Syd had never been a fan of horror movies.

It wasn't because of the shallow plots, or the bad acting, or the terrible dialogue. The hokey monster costumes didn't bother her, and even the goriest slasher films weren't violent enough to make her blink. No, the part that always made her turn off the TV in frustration was the way the human characters behaved.

They were just so – fucking – stupid!

When the monster showed up, they'd scream and cry, try to run away, hide in the most obvious places. If the threat was a mindless alien bug, one of the main characters would think it's a good idea to negotiate with it. Murderous clown? We should duck into this spooky circus tent to escape. And so on.

Apparently, people got a kick out of the absurdity. For some reason, they actually enjoyed yelling at the screen while a clueless heroine blundered from one avoidable mistake to the next. Syd had never understood the appeal. To her, it was an exercise in frustration.

Put me in the same kind of situation, she'd thought, and I know that I wouldn't be making dumb mistakes like that.

Today had given her a whole new perspective on the matter. If she survived, she was going to owe some fictional characters a heartfelt apology.

Encountering monsters in real life, it turned out, was a lot scarier than seeing them on a screen.

The first time she saw one, Syd froze. Even in the privacy of her own thoughts, it was embarrassing to admit, but that's exactly how it went. She'd just totally locked up, as if a switch had been thrown to shut off the thinking parts of her brain. You know, like the blue screen of death. Fatal exception error. Before she could start to process what had happened, she was already running away.

But it was just one time, she'd told herself. The situation had taken her by surprise. It wasn't that she'd been terrified, no, she was just startled by the unexpected. A giant monster had jumped out of a portal right in front of her and started tearing cars into pieces with its bare hands. Anybody would react the same way she did. Perfectly understandable.

Once she'd calmed down, it was easy enough for Syd to convince herself that her reaction had been a fluke. A single moment of weakness. Next time would be different, she thought. She was mentally prepared now.

She might have even started to believe it.

Getting dragged away by a pair of shady thugs scared her, sure, but it hadn't been paralyzing, mind-blanking terror that she felt. Honestly, the attempted kidnapping was kind of exciting. She kept a clear head, and the moment an opening appeared, she took it.

Then another one of those freaky portals appeared, and the fear came crashing right back down on her. She was back in the rocking, crumpling police car again, trapped, totally helpless, certain that she was about to die.

Now, as her feet pounded the pavement, carrying her away from something her rational mind couldn't comprehend for the second time today, she was forced to admit it.

She was terrified.

She wanted to go home.

Today really hasn't been my day, she thought.

Her fingers came up, unbidden, to touch the fancy stolen choker she was wearing around her neck.

Swiping the expensive-looking gadget had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. At the time, she hadn't thought much of it. Now she wondered if she'd made a mistake. Did she commit another one of those classic horror movie blunders?

Those guys trying to kidnap her seemed to think that it was important, anyway. So did the naked weirdo Amy had arrested for flashing people on Third and Main.

Weirdo or not, though, Syd had felt incredibly guilty about leaving him to die locked in the back of Amy's squad car. He'd begged her to help him, she remembered, and instead...

It was a relief to see that he'd survived, somehow.

And it was a relief that he was fully-clothed this time around.

Or was it?

Syd's foot caught on a crack in the road, nearly pitching her face-first into the ground, and she had to bite back on a scream. Irritated that she'd allowed herself to get distracted, she shook her head, attempting to clear it.

Focus less on the past, she told herself, and more on what's in front of you right now.

Behind her, a brilliant flash of white light momentarily brightened the sky, casting long shadows in every direction. A hollow, crashing boom followed seconds later, joined by the distant, repetitive honk of a car alarm. She resisted the urge to turn and look. Whatever the hell was going on back there, she knew that she didn't want any part of it.

She turned, boots skidding for traction on the wet asphalt, and darted through a gate in the chainlink fence between two warehouses that had been left open.

Building after run-down building flashed by as she ran, dark silhouettes rising up from the overcast night. Their broken windows stared down at her accusingly as she passed. Shouting voices chased her, indistinct, echoing off the alley's narrow walls.

Lungs burning, throat dry, she pushed herself onward.

Just a little further...

The backstreet dead-ended in a featureless brick wall.

...well, shit.

Syd dropped down behind a metal dumpster, gasping for breath, and attempted to take stock of her situation.

The alley was flanked by warehouses, all of them seemingly abandoned. Opposite her hiding place, there was a loading dock with a roll-up door, but it had been secured with a heavy padlock. She had a set of lockpicks on her, of course, but even the simplest pin tumbler would take time to open. Time that she didn't think she had.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Hesitantly, she pulled herself up to peek over the edge of the dumpster.

The absurd glowing rift hadn't moved from where she'd seen it last. Crackling and flickering at the edges, it hung impossibly in midair, like something straight out of a video game cutscene. As she watched, a bulky figure in high-tech white armor clambered out of the opening, then dropped down to the street two stories below. Another followed, landing behind the first in a clatter of heavy boots on concrete. She fell backwards before a third could finish emerging.

One of those blank-visored helmets had definitely just turned to stare in her direction.

I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home –

The ominous, metallic tread of armored footfalls drew closer, splashing through puddles and kicking aside debris as they advanced towards her inadequate hiding place.

Aside from their approaching steps, the interdimensional invaders were menacingly silent.

Syd pressed her trembling back against the cold, wet metal. She tried to slow her breathing, to still her shaking knees... to stop panicking and think.

