Training started at exactly 6:00 AM.
I'd slept for maybe three hours total. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Rifter's face. No eyes, just smooth skin. That mouth opening too wide. Heard those happy eating sounds. Saw the three bodies lying on the factory floor.
My body felt like it had been hit by a truck. Every muscle ached. The bruises from yesterday's fight had turned deep purple.
Diana met me in the training room—a huge space carved straight from solid rock, padded floors that could absorb impact, weapons racks covering every wall like an armory.
"Morning," she said. Her prosthetic arm caught the overhead lights, gleaming silver and black. Up close, I could see tiny panels and moving parts. It looked more advanced than anything I'd seen in hospitals. "Coffee?"
"Please. Strong."
She handed me a cup from a machine in the corner. It was black, strong enough to strip paint, and tasted like battery acid mixed with regret. Perfect.
"Today we focus on the basics," she said, setting her own cup down. "You got lucky yesterday in Chicago. The Rifter was distracted, feeding. It didn't know you were there until you were already in position. Next time you might face one that's hunting. That's completely different."
"How different?"
"When they hunt, they're fast. Intelligent. They learn your attack patterns and adapt. They set traps. And they absolutely do not stop until you're dead or they are." She walked to a control panel on the wall. "We'll start with reaction drills. Then weapon training. Then combat simulations. Six hours minimum."
"Six hours?"
"You have a mission tomorrow. Six hours is all we have." She pressed several buttons. "Simulations start now."
The room changed around me. Walls shifted and slid. Metal obstacles rose up from the floor with mechanical sounds. Holographic projectors activated, creating flickering images that looked almost solid. Almost real.
A Rifter materialized twenty feet away.
My hand went automatically to my hip. Empty. No weapon.
"Reaction time: 1.8 seconds," Diana's voice came from speakers. "Not terrible for a beginner. But against a real Rifter that's hunting you, you'd be dead right now. Try again."
The hologram vanished. Another one appeared directly behind me, silent as death.
I spun around. Too slow. Way too slow.
"Dead again. Point-seven seconds too slow." The hologram disappeared. "Your Combat Awareness skill helps you once you're already fighting. But it doesn't help if the Rifter kills you before the fight starts. You need to be ready every single second. Always aware. Always prepared. Again."
We did it fifty times. Fifty different scenarios. Rifters appearing from different angles, different distances, sometimes multiple at once. By attempt thirty, my head was pounding. By attempt forty, I was seeing double. By attempt fifty, I wanted to collapse.
But my reaction time was down to 0.9 seconds.
"Better," Diana said. It was probably the closest thing to praise she'd ever give. "Take five minutes. Drink water. Catch your breath. Then we move to weapons training."
I collapsed against the padded wall, gulping water from a bottle like I'd been in a desert. My phone buzzed in my pocket. A message from Derek:
Derek: Dude where you been? Haven't seen you in like a week. You still alive? We're worried about you man.
I stared at the message. How was I supposed to explain this? That I was living underground in a secret facility, training to fight monsters from another dimension, part of a secret war to save humanity?
Me: All good. Just got buried in a huge project for school. Really intense. Will catch up soon, promise.
Derek: You better. This isn't like you. And Jenny keeps asking about you lol. She thinks you're avoiding her.
Jenny. Right. The pretty girl from my sociology class who'd smiled at me once. In my old life—the one from a week ago—that would've been the most important thing in the world. I would've stayed up at night wondering if I should ask her out, planning what to say, worrying about rejection.
Now I stayed up at night wondering if I'd survive the next monster. Wondering if my team would survive. Wondering how long I could keep this secret from everyone I loved.
"Kane," Diana called out sharply. "Break time's over. Weapon drills. Let's move."
I put the phone away and grabbed a rifle from the rack.
Six hours later, I physically could not lift my arms above my shoulders.
Diana had run me through every single weapon in the entire arsenal. Rifles of different types and sizes. Shotguns with different ammunition. Pistols I could barely hold steady. Even melee weapons for close combat—batons, combat knives, something that looked like a high-tech spear.
My shoulders screamed with pain. My hands were covered in blisters that had popped and bled. My fingers were numb from gripping weapons all day.
"Good progress," Diana said, checking her tablet. Coming from her, that was basically a standing ovation. "You're a natural with rifles. Decent with shotguns. Absolutely terrible with pistols—your hands shake too much."
"I'll work on it."
"You will. Because next time, you might not have a rifle. Might not have any choice in weapons at all. You use whatever you can grab." She scrolled through her notes. "Elena wants to see you. Main briefing room. You're dismissed."
I walked through the underground facility, my legs barely working. People rushed past me—analysts, tech specialists, other heroes I hadn't met yet. Everyone moving with purpose. Everyone focused on the same mission: stop the invasion.
I found Elena in the main briefing room, standing in front of the holographic Earth display. Staring at it like she could make the red dots disappear through willpower alone.
More red dots than yesterday. Always more dots. Always spreading.
"Kane," she said without turning around. "How was training?"
"Painful. Really painful."
"Good. Pain means you're learning. Pain means you're getting stronger." She zoomed the display in on North America. "We have a serious problem. The Detroit team encountered something new this morning. A Rifter variant. Bigger than normal. Faster. Smarter. It took four Level 8+ heroes to bring it down."
My stomach dropped like an elevator with cut cables. "Did everyone make it?"
"No." She pulled up two photos on a side screen. Two faces I didn't recognize. Both young, maybe mid-twenties. Both smiling in their photos like they had futures to look forward to. "Rachel Kim, Level 9. James Porter, Level 8. Both veterans with over fifty successful missions. Both really good at their jobs. Both dead as of 11:47 AM this morning."
