"The question that's haunted us for decades finally has its answer," the news broadcaster intoned. His voice carried all the urgency of someone reading a grocery list. "While we assumed the invasion would come from above, it came from below…"
Kell rolled his eyes.
Dramatic. Someone's overpaid intern probably thought they were writing the opening crawl to a summer blockbuster.
He angled away from the TV wall and kept moving.
His soda cup chilled his fingers, condensation slick against his palm. The cardboard tray in his other hand bled grease through the seams; pretzel bites glistened under a coat of artificial butter. A bag on his wrist, bumping his hip, held the new game.
His freckles were nearly invisible under the mall lights, which also drained his color. His thoughts were already drifting toward home—his bed, the hum of his PC, the patch bar crawling toward completion while he queued for the first dungeon with a cup of ramen cooling on the desk.
He shoved his glasses back up with the side of his wrist, came close to baptizing the floor in soda, and muttered something unfriendly under his breath. His reflection dragged across the darkened storefronts as he passed—short red hair he'd meant to trim, rounded shoulders under a stretched hoodie, footfalls a shade too heavy for the quiet. He avoided his reflection in the glass and looked forward.
A knot of teenagers rushed by him toward the exit. One hissed, "Dude, move," while another kept cutting glances over his shoulder like he expected something to be right behind them.
Kell frowned, but let it go. Between the arcade's neon spill and the breath of frying oil from the food court, a simple truth settled in his chest… Tonight was going to be a good night.
The security gate at the far end of the food court hung halfway down, the bored guy in the orange vest already tugging on the chain. Neon signs blinked out one after another. The last of the stragglers drifted through the space. A couple argued quietly over a receipt. A knot of teenagers leaned close around a phone. An older woman picked at her sandwich like she had forgotten how to eat.
Kell shifted his weight, his lower back tightening in its familiar way. Too many hours folded over a keyboard, not enough time doing anything that counted as movement. He told himself he wasn't enormous. He was solid.
His aunt's voice slipped across his memory, warm and unhelpfully cheerful. "Solid's good, baby. Reliable. Built to last."
He mimed her expression without thinking. That tight little purse of the lips she used when she wanted to soften a blow. His eyes rolled before he could stop them. She had once described him as being built like a refrigerator. The thought didn't help now any more than it had then.
He took another bite of pretzel, savoring the salt and the heat. The dough gave under his teeth in that soft way he liked. Grease slicked his fingers. He licked them anyway. This was his ritual. Snack, game, nothing to worry about except not dying to the tutorial boss.
He checked his phone with the edge of his elbow.
10:48 P.M.
Plenty of time.
One notification sat at the top. A small knot of nerves pulled tight in his stomach when he saw the name. They planned to run a few matches tonight. Nothing serious. Nothing bigger than shared keys and coffee between old classmates.
Kell almost typed a reply. Almost.
He slid the phone back into his pocket. They could queue when he got home.
Kell tossed the empty tray into the overflowing trash can and threaded through the darkened storefronts. Mannequins stood stiff and patient behind glass. A closed clothing shop leaked a thin ghost of pop music through the shutter. His sneakers squeaked against the polished floor, each step nudging the small game shop bag at his wrist into a faint, rhythmic swing.
New expansion, character, and build.
Maybe tonight would be the night he finally stopped being terrible at DPS. A quiet chuckle escaped him. His breath fogged the glass door as he pushed into the night and stepped into the parking lot.
The air hit him like a fist.
Not cold. Heavy.
His steps faltered. The peaceful rhythm of his thoughts cracked apart in a single breath. The mall's automatic doors sighed shut behind him. In the hollow night, the sound was too sharp, present, and loud.
There was always noise. Engines. Someone's music leaking from a cracked window. A shout cut across the lot. The distant rush of the highway. Tonight, everything felt muted. Wrong. As if someone had dropped a filter over the world and dimmed it a shade too far.
Cars sat at crooked angles across the rows. Some idled with headlights still on, beams stretching over empty asphalt. People stood outside their vehicles instead of sitting inside them. A man in a dress shirt stood in the center of a lane, phone hanging loose in his hand, his gaze fixed on something Kell hadn't seen yet.
