that was as far as his knowledge extended. He'd seen movies and documentaries about famous Archons of course, but every Archon agreed that the experience was prettied up for the big screen. According to them, no one leaves a Shift as the same person they were before it, even aside from the fantastical powers.

Thando made his way out of the door, whose frame had twisted into an oblong circle shape before snapping shut after him. The sky outside was heavy with silvery metallic clouds that he could see roiling and pulsing like it was about to rain pure mercury. The ground had also taken on the metallic sheen of silver, though it wasn't constantly morphing like the buildings and clouds were.

Men and women were littered on the sidewalk, having fallen unconscious where they stood. Every car had turned into a blurry, silver blob. Every tree, silver of course, was swaying as though there were a gale force wind, except there was no uniformity to their motions; they each went their own way. The city was done for. Thando could only worry about finding his friends and getting out alive now.

The only problem was; he didn't know where to start. He knew where his friends were on the map, but those had just become severely outdated and he couldn't get his bearings with everything looking the way it did. He jogged in the general direction of the supermarket he knew Willem had gone to, but all the landmarks he’d once relied on were no longer there.

"Piet! Willem! Chan!" he called out into the air, hoping for a lucky break.

"...ando?"

The faint cry reached him and Thando started running toward the sound, not even taking the time to respond. He spotted Chan jogging towards him, a serious look on his face. That was a bad sign.

“Chan! Are you okay? Where are the others?”

“Willem’s fine but Piet’s still unconscious. I came to look for you, Willem’s with Piet. We’re with the Inspired that were supposed to be at the tournament, apparently Shifts don’t affect them like us so they’re up and about.”

Chan described their situation to him while they ran back. The Inspired were insisting on finding other groups as soon as possible but were balking at telling them the entire reason why, cryptically saying that hard choices would have to be made.

As they got closer, they heard voices raised in anger.

“-ause you won’t tell us anything! Unless you can fucking heal our way out of this, you have to tell us what we’re working with! Ek sal jou bleksem! You’re gonna get those of us who can’t grow a brain out of our ass fucking killed!”

“We told you already, there’s nothing either of us can do about your brother and you’d be best served leaving him here. We need to find the other Archons before the scene sets. We’ll explain everything when we’re all gathered, which you should be goddamn grateful for considering most other Archons have to figure everything out on their own!”

Willem, red-faced and fuming, was about to respond to the blond Inspired when he saw Chan waving at him, Thando in tow. Part of his stress seemed to melt away at seeing Thando, he was likely relieved that only one of their group would need help. Because there was no way any one of them would abandon another.

“Willem! Piet’s alright?”

“Yeah, but he won’t wake up. I’m not sure why, Chan already explained the family and friends thing.”

“I did but there’s still a lot we don’t know bro. Most information on this is classified and the Archons aren’t telling us, beyond the vague hints and random pieces of advice. What I do know is that we need to find the other groups for the best chance of survival. The plot will move on whether we’re with them or not and we’ll still have to achieve the same goals but it’ll be much harder without coordinated effort. We’ll also only know our Archetypes once we fall asleep and connect to the zeitgeist.”

“Shit, we’re Archons now. We actually have superpowers. Holy shit.”

“Yeah Willem went through this a few minutes ago, take a breath.”

“Don’t get too excited.” The redheaded Inspired intoned in a dour voice, “You need to escape here with them and your lives first.”

This set Willem off again.

“Then tell us the whole fucking story! Why do you think I’d abandon my brother on the say so of a stranger?! Is jy mal in jou kop!? Call your fucking boss or something!”

Willem often slipped into his vernacular when he was seriously pissed, which was perfect because Afrikaans sounded terrifying when used in anger.

The Inspired were unfazed however.

“Abandon him now or later, either way he has to be gone before the conflicts start. We can’t talk to Vitality while we’re awake, so we’ll be speeding around the area to see if we can sense any groups close by. Regardless, the whole world likely knows there’s a new Narrative Shift by now. This is immaterial however, as they cannot help us from outside while the Shift zone is still sealed. We unseal it by resolving the plot. This is all I’ll tell you while the others aren’t here. It’s incredibly important that we’re all on the same page, lest we all die.”

The emphasis was not lost on the three men. The two Inspired didn’t give them a chance to respond as they zoomed off at a sprint. Their powers weren’t speed based but their control over their own bodies meant they could run at peak human world record speeds and maintain that pace indefinitely.

Thando turned away from their receding figures to check on Piet, who was still unconscious but breathing steadily.

“Chan, what happens to Piet now? Why wasn’t he chosen like the rest of us?”