With a loud crash, the middle of the loading dock door bowed outward. A second impact tore the latch out of the wall, sending the still-secured padlock skittering off into the darkness. Fingers appeared in the newly-created gap beneath the shutters, then hauled upwards, throwing them open.

Silhouetted against the building's unlit interior, she saw the shadowy outline of a tall man extending his hand towards her.

"Hey, kid!" the figure bellowed. "Come with me if you want to live."

It was a familiar voice, one that she'd already heard several times today. The last time she'd seen the owner of that voice, Amy had been with him, which must mean Amy trusted him to some extent.

Right?

Anyway, it wasn't like she had a better plan.

Pushing herself to her feet in a single convulsive motion, Syd dashed across the alley towards the opening. As she passed, she saw the leading pair of the white-armored figures turn to look at one another out of the corner of her eye. Then, ignoring her, both raised their arms to point in the man's direction, elbows locked straight out and fists clenched. The unfamiliar pose had an unmistakably threatening air.

"Forward-Commander-Two!" the first shouted in an oddly-distorted but undeniably human voice. "Surrender immediately or be destroyed!"

She slipped beneath the rolling door at the same moment the big guy released his grip on it. A hair's-breadth behind her, it slammed shut.

"Come with me if you want to live?" Syd squeaked incredulously at him. "Who the fuck talks like that?"

A dazzling beam of pure white light blasted through the thin steel in the spot where the man's head had been a moment ago. She flinched with a yelp of surprise, tiny droplets of molten metal raining down all around her.

"It's a line from a movie," the man replied nonchalantly. He sidestepped out of the line of fire just before another beam carved through the door, this one at waist height. "Time to get out of here, I think."

The man grabbed her by the wrist, effortlessly pulling her to her feet, then took off with her in tow.

"It must... be... an old person movie..." Syd panted as she was dragged along. "Do... you even... know where you're... going?"

Another blast cut through the dark warehouse, sawing through a floor-to-ceiling shelf unit on the other side of the aisle they were running down. It fell apart in two cleanly-severed halves, the cut edges still glowing a dull red.

That one was way too close!

"An old person movie!?" the man spluttered indignantly, seeming to be more concerned by her offhand comment than the attack that had just narrowly missed them. "It only came out..." He started counting on the fingers of his free hand, and his expression clouded. "W-well, okay, maybe Terminator is a little old, but it's a classic!"

They ducked around a teetering stack of crates, the big guy giving the one on the bottom a hard shove once they'd passed. The entire rickety tower toppled behind them, boxes larger than she was plummeting to the ground in an incredible racket of splintering and cracking wood. A garbled cry suggested that at least one of their pursuers had been caught in the collapse.

"This way," her guide said, still holding onto her hand. In spite of the near-total darkness, he seemed to have no problem navigating their surroundings. "An old person movie..." he muttered in a low voice.

He shouldered his way through a door marked EXIT, and suddenly they were back outside.

Behind her, there was another crash, and then the snap of more... hand lasers, or whatever the bad guys were doing. The man looked away, his eyes scanning back and forth rapidly like he was reading something she couldn't see, then turned back to face her.

"Okay, we're clear, and they've got something else to worry about. You can relax for a second."

Syd slumped forward, heaving for breath with her hands braced on her knees, and did her best not to throw up. It took much longer than the offered second before she was able to speak.

"Who –" she shuddered, waiting for another wave of nausea to pass, then tried again. "Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck is going on?"

The man blinked.

"Oh, I guess I never got the chance to introduce myself." He held out a hand. "I'm Ryan."

"Great, nice to meet you," Syd replied flatly, ignoring the offered hand. "That's the second time today I've been attacked by space monsters, Ryan. What the hell did you drag me into?"

A slight frown crossed the big guy's features. Ryan's features, she corrected herself.

"The first time, in the car... that was all my fault, and I really am sorry I got you and Amy caught up in it." He glanced down, and she followed his gaze to the choker around her neck that she'd... borrowed from him. "But this one? It's on you, kid."

"Oh," she said. "Fuck."

She let herself slide down to the ground, still hugging her knees.

"Yeah," he agreed.

Maybe her parents were right, she thought. They'd always warned her that her bad habits would catch up with her someday. Although mom and dad probably hadn't expected that her comeuppance would take the form of killer robots from another dimension, or whatever they were supposed to be.

Fuck.

Syd felt a kernel of stubborn, self-righteous anger stirring in the pit of her stomach.

"I don't want to be here," she said. It came out more petulant than she'd intended. In a smaller voice, she added, "I'm scared."

"It's okay to be scared," the man told her. Leaning down, he confided in a lower voice, "I'm scared, too."

Syd gave him a doubtful once-over. He certainly didn't seem scared, she decided. In fact, his face was locked in an annoyingly-handsome, determined expression, jaw set, gaze focused on something taking place beyond the warehouse's brick walls.

"Right," she said.

More than anything else, she'd always hated being patronized.

He turned to face her.

"It's true," he declared. "Right now, Amy is out there, fighting to protect us. She's on her own, outnumbered... if she loses, we're all screwed. I find that terrifying."

"Then forget about me, and go help her already!"

"I can't." Standing up, he walked over to her and tapped the stolen choker she was wearing with one big finger. "But," he added, "you can."

"...me?"

"You."

She shook her head.

"Look, I don't know who you think I am, but –"

He interrupted her. "When you're powerless, and in a situation that's out of your control, it's perfectly normal to be afraid. What I'm trying to tell you is that you don't have to be powerless anymore."

The man gave her an encouraging grin. That expression, too, looked annoyingly handsome on him.

"Syd, do you want to be a hero?"