She closed the photos with a gesture that looked like it hurt.
"The Rifters are evolving," she continued. "Getting stronger. Learning from each encounter. And we're running out of heroes to fight them."
"How many active heroes do we have left?"
"Thirty-nine. Down from forty-three just last week. Two killed in Detroit. One retired with permanent injuries. One went missing in Berlin—we think a Rifter dragged him through a closing rift before we could stop it." She turned to face me directly. "Kane, we need more heroes. Fast. The Architect is accelerating the entire recruitment program. We're pulling people from F-Rank earlier than normal. Testing them harder. Pushing them faster. Some of them won't make it through the process."
"What does that mean for me?"
"It means you're Level 6 after exactly one real fight. The Architect wants you on active rotation immediately. Real missions. Real rifts. Real combat. Starting tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow? Diana just spent six hours showing me how unprepared I am—"
"And you'll keep training between missions when you have time. But we don't have the luxury of waiting for you to be perfectly ready. Nobody's ever perfectly ready." She pulled up a mission file on the display. "Small rift opened in Portland two hours ago. Single Rifter detected. Should be manageable for a standard three-person team."
"Should be?"
"Nothing's certain anymore. The rules keep changing." She sent the file to my secure phone. "You leave at 0800 tomorrow morning. Jin and Marcus are going with you—Marcus barely cleared medical but he insisted. It's a basic operation. Locate the Rifter. Eliminate it. Extract. Simple."
"Marcus's ribs are still broken."
"He'll take painkillers. We all do." She looked exhausted. Not just tired—exhausted down to her bones. Dark circles under her eyes. Her hands trembling slightly. "This is the reality of what we do, Kane. We fight while injured. We fight while exhausted. We fight while scared. We fight until we physically can't anymore. Because the second we stop fighting, people start dying."
I looked at the mission file on my phone. Portland, Oregon. One Rifter. Three heroes. Should be simple.
Nothing was simple anymore.
"Okay," I said. "I'll be ready."
"Good. Get some rest. Eat something with actual calories. And Kane?" She put a hand on my shoulder, her grip surprisingly strong. "If something goes wrong out there, if the situation falls apart, if you need to retreat—you run. You understand me? No hero points for dying stupidly. Dead heroes save exactly zero people."
"Got it. Run if things go bad."
"I'm serious. Marcus is tough but he's hurt. Jin is skilled but she takes risks. You're the newest, which means you might see things they miss. Trust your instincts. If your gut says run, you run and drag them with you if you have to."
I nodded.
She squeezed my shoulder once more, then let go. "Dismissed. Get some food and sleep. Tomorrow starts early."
I walked back through the corridors to my assigned room—a small concrete space with a bed, a desk, a chair, and nothing else. No decorations. No personality. Just a place to sleep between battles.
I collapsed on the bed without even taking off my shoes.
My phone buzzed. Mom:
Mom: Saw you hadn't posted anything on social media in days. Just checking you're still alive out there lol. Love you sweetie!
I smiled despite everything—the pain, the exhaustion, the fear. Typed back:
Me: Still alive. Just buried in work. Miss you. Love you too.
Mom: So proud of you working so hard! Don't forget to eat real food, not just ramen!
If she only knew what I was really doing. If she knew I was fighting monsters, that I'd killed something yesterday, that I might die tomorrow.
She'd never sleep again.
Then another message came through. Unknown number:
Unknown: Level 6. Not bad for a week's work. But the real test comes when you're truly alone. When your team is dead on the ground and the Rifter is still coming for you. That's when we see who you really are. That's when you either become a hero or just another corpse.
The message deleted itself as I watched, vanishing like it had never existed.
I sat up fast, heart pounding hard enough to hurt. Stared at the blank screen.
Who sent that? The Architect running another test? Someone else entirely? Was this part of the training or was it a real threat?
I checked the mission file again with shaking hands. Portland. Tomorrow morning at 0800. One Rifter.
Should be manageable.
But nothing was certain anymore. Rachel Kim had been Level 9. James Porter had been Level 8. Both dead this morning.
I was Level 6. Barely trained. One real fight under my belt.
I set my alarm for 0600 and tried to sleep.
This time, when I closed my eyes, I didn't see the Rifter from the Chicago factory.
I saw two faces. Rachel Kim. James Porter. Young. Smiling. Dead.
Heroes who'd died this morning while I was training. Heroes I'd never meet. Heroes whose names I'd only learned because they were casualties.
I thought about Elena's words: We fight until we can't anymore.
And I thought about The Architect's words: The day it feels good is the day you become a monster.
Somewhere between those two truths was the answer to what I was becoming.
A hero? A killer? A soldier in a secret war that would never be in history books?
Or maybe just a broke college kid trying desperately not to die while saving a world that would never know his name?
Sleep came eventually, restless and full of nightmares.
The call came at 0530, ninety minutes earlier than expected.
"Kane, wake up." Eli's voice through my phone, tense and urgent. "Rift opened in Portland."
I sat up, already pulling on my boots. "I know. Mission briefing said 0800—"
"Forget the briefing. Situation's changed." His fingers were typing frantically in the background. "The rift didn't close. It's still open. And it's not one Rifter anymore."
My blood turned cold. "How many?"
"Three. Three Rifters came through before we lost the feed. And Kane?" He paused. "They're not acting like normal Rifters. They're working together. Coordinating. We've never seen that before."
I was out the door and running before he finished the sentence.
This wasn't going to be simple.
This was going to be a nightmare.