The hair on Kell's arms prickled. He swallowed, the soda in his throat turning to stale syrup. "Okay," he whispered. "Weird." He pushed his glasses higher on his nose, grease smearing faintly across one lens, and stepped off the curb.
The air carried pressure. Pressure clogged his ears, mimicking the trapped feeling of a plane dropping from the sky. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. One sharp sound cut off mid-echo, as if someone had pinched the world closed.
Kell headed toward his car. Third row from the front. Silver hatchback with one mismatched door where his dad had backed into a pole. Overhead lamps illuminated everything with yellow pools, making the lot appear as uneven islands of light. His sneakers squeaked.
A little girl clung to her mother two rows over. Both were staring in the same direction as the man with the phone.
Kell followed their gaze.
His breath stalled.
Beyond the mall, past the parking lot, trees, highway, and city lights far in the distance…the horizon was wrong.
A wall of water rose where the horizon should have stretched clean. It climbed higher than the tallest buildings, higher than the cloud line, a towering mass that eclipsed the night. The water refused to move.
It should have roared. It should have crashed forward and swallowed the city in a surge of white and blue. Nothing moved.
The wave held itself like glass.
An ocean caught mid-collapse.
Streetlights glowed through the suspended water in dull smears. The silver thread of the highway vanished under the bulging curve. The crest froze in the air, as if someone had pressed pause on a disaster seconds before it destroyed everything.
Kell's soda cup slipped from his hand. It hit the asphalt with a wet slap. Dark liquid seeped through the cracks as if the ground tried to drink it.
"Oh," he whispered. "That's not right."
A scream cut through the muffled quiet. The sound tore it open, thin and jagged. Others followed. Shouts rolled across the lot. Curses tangled with prayers. Someone begged for help. Someone demanded an explanation no one could give.
The wave revealed more than water.
Lights pulsed inside it. They carried no reflection and no tie to the city glow. Sickly halos swelled and faded, colors caught between deep bruises and fluorescent algae. The shapes shifted in patterns that forced Kell's eyes to fight against instinct. Geometry warped inside the suspended mass, bending in ways the world should not allow.
Portals. Kell's mind grabbed the word because nothing else fit. Holes in the world glowed from deep inside the body of the ocean, lit by angles and colors the human eye had no right to understand.
Shapes moved behind them.
"Run!"
He jerked, heart leaping hard enough to sting. Someone sprinted past him toward a nearby car, where a toddler wailed. The call wasn't for him. Kell stood frozen, hands empty, game bag tapping against his wrist in a nervous rhythm he couldn't control.
A pickup truck reversed blindly with a screech of tires. It slammed into the sedan behind it. Metal crunched. Glass shattered. An alarm wailed like something wounded.
The sound cracked the stillness open.
Doors burst wide across the lot. People spilled out of cars, clutching children or bags or nothing at all. A woman in heels stumbled, her shoe snapping in half beneath her. A teenager dropped his phone and didn't look back.
"Drive. Just drive."
"Do not go that way."
"What the hell is that? What is that?"
The wave shimmered, if Kell could still call it a wave. Light inside the suspended water brightened. Halos swelled. Surfaces fractured. Something pressed against a portal's inner edge, flattening like a hand on frosted glass.
The glass cracked open.
Something stepped through.
Taller than any man. Taller than the street signs. Long limbs bent in places no limb should. Reflective plates wrapped a narrow torso in patterns that mimicked armor without serving the same purpose. A clustered, faceted head turned toward Kell. It had no eyes on its surface, yet Kell felt its attention sweep over him like a spotlight.
More creatures followed, pouring through the frozen ocean in a cascade that left the water untouched. They dropped onto the drowned highway, onto rooftops, onto the street below. Strange limbs bent and absorbed the impact with silent precision.
They moved.
No roar announced them. No warning cry. They did not posture, did not flex, did not threaten. They spread across the city with surgical purpose.
The first human they reached never had the chance to scream.
A forelimb unfolded with a sharp hiss. A needle-like appendage punched into the man's neck. His body spasmed once. The alien lifted him over one shoulder with the casual ease of someone hefting a bag of mulch and turned back toward the wave.
