Vince checked the clock. In big, red numbers, it read 3:05. AM. Not PM. Vincent wished it was only 3 PM. He sighed and resisted the urge to lean back in his chair and go to sleep. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Vince looked over to his cubicle neighbor, a woman named April. She was new. April had her head on her arms and was breathing softly, asleep. Vince briefly considered waking her up but then decided they weren’t really doing anything important anyway, so what was the point?

Vince leaned over the top of his cubicle and looked at his boss’ office. The lights were on and he could see the silhouette of his boss talking on the phone on the blinds. Vince sighed, climbed out of his chair, and trudged to the break room.

The break room, like most things in the Dellway-McCoy office, was small and cheap. There was a cramped kitchenette and enough seating for four people, except there was only enough table space for half that many. Even when it was completely empty, like now, Vince still felt a bit crowded inside. He went to pour himself another cup of coffee (his fifth since midnight) and found the pot empty. He sighed and clicked his tongue. Thinking back, he remembered his boss going and grabbing a steaming cup of coffee not too long ago, in fact, he was the last person Vince could remember being in the break room…

Well, there was no use griping about it, Vince decided. He wasn’t getting paid enough to hold grudges. Or was he getting paid too little to not hold grudges? He couldn’t decide.

Popping open the top of the coffee machine, Vince took out the filter and grounds, trashing them, and opened the cabinet to find new ones. There, he found more filters, but no new grounds.

“Great,” he muttered, “just fucking great.” Vince coughed, then coughed again. Soon, he was beset by a fit of body-racking, gut-twisting coughs. Once he stopped, Vince steadied himself by leaning against the counter and took a deep, shaky breath. He’d been coughing more lately. Maybe he was getting sick? The air in the office probably wasn’t the cleanest, nor was the building the newest, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that there was black mold in the walls or something.

Vince dug through all of the cabinets, even the ones he knew no one used, and couldn’t find more coffee grounds. Nor could he find coffee beans, not that he had any way of grinding them.

Cursing under his breath, Vince wandered out of the break room and briefly considered asking his boss to do something, but then he remembered that his boss didn’t do anything except collect an exorbitant paycheck and bother Vince and the other workers.

Vince meandered back into the break room and was surprised to find a door marked “Coffee Storage” on the far wall. He thought for a moment, trying to recall if he’d ever seen that door on that wall before, and decided he hadn’t. But then again, Vince thought, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen it not on that wall before. But what kind of office would have a room solely dedicated to storing coffee? Whatever kind of office would have a coffee room, Dellway-McCoy definitely wasn't one. Dellway-McCoy was too cheap to pay for multiple bathrooms. Instead, they just had one, large, gender-neutral bathroom. They claimed that it was to be accommodating to transgender or gender non-conforming workers, but they’d had it that way for twenty years. And which was more likely: Dellway-McCoy, which still didn’t have a person of color on its corporate board, was almost two decades ahead of the curve on social issues, or they were just cheap?

But anyway, this “Coffee Storage” room was suspicious, to say the least. But Vince didn’t care. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was just stupid, but Vince threw caution to the wind and opened the new, mysterious door.

It was dark inside the storage room, so, like a fool, Vince stepped forward. He took another step inside and the door closed behind him, slamming shut with a sinister click.

The lights flickered on and Vince found himself in a barren room with no furniture and a door directly across the room from him simply marked “Out.” In front of that door lay an angel. Or at least, what Vince supposed was an angel. He had the wings, bloodied and charred though they were, and he was wearing a white toga, though most of it was dyed crimson with blood.

The angel reached a hand out to Vince and whispered something under his breath.

“What?” Vince asked, more shocked than anything, but the angel didn’t respond. His eyes rolled back into his head and he gave a death rattle, before slumping back down to the ground.

As Vince reached behind him for the door handle to get himself out of this strange room, a strange shimmering mist rose out of the angel’s corpse and coalesced into an apparition resembling the angel, but far less injured.

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The ghostly image of the angel was tall and had dark, bronze skin, and short, cropped hair. At his hip hung a spectral gladius, with pale flames dancing across the blade.

The angel raised a hand and a beam of light flew from the tip of its finger and into Vince. Vince felt a sort of dizzy wave wash over him, but it was gone in a blink.

