A churning Gate awaited Levi, swirling away in the center of the lobby, right behind the attendant’s desk. There was no attendant, nor chair. A light breeze from the Gate ruffled the papers on the desk.

Levi strutted up to the desk and leaned on its top. “Good afternoon. I don’t suppose you’ll mind if I take the elevator this time?”

The Gate had nothing to say.

“I didn’t think so. You know, it’s good that you finally got a job. You’ve been a real pain in everyone’s ass for so long, I’m glad to see you finally contributing to society,” Levi said.

Stoically, the Gate continued churning.

Levi pushed up from the desk. “I’ll leave you to it, then. You’re probably on the verge of erupting, if you already ate someone and their chair.”

Aside from him and the gate, the space stood empty. All the lights were at their lowest settings. The cafes were closed, no patrons at this late hour, and no one loitered in the lobby this long after work was over, and they’d all gone home for the night.

He’d had to use the badge for floor 80-something to get inside. Apparently, the other one wasn’t approved for after-hours access. He glanced down at his badges, pursing his lips. I hope that’s what it is, anyways.

Without any monsters actively rampaging, the tower stood little risk of collapsing. Confident in its structural stability, Levi summoned an elevator. A little panel awaited a badge. He flashed the floor-90 badge. Nothing.

“Shit,” Levi muttered. Again, he tried the floor-80 badge.

Ding!

The elevator dropped toward him.

He pursed his lips. Looking at the floor-90 badge, he shook his head. “Don’t tell me they actually told security that they’d lost their badge and got it taken care of.”

He poked the badge. “Come on. Be lazy!”

The badge had no response.

Levi sighed to himself. “Oh well. Floor eighty-something, huh? This is gonna be a slog.”

Behind him, the Gate trembled. It widened, all at once.

“Huh? That’s not supposed to just…happen,” Levi muttered. He looked around, but the floor remained abandoned, save him and the Gate. “I didn’t tickle it. I mean, it was going to erupt in a few hours, but…”

The phone he’d stolen rang. Levi glanced up at the slowly-approaching elevator, then picked up the phone. “Leviathan Smith, discrete human removal services. All killer no—”

“Levi, are you near a Gate?” Maury interrupted him.

“Uh, yeah, how’d you know?” Levi asked.

“I didn’t know, I just…” Maury sighed. “Did the Gate suddenly open up?”

“Open? You mean like, start shooting out fissures and spin way faster, the way it does before it erupts?”

“Yeah. Well. Okay. Not good,” Maury muttered, half to herself.

“Why?”

“The one near me did, too. Precisely ten seconds ago.”

“Ten seconds? That’s about when mine started going.”

“Yep. And so did all the ones I have on camera. All of them. Ten seconds ago, they all suddenly began to churn.” She sucked a shallow breath through her teeth. “Shit. I really hoped this wasn’t the case.”

“What? What’s the case?” Levi asked.

Maury grumbled under her breath. He heard the distant step-clunk of her footsteps as she paced around. “The Gates, they’re all linked somehow. There’s a master Gate, that, if our guesses are correct, the Apostles are in charge of. If they tickle that Gate, all the Gates go off, at once, long before most of the supers even realize that Gates have spawned all over the city.”

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“Oh. That’s a problem.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem. As it was, we could just ignore the Gates. Let the supers wake up, find them naturally, and figure things out. But now? Now, they’re all going to erupt while everyone’s still sleeping. The few nocturnal supers are going to get wiped out before they even know what’s happening. By the time the daytime supers wake up, it’ll be too late. The whole city will be overrun with monsters.”

“Less than ideal. You have a plan?”

Maury made an exasperated snort. “No? Not really. I could try calling all the supers whose numbers I know, but I can only call from a normal phone line. Chances are, they do-not-disturb their phones at night. The only one who has all the supers on an unignorable phone line—”

“Is Alpha,” Levi said, casting his eyes upward.

“Yeah. I hate to say it, but you’re in the best position to save the city, Levi. Get up there. Call that line. Doesn’t even matter if you say anything, just ring all the supers awake. Without them…I mean, damn. I can probably reinforce myself into the earth and hide for a while, but…this many Gates? This whole city is going to become the Exclusion Zone it’s supposed to be. There’ll be more monsters than people. Slaughter in the streets. Even Alpha’s army of supers won’t be able to do anything. Hell, Alpha might not be able to—”

“Oh, come on, Maury. Alpha’s always able to do something. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s killing,” Levi said confidently.