The city repeated the scene in countless small horrors. People grabbed, dropped, and then disappeared. A kid in a football jersey nearly collided with Kell. "Move, dude."
Kell moved.
His body made the choice. His heart hammered in his ribs, lungs seized, and thigh muscles burned before he cleared the first row of cars. He clutched his game bag without thinking, the plastic strip biting deep into his wrist.
Speed never lived in him. He knew that. His thighs screamed. His chest tightened. Every hour he lounged in a chair, every skipped workout, every promise to start Monday surged up and demanded payment.
He ran anyway.
Behind him, the crashed car's alarm wailed. Someone screamed "No, no, no" on a loop. Another scream rose, thin and high, a child begging not to be taken. Glass burst somewhere behind him.
The parking lot warped into chaos ahead of him. Cars spun in panic. Engines revved. Drivers blocked each other in. Two vehicles locked bumpers in the narrow exit like snarling animals.
Kell darted between bumpers. His foot slid off a curb. His hand, which shot out, slapped a sedan's hood. As if he'd inhaled acid, his lungs burned. Cold sweat prickled his spine.
A shadow flicked across the ground.
Kell snapped his head up.
One creature crouched on top of the mall. Metal plates along its frame flexed as it dropped to the pavement without a sound. Another clung to the building's wall like a beetle digging into bark.
They spread with quiet intent, bracketed the lot, and boxed everyone in.
Panic flared bright and ugly in his gut. Pounding feet, he ran and staggered right, towards the car that waited, oblivious to the end.
Getting inside was possible. He could get the door shut. He could—the asphalt slipped under his sneaker. His foot skidded. Forward, his weight pitched, dragging him towards the ground. His arms windmilled, game bag whipping wildly, heart jumping into his throat.
"Nononono."
He slammed onto the pavement. The impact knocked the thought clean out of his skull. Pain burst through his knee and palms. His glasses twisted sideways, one arm digging into his cheek. His breath escaped him in a wheeze that sounded nothing like a grown man. He lay there for a moment, stunned. His cheek mashed into the blacktop that smelled like oil and old gum. His game slid free of the bag and skittered beneath the next car, the plastic case spinning once before it disappeared into shadow.
"Get up," he rasped. "Kell, get up."
His body refused.
Something large shifted at the edge of his vision.
He forced his head up.
A creature stepped between the cars a few feet away. One multi-jointed limb rested lightly on a hood. Up close, its plates showed their age. Fine lines cut across the surface, pitted scars breaking the shine like something had sanded it with centuries of pressure. Each limb ended not in hands, but in narrow, delicate claws holding delicate tools.
Several of those tools dripped.
Kell's mouth dried out.
The creature tilted its faceted head toward him. No eye broke the reflective plates. No pupil anchored its attention. A cluster of mirrored surfaces waited there, splitting Kell's pale, sweating reflection into fragments.
He tried to shove himself backwards. His knee screamed. His palms slid uselessly across the grit. "Please," he choked out. "Please, I—"
A limb shot forward.
A sting punched into the side of his neck. Hot and precise. The pain reminded him of a wasp carrying a needle made of ice. His body locked. Every muscle seized. His fingers clawed at nothing.
His last view of the parking lot fractured into pieces.
A man swung a tire iron at an alien; the blow bounced off, meaning nothing. A woman tripped and vanished under a swarm of chitinous limbs. The frozen wave towered above everything, impossible and full of shifting light. The creature lifted him with horrifying ease. His head lolled. The world tilted. His glasses hung on one ear. His legs dangled as if they belonged to someone else.
The alien carried him toward the frozen wall. Kell's thoughts slid through him in slow, syrup-thick confusion.
This isn't real. I was just getting snacks. I was just going to play a game.
As they neared, the wave consumed more of the horizon. The surface shimmered. The skin of the water crawled with trapped bubbles and flickers of buried light. A plane hung near the crest, half swallowed, wings bent at the wrong angle.
The nearest portal pulsed, its halo widening.
Kell's head sagged against the alien's side. His eyes found the pretzel stand through the mall doors, still glowing in its stupid, cheerful way. Something small and helpless twisted in his chest.
I didn't even finish my pretzel.
The wave opened.
Cold engulfed him.