My lungs were bags of fire. Every breath felt like swallowing ash and shattered glass.
"Shit, shit, shit!"
I ran. That was all I'd been doing since the sky broke. Running.
The ruins of the city blurred past me in a gray smear. Overturned cars, buildings reduced to steel skeletons… and silence. Always that unnatural silence, broken only by my ragged breathing and the sound coming from behind me.
Skree-thump. Skree-thump.
The sound of chitin claws on broken asphalt. A Stalker.
I didn't dare look back. I knew what it was. Eight feet tall, too many limbs, and a speed that mocked human biology. It had scented me.
My ankle smashed against a steel beam hidden among the debris.
The world tilted. I fell face-first, skidding across shattered pavement. Pain exploded instantly. I screamed—more out of rage than pain—and tried to stand.
The skree-thump stopped.
I kicked backward, scrambling desperately across the rough asphalt until my back slammed into the rusted chassis of an overturned bus. A dead end.
I looked up, horrified.
The Stalker stopped about fifty feet away, in the middle of the fractured street. A nightmare silhouette against the sick sky. It was studying me. I could see its mandibles twitching, tasting the air.
I knew I was trapped.
The creature tilted its head—an unnatural, almost curious gesture. Then it let out a guttural click that froze my blood. It crouched, powerful hind legs tensing as it prepared for the leap that would tear me apart.
I was dead. There was nothing I could do.
WWWHHHIIIIIIISSSSSSHHHHH—
A sound.
A piercing whistle, like a bullet train but a thousand times louder. It came from above.
The Stalker, mid-pounce, froze. Some primal instinct recognized a superior threat. It lifted its horrific head toward the gray sky.
That moment of hesitation was the last thing it ever did.
I saw a black dot growing larger and larger. It wasn't one of the fragments that had destroyed the world. It wasn't falling chaotically. It descended in a perfect straight line, with ballistic intention.
And it was aiming directly at the monster.
THOOOOM.
The impact was dull and absolute.
There was no fiery explosion, only a displacement of pure air. The shockwave hit me like an invisible battering ram. I didn't even go flying; I was simply crushed back against the bus chassis behind me. The air blasted out of my lungs so violently it stole any scream I had left.
My whole body howled in pain, and the world blurred for a moment.
The silence that followed was more terrifying than the whistle. A heavy, total silence, broken only by the sharp ringing in my ears.
I lay there, paralyzed, waiting for my heart to start beating again.
When I finally caught my breath, I slid down the side of the bus, shaking.
The Stalker was gone.
Where the creature had stood, there was now a five-meter-wide crater. The asphalt was pulverized.
And at its center, perfectly still, was a sphere.
It was the size of a small car. Perfectly smooth. And black. Not black like paint or stone—black that swallowed light, a spherical void. It didn't smoke. It didn't glow. It simply… existed.
The object that had fallen from the sky and saved my life.
I stood, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ankle. Adrenaline kept me moving. Was it a weapon? A bomb?
My curiosity was stronger than my fear. This world had no rules anymore. Monsters were real, and now, apparently, so were miracles falling from the sky.
Limping, I approached the edge of the crater. The sphere rested at the bottom. Not a single scratch on its surface.
It was beautiful. And the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
I slid down the edge of the crater, kicking up a cloud of dust. I stopped a meter away from it. The air around it was cold.
"What…"
I stretched out a trembling hand, not daring to touch it. I leaned closer, trying to see my reflection.
There wasn't one.
The instant my face came within half a meter of its surface, the sphere opened.
It made no sound. No mechanical click, no metal sliding. It simply split apart, like an exotic fruit, revealing a hollow core.
And something inside that core moved.
It jumped.
I didn't even have time to blink.
A jet of black liquid—thick, glossy—shot out of the sphere. It didn't aim for my chest or my hand.
It aimed for my eyes.
"AHHHHH!"
I fell backward. The liquid hit me square in the face. It was cold—horribly cold. I tried to wipe it away, but there was nothing. It was gone.
No… not gone.
An unimaginable pain detonated behind my eyes.
It wasn't chemical. It wasn't a burn. It was the sensation of a thousand ice needles dragging themselves along my optic nerves. I could feel them. I could feel that… thing… cold and fluid, forcing its way into my brain.
I clutched my head, clawing at my own temples. I screamed, a raw, shredded sound that echoed down the dead street.
The sense of invasion was absolute. I was being violated on a neurological level.
My vision turned to static, then red, and then—nothing.
The world went black.
Pain woke me. Or maybe it was the absence of it.
I opened my eyes. The sky was still gray. I was still at the bottom of the crater. My head throbbed—a dull, hungover ache—but the sharp agony of the invasion was gone.
I sat up, dizzy.
The sphere was still there—open and empty. A useless shell.
"What… what did it do to me?"
I lifted a hand to my eyes. They were fine. I blinked.
And the world changed.
In the upper corner of my vision, a small blue icon appeared. A blinking square.
I swallowed hard, heart pounding again. Was I hallucinating? Dying?
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The icon remained, etched into my inner darkness.
I opened them again.
A translucent screen—like something out of a video game—unfolded in front of my face. It took up twenty percent of my field of vision. The letters were crisp, glowing cyan.
[INITIALIZING EXTINCT ARCHIVE SYSTEM…]
[CALIBRATING… LOCAL BIOLOGICAL DATA ERROR.]
[ACQUIRING CONTROL OF OPTIC NERVE… SUCCESS.]
[ACQUIRING CONTROL OF BRAIN STEM… SUCCESS.]
[EMERGENCY HOST REPAIRS INITIATED.]
I looked at my ankle—the one I'd twisted in the fall. The sharp pain was gone, replaced by a faint itch.
The screen flickered and displayed a new message.
[WELCOME, NEW OWNER.]