“I just don’t get your fascination with this kid,” Tristan was saying as the team sat around a table in their trailer outside the school grounds. The interior was surprisingly quiet despite the torrential downpour going on outside. They had been going over the prospective candidates to determine who would be eligible for the follow-up interview. Most of the cases had been straight forward. High potentiality scores, unique affinities, and strong responses to the personality tests brought most of the cream to the top. There was one student, however, that Mae kept bringing back up after the other two thought they’d thoroughly dismissed him.

  “Something doesn’t add up about that kid,” she insisted. “No one scores a zero. There must have been something interfering with the test. And that affinity?”

  “It was just a glitch, Mae,” Sarah said. “The system didn’t even record the result, see?” She slid her tablet across the table, showing a picture of the student’s face as well as the results of the tests. It read:

  Name: Ryan Donnovan

  Age: 16

  Astral Potential: 0

  Affinity: N/A

  Mae shook her head and slid the tablet back. “I know what I saw,” she insisted. “I’m pretty sure it read Aegis.” She slapped the note she’d scribbled down on the table, a copy of what the screen showed before from the testing equipment. “It has the same number of characters.”

  “And what about this second word?” Tristan asked. “It’s just a bunch of gibberish.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Mae said. “But I still say he warrants further testing. He barely answered any of our questions. I want to see who he really is.”

  “All right,” Sarah said. “Let’s just bring him in for the interview and see how it goes?”

  “Fine,” Tristan assented. “That makes the list a little long to get through in one day, though.”

  “Just knock off that kid at the bottom,” Mae said. “Watkins I think it was?”

  “Witkins,” Sarah corrected. “His father is pretty influential, not sure if it would go well if they found out we knocked him off for some nobody…” She trailed off at the look on Mae’s face. “Ok, he’s been stricken.”

  “No,” Mae countermanded with a sigh. “I don’t need to hear another lecture about politics from the boss, just,” she looked at the list. “I’m not going to give up the chance to recruit an Ice affinity, and that Peterson kid scored higher than his brother, who is already a second year at the academy. We’ll leave Donovan off for now. We don’t have to head out until Saturday anyway, I’ll come back tomorrow for a follow-up—" the trailer rocked slightly. It was a heavy trailer.

  “What kind of gust of wind could…” Sarah began.

  “Not wind,” Tristan said. “That was a force blast.”

  “You mean, like, from an explosion?!” Sarah exclaimed as Mae shot past her, tapping open the door. The storm immediately burst into the cabin, drenching Mae and the interior near the open door. She ignored the discomfort of the icy rain and stepped onto the street, panning her gaze around until she saw the orange glow of a receding fireball in the distance.

  “Tristan,” she spoke at her normal volume, not attempting to shout through the storm and trusting her intuitive earpiece to pick up her vocals and transmit. “What major structure is approximately 20 kilometers due east of our location?”

  “Stand by,” he said, only pausing for a moment before giving the answer. “The district’s power plant is eighteen clicks east.” Mae panned her gaze around once more. It was raining so hard now it was almost like she was surrounded by a dense fog, but her vision was enhanced from her exposure to and recovery from astral forces, so she was able to pierce the haze and confirm that not a single light was on in any building around her, including—she turned—the school.

  “Tristan,” she said. “You made sure the stabilizers had back up power, right?”

  “Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Tristan said. “I found an industrial strength battery backup in the ceiling tile.” He poked his head out into the storm—his short crop of hair immediately plastered down on his head by the rain—and shouted over the storm. “I’m guessing by your questions that the explosion we felt was the power plant?” Mae nodded.

  “It is still a good idea to double check the stabilizers, I would hate for the—” she was cut off once more, this time by a low hum that started vibrating around them. Her eyes went wide. Without hesitation, she dashed towards the school, pushing the speed enhancing abilities of her nano weave suit to move as fast as she could. A miasmic distortion in the air began to ripple and then twist into a purply haze just as she was about to get to the steps. It solidified the moment before she reached the threshold, and she was repelled back with an equivalent force to the speed she’d built up.

  Mae skidded and tumbled across the wet pavement of the school yard as Tristan and Sarah came up to arrest her momentum, Tristan catching her up against this large chest. The impact had been enough to knock her unconscious, and as Tristan tried lightly tapping her cheek to wake her up Sarah turned her gaze to the field that now enveloped the school.

