If there is one universal truth each and every being would say applies to themselves it would be this: “If something can go wrong, it will.” Every being in existence does everything it can to mitigate this risk in every way they can, even down to how they evolved. Eventually, everything becomes a crab or a slime.

What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t particularly surprised that the apocalypse descended in the moments before I finally graduated from University. Twelve years of standard education, rolling right into seven years of much more expensive medical training. It’d be easy enough to see the benefits of a surgeon in the apocalypse but immensely less-so for psychiatry.

They’d need me afterwards, I joked as I sprinted as far as I could from Saint Gerrard’s University. We’d all received the same, insane message in our heads at the same time but not everyone was reacting like me. They were all in shock, but I couldn’t afford that.

I needed to get home.

All at once. the whole university and, I’m assuming, the planet received an ominous warning. “The end of the beginning starts in thirty.” A sonorous voice intoned, causing immediate halt to all proceedings and a lot of screaming. It was easy enough to figure out we had all heard the same thing when people started talking. “Thirty what?” The most common and most important question.

When the voice returned, not quite a minute later, and droned a simple “Twenty nine”, the confusion only increased. People were looking around desperately for someone who could give them an answer, but there just wasn’t one. A few other people started to look increasingly disturbed. Panic was setting in.

I was already leaving.

“Where are you going?” Bless her heart, Professor Daniels was holding my diploma out to me, still. I had been next to receive the degree, but it obviously didn’t matter now. Either I was completely insane and my psychiatry career was over before it began or… the world had gone completely insane. We’d see what that meant for me career-wise, if I survived.

“Twenty eight.”

“Ahh, piss off!” I shouted. Even though she had heard the voice too, the doddering woman looked offended. Hopefully I would get the chance to apologise, but how could it matter? I sprinted off the stage and made for the exit. Luckily, because of my haste and the relative spotlight on me, most people in attendance were too stunned to crowd the aisle yet.

“Twenty seven.”

This particular announcement coincided with the deep ringing of the school bell. An actual bell, with a belfry. Someone was diligent, I thought as I made a beeline for the front doors of the university. The bell required a physical pull on a heavy rope to sound. I shook my head. “British people…” I muttered under my panting breath.

The chaos had started at this point, and my lungs were full of sharp blades. I cycled every now and then, but I was by no means in peak physical shape. I wanted to kick myself but I could hardly have expected some weird, magical armageddon to descend. The sky seemed to have been informed it was time to be dramatic, and rumbling red clouds were beginning to appear in the sky.

Though still not entirely convinced I wasn’t hallucinating, it was becoming more and more clear something serious was happening. Home was a small two bedroom house about three miles from the school. The hour or so it took to walk in the morning was a scenic walk through idyllic English suburbs and a park. Those pretty houses and lovely lanes were just obstacles.

“What’s going on?” A vice grip literally stopped me in my tracks. I was stunned to see the ancient face of Mrs Naebol looking straight into my eyes. Her milky white sockets were useless, I thought. The intensity in those blank eyes was almost as terrifying as the “Twenty six” which the deep voice intoned.

There were people in disarray all around and I saw them all flinch. Everyone but Mrs Naebol, that is. “The hell are you made of?” I asked under my breath. “I’m not sure Mrs Naebol, but I don’t think it’s good. You should get home…” I tried to pull away but her grip was intense. I also didn’t try too hard. I closed my eyes and sighed at myself. What am I doing? “Can I get you somewhere safe quickly?”

“You’re the Kaeron boy, aren’t you?” I was pretty sure that Mrs Naebol was older than the original sin. She could often be seen in the various warm places around, getting a coffee and trying to find someone to talk to. I had taken the time to chat on a few occasions, which I was glad for right now. We needed to get somewhere safe, if that existed anymore.

“That’s right, Grant Kaeron. Will you walk with me?” She wasn’t letting go and I couldn’t blame her. Blind, quiet and tiny, what chance did she have if the world fell apart and no one helped her? I would grab the first person I could, too. She nodded and I flinched as the voice boomed again.

