My eyes shot open to screams, yelling, and rumbling. I felt bruised, battered, and I realized I was lying in a pile of rubble. I staggered to my feet, groaning, trying to find out where I was. Desks, chairs, a broken projector, bags, and… unmoving bodies.

The university campus. The lecture hall was ruined, strewn with debris. People were screaming outside and some of what I’d feared were corpses were actually waking up, groaning like I did.

“What the hell happened?” I rubbed the back of my head.

Outside, through the glass windows, the campus was destroyed. I saw something stalk through the plaza, a dog… or a wolf, only too large for the distance. I was entranced, confused, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of how unnatural it was, how out of place, despite the state of the university.

Then someone ran past, screaming. Out of reach, beyond any attempts at warning, there was nothing I could do. Its attention flicked to the runner, bloody and obviously injured. Its nostrils flared and it bounded across the open plaza—

I looked away, eyes wide. I saw the flash of red, the scarlet blood, before I could fully tear my eyes from the scene. It put everything into perspective, all the stains on the plaza, the debris. Some of it was… I vomited on the floor, coughing, teary-eyed.

[Notice]: You have gained the [Solo] Class.

[Notice]: You have gained the Class Skill: [Never Alone].

The sudden bright lettering was less disorienting than it should’ve been. Solid, smooth, and certain in a world of sudden chaos. His vision blurred but the words didn’t.

“—Hey! We have to get out of here! Anywhere else, man.” Someone yelled, voice shaking.

“W-what’s happening?” A girl whimpered.

I looked at them, realizing something had blasted through the lecture hall. There was a body smeared across the floor and it wasn’t human. I tried to stop myself from hyperventilating and suppress my shaking hands.

I glanced around hesitantly, finding my backpack. School supplies, a laptop, a water flask, nothing else. I pulled it on, grip white-knuckled on the straps. Vague memories came back to me. A beautiful astral sky, lights. The notion… of apocalypse.

I breathed in and out, deep breaths in a vain attempt to steady myself. People were arguing in harsh whispers but my eyes were glued to the outside. The university was in ruins… unrecognizable not for the fact that it had been destroyed but that it had been spliced with some other terrain.

My heart sped up as some lumbering beast cocked its head towards us. Monster. The word rang in my mind as an absolute.

“We need to go.” My voice was shaky. “Now.”

I wasn’t sure if I was talking to myself or them.

It got everyone’s attention regardless. Fear and hesitance. I stared back at them for a heartbeat before shouldering my backpack and getting the hell out of that room. Blood and viscera was bound to tickle the nose of anything passing by.

“Where the hell are you going?” Someone called after me. “You’re good as dead out there!”

Going outside wasn’t the plan, that’d be the same as suicide with those things roaming around. The lecture hall was connected to an underground lab, the type of experiments requiring thick steel doors and other such precautions. I found the access stairwell, normally unexplored by students and left to professors, lab aides, or other staff.

The hallway below was a bleak affair, old yellow lights and a clean yet plain linoleum. It might as well have been heaven compared to above. I found one of the doors to a lab room, thick steel with cautionary warnings during active experiments. Unoccupied, going by the green vacancy card.

I tugged on it and was met with a groaning creak. Something thumped against the other side, angry and vicious, desperate. With enough ferocity to indicate an absence of humanity. I shut the door rapidly with a hollow thunk, hearing it click back into place.

Only to find a green ugly thing staring at me from the end of the hall, deeper into the academic labs. It was an ugly knobby thing, a humanoid with lanky limbs and uneven features. No taller than my hip.

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It was enough to make me go cold.

It hadn’t been there when I’d come down. And it stood in the center of the hallway with eerie stillness. I stared at it, frozen with fear, my mind deciding between fight or flight, overloading at the decision. But no, it was moving, arm slowly raising, mouth revealing sharp teeth.

Then it screamed and I was scrambling backward, falling onto the plain floors, limbs flailing in a futile attempt to run. It loped at me like a beast and I cried in desperation, kicking and clawing in my own way. It was grinning at me, at my fear.

