Moishe Rose reached out and touched the Skin Balloon.

It was the last minute of Orientation, and he knew that it was there for him, one of James’s creatures. He didn’t know to what purpose, yet. Wrapped around his other arm, Moishe’s tamed viper hissed at the strange monster—which the Skin Ballon thankfully ignored.

“It’s all right, Cecilia,” Moishe murmured in the low, soothing voice she liked.

His hand took a firm grip on the Skin Balloon, to ensure that they could not be separated.

Then he found himself in the white room with the System Homunculus, which ran down the list of Moishe’s rewards.

After that brief visit, he was teleported back to Earth.

Moishe’s body fell to the pavement from several feet in the air, but in the second he was falling, he managed to quickly reposition his body so as to land on one foot and one knee, somewhat poised. The Skin Balloon had appeared alongside him, touching his hand where it had been before the end of Orientation.

That’s convenient, he thought as he landed.

At the same time that he had dropped, however, several other people hit the ground nearby.

“Need you to get away from me for a bit,” Moishe whispered harshly in the Skin Balloon’s direction. “I’ll follow you, but I don’t want strangers to see me hanging out with a monster.”

He hoped the creature understood language. Moishe knew this was one of James’s creatures, but the strangers around him would have no way of knowing that—and he didn’t want to be in the position of having to explain associating with a strange magical creature, right after everyone would have spent the last couple of months dealing with monsters. It sounded like a good way to get murdered.

Cecilia was still wrapped around his body, but he decided that he would order her into his bag, too. Just as soon as he tested it to make certain it could contain living things without killing them.

The Skin Balloon bobbed up and down, almost like it was nodding, and then it floated quickly up and away.

“Hey, man, what the fuck’s that?”

Moishe turned and saw one of the people who had landed near him. Fortunately, the man wasn’t looking or pointing at him or the Skin Balloon, but at a giant black rat—roughly the size of a man—with gleaming, glossy eyes that stood on the street corner.

I wonder whose Orientation you came from…

“Shit…” murmured one of the other people who had landed near Moishe.

The rat took a step toward the humans, and everyone but Moishe scattered, running without looking back. That was apparently what they had learned from their Orientations. Moishe stood his ground and stared the rat in its beady little eyes.

I’m not moving. You need to get lost.

The rat took another step forward. Its movements were the furtive, uncertain motions of a creature that had matured on Earth, before the System changed it. Moishe instinctively realized that it was not one of those monsters that knew humans primarily as prey. This rat had first experienced them as predators. Moishe drew his daggers without breaking eye contact.

If you want to die, I’m perfectly happy to get some more experience…

The rat stopped moving and simply watched him for a moment. For the first time, Moishe had the inkling of some form of intelligence in the creature’s unwavering eyes. It was trying to decide whether it could win.

Moishe took a step forward, and the rat took that as its cue. It leaped away from him, then crawled through a chunk of shattered pavement—down into the sewers, or the space where the sewers had once been.

Oh, I don’t like that, Moishe thought. Orlando was going to turn into quite a dangerous city if the sewers turned into a breeding ground for rodents of unusual size—and whatever other manner of creatures chose to take up residence.

He finally had a chance to look around, with no pressing danger weighing on him, and he wanted to get the lay of the land—see what else had changed along with the arrival of monsters from out of some fantasy—or nightmare.

He turned his head to look toward the city center, and his mouth fell open at what he saw.

Never mind, then. I guess the city’s fucked anyway. He managed to pick his jaw up off the ground, but pulling his eyes away was another matter. Orlando looked like it had been the victim of a horrendous natural disaster.

In the distance, he could see that all of Orlando’s tallest buildings had toppled. Broken glass littered the streets. There were great fissures where the pavement had been. People appeared to be panicking, running around directionless, as if a disaster was ongoing.

But afraid. They knew to be desperately afraid.

Without a strong leader, this place is going to descend into the ugliest kind of anarchy, Moishe thought.

He didn’t see any sign of James anywhere, though. As Cecilia shifted on his body to wrap around his bicep more tightly, Moishe turned to look up at the Skin Balloon.

The creature had almost camouflaged itself, hiding partially obscured behind a cloud. Fortunately, Moishe had good vision, so he could still see the Skin Balloon. It appeared to be waiting patiently for him. The direction it had moved in suggested that it wanted to lead Moishe out of the city.

Great. At least I won’t be in the middle of the collapse.

He put away his daggers, then turned again, to where he remembered a convenience store had been. There was some thought of getting supplies in the back of his mind, but as he saw the wrecked building, memories from before the onset of Orientation came rushing back. He had been visiting his sister Isabelle at her place in Orlando.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

When word of the end of the world as they knew it came, Isabelle had had a hard time taking it as seriously as Moishe thought it required. He had always been the more practical one, even though she was older. So he had gone down to the Quick Mart convenience store at the last minute. He’d had a hard time cutting through the crowds to get in.

He shook his head at the memory.

I didn’t end up getting much in the way of supplies. It didn’t really help us at all. The others trying to make their last minute apocalypse preparations had almost cleaned the store out.

A memory of his sister’s face suddenly flashed before his eyes.

She had looked so happy when she video called Moishe to invite him there for her baby shower. She and her partner, Eugene, were expecting their firstborn child, a little girl. They were engaged to be married in the Fall.

When Moishe saw her in person, she had looked almost ready to burst. It had really brought home for him how their lives were about to change. She was going to be a mother, which would make him an uncle.