“Twenty four.”

“Jesus chr- Imeny.” I frowned. Best not to throw powerful names around in vain right now. “You’re hearing that too? Come on, let’s get somewhere warm, at least.” Despite the promise of Summer around the corner, this particular week in May had been frigid as a witch’s tit. Mrs Naebol had grabbed hold of me as I passed an alley leading to the local park. There was a café there where I could leave her without too much guilt.

The voice told us another segment of time had passed. At around fifty second intervals, I judged that there were less than twenty minutes left. I could still make it, taking the short walk to catch my breath. “Always knew this would happen.” Mrs Naebol was muttering strangeness, still vice gripped to my sleeve.

“Twenty two.”

I didn’t have the time to think about anything but getting free of the old dear. Still, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just pulled free. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could. Crazy old lady strength. “We’re nearly at Clive’s. Is Sandra working today do you think?” Study kicked in. Keep talking about the mundane and fear can’t set in as easily.

Everyone in the room jumped as I opened the door. The voice spoke at the same time, and we received accusatory looks. “Sorry,” I winced. Luckily, I didn’t need to do much explaining as the owner came flapping over. Her husband Clive had passed away a few years ago, but the name of the business stuck. Like a mother hen, Sandra covered the elderly woman with her shawl. She released me and I turned for the not yet closed door behind me.

“Twenty. Integration initiated.”

The door fell into my hand. Expecting physics to follow the rules I was used to, I was unprepared for the weight it swung closed with. Like it had been shoved shut with a huge finger, I was thrown back by the force. With presence of mind, I blocked my head with my left hand just before I collided with a nearby wall. Keeping myself conscious was great, but it meant the pain in my shoulder was inescapable.

I screamed even as someone began to crowd me. “Hey. Hey kid. Look at me. Don’t look at your arm, look at me.” I found it hard to focus my eyes, but I managed to lock on to a pair of watery blue eyes. The man had short salt and pepper stubble and a ruddy redness in his bulbous nose. “This is crazy, right?”

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Everything hurt. “Yeah,” I mumbled. I hoped that agreeing with him would be enough and that he would leave me alone, but he didn’t. He asked a few more rapid fire questions. Did I go to the university? Yup. Had I tried the sandwiches on sale here? Most lunchtimes I got free, yes sir. Could I take a deep breath? Well, sure, watch.

“Nineteen.”

As the voice boomed in my ear, the man yanked my arm. It was like he pulled my consciousness back from the brink. The fog in my mind was blasted apart and suddenly I was back in the room. “Ow…” I moaned.

“Yeah, that’ll sting alright.” The man stood up. I’d seen him around over the years, but we’d never had reason to speak before. “Can you get up?” His outstretched hand felt like a taunt as I gripped my right shoulder to stem the pain. I grunted and grabbed his arm with my left hand, letting myself be pulled to my feet. It felt like my back was being shredded against barbed wire.

Now it was my turn to look at the door with accusation. Why had it swung back so hard? “What the fuck is going on?” Though I basically whispered the question to myself, Sandra’s head snapped my way so hard her earrings clattered loudly. I smothered an eye roll and turned my expression apologetic before gesturing my head to my shoulder.

Struggling to be polite, I felt frustration rise as the sourceless voice spoke again. Eighteen by fifty was nine hundred. Fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sprinting anywhere with my shoulder like this. Innocent as anything, I walked back up to the door. Once I was close, the rage I felt came forth and I planted my foot near the handle and pushed. Every action gets an equal reaction according to Newton, but the whiplash this time felt disproportional.

Luckily, nothing dislocated, but I fell back into the café where multiple worried and confused faces were glaring at me. Oh, like you were all just enjoying a nice lunch before we came in. Mrs Naebol had been ushered to a chair and was seated with a look of deep consternation on her face. The pain in my shoulder had flared but I gritted my teeth and got to my feet.

