I couldn’t help but shiver as my captors swiftly retreated and left the room. The man in front of me was a good fifteen meters away, but his presence was stronger than if a normal person had been breathing on my face. “Come closer,” he ordered.

Walking towards him, I began to notice he looked somewhat average: raven hair with barely a hint of white, a goatee, and a somewhat round face which contrasted sharply with his piercing gaze. He wasn’t really muscular or tall, but I could swear I saw the silver decorations on his dark uniform gleam with otherworldly light for the briefest moment as I finally came to be face to face with him.

”I suppose I’m your prisoner, general?” I spoke, trying to sound more confident than I was. Despite having discovered a bit of my power, I knew that the person in front of me was way stronger than I... my best stat was four stars, and the System had ranked him three, but the fact that the kind of symbol used to mark his power was different...

”You could say that, young man. Let me congratulate you on your Japanese though, its rare to find spies trained well enough to shed every last bit of their accents these days. Which organization are you from?” he seemed to relax a bit, but it did nothing to ease my anxiety.

”I’m Italian, but I’m not really with any secret service or some such. You could say even I don’t know exactly how I got here in Tokyo... This is Tokyo right?”

”No matter,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “I don’t need you to speak honestly: I was just giving you a chance to skip the painful parts”.

”Wh-”

The whole room began to tremble, and the crystal desk screeched ominously as the man stood, the air around him shimmering like a mirage.

---FORCED OD INTRUSION DETECTED---

---PREMIUM PRIVILEGE ACTIVATED---

---HAND OF THE MAKER WILL BEGIN REJECTION---

Second through second the pressure grew, and I quickly found myself holding onto the desk, before collapsing completely. It felt like a mass of needles was trying to pierce my flesh, but instead of skewering me right away, something was pushing back from inside of my body, leaving mostly just crushing weight.

”Grrraagh!”

I tried to imagine the thing pushing me down best I could, despite not being able to see it with my eyes, and used every ounce of will I had in me to push it back even more. I needed to use my ability, if I wanted to survive.

”Hand of the Maker!”

As the shout flew out of my chest, I remembered the feeling I experienced when I changed the shape of the broomstick, imposing it onto the invisible force above me. Almost instantaneously, I felt it bend back, until even the shimmer in the air was placated.

A second later, the silence broke, together with the marble floor beneath my back, which cracked violently, almost exploding in a shower of debris. I tried and failed to get back on my feet, and opted to rest a bit on my knees instead. The general was back on his chair, a baffled look on his sweaty face.

”I... am not... a spy! Please... listen...”

---OD FLOW ROUSED---

---IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM #9977 IMPLEMENTED SUCCESSFULLY---

---PREPARE FOR FEEDBACK RECOIL---

In the blackness, a small flickering light shone defiant, like a brave firefly trying desperately to live. “So pretty,” I thought, as a dozen more lights appeared, clustering together before bursting outwards, connected by bright strings.

“I never...” my consciousness drifted away, the lights turning into a roaring flame. In the gentle warmth of it, I couldn’t help but recall what I did not have the strength to hold before.

”I want to live,”

With a gasp and a cough, I jumped up and noticed I was sitting on a small bed.

”You sure are something, Lorenzo,” said a man sitting in the corner of the infirmary.

”How do you know my name?” I asked, even though I already had an idea of what the answer was going to be.

”After you repelled general Suda’s first attempt at reading your od, the instruments in our labs caught a second burst of essence. We looked into it and found that you are somehow directly connected to the System, though the only information we were able to gleam from your link was your registration name”.

“So you know of the Imago System? Is it related to what happened in the city?”

The man adjusted his bangs and fidgeted rapidly with a pen in his slender fingers. I could tell he was very tall, even when he was sitting, and his long, braided hair was unusual for military personell.

“You really don’t know anything about Zero Point do you? Well, I might not be the best person to bring you up to speed, considering we still have to completely rule out the possibility of you being a foreign spy, and even then we will have lots of questions for you, bu-”

The automatic door slid open, and a couple of soldiers gestured to me and said something I couldn’t quite catch to the doctor, before ordering me to follow them out. I shot an alarmed look at them, before passing through the threshold.

Just before turning a corner, I heard the doctor shout: “My name’s Rei Tsukishima. You don’t have to worry too much, it’s bad for your health!”

Surprisingly, the room where they brought me had a cozy feel to it, almost like an old therapist office. The two soldiers left me almost immediately, and I was left together with a what I supposed was going to be the one to question and inform me: a blond woman who looked no older than thirty.

She was wearing a black suit with no buttons or zippers, which also bore some sort of slightly glowing ornaments on the cuffs, neck and a few other spots. I had no idea whether I had grown more attentive towards that glow, or if hers was just brighter.

“Pleased to meet you, Lorenzo. Make yourself comfortable,” she said, her green eyes scanning me without feeling like she was prodding me for weak spots. “I am Shijima Touko, senior psychological counselor of this base”.

I took my seat on the spacious sofa in front of her desk, and said: “I take it I’m famous now? Who would have guessed I’d get my big break after... Wait, right: what year is it?”

A small smile opened on her face, and again she spoke with a tone of artificial kindness: “We are currently in a military base just outside the Second Tokyo Quarantine Zone, the date is April 17th 2053, and it has been twenty-three years since the first recorded Zero Point incident. Are you really ignorant of everything? Were you one of those who took refuge in sealed shelters or?”

---FORCED OD INTRUSION DETECTED---

---FORCED OD INTRUSION REPELLED---

“Yeah, the last thing I remember is receiving a package containing some sort of strange metal device at my apartment in the middle of the night, trying to use it, having it screech some sort of recorded message about the Imago System and then finding myself in Shibuya in a completely different body”.

I didn’t really want to alarm her or anyone else in the base, considering the situation, so I purposefully avoided addressing the strange warning about someone trying to “intrude in my Od” or the whole situation in the Finz Establishment.

“I was living in Perugia, Italy at the time. It was also December 9th, 2019... Did I mention I have no idea what the hell happened?”

She tapped on the desk as if using an invisible keyboard, and then looked at me with the slightest hint of suspicion. Somehow, I could feel a slight hostility towards me coming from her, even if my eyes didn’t catch any change in expression. She looked relaxed, but her “aura” felt different.

After looking at the monitor for a moment, she nodded, smiled, and said: “Well, it seems like you are telling the truth...” she stopped mid sentence, letting it hang ominously for less than a second. “I was authorized by general Suda to explain the current state of affairs to you, since in these last days we have been requested to file you as a special case”.

“Well, I’m not going to be more ready than I am right now,” I said with an exaggerated sigh, trying not to look at my questioner directly in the eyes.

Despite the fact that I probably had gotten mixed up in some sort of post apocalyptic hell on Earth scenario, my excitement was palpable.