"Glenn."
The voice hit me the moment I pushed through the rattling metal gate and stepped onto the site, sounding flat and irritated as if it had been festering in the cold morning air for the last forty minutes.
I didn't even need to look up to see the boss standing by the temporary office with his clipboard tucked under one arm, watching me with the weary eyes of a man who had already written me off as a lost cause.
"You know what time it is."
I glanced at the scratched plastic face of my watch even though the silence between us already held the answer.
"Seven forty."
"And what time does the shift start on this site, Glenn?"
"Seven."
He didn't raise his voice, which somehow made the disappointment feel heavier as he just stared at me for a long moment, measuring my worth against the ticking clock before letting out a sharp, tired breath.
"Get your helmet on, get upstairs, and try to be useful because the crane is bringing material in twenty minutes."
"Alright."
That was the end of the conversation, no lecture and no shouting, just the quiet acceptance that I was exactly the kind of unreliable worker he expected me to be.
I grabbed a scuffed helmet from the rack and walked toward the external lift, feeling the platform creak and groan as it began the slow climb along the side of the building through the biting morning fog.
Construction wasn't exactly complicated work since you just lift something, move it somewhere else, and repeat the process until the sun goes down or your back gives out.
The simplicity of it was the only reason I ended up here in the first place, because back when I was younger, people talked about life like it was a map with a clear, golden direction.
Study hard, get the grades, find something respectable, teachers said it so often that you actually started to believe there was a seat at the table waiting for you if you just followed the instructions.
The problem was that the instructions never made a lick of sense to me, numbers blurred together during exams, and every lecture felt like white noise drifting right past my ears.
Whenever someone asked what I wanted to become, the only honest answer I had was a shrug because the path everyone else saw was completely invisible to me.
Eventually the grades bottomed out, the teachers stopped looking my way, and the future everyone promised quietly disappeared into the rearview mirror.
Construction didn't ask for a resume or a mission statement, because if you could carry steel and show up most mornings, that was usually enough to earn a paycheck.
The lift stopped with a violent metallic jolt and the gate rattled open onto the top floor, where the wind moved freely through the skeleton of the building while workers dragged bundles of rebar across the raw concrete.
I stepped off the platform and pulled my gloves on, nodding to a foreman named Bethel who raised a hand from the far side of the deck.
"Need those rods moved before the crane makes its next pass, so get a move on!"
I followed his gesture to a bundle of long steel rods lying near a support column and joined another worker to lift one end, the metal scraping loudly against the floor as we shifted the weight away from the landing zone.
It was routine, the kind of mindless labor you do on autopilot, and I was halfway through the second bundle when the guy beside me suddenly went rigid.
"Wait."
"What is it?"
He tilted his head toward the open sky, asking if I heard that, but at first I only heard the distant hum of the city until a thin, metallic whistle cut through the air.
I looked up just in time to see a steel rod falling from the heights above, spinning slowly as gravity claimed it and it plummeted through the open frame of the building.
For a heartbeat my mind just watched it, tracing the way the rod grew larger and faster as the whistle sharpened into a scream that tore through the morning silence.
There wasn't time to dive or even pray, there was only the sight of the steel rushing toward me like a spear launched from the heavens.
Then came a violent, sickening crack and a splash of warm liquid across the concrete as the rod drove straight through my skull, the force slamming my body sideways while the world twisted and dissolved into a cold, absolute darkness.
Someone shouted my name from a thousand miles away, the sound fading into a whisper, and then there was nothing at all.
My mother used to toss out little pieces of wisdom while she was cooking or folding laundry, most of which I ignored because teenagers rarely believe their parents know anything about the real world.
Looking back, she probably had more sense than I ever gave her credit for, but unfortunately the one piece of wisdom I was currently experiencing was the one I used to laugh at the most.
Out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.
Voices reached me before I could even force my eyes open, sounding hollow and clinical as they poked at my new, unfamiliar skin.
"Another one from the batch."
"Looks small, doesn't it?"
"Yeah… weak bones too, likely won't survive the first cycle."
Something cold pressed against my chest while rough hands lifted me with no more care than a piece of luggage before setting me back down on a hard surface.
"Is he from a Commander's line?"
There was a short, dismissive pause before the second voice returned with a sneer.
"No, just civilian breeding stock, so he probably won't last long enough to learn his own name."
Laughter followed that statement, not the cruel kind exactly, but the casual amusement people use when they're discussing something that doesn't matter, like a broken tool or a stunted plant.
I forced my eyes open and was immediately blinded by a flood of clinical white light that slowly sharpened into the shapes of gray metal walls and a long chamber filled with pods.
Large, towering figures moved between the rows, their shadows stretching across the floor like dark giants from a nightmare I hadn't invited myself into.
My first thought was a simple realization that I definitely wasn't on Earth anymore, but the second thought hit me with the force of a freight train.
Oh hell.
I recognized this place because I had spent enough nights in my old life reading comics and watching anime to know exactly what kind of world I was looking at.
I was on Viltrum, or more accurately, inside a Viltrumite incubation facility where the "weak" were filtered out before they could even take their first real breath.