Right up until my foot found its gut. It slid across the floor, hacking, coughing. Keening with pain. Breathing hard, it took a moment for me to figure out what happened. I’d kicked it. And it had felt pain.

A surge of emotion overcame me and I advanced, screaming, reared back and cracked it across the forehead with another kick. Its head rebounded off the wall, groaning until finally stilling. Scarlet liquid staining the floor.

I stood there, panting.

[Notice]: You have leveled up: Level 2.

What the hell was happening? In the chaos, I’d forgotten about the strange screens, attributing them to some kind of sick hallucination. Reality had settled in, some twisted version of it. I’d gotten a Class called [Solo]. And a Class Skill.

Everything came to me in clarity with the barest intention. “What is this?”

Name: Evahn Wynst

Level: 2

Class: [Solo]

STR: 6

CON: 5

DEX: 5

AGI: 6

PER: 9

INT: 10

WIS: 13

WIL: 15

CHA: 4

LUK: 4

Stat Points: 1

Skills: [Never Alone]

I glanced around, listening for anything out of the ordinary, before tucking into the shadow of the stairwell. Anything coming or going and I’d hear their steps. Then I turned my focus on this whatever the hell this was.

It didn’t take me more than a moment to realize this was me. Evahn Wynst, not particularly fit nor out of shape, no more coordinated or faster than the next, jaded and observant, somewhat studious, determined and resolved, antisocial to a degree, and most certainly unlucky.

All summarized.

It almost felt like a game to me. Until I heard the screams above. A girl’s scream. I closed my eyes and tried not to think. Tried to calm my breathing once more.

I failed miserably. Distraction and focus, I needed both.

What was a Skill? It had to be useful. Enough to tip the scales of survival. It had to. So I didn’t end up… like that. I glanced upward, shivering.

Skill: [Never Alone]

Even working alone, it never hurts to have another set of eyes. Better yet when they’re yours. You are able to replicate yourself to a certain degree and capacity.

It came to me in more than just words. Confusion at first, then sudden understanding. An intrinsic knowledge of… how to use the Skill.

I didn’t take even a moment to consider it. I knew I needed it.

I took a step to the side, some instance of myself left behind to fork into individualism. And suddenly I was staring at myself.

Me.

A man neither short or tall, of average build, and generally non-descript save for a pair of pale green eyes. He had the same messy hair I did. The same clothes too. A pair of joggers and a hoodie, comfortable. And from his searching face, exactly my own thoughts.

He looked at me and both our minds whirled, catching up to what I’d just done. I had just replicated myself. The implications danced across my consciousness. I wondered—

“Well, I know I’m a clone. That’s one question answered.” He said to me, looking just as bewildered.

We didn’t even have to mention the absurdity between us. It was plain on either of our faces. Whatever was happening outside, I now had myself to watch my back. It was uncannily comforting. Was it my general disposition that made me accept it so fast? Or something altering my threshold for the impossible? Or the knowledge I’d never betray myself?

Maybe it was because with what I’d seen above, that good news was so desperately welcome. No matter how strange. I didn’t dare question a blessing but I was still curious of its nature.

“Is there any difference between us?” I asked, wondering if his status as a clone gave him any insight beyond what I knew. What I suddenly and instinctively knew.

“I’m weaker, I think.” He responded. “A fraction of the original. You. This is weird man.” That’s what I thought.

“Yeah.” I decided, in his shoes—which were mine— I’d probably appreciate blunt forwardness in this situation. “If we’re navigating this apocalypse… you know, it’s probably best if you’re in the front.”

He took a breath and exhaled. “Yeah, that makes sense. I think I’m a little less scared of death. Expendable. God that’s weird.” He said.

“This is crazy,” I said, sitting down. “What happened up there? The university is destroyed, monsters roaming the campus, and it’s like a whole forest was teleported in the middle.”

My other self took a seat nearby. “You know I know just as much as you.”

“I can’t be the only one with new abilities,” I said, almost sure of it.

“Yeah, I don’t think so either.”

“Well, you’re me so we probably thought the same.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”