Chapter Two: Ten Minutes in Hell

Jake woke to the sound of something chewing.

For a few seconds he had no idea where he was. Dirty white tiles. Broken glass. The underside of a counter. His cheek was pressed to the floor and his mouth tasted like copper.

He tried to breathe, and pain tore through his chest.

He jerked upright with a strangled gasp, regretted it right away, and fell back against the counter.

"Ah, fuck!"

His hands flew to his stomach. There was blood everywhere. His shirt was soaked and ripped open, the front of it stained dark. But under the blood, his skin was whole.

No hole. No torn flesh. No broken ribs jabbing at his lungs.

He pressed a shaking finger to the spot where the creature had stabbed him. Nothing. He pressed harder. Still nothing.

"No. No, no, no."

He pulled the shirt aside and looked again. No cut. No scratch. Not even a bruise. All that blood had come from a wound that didn't exist anymore.

He was alive. He was alive after something had put a limb through his chest.

The memory came back in pieces. The creature. The impact. The pain. The dark.

And the voice. Your first skill is Immortality.

Jake stopped breathing for a moment.

A faint blue light appeared in front of his face. He flinched so hard his shoulder hit the counter. A see-through window hung in the air, and unlike the messages he'd caught glimpses of in the chaos, this one was perfectly clear.

(SYSTEM NOTIFICATION)

UNIQUE SKILL: IMMORTALITY

Fatal damage has been reversed through reconstruction.

Host status: Alive.

Reconstruction: Complete.

(WELCOME, JAKE ADRIAN.)

He stared at it until the letters blurred. Then he reached out to touch it. His fingers went straight through. He waved his hand through it again. Nothing.

"Okay," he whispered. "Either I'm losing my mind, or dying just made everything worse."

The window vanished.

Jake stayed crouched behind the counter, listening. Something scraped across the floor past the overturned tables. The chewing went on.

He leaned sideways, slowly.

A creature was hunched over a body near the entrance. It was smaller than the one that had killed him, maybe the size of a large dog, but its shape was wrong. The back legs bent the wrong way. Thin pale limbs held the body in place while a round opening under its head worked at the dead man's shoulder.

Jake clamped a hand over his mouth.

The creature stopped. Its head lifted.

It had no eyes, but Jake felt its attention land on him. He backed away. A piece of glass cracked under his shoe.

The creature shot across the café.

He threw himself sideways and the thing hit the counter where his head had been, splintering the wood. He scrambled up and ran for the kitchen, hearing it tear after him. His shoes slipped on spilled water. He caught himself on a steel table, kicked a metal tray into the narrow doorway, and kept going. The tray crashed down behind him.

It was still coming.

He burst through a service door into a cramped storage corridor and slammed it shut. Something hit the other side. The door bowed inward.

"Come on!"

He dragged a steel shelf across the entrance and cans and boxes spilled everywhere. Another hit shook the frame. He didn't wait to see if the barricade would hold. He ran down the corridor, shoved through an emergency exit, and stumbled out into an alley.

Cold air hit his face.

Chicago was a different city now. Smoke rose between the buildings. Car alarms screamed from every direction. A bus sat sideways across the intersection, front windows smashed, doors hanging open. People sprinted down the street while gunfire cracked somewhere in the distance. A man stood in the middle of the road yelling for everyone to get inside.

Something dropped onto the roof of a car behind him. The man never finished his sentence.

Jake looked away.

He couldn't help anyone out here. He needed shelter. He needed to understand what had happened to him. Most of all, he needed to get home.

Rebecca lived a few miles south of the university. She'd texted him that morning to remind him to pick up groceries on the way home. Jake had promised he would.

He pulled out his phone. Three missed calls from Rebecca. One text.

Aunt Rebecca: Jake, are you still at the university? Something is happening outside. Call me now.

It was timestamped eleven minutes ago. His throat tightened.

He called. It rang once. Twice.

"Come on, Aunt Bec."