Back on Earth, people argued about power scaling and fictional universes like it actually mattered, and I had been one of them, killing time after a shift by scrolling through debates about aliens and superheroes.
But knowing the lore in theory and waking up inside the belly of the beast were two very different, very terrifying experiences.
One of the giants leaned closer, his sharp eyes examining me with the same detachment a butcher uses on a side of beef.
"This one's awake already, look at the eyes."
"Doesn't look promising regardless."
That was the moment I realized they weren't talking about me like a newborn baby, they were evaluating me like livestock in a world where "average" was a death sentence.
Viltrumite society wasn't built on kindness or potential, it revolved entirely around strength, conquest, and the brutal elimination of anything deemed "unfit."
Weak children were discarded, weak soldiers were left on the battlefield, and weak planets were simply erased from the star charts.
"Tag him with the next generation batch and let's move on."
"What about his genetic ranking?"
"Low."
That was the final word on my existence, a single syllable deciding my place in an alien empire built on the corpses of the fallen.
"Accelerated growth cycle begins tomorrow, and remember, the purge continues until only the apex remains."
The Purge, the words sank into my mind like a stone, reminding me of the era when Viltrumites slaughtered their own population by the billions to ensure only the strongest survived.
I hadn't just reincarnated into a world of gods, I had dropped into the single most dangerous point in Viltrumite history.
Fantastic.
My new life officially began the following year, though Viltrumites don't waste time being helpless infants since our bodies develop with a speed that would look like a horror movie to a human doctor.
By the time I could walk, the training had already started, though "training" was a generous word for what was essentially organized, state-sponsored brutality.
Hundreds of us were thrown into combat arenas while instructors watched from high balconies, waiting for us to tear each other apart with fists and teeth.
There were no rules and there was certainly no sympathy, only the one lesson repeated until it was carved into our souls.
Strength meant you got to breathe for another day, while weakness meant your body was just more trash for the cleaners to sweep away.
The first time I saw a child die in the dirt I froze, watching as one boy slipped during a spar and the other didn't hesitate to crush his throat before the instructors even looked his way.
The body was dragged off like it was nothing and the training continued without a second of silence for the dead.
That was the day I truly understood that on Viltrum, violence wasn't just a part of the curriculum it was the entire education system.
Years passed in those blood-soaked arenas as my body grew stronger and my muscles hardened into something that felt like living stone.
Viltrumite biology was a miracle of adaptation, knitting broken bones back together thicker than before and healing wounds faster than any human science could explain.
But raw talent still dictated the hierarchy, and that was where the gap between me and the elites started to feel like an ocean.
Some of the other kids carried bloodlines tied to legendary warlords, and their bodies developed with an effortless grace that made my hard-earned progress look pathetic.
The first time I stood across from one of them named Varrek, the difference became painfully clear within the first three seconds of the match.
He was tall for our age with muscles sculpted like a statue, and when the signal to fight was given, I made the mistake of trying to strike first.
He sidestepped my punch like I was moving in slow motion and drove a fist into my ribs with enough force to send me skidding fifty feet across the stone floor.
The next hit shattered my jaw, and the third strike lifted me off the ground entirely before slamming me back down with the weight of a falling building.
The fight ended in less than ten seconds, and I remember lying there staring at the ceiling through a haze of pain while blood filled my mouth.
"Pathetic," was the only comment he gave before walking away, leaving the instructors to drag my broken frame out of the dirt.
But a strange thing happened over the following years, because even though I wasn't the strongest, I refused to stay down.
Every defeat carved a new layer of experience into my muscle memory, and slowly, painfully, I began to bridge the gap through sheer, stubborn survival.
The first time I killed someone was three years later, a trainee who was just a little slower than me, and I still remember the sharp snap his neck made when I finally squeezed.
The arena went silent for a heartbeat before the instructor nodded once and called the kill "acceptable," which was the highest praise any of us ever received.
More years passed filled with more blood and more fights, and while I climbed the ranks, I never truly touched the level of the true high-bloods.
The sons of commanders and the descendants of the royal lines always ended our matches the same way: me on the ground and them looking down with bored eyes.
The final fight came when I was barely old enough to be called a warrior, standing in a massive arena under the gaze of a thousand hungry spectators.
The opponent waiting for me was Thragg, in future a name that carried enough weight to make even the bravest Viltrumite tremble.
He didn't speak as we circled each other because the difference between us was written in the way he moved, faster, harder, and with a power that felt like a localized earthquake.
I fought with every scrap of instinct I had, but it was like trying to hold back a hurricane with a paper shield.
Eventually he caught my arm and the bone shattered instantly, followed by a chest-crushing blow that sent me to my knees with blood filling my lungs.
For a brief moment our eyes met, and I saw a total lack of empathy in his gaze right before his fist drove through my skull and the world went black.
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A|N -
Updates won't be super fast, but I'll try to stay consistent. You can expect around 2–3 chapters a week, each over 2000 words.
Also...
I'm kind of a trash writer, so tolerate it if you can. If not, feel free to move on.