There was silence on the other end of the line. After a few moments, Maury sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Still. Alpha will be stuck with more monsters than he can handle. Even if we assume he’s at the top of his game, that’s all kinds of fallout. The damage to the city will be nigh-irreparable. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.”

“We don’t want that,” Levi said.

Behind him, a horrible roar echoed across the abandoned lobby. Levi glanced over his shoulder. The Gate churned faster and faster, on the verge of erupting. “Er, Maury?”

“Yeah?”

“Any chance the Apostles, like, I don’t know…summoned some really nasty-ass monsters?”

“What, like the kind that multi-hundred-pointers need to level up?”

“Yeah, like those monsters. The kind that Alpha needs at least two hits on.”

There was a thoughtful pause. “They shouldn’t be able to choose the monsters that end up over here. The Gates point where they point, and whatever’s on the other end gets sucked through. That’s just how it works. What we know as an eruption is really more like the Gate changing locations; if the Gate changes to a highly populated location, more monsters come through, and the Gates seem to like choosing highly populated locations to change to. It’s possible for a Gate to ‘erupt’ and spew no monsters—”

“Okay, yeah, spare me the lecture, ya dang nerd. Is it possible?”

A grunt. The silence of long thought. “It’s possible,” Maury said at last. “If they knew where the monsters were, and could point the gate at them, then yes. It’s entirely possible. It requires a lot of Gate knowledge. Knowledge of the plane on the other side of the Gate. Knowledge of the Gates themselves, to influence their motion. But it is possible.”

More thoughtful silence. Behind Levi, the Gate suddenly expanded even further, eating into the ceiling and the floor. A clawed, feather-adorned hand curled around the edge of the gate, the hand so large it barely fit inside the first floor.

“So…it’s possible,” Levi said, eyeing the hand. “Because it’s starting to look like, maybe, they did exactly that.”

The hand pulled at—at space, reality, Levi had no idea. A beak pierced through the Gate, long and lined with teeth. It crashed through the glass at the front of the building, and then the head appeared, small, bulbous, birdlike. A single horribly intelligent eye stared at Levi, big and golden. The giant raptor let out a hungry squack, and pulled again, squeezing through the Gate one inch at a time.

The elevator arrived with a cheery jingle. Levi jumped on. “Maury, you still with me?”

“I’m still with you. I was just thinking. There was this guy. Back at the institute. He uh, he was researching the Gates. The Gates, and the world on the other side. Had this great idea. What if we could manipulate the Gates to only land on empty space, or space with relatively weak monsters? Then the Gates are basically a non-threat, and the Exclusion Zones could be populated again. Brilliant guy.”

“That, uh, that’s a bit suspicious, yeah. You know where he lives?” Levi asked.

Maury hummed to herself. “I’d have to look it up. Lost touch when Alpha…well, you were there.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Yeah. So. I’ll see if I can figure out what happened to him. If someone stole his research, or…”

“Or he became the leader of the Apostles,” Levi muttered darkly.

Maury grunted. “I’d be surprised. Dude had the charisma of a paper bag. At best, he’s their smart guy, working behind the scenes.”

“Like you!” Levi said happily.

The building shook. Levi fell against the wall of the elevator. All the lights flickered.

“Fuck,” Levi spat.

“What?” Maury asked, concerned.

“I should’ve took the stairs.”

She laughed. “You’ll be fine. Alright. I’m going to go digitally stalk an old friend. You hang on. Try not to die too much. We don’t need you getting corrupted right now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Levi rolled his eyes at the phone, then hung up. The elevator drew to a halt, and he threw himself off it, landing in an action roll on the eightieth floor.

“Safe,” he whispered, in a cool voice.

Unaware of his desperate escape, the elevator doors slid smoothy shut, and it trundled away again.

Levi dusted himself off and stood. He looked around.

The number 83 stared back at him, blazoned on the walls all around. Levi licked his lips. “Still got a bit of a climb. Let’s go!”