Chapter 1: Awakening to Nightmare
POV: Ben
A sharp gasp breaks the silence of a dingy Queens apartment as consciousness floods back into a body that shouldn't exist in this world.
The ceiling stares back—water stains mapping unknown continents across yellowed plaster. Ben's fingers curl against threadbare sheets, nails scraping fabric that smells of mildew and someone else's dreams gone sour. His throat burns like he's been screaming, though no memory surfaces to explain why.
[WELCOME, HUNTER]
The words materialize in translucent blue, hanging in the air three feet from his face. Ben scrambles backward, his spine hitting the headboard with enough force to rattle his teeth. The interface follows his movement, text floating with impossible persistence.
[SUPE-HUNTER SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
[HOST: BEN DONAVEN - LEVEL 1]
[CURRENT STATS: STR 10 | AGI 10 | END 10 | INT 10 | WIS 10 | CHA 10]
"This isn't real. This can't be real." The words echo in his skull, but his voice won't cooperate. Air sits thick in his lungs, refusing to carry sound.
[TUTORIAL QUEST ACTIVATED: FIRST BLOOD]
[OBJECTIVE: ELIMINATE ONE (1) SUPE TARGET]
[REWARD: SHADOW EXTRACTION UNLOCKED]
[FAILURE CONDITION: DEATH]
The apartment spins as Ben forces himself upright. His legs shake—muscle memory from a body that isn't quite his anymore. Stumbling to the window, he peers through grime-caked glass at a skyline that steals what's left of his breath.
Vought Tower rises like a cathedral of glass and steel, its logo burning against the dawn sky. Corporate worship made manifest in chrome and ambition. The sight hits him with the weight of absolute certainty—he's fallen through the screen into a world where gods wear capes and corruption flows like blood through golden veins.
"The Boys universe. I'm actually in The Boys universe."
[COMPOUND V DETECTION: ACTIVATED]
[SCANNING RADIUS: 50 METERS]
[TARGETS DETECTED: 1]
[DESIGNATION: JUICE BOX - ENHANCED STRENGTH VARIANT]
[ESTIMATED LEVEL: 8]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME]
The blue text burns itself into his retinas. Level 8 versus his pathetic Level 1. Simple mathematics painted in neon warning signs that his brain refuses to process properly.
Ben's reflection in the window shows a stranger—hollow cheeks, dark circles carved beneath eyes that have seen too much too quickly. Twenty-something features wrapped around panic and something darker. Something that whispers about necessities he's not ready to name.
Three blocks south, the System's detection pulses like a heartbeat. Juice Box. A walking pharmacy with fists that could punch through concrete. Ben knows this from somewhere deeper than memory—knowledge that settled into his bones while he slept, uninvited and absolute.
The kitchen yields weapons of desperation: a steak knife with a chipped blade, a rolling pin that's seen better decades. His hands shake as he tests the knife's edge against his thumb. A thin line of red wells up, and the System chimes with mechanical approval.
[DAMAGE REGISTERED: -1 HP]
[CURRENT HP: 109/110]
[PAIN TOLERANCE: DEVELOPING]
"I'm going to die." The thought arrives with stunning clarity. "I'm going to walk out there and die because some cosmic algorithm decided I should hunt monsters."
But the alternative—waiting here while Vought's machine grinds innocents into profitable paste—tastes worse than fear. The knowledge sits heavy in his chest: which heroes will rape, which will murder, which will smile for cameras while children scream in basement laboratories.
The stairwell smells of piss and broken promises. Each step down feels like descent into something that will change him in ways he can't undo. His ribs ache from nothing—phantom pain from battles not yet fought.
Outside, Queens breathes with the rhythm of a city that never learned to sleep properly. Sirens wail in the distance, and Ben wonders if they're rushing toward or away from the kind of truth that shatters comfortable lies.
The System guides him through back alleys where streetlights flicker like dying stars. His feet know this path though his mind insists otherwise. Three blocks becomes two becomes one, and then he's crouched behind a dumpster that reeks of rotting dreams, watching a bodega's neon sign buzz with electrified anxiety.
[TARGET ACQUIRED]
[TACTICAL ANALYSIS: FRONTAL ASSAULT - 5% SUCCESS PROBABILITY]
[STEALTH APPROACH - 15% SUCCESS PROBABILITY]
[RECOMMENDED STRATEGY: GAIN ADDITIONAL LEVELS BEFORE ENGAGEMENT]
"Fifteen percent. Those are lottery odds."
But people are dying right now—have been dying—will keep dying if someone doesn't do something. The knife feels like a toy in his grip, its weight insufficient for the task ahead.
Juice Box emerges from the bodega, and Ben's first clear look at a Supe steals whatever courage he'd managed to scrape together. The man moves with casual confidence that comes from knowing physics don't apply equally to everyone. Broad shoulders stretch a Patriots jersey two sizes too small, and his smile carries the particular cruelty of someone who's never faced real consequences.