  “This isn’t like any Incursion Event I’ve ever seen,” she said. Tristan looked at the barrier.

  “No,” he said. “This is something else.” He reached up, tapping a sequence into his earpiece. “This is Agent Alpha Five. Get me the director.” He said on the emergency channel. This was bad. Tristan hadn’t seen something like this since the crisis, and he had never seen it end in anything other than wanton destruction. After a moment he got a response.

  “Xavier here. What’s the situation?”

  “We have a Critical Incursion Event, Boss. It looks like an Emergence Zone has formed around the school in District 7.”

  “My God,” Xavier whispered.

  “There was a rumor, back in the day,” Tristan said suggestively. “That the old Doc had been working on something that might help in this kind of situation…” There had been rumblings about a way to create an artificial aperture near the end of the Crisis, but since the primary catalyst had been neutralized the need for such things had fallen from priority.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Xavier said and then cut the communication. Tristan picked up Mae and headed back towards the trailer, Sarah following by his side.

  “What is an Emergence Zone?” she asked. “I’ve never heard that term before.” Tristan looked at her for a long time before answering.

  “Get inside the trailer, we need to get Mae out of this weather. Then we can talk.”

  Ryan was still sitting on a toilet in the dark, staring at a progress bar with his cheek resting in his hand when things went weird. Like, really weird. Something reached out and touched the Concentrated Firmament in his pocket. He could somehow feel it. Then everything started to hum, first a single tone then a discordant one, and finally a full harmonic chorus of humming as the world began to vibrate, the orb heating up in his pocket. A wavering distortion passed over him, sending a shiver up his spine. A dull incandescent glow started emanating from above, though he could no longer see the ceiling lights. The floor tiles began flipping over one by one and turned into carpet squares, the metal stall turned into quilted fabric, and the toilet turned into an ugly yellow armchair.

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  “Uh,” Ryan said again nervously. A new message popped up on his display.

  Firmware Update Complete

  Beginning Neural Synchronization

  Do Not Remove PerSpectives

  His HUD showed a rotating brain with electrical activity slowly turning from red to green in different areas. The world wobbled around him, and the floor began to change again, the carpet squares flipping over into a checker-board laminate. The quilted blanket walls dropped away, and the chair deflated from under him. He fell butt-first into a gaping hole that had appeared. Ryan was not interested in finding out what the sewage was warping into, and he desperately tried to pry himself out of the hole using his bent elbows and legs, practically crab walking out of it before he rolled over onto his arms and knees.

  “Ok, I’m gonna be sick,” Ryan said to himself, taking deep breaths to quell the queasiness in his stomach.

  The image in his display finally turned fully green and started flashing “Synchronization Complete” and then “System Rebooting.” The reboot was actually fairly quick compared to the other two processes, Ryan sat up as he saw the familiar logo and then a new message appeared.

  Warning! Anomalous Activity Detected!

  Eye-in-the-Sky drone’s integrity has been altered.

  Sensory data still available and transmitting.

  Analyzing data from Eye-in-the-Sky as well as imbedded sensors.

  Zone of Inverted Reality Detected

  Anomalous Entities Detected

  Civilian Casualties Probable

  Activating Emergency Protocols

  Restricted Functions have already been Unlocked by System AI

  “Aitherios, it would seem we have found ourselves in a precarious position,” the System AI said as Ryan read through the lengthy message.

  “No crap,” Ryan said. “What the heck is a ‘Zone of Inverted Reality’? This place reminds me of the astral.”

  “Indeed,” Helios responded levelly. “A Zone of Inverted Reality, otherwise known as an Emergence Zone, is a localized space where the Astral has merged into Reality. It is a highly unstable state and cannot exist for long. When it collapses it will destroy everything within its boundaries.”

  “How the heck did this happen?”

  “Sensors from the PerSpectives were offline during the event so data is limited to what the Eye-in-the-Sky was recording, but evidence indicates an entity forced its way through the previously sealed fissure and attempted to enact a ritual to locate something.”

  “What was it trying to locate?”

  “I cannot say with a significant degree of accuracy, but there are some data points worth considering.”

  “Go on…”

  “The anomalies entered via the gate that had been repaired by you fusing the Locus,” Helios began listing its data points. “The anomalies appear to be a swarm type, much like the Nightmare Grade creature you encountered during your projection. The ritual they established focused in your direction. Finally, the Inverted Reality propagated outward from where you were located.”

