The world ended quietly.
No explosions. No earthquakes. No warning.
Just a single, sharp tone that cut through the night like a blade.
Aaron Fisher was half-asleep when it happened, lying on his couch with a half-finished sandwich and a documentary droning softly in the background. The TV flickered once, sputtered, and died. His phone vibrated out of his hand, fell to the carpet, and went dark as well. Even the hum of the fridge behind him choked into silence.
A sudden stillness filled the room—unnatural, pressing, as if someone had muted the world.
Aaron blinked and sat up straighter.
He wasn't supposed to even be home tonight.
He usually worked the late shift delivering groceries around the city, running routes until sunrise. Bills didn't pay themselves, and the company didn't exactly shower part-timers with money. But the rain had cancelled the last two orders, and for once, he'd allowed himself the luxury of sitting in the dim glow of his cramped living room, pretending he had nothing urgent to worry about.
He lived alone in a small second-floor unit—peeling wallpaper, a fridge that rattled when it ran, and a couch older than he was. But it was his, and that meant something. Especially after the last year—dropping out of polytech, juggling two jobs, and the breakup that he still didn't talk about even in his own head.
He rubbed his eyes.
Great. Power outage? Or the building finally gave up on electricity altogether.
Then the air in front of him shimmered.
Lines of pale-blue light crawled together in an orderly pattern, forming a floating rectangle at eye level. It looked like a holographic screen from a cheap sci-fi flick, except it cast a cold glow over the room, highlighting every dust mote hanging motionless in the air.
Aaron pushed himself upright.
"What the hell…?"
Text appeared in crisp, sharp letters.
[SYSTEM ONLINE]
Calibration complete.
Preparing Humanity for Integration.
The words hung there, silent and absolute.
Aaron frowned, still half convinced he had finally stayed awake too long. Delivering groceries at all hours, napping irregularly, surviving on a diet of caffeine and whatever he could scrounge—hallucinations weren't out of the question.
But the air felt too sharp. Too real.
The cold glow settled into his skin like static.
Then the world broke.
A sound like cracking glass rippled outward. His apartment shuddered. Outside, car alarms tried to start and failed, strangled by the same force shutting everything down. A low, rising hum filled the air—felt more than heard—like a jet engine spinning up inside his bones.
Aaron staggered to the window.
The street below looked normal at first. Street lamps, parked cars, night wind blowing loose paper across the asphalt. But then the sky flashed.
Tears—thin, vertical lines—opened across the clouds. They glowed red like molten metal cooling in fast motion. One after another, they slid into existence, dozens of them, stretching from horizon to horizon.
A sick feeling twisted in Aaron's stomach.
He wasn't brave. He knew that.
He wasn't the guy who ran toward danger. He couldn't drop everything and play hero like in the shows he sometimes binged after shifts. He was the guy who kept his head down, worked hard, and hoped life didn't kick him too hard while he tried to stay afloat.
So seeing the sky tear like a sheet of fabric in a fire?
Seeing red fissures pulse across the clouds?
His first instinct was the simplest kind of panic: hide.
The holographic message pulsed again.
[LEVEL INITIALIZATION BEGINNING]
His phone vibrated on the carpet. Except it was still dead—the screen blank.
The vibration came from him.
A second panel appeared beside the first, flickering with unstable lines.
[USER IDENTIFIED]
Name: Fisher, Aaron
Age: 19
Status: ERROR
Aaron froze.
"Error?" He leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "What does error mean?"
New text began etching itself across the display, jagged like a corrupted file struggling to form.
[ERROR: Undefined User Category]
[System Layer Conflict Detected]
Would you like to assume temporary administrative control?
A cold sweat broke across his neck.
He had always been the kind of guy trouble found even when he did nothing wrong. Missing packages blamed on him, a teacher who held a grudge for no reason, bad luck that bordered on supernatural. So when a world-changing system popped up and declared him an error, it felt… inevitable.
Of course it's me. Why wouldn't it be me?
More tearing sounds echoed outside. Something large moved between the broken red slits in the sky. Dark. Winged. Wrong.
A distant crash shook the floor of his apartment as car alarms tried to wail and failed again.
Aaron swallowed hard. "This can't be real…"
Another message popped up, urgent and pulsing.
[WARNING: Local Zone Unstable]
[Hostile Entities Approaching]
[Administrative Override Recommended]
The glow brightened until the whole room felt submerged in cold light. The panels hovered inches from his face, waiting.
Outside, a metal screech reverberated through the neighbourhood—sharp, metallic claws dragging across pavement.
