"Move your ass, janitor boy!" Sarah barked, already jogging down the street with her rifle at the ready. "Unless you want to become monster chow!"
Dante scrambled to his feet, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs where the Prowler had tagged him. His legs felt like jelly, but he forced them to work. Twenty years of apocalypse survival had taught him one thing: when someone with a gun tells you to follow them, you fucking follow them.
"Where are we going?" he panted, trying to keep up with her steady pace.
"Somewhere that isn't here," she replied without looking back. Her eyes swept the street like a predator scanning for threats. Three more gunshots rang out, and wo more monsters dropped, their alien shrieks cut short. "Questions later, survival now."
The sky above them looked like someone had taken a hole punch to reality. Black portals hung in the air like infected wounds, each one vomiting out fresh horrors every few seconds. Prowlers, Razorclaws, something that looked like a spider made of knives, all of them hungry, all of them pissed off at finding themselves in a world that smelled like fear and tasted like prey.
She's good, Kairos observed as Sarah put a round through a Razorclaw's eye socket without breaking stride. Military?
Police tactical unit, Dante thought back, ducking as chunks of concrete rained down from a collapsing building. She made Commander after Day Five, when most of the brass got eaten.
And you knew her how, exactly?
The question hit him like a sucker punch. In his original timeline, he hadn't met Sarah until three weeks into the apocalypse, when he'd been running with a group of survivors trying to reach the Denver Safe Zone. Now here she was, saving his ass on Day Zero.
Things are already different, he realized. The timeline's changing.
A woman's scream cut through his thoughts like a rusty knife. Twenty feet away, something that looked like a cross between a wolf and a blender was tearing into a middle-aged woman who'd been unlucky enough to trip while running. Blood painted the sidewalk in wide, arterial sprays.
"Help me!" she screamed, her eyes finding Dante's across the carnage. "Please, I have children! I have—"
The monster's jaws clamped down on her throat, cutting off her words with a wet, choking sound.
Dante's feet stopped moving. His hand went to the empty spot where his sword should have been, finding nothing but janitor's coveralls and the lingering smell of hospital disinfectant.
Keep moving, Kairos said sharply. She's already dead, kid. Half her guts are decorating the pavement.
"I could—"
You could what? Get yourself killed trying to play hero with a body that can barely benchpress a ham sandwich? Move your ass before—
Something slammed into Dante from behind with the force of a freight train. The world turned into a kaleidoscope of pain and broken glass as he smashed through the front window of Murphy's Café, the same place where he used to grab coffee before his shifts at the hospital.
The monster landed on top of him, another Prowler, bigger than the first one, its mandibles dripping with something that probably wasn't saliva. This close, he could smell its breath: rotting meat and sulfur and the kind of stench that made you want to tear your own nose off.
"Fuck," Dante gasped, trying to push himself up. His vision swam like he was looking through water, and something warm was trickling down his forehead. Blood, probably. Everything hurt in that special way that meant internal damage.
The Prowler chittered something that might have been laughter and raised one clawed arm.
The blue screen flickered to life in front of him, translucent letters floating over the monster's ugly face.
[EMERGENCY QUEST ACTIVATED]Objective: Defeat the Prowler Rewards: +2 Strength, +1 Agility, Skill: Basic Combat Proficiency Failure Penalty: Death Note: Git gud or git dead, scrub
"Oh, very fucking helpful," Dante snarled, rolling sideways as claws tore gouges in the floor where his head had been. "Thanks for the pep talk, System."
The Prowler was fast, faster than anything that size had a right to be. It moved like liquid death, all flowing muscle and razor-sharp intent. Dante scrambled backward on his hands and knees, glass crunching under his palms, trying to put some distance between himself and certain death.
His back hit something solid. The counter. Nowhere left to run.
The monster lunged.
Dante threw himself sideways, behind the counter, as claws raked the air where his face had been. His shoulder slammed into something metallic, a prep station, covered with the usual café debris. Napkins, sugar packets, and—
"Thank you, sweet baby Jesus," he breathed, grabbing the biggest knife he could find. It wasn't much, maybe eight inches of dull steel that had seen better decades, but it was a hell of a lot better than his pocket toothpick.
The Prowler vaulted over the counter like a gymnast made of nightmares.
Dante met it with the knife, driving the blade toward its center mass. The steel scraped against chitin with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, finding the gap between armor plates, sliding deep into alien flesh.