The angel spoke.

“My name is Daniel,” he said. The angel’s voice was hollow and echo-y, like a distant call from across a canyon. “I have granted you a great power, a power that will allow you to reach levels that most humans can only dream of.”

Vince sighed. “I got to get back to work.” He turned around and reached for the door handle.

“Wait!” the angel pleaded, the echo gone from his voice, replaced by a desperate whine. “Just say profile to open your stat window and you’ll see why you should listen to me.”

“Stat window? Like a video game?”

“Sure,” the angel said. “A heavenly power designed by the servants of God, but I guess it’s like a video game.”

Vince sighed and checked his watch. 3:07 AM. It was too damn late for his hallucinations to be this weird, but whatever, in for a penny in for a pound, right?

“Profile,” Vince said, feeling a bit stupid.

A stat window blinked to life in front of his eyes. Vince, just for the hell of it, tried to push his fingers against it, but they went straight through.

“If you want to interact, you can press it with that intention and the interface will respond,” Daniel said helpfully. “You’ll want to check your stats.”

“How modern,” Vince remarked. He looked at his stats. They looked terrible.

Strength: 3

Agility: 4

Endurance: 1

Logic: 4

Conception: 5

Presence: 2

“Three to five in a stat is about normal for modern humans,” Daniel explained. “The higher the better, obviously. Do you need me to explain what each stat is?”

“Why’s my endurance a one?” Vince asked, ignoring the angel.

“Oh. Right. That’s important. Scroll down to the statuses section.”

Vince did. For just a second, the ground disappeared and the world twisted. Vince took a deep breath and continued reading.

“I have lung cancer?” he asked, pointing to the status effect that said Terminal Lung Cancer. Daniel didn't say anything, he just looked away, a bit ashamed. Vince tapped on the effect and a small window popped up.

Terminal Lung Cancer: The cancer is rapidly spreading throughout your body, likely caused by years of smoking and stress. I don’t know how long you have to live, but it probably isn’t too long. Oops.

-3 Endurance, -1 Strength

Another coughing fit began and Vince fell to his knees. Agony coursed through his midsection as his body shook. When it was all over and he wiped his mouth, there was a bit of blood there. The interface flashed before his eyes again

Skill Unlocked:

Dying (1):

My father always said, “If you’re going to do something, do it right.” Well, this is you learning to do it right.

Vince began to chuckle. Then laugh. Then, he began to cough but that didn't stop his howling laughter. Eventually, he calmed down, and after wiping bloody phlegm from his mouth and spitting the rest out, he got back to his feet and grinned at the angel.

Daniel saw the human staring back at him, a wicked, blood-splattered grin on his face, and felt a jolt of fear go through his body. Instinctively, the angel reached for his sword, slung at his side. If Vince noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“I know how this works,” Vince said, slowly drawing the words out. “You could normally cure me, but—”

“My power is expended. Giving you the System has nearly erased me.”

“Right,” Vince said. “And I’m guessing if I do whatever you want me to do, there’s a way to cure me?”

“Yes, all you need do is explore the labyrinth and find Angel’s Tears, those will restore—”

“Great, okay, got it,” Vince said. “Labyrinth? Is that like a dungeon from a video game?”

The angel sighed. “Well sure, let’s just call the Labyrinth, born from Daedelus’ mind, a construct of unimaginable size and complexity, a dungeon from a video game. Yeah, sure.”

Vince rolled his eyes. “Can you just skip to the end of the speech where you recap everything in a few sentences?”

The angel sighed and spread its hands out in a grand gesture. “Little time will pass for you as long as you are on this quest. Go into the Labyrinth. Survive and grow stronger. Save this reality. Save us all.”

Daniel’s ghost and corpse shimmered out of existence, once again revealing the door marked ‘Out.’

The Door to the Labyrinth:

Any door can be a door to the Labyrinth, but getting out of the Labyrinth is a bit harder. To enter the Labyrinth, will it to be so and it shall.

“How cryptic,” Vince said. He rolled up the sleeves of his white button-up and cracked his knuckles. “Hey, what did he mean ‘save this reality?’”

Just go through the door already.