Ben springs from cover like a broken jack-in-the-box, knife leading. For one impossible moment, he thinks he might actually—
The blade hits Juice Box's neck and shatters. Metal fragments rain down like silver confetti while Ben stares at the impossibility of it. Enhanced skin. Enhanced everything. The tutorials hadn't mentioned this particular physics lesson.
Juice Box turns, eyebrows raised in mild curiosity.
"Did you just—"
The backhand launches Ben through space and time and the bodega's front window. Glass explodes around him in a constellation of sharp possibilities. His shoulder hits the lottery machine with a sound like breaking promises, and something essential tears loose in his chest.
The world tastes of copper and shattered glass. Air refuses to enter his lungs properly, each breath a negotiation with ribs that have forgotten their designated positions. Through the ringing in his ears, he hears Juice Box's laughter—genuine amusement at the audacity of prey fighting back.
"Run. Run now or die here."
Ben crawls through broken glass, each movement sending lightning through his nervous system. The back exit beckons like salvation painted in emergency lighting. Behind him, Juice Box's footsteps grow closer, unhurried. Why rush when your prey is already bleeding?
The alley behind the bodega offers darkness and the bitter promise of escape. Ben stumbles into shadows that taste of garbage and desperation, his shoulder screaming protests with every movement. The System chimes cheerfully.
[SURVIVAL ENCOUNTER COMPLETED]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 5 XP]
[CURRENT PROGRESS: 5/100 TO LEVEL 2]
[INJURY ASSESSMENT: MAJOR]
[MEDICAL ATTENTION RECOMMENDED]
Five experience points. The price of his humiliation calculated with algorithmic precision. Ben limps through Queens as dawn paints the sky the color of dried blood, each step a reminder that he's swimming in waters deep enough to drown the world.
The hospital emergency room buzzes with the particular chaos of a city that never runs out of ways to break its people. Ben slumps in a plastic chair that's seen too many emergencies, his shoulder throbbing in time with the fluorescent lights overhead.
"I have to warn them. About Homelander, about what's coming. Sarah's here somewhere—she could listen, could tell people who matter."
Nurse Sarah Chen appears like an answer to prayers he'd forgotten how to say. Her badge reads 'Sarah C.' but Ben knows her full name, knows the apartment where she keeps plants that somehow thrive despite her impossible schedule, knows the way she hums while treating patients who probably don't deserve her kindness.
She approaches with the practiced compassion of someone who's seen enough broken people to recognize the different varieties of breaking.
"What happened to you, honey?"
The words build in his throat like pressure behind a dam. Truth wants to spill out—about Homelander's rage, about Stormfront's Nazi lightning, about children in laboratories and heroes who aren't. Instead, what emerges makes his blood freeze:
"Flaming bicycle murders Tuesday!"
Sarah's eyebrows furrow. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
Ben tries again, focusing every ounce of will on forming coherent words. "Homelander is going to—purple monkey dishwasher!"
[TIMELINE PRESERVATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE]
[FUTURE KNOWLEDGE VERBALIZATION: BLOCKED]
[CAUSALITY PROTECTION: ENGAGED]
The System's message hangs in the air like a death sentence. Ben can see the future—all the horrors waiting to unfold—but he's been rendered mute by cosmic copyright protection. He's a prophet with his tongue cut out, a witness bound by invisible chains.
"Did you hit your head?" Sarah's voice carries genuine concern. "Sometimes head trauma can cause aphasia or—"
"No." The word comes out clear as broken glass. "I mean—I'm fine. Just shaken up."
Sarah's examination is thorough and gentle. Her fingers probe his shoulder with professional competence, but Ben catches her glancing at his face between tests. Something about his expression troubles her in ways that transcend medical training.
"Three cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder. You're lucky nothing's punctured." She secures his arm in a sling with practiced efficiency. "What really happened?"
"Mugging gone wrong." The lie tastes like ash. "Guy was bigger than I thought."
"She's kind. She deserves to know what's coming. But I can't tell her. Can't save anyone."
Sarah finishes the paperwork with small talk that feels like lifelines thrown to a drowning man. She mentions working double shifts, complains about the coffee, asks if he has someone to call. Each word lands like a small blessing in a world gone dark.
Dawn breaks over Queens as Ben limps from the hospital, Sarah's concerned gaze following him through automatic doors that whisper shut behind him. His ribs ache with each breath, but something worse burns in his chest—the knowledge that he's trapped in a story where he knows all the endings but can't change a single page.
Vought Tower gleams in the distance, its corporate perfection a monument to the lie that power serves justice. Somewhere in that building, monsters plan atrocities they'll market as heroism. Somewhere in this city, innocents walk unknowing toward deaths that have already been written.
"The strong eat the weak here." The thought settles into his bones like winter. "So I'll start at the bottom and work my way up, no matter what it costs."
Ben clutches his ribs and disappears into the city's morning crowd, just another broken person in a world that specializes in breaking things. But something has changed in those spaces between heartbeats. Something that tastes like necessity and sounds like hunger.
The System pulses once, a gentle reminder of quests unfulfilled.
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