Now that’s never going to happen…

Moishe tried to resist for a moment, then gave up and let the tears roll down his cheeks.

He sat down on a chunk of curb and just bawled his eyes out for a few minutes.

“It’s not fair,” he muttered to himself. “Out of all the people Rostov could have picked to fucking sacrifice…”

The anger still boiled somewhere inside him, but now the grief was stronger.

I’ll never see her again, he thought. And her baby, too… Goddamned sick rat bastards. I’ll never meet my niece. Poor Isabelle…

He buried his face in his hands and allowed himself to sit with his grief until he heard the sound of movement from the convenience store, now at his back.

Moishe hurriedly rose from the curb and used the back of his arm to wipe the tears from his face. The arm came away dirty as well as wet, and Moishe grimaced.

He hadn’t showered in weeks, so he could only imagine how he would look to whoever was moving around inside the wreckage of the convenience store. The reason he had sat with his back to it was that he had assumed it was empty—but now, through the half-collapsed ceiling, he could see two people walking toward him.

The two men were in conversation, focused on each other and not looking straight ahead, so they hadn’t noticed Moishe yet. He had the chance to get away without being seen, if he wanted.

What am I fucking thinking? Moishe asked himself angrily. I’m all alone here, in a world where monsters absolutely exist. Until I reach James and his people, I’m pretty vulnerable. Assassin equals glass cannon. If I can acquire some allies, I should be grateful for the opportunity—not running away. Get it together, man.

Moishe bent down, looked around for a minute, and quickly grabbed an earthworm that was wriggling around on the ground.

He stuffed the creature into his Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions, closed the bag, counted out thirty seconds in his mind while occasionally popping his head up to make sure the men in the Quick Mart hadn’t seen him—and then he opened the bag back up and drew the earthworm out again.

It still moved, though its activity in his hand when he first brought it out seemed sluggish.

As if I just took it out of suspended animation, maybe?

In any case, the worm quickly resumed its normal wriggling movement—the same sort of motion Moishe remembered he had seen before in earthworms.

That would have to be good enough.

Moishe whispered to his snake, “Cecilia, would you do me a favor and please get into my bag for a little while? I promise it’s bigger than it looks on the inside.”

The viper slithered slowly down his arm and into the opening of Moishe’s bag.

Did he detect the slightest reluctance? It was hard to be certain. But his little friend did allow herself to be stored inside the bag.

Once her head was in, it almost seemed to suck the rest of her body inside.

Sort of weird how that works. It seemed like something to perform experiments with, later.

Moishe rose from his crouched position and saw the men were closer to him now. He stood still and simply looked at the man walking in the lead until he and the other man made eye contact.

The man smiled nervously at Moishe, and the Assassin gave him a nod and a firm smile back.

As the two men approached, Moishe evaluated them visually. The man in the lead had a vaguely Mediterranean look to him—or maybe Middle Eastern. It was hard to be certain. The other fellow was Caucasian of some stripe, with a neat, clean cut look.

“Nice to meet you, young man,” said the man in the lead as he reached Moishe, extending his hand to shake.

“It’s good to meet anyone in this wrecked world who isn’t trying to kill me,” Moishe replied, looking over the other men’s shoulders and ignoring the offered hand for the moment. He thought he saw movement in the rubble behind the two men. “I think we probably need to move away from this area, though. Maybe save the introductions until after that.”

The man who had just tried to shake his hand turned to look behind himself, and a chunk of rubble moved.

“Something was following us through there,” the man said, shuddering slightly—although there was a slight smile tugging at the edge of his lips, as if he liked the proximity to danger a bit.

Maybe he’s a little like James, Moishe thought. Some guys really like proving they’re the most dangerous thing in the room.

“Yeah,” Moishe said, speaking quickly, eager to move the conversation to a new location. “This city is looking kind of unsafe, generally. I have some friends who I’m planning to meet up with outside the city. There are a few strong people, and I’ve seen that they’re capable of protecting a group. I’m not sure if you have plans that would keep you in the city, but if you’re interested in leaving, I think it might be safer to travel together rather than individually. Either way, we should really move away from here.”

“Can I lead the way?” the man asked, still turned to face the Quick Mart wreckage. “I also have some friends from Orientation who are supposed to meet me. If you want to travel in numbers, that ought to make our trip even safer.”

Moishe nodded. He just wanted to get out of there. And with other people beside him sounded better than without.

“Perfect,” the man said.

Moishe followed the man—and his thus far silent companion—as they made their way from the front of the Quick Mart, in the direction of the city center.

This is really probably moving us toward danger, Moishe thought, his heart beating more quickly as they moved into what he imagined would be a soldier’s worst nightmare. The city was in terrible shape, with some buildings barely standing and others having collapsed, while still others were on fire—some form of human action, or something the monsters had done? He couldn’t be sure.

It would be easy for a group of creatures to ambush them from any of these abandoned buildings.

Moishe had just opened his mouth to ask how much farther it was, and if they could perhaps take a different route to meet his new companion’s friends, when the trio turned a corner, and Moishe saw a crowd of people in the distance. They were standing near the lake.

“We made it,” said the man, satisfied. He turned to Moishe. “We’ll meet up with my people, and then you can lead us to your friends, if you think that’s the safest choice. Otherwise, we’ll see if anyone else in the group has any bright ideas.”

“Sounds good,” Moishe said. “I guess we’re out of the woods for now. I’m Moishe, by the way. Moishe Rose.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said the other man. “My name is Cyrus.”