My muscles tensed when I heard the siren, and I immediately turned to the glass wall to my right, knuckles white with horror. There, hovering above Elliott Bay, was a colossal, three-dimensional sphere resembling a drop of mercury wrapped in near-invisibility. It was a “rift”—a wormhole—that led to whatever Godforsaken hellscape the rifters came from.

“W-W-Wait,” Maggie stammered, her hands suddenly clasping her mouth as purple liquid oozed out of the rift into the ocean, as if Aquarius himself was pouring a bucket of paint into Elliott Bay. A sickening, writhing waterfall of flopping aquatic beasts followed, each with a different appearance, hitting the water with a splash, making the center of the bay look like it was boiling.

That was just the beginning. A massive black creature plugged the purple liquid pouring out of the rift, clogging it like an octopus in a hole. Tentacles shot out, writhing in the air, searching for purchase as it pushed itself into our world.

“W-W-What the fuck is that?” Maggie stammered.

“It’s a Beta!” I said. Rifters were classified by the first eight letters of the Greek Alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, and Theta. Theta was for non-invasive bugs and minnows, while Alpha represented humanoid aliens called Riftwalkers and swarm types that could wipe out human populations. But for single, non-humanoid monsters, Beta was as high as it got—and this one was the size of a skyscraper. “Now move!” I yelled.

Maggie’s body locked up, and she turned to me with choppy movements. “W-What—“

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I grabbed her arm and yanked her out of her chair. “Now!” Maggie stumbled forward as I pulled her along, determined to get her to a shelter before the line became lethal.

Warships stationed on Harbor Island suddenly fired missiles, warheads leaving molten chemtrails before exploding in a rain of fire and shrapnel. Maggie screamed and cupped her ears as mounds of flesh fell into Elliott Bay, splashing around an orange cargo ship navigating the waters. Despite the blast's sheer force, the creature remained unfazed, shedding skin and scales as it slowly pulled itself out.

“Follow the soldiers!” the host yelled, running to the door as soldiers ran past the glass walls with 10-gauge shotguns. “There’s a shelter a block down!”

“Come on!” said a clean-cut businessman I’d later know as Alphonse Carmichael. He ran and opened the door as the women in his party kicked off their heels and ran.

Suddenly, the grass outside the window turned black as shadows danced over the sidewalks and foliage.

“Wait… what?” I muttered. “Why—“ Maggie tried to run forward, but I grabbed her, “Wait!”

“W-What?” she cried.

“There’s stalks out th—” I saw the business party running out the door. “Wait! Don’t go out there!”

A businesswoman in a purple blouse stopped by the door, but her colleague rushed out. The man barely made it onto Pikes Street before a colossal black bird the size of a reaper drone swooped down, snatching him in its talons and carrying him away. His screams became distant in seconds. The group processed that—

—then panicked.

“Lock it!” Alphonse yelled in an aggressive reversal, watching a group of people rushing toward Cutters Crabhouse. He slammed the door shut before they arrived, working with the host to latch a bar lock on the door. Soldiers and citizens pounded on the glass, pleading and screaming to let them in.

A transparent earbud I was wearing suddenly clicked on as I watched, and my superior, First Lieutenant Clint Slade, came on the receiver.

Where the hell are you?

I touched the receiver.

“I can’t move.”

What do you mean, you can’t move?

“I’m in a locked building.”

Then unlock it. Now!

“I’ll try—“

You will!

The receiver clicked off, ending the transmission. I turned to the bay I needed to be at, watching the carnage unfold. Stalks of all colors, shapes, and descriptions dotted the skies as soldiers shot at them with Browning M2 machine guns on the wall blocking the water. Two went down into the bay; one picked up a Sickle and flew away. A third rammed a helicopter with gray horns, crumpling the aircraft like a soda can before it hit the ocean like a skipping stone. The stalk was fine, but it was mowed down by turrets a moment later.

It was the Rapture all over again.

I turned back to Alphonse and found that most of the people trying to get into the building had fled. “I need to leave,” I said to the businessman. “So unlock it.”

Maggie gripped my arm. “W-Wait! You can’t leave me!“

“I’m dropping you off at a—”

“Are you crazy?” a businesswoman I later knew as Sandra Kennel screamed. She wore a purple blouse and her sense of entitlement, using a tone that relayed her accustomed authority. “We’re all going to die if we open it up!”

“It’s only for a second,” I said. “Either way, I’m following an order from an officer of the US Marine Corps. That overwrites every obligation you and I have. This is a hot zone, and these are the terms you signed off on. If you don’t comply, the military will—“

“Don’t you dare threaten us,” Alphonse said, stepping in front of the door. “We’re managers at Amazon. If the military even tries to touch us, they’ll—waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai—“

My world slowed when Alphonse began screaming, and I suddenly saw a long shadow cast shade over the tables around me.

I grabbed Maggie and jumped a split second before a boom and rock of thunder quaked in the room from something crashing into the glass wall beside us. Spider web cracks fifteen feet across shot out of my periphery, and massive chunks of glass the size of paperweights slammed into tables.

