The next few days were blissfully boring. Alex fell into a routine that was so wonderfully average it felt like a dream come true.
He would wake up, put on his drab gray uniform, and spend his day performing menial tasks.
He fixed a coffee machine that had developed a strangely aggressive personality, cleaned a window that a bird had clearly mistaken for a rival, and had a long, silent standoff with a stubborn clog in a drainpipe.
He was winning the war against campus grime, one small battle at a time.
His nights were spent in his secret workshop the forgotten supply closet that now housed his new suit and his slowly improving golem, whom he had nicknamed "Scrappy." He'd tinker with Scrappy's wiring, using the [Stable Logic Processor] to run diagnostics and write small improvements to its balance.
He was teaching it how to pick up tools, a task made more difficult by the fact that it only had one arm. It was slow, quiet, and deeply satisfying work.
This peaceful existence was shattered on a Tuesday afternoon.
Alex was in the middle of buffing a floor in a remote hallway, humming to himself and admiring the perfect, streak-free shine, when the alarms went off.
This wasn't the standard, almost polite chime of a low-level Glitch alert. This was a loud, angry, insistent wail. It was the kind of alarm that meant something had gone wrong in a place it shouldn't have.
His data pad buzzed violently in his pocket. It was a message from Fitz, written in his usual frantic, grumpy caps.
< C-RANK GLITCH. NORTH QUAD, NEAR THE OLD STORAGE WAREHOUSES. THAT'S A NON-PATROLLED SECTOR. SOME IDIOT STUDENTS MUST HAVE GONE WHERE THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE. AGAIN. GET OVER THERE BUT KEEP YOUR DISTANCE. THE REAL STRIKERS ARE ON THEIR WAY, BUT IT'LL TAKE A FEW MINUTES. YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE SURE NOBODY SLIPS IN THE GOO AFTERWARDS. >
Alex sighed, turning off the floor buffer. A C-Rank Glitch was a serious problem. It wasn't a training exercise with a single, confused monster.
A C-Rank meant multiple hostiles, and they were usually faster, stronger, and much meaner than the little glass coyote he'd seen before.
And a "non-patrolled sector" meant there were no built-in safety barriers or quick-response teams nearby. Some kids had gotten themselves into real trouble.
He grabbed his rattling cart and headed toward the North Quad. He didn't hurry. He was, after all, just the janitor. He was supposed to stay out of the way.
But as he got closer, he could hear the sounds of fighting, the panicked shouts of teenagers, the high-pitched shriek of failing energy shields, and a strange, chittering sound that made the hairs on his arms stand up.
He stopped at the edge of the quad, hiding behind a large, overgrown hedge. From here, he had a clear view of the disaster.
Three students, probably D-Ranks looking for a thrill, were backed up against the wall of an old warehouse. Their fancy uniforms were torn and dirty.
One of them, a boy with spiky hair who was clearly trying to be their leader, was desperately throwing weak-looking fireballs that fizzled out before they even hit their targets.
Their attackers were horrifying. There were three of them. They looked like giant, shadowy praying mantises, but instead of legs, they skittered around on dozens of thin, spider-like limbs.
They moved with a terrifying, unnatural speed, climbing on the walls and ceiling, their heads twitching as they searched for an opening. The chittering sound came from them, a noise that sounded like cracking ice and grinding metal.
"Hold the line!" the spiky-haired kid yelled, his voice cracking with fear. "My dad is a trustee! I'll buy a new artifact when we get out of this!"
"We're not going to get out of this!" another student wailed, cowering behind a shimmering shield that was flickering like a dying lightbulb. "They're too fast!"
Their distress call was a panicked, garbled scream over the comms system. Help was on the way, but they didn't have minutes. They had seconds.
Alex watched, his jaw tight. He saw the situation not just with his eyes, but with his [Debugger]. The Aberrations were a whirlwind of chaotic code, but even chaos had patterns.
He could see their attack patterns, a repeating loop of skittering movements. He could see their weak points, a glowing spot on their undersides where their "reality code" was thinnest.
He could see the students' fear, a messy, panicked flood of data that was making them sloppy and inefficient. They were going to die.
"Idiots," Alex muttered under his breath. An old, familiar, and deeply annoying feeling began to stir inside him. It was the feeling that said, you can fix this.
He tried to push it down. His plan was to be invisible. To be average. To let the "heroes" handle the problems.