Aaron flinched back from the window.
Something was out there.
Something approaching fast.
The screen shifted.
[Last Chance: Assume Administrative Control?]
Y/N
Aaron's hand hovered.
He had never wanted power. Never dreamed of being special.
All he'd ever wanted was a stable life and maybe a future he didn't have to fear.
But the lights in his apartment flickered again—not from electricity. From the world itself bending.
A shadow passed across the window—a shape far too large to belong in any quiet suburban street.
Aaron's breath caught.
He didn't think. He hit YES.
The holographic panels exploded in a rush of symbols and code that spiraled into his vision like a tidal wave.
And the System—whatever it was—listened.
The symbols didn't stop.
They spun around him in rings of shifting characters—glyphs that flickered between English, numbers, and something older, more primal. The air vibrated like a live wire as the code dug into him, threading through his vision, his hearing, his mind.
Aaron staggered, catching himself on the arm of the couch. His pulse hammered. His breath came shallow and fast.
[Administrative Access Granted]
[Stabilising User Layer…]
[WARNING: Hostile Entity Within 40 Metres]
A distant hiss drifted through his open window.
Not human. Not animal. Something wrong in the sound—wet, metallic, hungry.
The screen split into two panels. The left displayed a minimap of his immediate surroundings: a simplified top-down grid of his street, his building, and the units inside. A red marker pulsed at the far edge of the map, crawling closer.
The right panel filled with options—menus upon menus.
[Commands Available]
• Zone Lockdown
• Environmental Override
• Entity Classification
• Personal Attribute Assignment (Locked)
• System Messaging
• Dev Console (Restricted)
"A dev console?" Aaron whispered. "Why would I have that?"
Another hiss—louder this time.
He moved to the window despite himself.
A creature stalked the street below. It was shaped like a dog at first glance—if dogs were built from jointed metal plates, serrated limbs, and a skull that opened in three directions. A glowing ember-red core pulsed in its chest, leaking steam from vents along its ribs.
Aaron's stomach turned.
The creature sniffed the air. Its head snapped upward toward his window.
The minimap updated.
[Distance: 32 Metres]
[Classification: Unidentified Predator Tier-1]
[Recommended Action: Flee]
Flee where? The building was old, the staircase cramped, and the creature was already hunting.
The System chimed.
[Administrative Suggestion: Zone Lockdown?]
Aaron's hand shook. He selected Zone Lockdown.
A new screen unfurled.
[Lockdown Parameters]
• Seal exits
• Reinforce walls
• Nullify entity entry
Activate?
"Yes," he breathed. "Please."
A wave of distortion rippled through the building.
The windows darkened, shimmering with hexagonal patterns. His apartment door creaked as metal threaded through the wood, reinforcing it. The walls vibrated, strengthening, density rising like stone sinking in water.
On the minimap, the creature's icon paused.
It sniffed again. Then it lunged at the front door of the building.
A crash echoed up the stairwell.
Aaron flinched violently.
[Impact Detected]
[Lockdown Integrity: 97%]
The creature slammed the door again.
Then again.
Its claws scraped metal. Sparks rained down the stairs.
[Integrity: 93%]
Aaron's throat tightened. He opened the next menu.
Environmental Override.
He pressed it.
A list unfolded:
• Gravity Shift
• Temperature Control
• Air Pressure Manipulation
• Structural Morph
• Local Terrain Editing (Restricted)
The building shook again.
[Integrity: 89%]
Aaron didn't hesitate. He tapped Gravity Shift.
A slider appeared.
He dragged it to the right—increase gravitational force.
[Gravity: +200%]
Confirm?
"Yes!"
The confirmation boomed through reality.
The creature howled—an awful metallic screech—as its body slammed into the floor, crushed under sudden weight. Its limbs buckled. Plates cracked. The minimap flashed yellow as the beast struggled to rise and failed.
Aaron didn't stop. He dragged the slider further.
[Gravity: +450%]
The creature flattened. Metal groaned. The street pavement cracked beneath it. Red light leaked from its joints as the internal structure collapsed.
One minute later, the red icon flickered.
[Entity Neutralised]
Aaron let out a long, shaking breath. His back slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, heart hammering, palms cold with sweat.
The System chimed softly.
[First Hostile Eliminated]
[Administrative Stability: +12%]
Welcome, Administrator.
Aaron stared at the glowing panels.
Outside, the sky continued to tear.
And somewhere far beyond his apartment—beyond the city—a deeper roar echoed across the world.