On the fourth ring, someone picked up.

"Jake?" She was out of breath.

"I'm here. I'm okay. Where are you?"

A crash came through the phone. She gasped.

"Listen to me. Don't come home yet. There are things in the street. I saw..."

The line crackled.

"Aunt Bec?"

Something growled on her end. Jake's grip tightened.

"Rebecca, get somewhere safe. Lock the doors. Don't let anything in."

"I know. I know, sweetheart, but there's someone outside the..."

A loud bang swallowed the rest. Then a scream.

"Rebecca!"

The call ended.

Jake stood still in the alley. He called again. It wouldn't connect. He tried once more. Nothing.

For a moment the whole world shrank to the phone in his hand.

Rebecca had taken him in when he was sixteen, after the last relative willing to keep him made it clear he was turning into a nuisance. She had never once made him feel like a burden. She'd worked double shifts when money ran short, shown up to his school meetings, and kept a photo of his parents on the living room shelf even though looking at it sometimes made her cry.

He had promised he'd come home. Now he couldn't even reach her.

"Please," he whispered.

Metal clattered at the far end of the alley. Jake shoved the phone in his pocket and made himself move.

He had no weapon. No idea how to fight these things. No guarantee his new ability would save him a second time.

Immortality. The word sounded almost like a joke. He could come back from the dead, fine. But he had zero interest in finding out how many times he could do it before something went wrong.

A new blue window opened. Jake stopped. This one was bigger.

(SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE)

HOST: JAKE ADRIAN

Level: 1

Class: Unassigned

Status: Recovering

ATTRIBUTES

Strength: 5

Speed: 6

Agility: 6

Vitality: 5

Endurance: 5

Perception: 7

Intelligence: 8

Willpower: 7

UNIQUE SKILL

Immortality, Rank: Unknown

(NOTICE: ATTRIBUTE VALUES ARE PROVISIONAL.)

He read it twice. Five Strength. Six Speed. He didn't know what the numbers meant, but they looked pretty sad for a guy who'd just come back from the dead.

"Can I raise these?" he asked.

The screen didn't change.

"Right. Of course you can't answer."

He tried touching the Strength number. Nothing. Then he focused on it instead, and a smaller window popped open.

Strength: 5

Measures physical force, lifting power, and striking power.

Current rating: Within normal human range.

Growth: Training, experience, System progression, and qualifying achievements.

Jake's eyes moved down the list. So he could get stronger. Faster. Quicker at dodging. That was something. It wasn't nearly enough to fight the things tearing through Chicago right now, but it was something.

Then another message appeared.

(WARNING)

Unique skill Immortality has an undisclosed secondary cost.

Further information is restricted.

Jake's face went hard.

"Yeah. That's not scary at all."

The window faded.

A scream came from the street. He turned. A young man, The man was about his age, perhaps a little older, with short brown hair and a split in his lower lip. Stumbled around the corner clutching his left arm. Gray hoodie, a red fire extinguisher in his other hand, blood running down from a cut on his forehead. Three pale creatures were right behind him.

"Move!" the stranger shouted.

Jake didn't need to be told twice.

They ran together toward a pharmacy across the street. The stranger got there first, swung the extinguisher into the glass door, and smashed it. He grabbed Jake's jacket and hauled him inside just as one of the creatures leaped. It slammed into the doorway, limbs clawing at the frame. The stranger brought the extinguisher down on its nearest arm and it recoiled, shrieking.

They dragged a display rack across the entrance and staggered back into the dark pharmacy.

For a few seconds neither of them spoke. The stranger bent over, gasping.

"Please tell me you have a car."

Jake looked at him. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

Something scraped slowly across the glass outside. The stranger raised the extinguisher again.

"I'm Ethan," he whispered.

Jake glanced at the barricaded door. "Jake."

The glass started to crack.

And for the first time since the world ended, Jake wasn't alone.

That might save his life. Or get them both killed.