One of the creatures lunged, its sharp forelimbs slicing through the last of the student's shields. The student screamed.
Alex squeezed his eyes shut. "Fine," he whispered to the hedge. "Fine! But this is not my problem. I'm just... cleaning up a mess before it happens."
He abandoned his cleaning cart and slipped away, disappearing into the shadows of a nearby building.
His workshop; the forgotten supply closet was just around the corner. In less than thirty seconds, he was inside. He threw off his gray janitor's uniform, pulling on the simple black tactical suit.
It felt like a second skin.
He slid the blank, featureless mask over his face. The world seemed to go quiet. The panicked screams faded into the background. There was no more Alex Vance, the annoyed janitor. There was only the objective.
He grabbed a simple, three-foot-long steel pipe that was leaning in the corner, leftover from some old plumbing job. It was heavy, solid, and wonderfully simple. It wasn't a magic sword or a laser gun. It was a tool.
He stepped out of the closet, not into the light, but into the deep shadow between two warehouses. He moved silently, a black shape flowing through the darkness.
The students were about to be overwhelmed. The three creatures were closing in for the final attack. The spiky-haired leader had fallen and was scrambling backward on the ground, his face pale with terror.
Then, a black-clad figure appeared.
He didn't run in with a battle cry. He didn't land with a heroic thud. He was just suddenly there, standing calmly between the cornered students and the monsters. He seemed to have materialized from the air itself.
The Aberrations paused, their heads twitching as they tried to process this new variable. The students stared, their mouths hanging open.
"Who... who is that?" one of them stammered.
Zero ignored them all. His entire focus was on the creatures. With his [Debugger] active, he wasn't just seeing monsters; he was seeing living, moving blueprints of their own destruction.
He saw their looping movement patterns. He saw the glowing weak spots on their bellies. He saw exactly where they were going to be a half-second before they moved.
The first creature hissed and lunged, its bladed arm slicing through the air. Zero didn't dodge or block. He took a single, small step to the left, a movement so simple it looked almost lazy.
The monster's attack sliced through empty air, throwing it off balance for a split second. In that tiny window of opportunity, Zero moved. He didn't swing the pipe like a club. He used it like a giant needle. With a quick, precise jab, he struck the creature's glowing underbelly.
Tap.
There was no explosion. No flash of light. The Aberration just seized up, every one of its spidery legs locking in place. A flicker of static ran through its body, and then it collapsed, dissolving into a puddle of black goo. It was so fast, so quiet, so... anticlimactic that it was more shocking than a huge fight.
Before the other two creatures could react, Zero was already moving. He flowed forward, the steel pipe held in a low grip. He didn't run; he just seemed to cover the ground effortlessly.
The second creature leaped at him from the wall. Zero ducked under it, and as it passed over his head, he brought the pipe up in another short, sharp jab.
Tap.
The second monster fell from its perch, dissolving before it even hit the ground.
The last Aberration, seeing its companions vanish, let out a high-pitched shriek and tried to scurry away. But Zero was already there, cutting off its escape path. He didn't even need to move his feet.
As the creature tried to scramble past him, he simply extended the pipe. The monster, in its panic, ran right into the tip.
Tap.
And then there was silence.
The whole encounter had taken less than five seconds. Three dangerous, C-Rank monsters had been neutralized with three simple, precise strikes from a steel pipe.
The three students stared, their minds unable to catch up with what they had just seen. The fight was over. The black-clad figure stood there for a beat, the pipe held loosely in his hand.
He looked at the three puddles of goo, then turned his blank, featureless mask toward the students. They flinched under his empty gaze.
"Did you... did you see that?" the spiky-haired kid whispered from the ground. "He didn't even... he just poked them."
The masked figure gave no reply. He didn't offer a hand to help them up. He didn't say a cool one-liner.
He simply turned, and with the same impossible silence with which he had arrived, he melted back into the shadows between the warehouses and vanished.
He was gone, leaving behind three stunned students and a few rapidly evaporating puddles of goo.
A minute later, Alex Vance, the janitor, reappeared from around the corner, pushing his rattling cleaning cart. He stopped and looked at the stunned students and the wet spots on the ground.
He sighed loudly. "Honestly," he said, shaking his head in disapproval. "Fighting monsters is one thing, but do you have to leave such a mess? Some of us have to work for a living, you know."