The first of many.
The quiet returned too suddenly.
No claws scraping metal.
No tremors shaking the stairwell.
Just a dead, eerie stillness that felt wrong for a world that was clearly falling apart.
Aaron forced himself to stand.
His legs trembled, the adrenaline fading into a creeping numbness. His hands were cold, fingertips tingling. He felt hollow—like his mind hadn't caught up to what his eyes had seen.
A machine-animal had stalked his street.
He had crushed it with gravity like some kind of comic-book villain.
And the System had congratulated him for it.
He swallowed and wiped a hand across his face.
"This is insane…"
But the screens didn't care about sanity. They responded only to inputs, logic, and whatever the System wanted from him.
And it wanted something.
The air shimmered again as a new prompt formed.
> **[Local Zone Secured]**
> **[Suggested Next Action: Explore Administrative Functions]**
>
> **[WARNING: World State—Unstable]**
> *Global Level One Initiation in progress.*
> *Expect anomalies.*
Aaron paced slowly to the window and peeked outside.
The dead creature was still there—a twisted, broken shape pinned into the pavement, metal plates crumpled like tinfoil under a boot. Steam hissed weakly from its vents. Its red core flickered once, then sputtered out.
But the street beyond it…
The tears in the sky widened.
What had been narrow, angry-red fissures now stretched across the heavens like glowing cracks in a porcelain dome. The edges bled light. Shapes moved behind them—huge silhouettes, indistinct but wrong in every possible way.
Aaron felt his stomach sink.
*This is worldwide… Who else is seeing this?*
He grabbed his phone. The screen was still dead.
He tried to power it on. Nothing.
He glanced at the System panels forming an orbit around him like floating datapads.
"Can you connect to the internet? Or… whatever's left?"
Instant response.
> **[External Networks: Offline]**
> **[Cellular Infrastructure: Collapsed]**
> **[Satellite Uplinks: Interference Level Critical]**
>
> **No communication beyond System channels available.**
A chill settled in his chest.
"So I'm alone."
> **[Correction: You are the only Administrator detected in Local Sector 14B.]**
He frowned. "There are more sectors?"
The map zoomed out automatically—zooming past his building, past the city, and then the entire region. Hexagonal zones shimmered across the landscape like a digital overlay on a board game.
Most were highlighted in red.
> **[Sector Stability: 3%]**
> **[Human Survivability: Declining]**
> **[Hostile Density: Rising]**
Aaron stared at the red-filled map, feeling his pulse spike again.
"You're telling me the whole world is going to get filled with these things?"
> **[Affirmative]**
"And I'm supposed to… what? Fix it? Because you flagged me as an error?"
There was a long pause.
Then the System responded with something new—something that felt less like a status line and more like an intention.
> **[Administrator Fisher]**
> **The world is rebooting.**
> **Those who adapt will survive.**
>
> *Those who fail will be replaced.*
Aaron exhaled sharply as a cold shiver crawled down his spine.
"What does that mean?"
Before the System could answer, the minimap pulsed violently—bright red.
Another hostile signature appeared.
Then another.
Then three more.
Dozens.
Moving fast.
Closing in from multiple streets at once.
Aaron's breath hitched.
"Why are there so many suddenly?!"
> **[Reason: Hostiles attracted to System activity]**
> **[Administrative actions generate detectable energy]**
>
> **[Estimated Time Until Building Breach: 04:12]**
Four minutes.
His reinforced walls wouldn't hold against a swarm. He'd seen one Tier-1 creature up close—barely survived. There were at least twenty icons now, some larger than the first.
His heart hammered.
"System," he said, voice shaking, "I need options. Anything."
The panels reorganized instantly, forming a ring around him.
> **AVAILABLE ADMINISTRATIVE PROTOCOLS**
> **1. Zone Expansion (Experimental)**
> **2. Environmental Mutations**
> **3. Defensive Constructs**
> **4. Personal Attribute Assignment (Unlocked)**
> **5. Dev Console Override (WARNING)**
Aaron stared at the list.
He didn't know what any of them really did.
He only knew one thing:
The creatures were coming.
He didn't have time to hesitate.
He didn't have time to be the scared kid who barely scraped rent.
He needed to act.
Another crash thundered from the street below. The icon representing the largest hostile began climbing the exterior of the building like a spider of serrated metal.
Aaron clenched his fists.
"Open Personal Attribute Assignment."
The System obeyed.
The page unfolded.
And the first step toward changing himself—and possibly the world—began.