“Not sure bro. After Shifts unseal, they allow the world outside to come in and rescue guys like us, but everyone else caught in it gets ported randomly all across the system. It’s why shift survivors have those special visas. The only problem is they never remember anything about the experience. Ever. And the UN has some sort of non-disclosure agreement with the Archons, because even the most famous ones say they can’t tell us. We track a large portion of them down but millions drown or die of exposure or violence if they get dropped somewhere unlucky. So many of them go missing that we’re not even sure if they all make it out of the Shift.”

“You’re saying he’ll possibly survive but there’s a high chance we’ll just never see him again.”

Chan shuffled uncomfortably on his feet.

“This is why Willem was about to throw fists at those assholes. When they didn’t want to help us carry him to a safe spot, he asked why and they said we had to abandon him if we wanted to both survive and give him the best chance of living. They obviously know more about this than the rest of us but they’re not telling us how they know and what will happen if we don’t leave him behind.”

“We can’t leave him behind.”

“I know. That’s why we need all the information from these fucks so we can figure out how to get him out of here safely, bro. We’re moving blind right now.”

Thando sighed. He knew Chan was right, they needed to go along with this to give them all the best chance of making it out.

“Okay, let’s just carry him for now. When the scene sets and we have a place we can stay in, we’ll keep him there. You’ve seen what Archons can do, no way we’ll have no options.”

Chan opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and thought better of it. Willem grabbed Piet by the legs, Thando held him under the armpits. Together, they lifted him and headed to an open area, away from the undulating buildings and swaying trees. The silver light bathing everything made Piet’s face seem uncomfortably corpse-like as they laid him down on the ground. Willem stood looking down at Piet’s pallid body, and a determined look entered his eye.

“We need a plan.”

“Impossible bro, we have none of the relevant info.”

“And what do we do when we don’t know much about an opponent?”

Willem had worked in a kickboxing gym for money as a child. He’d take part in lessons and clean the gym afterwards. Over time, he grew into a proficient fighter, using a blend of kickboxing and muay thai to overwhelm an enemy as quickly as possible from as far away as possible, focusing mainly on striking techniques and evasive footwork. As good as he was as a student, however, he was an even better coach. When he finally convinced Piet and Thando to learn MMA, he never expected Thando would have such an affinity for the sport. He recognised the potential and urged them to go pro, with him as coach, Thando as the talent, Piet as a sparring partner/social media guru and Chan as their manager. Two years later, here they were on the cusp of greatness. At least, before everything went silver.

“We bide our time, shore up defences, and send light probing attacks to gauge any weaknesses, before overwhelming them.”

Thando had listened well. Willem nodded.

“Exactly. They want us to leave him behind and that’s not an option. They have all the information right now and thus all the power. But, according to Chan, tomorrow morning, we’ll have freshly baked superpowers that will tilt the balance.”

“Definitely will bro. Archons have gotten more powerful over time, Shifts used to only give tertiary archetypes, then more and more secondary archetypes started popping up. Then they only gave secondary archetypes until a primary showed up. We all know what happened there. Soon after that, fiction got banned and Shifts mostly stopped happening so there isn’t much data, but the last Shift, the first in years at that point, also spat out a primary.”

“The [Gamer].”

“Yup.”

“Shit, so one of us is likely a primary.”

“Yeah, the trend seems to indicate that. Whether its one of us or the other Archons in here, as a group, we’ll be more powerful than the Inspired. And assuming they actually debrief us properly, we’ll hold all the cards and can do whatever we want with Piet, whether they like it or not.” Willem declared.

“What about in the meantime bro, what can we do with him all helpless like this? We can’t keep him near; they’ll sense his life.”

Thando considered for a moment before chiming in.

“I think we can. We’ll bring him with us for now, acting all conflicted about it. They’re assuming that once they explain whatever this looming threat is; we’ll have no choice but to leave him. So we do. Make a big song and dance of it. But by then the scene will have set…”

“Which will give us a physical location we can store him in and come back to,” Willem continued, “And by then, they won’t be able to force us.”

“Assuming one of us is the primary. Don’t forget Piet is the people person in this group bro, if the other Archons listen to the Inspired and they’re stronger than us, we’re kinda fucked.”

“Then we’ll just keep him hidden until we finish this. It’s our only solution.”

The three men gave each other a nod at the successful battle plan, just in time as well, because the Inspired appeared in the distance. They ran up at full speed, each carrying one person in their arms and one on their back for a total of four new faces. Two men and two women.

“Say hi kids,” the blond Inspired started, “everyone here just became part of a powerful and exclusive club. Don’t let it go to your head until we’re out of here however. You have to get through the conflicts first.”