The thing's face flickered with scales underneath the skin, joints that bent wrong, eyes that didn't fit the skull, his stomach lurched but he forced himself to stay calm.
'There's an alien in my living room. An actual alien. And it wants the bracelet. The thing that's inside me now.'
"Are you certain you're feeling alright?" The alien was still playing doctor, voice smooth and concerned. "Your vitals were quite troubling earlier."
"Yeah, I'm fine," he came down the rest of the stairs keeping distance between them, "Thanks for stopping by, but I think I just need to sleep it off."
His mom looked between them not understanding the tension, "Honey, are you sure? Dr. Harwell came all this way..."
"I'm sure," he put a hand on her shoulder, "You should get some rest too. It's been a long day."
'Get her out of here. Whatever happens next, she can't be here for it.'
"I suppose you're right," she touched his face searching for something, "You'd tell me if something was wrong?"
"Yeah. Of course."
The lie was so easy it almost scared him.
She kissed his forehead and headed upstairs with footsteps creaking on each step, he waited until her bedroom door closed before turning back to the alien.
The human mask was already slipping.
"Interesting," it said and now the voice had a buzzing undertone, "The device bonded faster than expected. I was told it would take days."
He didn't answer, his eyes were scanning the room with the kitchen knife block fifteen feet away, front door behind the alien, back door through the kitchen.
"You can see what I am, can't you?" The human face rippled with skin stretching in ways it shouldn't. "The scan function must be operational. Impressive."
"Who are you?"
"My name wouldn't mean anything to you. I'm a collector. I've been tracking your father for thirty years, waiting for him to finish his work," the alien stepped forward and under the flickering disguise he could see four arms unfolding from its torso, "He ran well. Not well enough."
"My father's dead."
"Yes. Convenient for him. The coward got to take his secrets to the grave," another step forward backing him toward the wall, "But not all of them. That device you're wearing? I'll be taking it now."
"It's inside me. It won't come off."
The alien smiled with too many teeth, "I know."
[Mission: Survive the Encounter]
[Reward: 50 XP, 1 Skill Point]
The notification flashed in his vision right as the alien lunged.
'Fast!'
He threw himself sideways and crashed into the coffee table as a clawed hand punched through the wall where his head was, plaster rained down and the alien turned already tracking him with four arms spread wide to cut off any escape.
'I'm going to die. This is how I die.'
He scrambled backward, grabbed a lamp, threw it, the alien batted it away without looking, he grabbed a vase and got the same result, a picture frame did nothing.
"Stop embarrassing yourself," the alien advanced slowly enjoying this, "Your father could at least put up a fight. You're just a child."
[Analyzing enemy. Weak points identified: joint connections, sensory organs, central mass vulnerability.]
Information flooded his mind not words but more like instinct, suddenly he knew things he shouldn't know, the alien's left knee rotated wrong, its eyes were sensitive to light, the breathing slit on its neck was unarmored.
'Great. So I know where to hit. Doesn't mean I can actually hit it.'
He grabbed a chair and swung it, the alien caught it one-handed and crushed it to splinters.
"Your father was smarter," it grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground with four arms pinning his limbs, he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, "He ran for thirty years. You couldn't last thirty seconds."
His vision was going dark, lungs burning.
[Emergency option available: Temporary Stat Boost (+50% Physical Stats). Duration: 60 seconds. Accept?]
'YES!'
Power flooded through him like caffeine and lightning at once, his muscles stopped burning, his vision cleared, and suddenly the grip on his throat felt less like iron and more like just pressure.
Something he could work with.
His hand shot up and his fingers found the breathing slit on the alien's neck, he jammed them in deep.
The alien screamed with nothing human about that sound and its grip loosened just enough, he twisted free, dropped to the floor, rolled, grabbed the first thing he touched.
A shard of glass from the broken vase.
The alien lunged again with four arms grasping and he didn't think, just moved, ducked the first arm, sidestepped the second, felt the third graze his shoulder, drove the glass into the alien's throat.
Right where the System told him to aim.
Wet gurgling, arms spasming, claws raking lines across his back that burned, then the alien collapsed twitching with blood pooling in a color that wasn't quite right.
He stood over it breathing hard with glass still in his hand.
The boost faded and his legs gave out, he crashed to his knees.
[Mission Complete]
[Reward: 50 XP, 1 Skill Point]
[Level Up! You are now Level 2]
He stared at the notifications then at the dead alien then at his hands, shaking, covered in blood, his and its.
He just killed something, killed something with a piece of broken glass in his living room.
'I should feel bad about this. Shouldn't I? Why don't I feel bad?'
All he felt was his heart hammering and adrenaline still buzzing through him, no guilt, no horror, just the cold awareness that he did what he needed to do.
'What's wrong with me?'
[Suggestion: Dispose of remains before biological parent discovers them. Recommended method: Utilize emergency waste disposal in basement laboratory.]
He almost laughed, the voice in his head was giving him tips on hiding bodies.
He looked at the corpse, the destroyed furniture, the blood everywhere, his mom was upstairs probably passed out from exhaustion, she couldn't see this, couldn't know about any of this.
Thirty minutes later the living room almost looked normal, he dragged the body to the basement because it was heavier than it looked with four arms and found something in his father's lab that dissolved organic matter without leaving residue, he didn't want to think about why that existed.
Broken furniture went in the garage, blood got scrubbed off the floor, the holes in the wall were going to be harder to explain but he'd figure something out, gas leak, break-in, something.
He sat on the couch covered in alien blood and sweat and stared at the ceiling.
[Alert: Hostile entities in local area. Current count: 6]
[Distance: 2.3km, 3.1km, 4.0km, 4.2km, 5.8km, 6.1km]
Six more of them, six more things out there that wanted him dead.
[Recommendation: More will come. Increase combat capability immediately.]
He closed his eyes.
'More are coming. Of course more are coming. Because apparently my father spent thirty years stealing alien technology, and now I'm the one they want.'
His mom was upstairs, six blips on whatever radar the System was showing him, he killed something tonight and felt nothing but alive.
'This is insane. This whole thing is insane.'
He opened his eyes and looked at the notifications still floating in his vision.
'Alright. Alien computer in my brain. Guess we're doing this.'