The Prowler shrieked and backhanded him across the face.
Stars exploded behind Dante's eyes. He hit the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth, tasting copper and failure. The knife was still buried in the monster's side, black ichor leaking around the blade like motor oil.
Not dead yet, he thought dizzily. That's... something.
The Prowler pulled the knife out with one clawed hand, examining the weapon like it was mildly curious about what had just stabbed it. Then it dropped the blade and turned those dead black eyes back on him.
It's toying with you, Kairos observed. These things are smart. It knows you're not a threat.
"Gee, thanks for the confidence boost," Dante muttered, pushing himself upright. His legs felt like overcooked spaghetti, but they held. Barely.
The monster stalked toward him, taking its time, mandibles clicking in what might have been amusement.
Dante grabbed the coffee machine and threw it.
Twenty pounds of stainless steel and shattered dreams caught the Prowler square in the face. It stumbled backward, more surprised than hurt, but that was enough. Dante dove for the fallen knife, his fingers closing around the blood-slick handle just as claws raked across his back.
Fire bloomed between his shoulder blades. The coveralls tore like paper, and he could feel warm wetness spreading across his skin. But he had the knife, and sometimes that was enough.
He spun, putting everything he had behind the thrust. The blade punched through the soft spot under the monster's jaw, angling upward, searching for whatever passed for a brain in these things.
The Prowler went rigid. Its eyes rolled back, showing crescents of white, and black blood poured from its mouth like crude oil.
Then it collapsed, taking Dante down with it.
He lay there for a moment, pinned under two hundred pounds of dead alien, trying to remember how breathing worked. Everything hurt. His back felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to it, and his head was pounding like a techno concert in a blender.
But he was alive. The monster wasn't.
Not bad for a rookie, Kairos admitted grudgingly. Sloppy as hell, but you got the job done.
"Thanks for all the help," Dante gasped, shoving the corpse off him. "Really felt that divine assistance."
I told you, I'm running on fumes here. Besides, you need to learn to fight without godlike power. Can't rely on cheats forever.
"No shit. I still don't understand how I am literally in the past."
Kairos chuckled low. That answer's going to have to wait. Surviving this timeline comes first.
The blue screen flickered back to life, brighter now, more insistent.
[QUEST COMPLETED]Prowler Defeated: 1/1Calculating Rewards...
[LEVEL UP!]Dante Ashford - Level 2Attribute Points Gained: +2 Strength, +1 AgilityNew Skill Acquired: Basic Combat Proficiency (F-Rank)
[STATUS UPDATE]Name: Dante Ashford
Level: 2
Class: None
HP: 67/120 (Injured)
Mana: 50/50
Strength: 10 (+2)
Agility: 13 (+1)
Intelligence: 15
Equipment: Blood-Stained Janitor's Uniform, Kitchen Knife
Skills: Basic Combat Proficiency (F-Rank)
Title: The Regressor (Hidden)**
The changes hit him like a shot of adrenaline mixed with battery acid. His muscles felt denser, more responsive. The pain in his back faded to a dull ache, and his hands stopped shaking.
But exhaustion was creeping in around the edges, the kind of bone-deep weariness that came after surviving something that should have killed you. His eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each.
Don't you dare, Kairos warned. This place is still crawling with monsters. You pass out here, you're going to wake up as something's lunch.
"Just... just five minutes," Dante mumbled, leaning against the wall. The knife slipped from his fingers, clattering to the floor. "So tired..."
Outside, he could hear more screaming, more gunfire, more of the sounds that meant civilization was eating itself alive. But it all seemed very far away now, like a movie playing on someone else's TV.
Dante!
Sarah's voice, sharp with worry, getting closer. Right. He was supposed to be following her. She was probably wondering where her pet janitor had gotten to.
He tried to stand, made it about halfway before his legs decided they'd had enough. The wall was comfortable. The wall was his friend. Maybe he'd just rest here for a—
You stubborn piece of shit, Kairos snarled. Get up, right now!
That got him moving. Barely. He grabbed the kitchen knife, hauled himself upright through sheer force of will and spite, and stumbled toward the broken window. His reflection looked back from the shattered glass, blood-streaked, exhausted, but alive.
Level 2. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
Now he just had to survive long enough to make it count.
"Coming, Sarah," he called out, his voice barely above a whisper. "Just had to kill something."