“Seventeen.”

Someone screamed. The pressure was mounting with each passing moment, people were bound to buckle eventually. In fact, I probably looked pretty frantic after nearly breaking myself on the front door twice in as many minutes. The scream had come from a bespectacled woman who brandished her laptop with two hands over her head. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

No one had been approaching, and they definitely weren’t now. “It’s okay, calm down.” The man who had relocated my shoulder spoke in an almost bored drawl. “The scene’s already being made, love, no one needs you getting all crazy, too.”

“Me? Crazy? That boy’s the only one doing anything! We need to get out of here!” I shrank into a seat next to the still-frowning Mrs Naebol. Don’t single me out, I’m not on your side. A few looks my way were met with as close to a shrug as I could manage. I was done trying to shove my way out, at least. Someone else could come up with a plan.

The laptop lady and the helpful man continued having a back and forth, but just like he had with me, the older man was trying to keep a lid on the situation. It wasn’t working nearly as well with laptop lady, however. As the voice called out sixteen minutes (until the end of the beginning, whatever that meant), she only became more frantic.

“Get us OUT!”

Despite the seriousness of my own injuries, which I felt a little disconnected from, it was easy to find the situation absurd rather than frightening. A mysterious voice was counting down to something unknown and I was stuck in a café with a bunch of strangers. The doors were blocked by some inexplicable means and no answers were forthcoming.

Frustrated and scared, the woman got a running start and threw her laptop as hard as she could at a window. Intending to follow it out, I imagine she was quite surprised when a similar effect to the door caused the laptop to fling back towards her. I never learned her name. The laptop might have given me an answer if I were inclined to search, but things got rather hectic rather quickly after that.

Much like the door had suddenly seemed to weigh a hundred times its norm, and my kick rebounded with astounding force, the laptop ricocheted like a hard plastic bullet. It disappeared from view. A crash behind me was followed by a slap of wind. Everything happened all at once.

I reached up to my face, where the wind felt like it had left a mark. My fingers came away bloody. Panicking, I turned and saw the laptop smashed, half buried in the brick wall. “Huh?” The woman asked. That was all I heard before the screaming started again. It wasn’t her this time, and the older man who helped before joined in the chorus as people saw what had occurred.

I had a small cut on my cheek, but there was blood all over my forehead. I returned my gaze to the woman just in time to see her fall. Her top half fell, that is. Her legs gruesomely remained standing for another few seconds before the knees buckled. I barely heard the evil voice in my head say fifteen.

Blood pooled quickly. I absently noticed that much more blood was flowing from the top half than the bottom half. There wasn’t much I could do about the shock at this point. Simply too many things had conspired at once. “I was supposed to graduate today,” I chuckled.

Mrs Naebol turned to me, and I quickly grabbed a napkin to get the splatter of blood from her face. “So it’s really happening?” She asked. My heart broke a little. Mrs Naebol didn’t have any clue what was going on, and now she was just surrounded by screaming.

“Lots of bad stuff is happening. What do you mean, Mrs Naebol?”

“The System has come for Earth.”

“What system?” My head was still swimming but something pulled me into the moment. Despite the horror going on in the café, this felt more important right now. There was nothing I could do for either half of Glasses Lady. Maybe I could help the people screaming, but I wasn’t focusing on them.

“Fourteen.”

“Ugh, shut up. Can you not hear that, Mrs Naebol?” Each time the voice spoke it was louder than the time before. Deep, full of bass and terrifying, Mrs Naebol was the only person who didn’t react to its countdown. She hadn’t reacted once, now that I actively tried to think about it.

She smiled a gentle smile, discordant somehow with the drama behind her. The air around us became noticeably calmer, the sounds of useless triage muted. “This isn’t my first go around, Grant.” She raised a hand to my cheek and I found myself unable to move away. “And I’m not looking for another.”