  Ryan frowned, thinking over what Helios had just said. He thought about the humming, and the reaction of the… “The Concentrated Firmament. That hand creature is looking for it.”

  “A not unlikely hypothesis,” Helios concurred.

  “So, it was looking for me,” Ryan thought out loud, “but something unexpected happened.”

  “Indeed, it is unlikely the creature intended to create an Emergence Zone, considering how unstable they are, and the consequences of them collapsing.”

  “Can you tell how far the zone extends to?” Ryan asked.

  “It is difficult to determine with the current sensor data available. Sending out the Eye-in-the-Sky to gather intel is advised.” Ryan nodded.

  “Make it so,” he said, and half smiled to himself. Derek would’ve got a kick out of— “Derek! Lisa! The system message said civilian casualties are probable. Was the auditorium caught up in this?”

  “That is a likely scenario,” Helios stated. “Displaying mini-map generated by Eye-in-the-Sky. Will indicate life forms based on threat level.” A circular map appeared in the lower right of his HUD and Ryan noted that, while the world had gone all wonky, the general layout of the school had remained the same. The map also had a battery indicator, which showed the drone at 93%, which, he thought, wasn’t bad for how long it had been hovering around. As the drone got further away the map zoomed out. Yellow marks were displayed periodically in rooms as it passed. There were several red marks moving down the hallway. As he watched Ryan thought of his device.

  “Helios, do our phones work in here?”

  “Negative, Aitherios. All communication in or outside of the localized unreality is blocked. It may be possible to set up short range communication using the Sifting App and the PerSpectives as a hub, but we would need to make direct contact with any devices we wanted to add to that network first.” Ryan was a little disappointed but not entirely surprised. Ryan continued to watch the map expand, thinking the range of that little drone was a lot better than he had visualized in his mind. There were a few rooms that were marked with a strange symbol, and the more Ryan tried to focus on it the more his mind tried to push his eyes away.

  The drone eventually made it to the auditorium where the vast majority of the student body remained. He wondered why they hadn’t come spilling out in a panic when things started going pear shaped, but decided to put that aside for now, as a new system window popped up. It seemed that reaching the desired destination triggered the task system.

  New Task: Revert Reality

  Main Objective: Find a way to under the localized Inverted Reality without causing it to collapse.

  Secondary Objective: Find your friends.

  Secondary Objective: Do not get caught

  Reward: 1 Gold Store Token

  2,000 XP

  15,000 CP

  “Geeze, Helios,” Ryan gaped at the rewards. “I know this is life or death but aren’t these rewards a bit much?”

  “Rewards are determined algorithmically based on complexity of the tasks assigned,” Helios said dryly. Ryan shook his head and looked back at the map.

  “Can we bring the drone back down here so I can get some more real time data on what is going on out in that hallway?” In response the drone started moving back, showing as a rotor symbol on his map. “I remember seeing several read dots in the hallway.”

  “Affirmative. The PerSpectives can calculate a route with the least likelihood of encountering any anomalies.”

  “Yes, do that!” Ryan blurted. The system waited for the drone to get close enough that it could get real time sensor data from the hallway and then mapped a quick jump to one of the classrooms across the hall. He stood, looking around for where his backpack might have been. It was buried under a pile of quilts. Ryan had a brief thought about what might have happened to all the germs that lived on every public bathroom floor but immediately pushed that out of his mind as he pulled his pack over his back.

  Aside from the blankets piled on the floor where the stalls had been, the rest of the bathroom seemed to have changed into an old timey diner. The sinks had turned into a counter with bar stools rising from rods jutting from the black and white checkered floor. There was a jukebox in the corner where the radiator had been. The door was rounded at the top and had a porthole style window in it. Ryan approached and slowly pushed the door open, peeking out into the hallway.

  It was pitch black out there with skittering sounds echoing up and down the infinite darkness. A red arrow expanded out along the floor in his vision, supposedly pointing the way towards his first destination. There was a counter in his view ticking down from 3…2…1 Go! Ryan shot across the hall, following the arrow until he reached another door; this one was like an industrial refrigerator with a large metal latch handle. He pulled hard until the door finally gave and then shot inside.