I got off Maggie and turned, finding a neon orange bird with the spiked scales of a horned toad stuck in the south window, glass wrapped around its neck like a human head stuck through a windshield. It was the size of a reaper drone and had a beak that could swallow a beach ball, screeching with the vigor of someone laying on the horn during traffic.

It was a “stalk”—an avian rifter.

Maggie screamed and scrambled backward, trying to tug me back with her, but I wouldn’t move. Instead, I stood up in a trance, staring at the stalk. The bird didn’t interest me—

—it’s what it brought with it that left me captivated.

Aether.

These beasts, these animals, these monsters—thrive on invisible energy that they brought over from their world. The Chinese call it “Qi,” Indians—prana. Some call it mana, and the rest of us in the West call it “aether.” Whatever it is, it fuels these creatures, gives some of them wild abilities, and since I’m sensitive to it—

—it gets me high. Not like runners’ high or the feeling you get after eating a Carolina Reaper. It was a gambler’s high that put me at a craps table, $10,000 up, as a beautiful woman whispered, “Go all in. Even if you lose, I’ll let you win all~night~long,” and I was suddenly drowning in an amount from two riftbreaks.

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My vision distorted with color like an acid trip, and I could see the aether. There were ten colors for ten types. “Red” (the closest match, as these colors didn’t exist in our color spectrum) gave Sickles superhuman strength. “Green” increased perception and slowed the world down. “Blue” hardened skin like a shield. “Purple” increased speed. I had obtained those four through eating specialized rifter meat, but the rest were unknown at the time.

Most importantly, I could see it flowing through the stalk, purple channels flowing into a bright purple sphere near its lungs.

Its core.

A single bullet simply shaking that spot would make the beast die as if it suddenly ran out of batteries—

—and at that moment, high as fuck, I found myself touching my Beretta M9’s holster as if that was a completely reasonable thing to do.

“What are you doing?” Maggie screamed.

“Calm down,” I said. “I’m just marking the core. “ My pistol had incendiary tips. Once I marked the core, anyone with infrared (which was now standard) would know where to shoot to kill it. Problem was—my pistol couldn’t pierce the glass wall. That was just an excuse. My primal instincts had other plans.

I touched my receiver to speak to Slade. “Request to trace a stalk. There’s a stalk trapped in a window at Cutters Crabhouse, and citizens are trapped inside.”

Denied, Private! If they’re in a hot zone, they’re not our responsibility. Now get your ass down here!

The stalk thrust forward, snapping the wooden frame over and over with a boom, Boom, BOOM! cracking the wood.

“Sir, listen to me. It’s stuck in the window. I can trace it easily. In fact, if I got a McMillan, I could kill it with one sh—“

I said denied! Now stop talking, or I’ll write you up for insubordination!

The line clicked.

I felt intense disappointment, but—despite being high and primal—I complied. “I need to leave,” I said to Alphonse, “and you will open that door. You’re on video right now. If you don’t comply, you will face a military—“

It was right then, right there, on that unforgiving day in June, that God suddenly intervened, declaring, You shall disobey Slade’s orders! as the wall’s frame snapped, shooting splinters out like shrapnel as the stalk flew into the room, screeching and snapping as it dragged the entire window inside the building.

“Get to the kitchen!” I yelled, grabbing Maggie and throwing her out of the way. It was the safest spot, as the park was walled off and two stories above Elliott Street, and stalks were in the sky.

Throwing her gave the stalk time to catch up, crashing into tables in front of me. I dodged one of the tables and ducked as it snapped at me, grabbing its neck as I was pushed forward by the glass wall around its neck.

The stalk swung its head in response, whipping me like a chew toy—slamming me into a table. I coughed, but I didn’t let go. It didn’t either. It slammed its beak on my head and flung me across the room.

This all happened in three seconds.

2

My ears rang with tinnitus, and my vision blurred as the stalk approached, pushing eight tables forward with the glass cone on its head—the only two factors keeping me alive.

At that moment, it would’ve been extremely reasonable to think, Congratulations! You got exactly what you requested—certain death—you fucking idiot! for asking to trace it—but I didn’t.

The situation felt… wrong.

Despite its power, I felt like a pro Basketball player losing a game to a sweaty man named Steve with balding hair and burly chest hair. It didn’t make sense, and I didn’t know why.

I closed my eyes and felt the aether around me. I’ve always been able to feel it, and the trace amounts I breathe slow my world, allowing me to wrack up kills. But that day? That day, I was wearing the shit like a coat, feeling each aether type as if they had their own textures, ripe for the taking as if I could just breathe them in instead of needing to eat rifter meat. It made me feel powerful—if only I could just use them. The core hidden behind the rifter bite scars I had on my chest was also screaming for me to use the aether. It felt dry, parched—dying. I just didn’t know how. But somehow, for whatever reason, I instinctively focused on my core—

—and “spun” it.

I didn’t actually “spin” it. If it was that simple, everyone could do it. But whatever I did—it worked. When I opened my eyes, all the “breathable” aether types flowed into my chest as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

When the green aether hit my brain, my world slowed to a near standstill; when the purple hit me, I felt like I could move normally during that slow motion; when the blue hit me, my body felt hard and strong; and when the red hit me, I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger on an Angel Dust kick. Most importantly, the culmination of all of these things led to me seeing the ninth form of aether—Dust, as I now call it—something I’d later become famous for.