“I don’t understand,” I said dumbly. The confusion only grew, as the sounds around us got even quieter. Somewhere in the mumble I heard the ominous voice whisper the word twelve. Astonished, I watched Mrs Naebol’s eye clear. As though her cataracts had never stolen the sight, she looked at me.

Two vibrant amethyst eyes burned into mine. Their intensity was greater than the sun, yet I couldn’t look away. Around the purple orbs of power, Mrs Naebol’s face became apologetic. “I’m truly, very sorry for this.”

“Wha-”

My mind was bitch-slapped like a train had been shoved up my nostril. All senses except touch disappeared. I felt all of my muscles snap into positions they were not meant to move. I could feel nothing but my own body moving. I screamed in terror but had no idea if I was actually making the noise.

The horrible, locked-in feeling of having no control over my own body was harrowing. I could almost feel various parts of my psyche being branded by the experience, though in the moment all I could truly feel was fear. What’s happening to me? Mrs Naebol? Sandra? Anyone?

As suddenly as the world disappeared, it returned. I could taste blood. My fingers were sticky and all of my muscles felt heavy. I was breathing like I had run a marathon, or more appropriately, gone twelve rounds with a heavyweight. “What the fu-” I stopped talking, my throat apparently shredded. Maybe from my screaming?

Sight was the final sense to return. I hadn’t noticed that I could hear the room because it was so quiet but I heard my own voice, and the coughing thereafter. “It’s not fair,” came a voice to my right. I jolted, and my muscles reminded me they were in a lot of pain right now and such movements were not allowed. I groaned and fell onto my back with a splash. By that point, the blood was impossible to ignore. My mind had done its best, but reality forced its way into my perception whether I liked it or not.

I did not like it.

The walls were covered in blood. There was no sound because everyone had been torn apart. Like the room was secretly a giant blender which I had somehow avoided, everyone else was ripped to pieces by an unknown attacker. I looked down at my own, destroyed hands with numb, dreadful understanding.

Finally, I looked down into the ankle deep puddle of blood. How many was it? Twelve? Eleven, I think. Glasses Lady was already dead. Grey, wiry hair was matted with the crimson clotting of the café goer’s blood. Her yellowing cardigan and brown knee length skirt were stained nearly black with it. “It’s not fair,” she repeated.

“One.” The voice shook the world, forcing me to plunge my ruined hands into the blood for stability. The countdown was already over? Had I missed other statements after the last? I guessed it didn’t matter.

“What’s not fair?” I stared into her gemstone eyes. I was pretty sure the world was ending, I had also probably gone insane and it certainly seemed like I had killed this room full of people. I might as well humour the old lady.

“What the System does to people is cruel. Good people don’t survive long. Ever.” Her eyes still seared into my own with unexplainable energy, and I felt that energy grasp hold of my mind. It was the same as before my blackout. Maybe I gained some kind of resistance to the control.

Not enough, unfortunately.

“Zero. System online. Good luck.”

As the countdown finished, Mrs Naebol used her strange power to move my limbs. I watched in confusion and then nauseous horror as my hands wrapped around her neck. One fierce squeeze, only a moment of strength, and the light was snuffed from her eyes. The control was immediately removed and I threw myself backwards, away from the body.

Ding. “Level up!”

The same voice from the countdown shouted the words happily into my head. Then, it happened again. And again. Then something seemed to finally break because the volume jumped a magnitude, the words became a jumbled mess. “Level-achieve-title unl-new ques- Level up!- Would you like- Level up!- to loot Naeboaroseax?-Level up!-gon Slayer, equi-Inventor- Level up!”

The world was nothing but blood, loud noises and an altogether indescribable feeling somewhere between being hungry and inflating like a balloon. I slipped on the blood as I tried to take a shaky step towards the front door. As I fell, my head clipped the corner of a table. The questions and sounds from the System kept coming.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, not able to make any other words come to mind. “Yeah.”