Dust isn’t a color as we know it. It looks like it exists somewhere in the fourth dimension, a color that was two colors, and that only added to the strange power it gave me—

—the ability to see the future.

Not exactly. The Dust created copies—or dopples—of the stalk, showing me trails of where it was going to move, like an afterimage in reverse, but that’s all it took. I was high as balls, so the moment I saw it, I became absolutely resolute that I was a superhero with foresight and determined that the only reasonable thing to do with that power was to pry the fucker’s beak open, stick my Beretta down its throat, and blow a hole through its fucking core.

So that’s what I did.

The people who later saw the camera footage believed that I charged right into this thing’s beak and got lucky, but the dopples told me it was about to move right, so I jumped forward at its head. The dopples proved correct. It whipped right, and by the time it returned, I was smashing my red aether-enhanced fist onto its beak like a blacksmith’s hammer. Its head crashed into one of the tables, cracking in half. I didn’t miss a second. Cool blue aether flowed into my hands, making them harder than steel as I clamped down on its beak and started to pry.

Come on, I thought. The beak opened, and I jammed my left arm into it, with my elbow and palm making a jack to keep it open. The stalk bucked, whipping me around in slow motion, making me adjust my body for balance.

Stop… I internally yelled. Moving!

I let go with my right hand, unholstered my pistol, and shot its eye repeatedly, making it stumble forward.

I pushed my foot through a crack in the tables as it fell, navigating to the floor as I held up its dazed body with super strength. Then I planted my feet on the ground, lifted it from a squat, and, true to my highly delusional pledge—

—I stuck my Berretta M9 into its maw, aiming at the core in its lungs, and squeezed the trigger.

3

My Beretta M9 let out a muted pop like a New Year’s party streamer. But that pop instantly silenced the beast, making it collapse as if I had unplugged it from a wall.

Instant death.

I let go, jumping backward to avoid the window around the limp stalk’s body as it fell forward. Then, I collapsed on the ground, burning hot, feeling my chest rise and fall, and released the green aether—"Sena"—which sped up my world. All the processed information from the slowed time crashed into my brain, hitting me like a blacksmith striking an anvil. It almost split my mind in half, but I didn’t care. As soon as the pain subsided, I chuckled.

That… was stupid, I thought. But I won… I actually killed that fucking thing….

I was thrilled, and the sound of gunfire and bombs celebrated my victory like a Fourth of July celebration. It was legendary.

For a moment, I basked in the warm glow of my stupidity before remembering that I’d be fucked if I didn’t report to duty.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” I groaned. “I’m coming.

I slowly got off the floor, walked into the flap doors to the kitchen, and looked at Maggie, the business party, the host, and the cooks. “The stalk’s dead, and I need to leave. But I’ll take you to a….”

I froze and touched my neck when I saw the way they were nervously backing away from me. The Lep C scales hidden by my shirt had started the process of stretching (where the scales spread like a malignant tumor as you consume aether). At that moment, it just looked like black veins, but once the skin hardened and cracked, it would look like scales, and people would be able to tell I was a Sickle on sight.

Yet I didn’t care about that. I cared about the fact that I just saved these people, and they were treating me like an abomination. It was always like this. No, thank you for saving our lives from a monster, Kei. No thanks for saving our business from a giant fucking monster, Kei. No, thank you for spending thousands of (non-refundable) dollars at our establishment, but it’s on us today, Kei. Just quivering lips—even from your date, who was touching her lips and gagging as she remembered that we shared a soda together.

I sent Maggie a mocking sneer. We’re “humans,” huh? I telepathically communicated. I knew what would happen if she found out, but the fact that she almost got me killed with her self-righteous, non-“oblivious,” new pro-Sickle bullshit made her hypocritical reaction even worse.

I scoffed. “I gotta go.”

Alphonse reached out his hand. “W-Wait! You have to protect—“

“That’s not how this works,” I said.

“Y-Yes, it is,” Sandra protested. “You’re a Sickle, right? You have to protect—“

“I said, that’s not how this works! You’re in a hot zone. That means your life is forfeit if… that happens!” I pointed at the massive ripple in Elliott Bay that looked like a whirlpool leading to the underworld. Somewhere along the way, the Beta had fallen into Elliott Bay. Now, there was an orange cargo ship right in the center of that massive bubbling ripple, locked in place from the colossi’s breathing. “And while having escorts provides you with basic security,” I continued, “it does not entitle you to their protection if a direct order overrides their duty to protect you. You had to take a class on this shit before you came here, and you signed a fucking form. So it doesn’t matter if you’re Amazon or if your father’s rich. If you think anyone outranks the military, you’re fucking delusional.”

Then I paused and looked at Maggie in disgust. “I just saved your lives,” I said indignantly. “You should be grateful.” I holstered my pistol and rushed out the broken glass wall into Victor Steinbrueck Park, ignoring the two-story railing, cold indignation burning in my veins.