The transition from a multi-day beta test marathon to the end of the world shouldn't have been this quiet.
Ace peeled his cheek off the cool laminate of his desk. A dull ache throbbed in his neck, and his mouth tasted like stale coffee and copper. He rubbed his eyes, confused. He was expecting to wake up to his monitors glaring at him, welcoming him back to finish the beta build he had been compiling.
Instead, there was only a glossy, dead black screen.
He blinked, realizing the entire office was dark. The lack of lighting was disorienting. At first, he chalked it up to the late hour—the motion-sensor lights must have timed out after everyone else clocked out and went home. He jiggled his mouse to wake his screens. Nothing. He jabbed the power button on his tower. Silence.
He looked up at the ceiling and realized it wasn't just the main lights. There wasn't even the faint green glow coming from the emergency exit sign by the stairs. The entire floor was completely dead.
Instinctively, he pulled his phone from his pocket, pressing his thumb to the screen. It remained a dark, dead brick. Confusion began to creep into a low-level nervousness.
"Great," he muttered, his voice sounding thin and alien in the dark office.
He stood up, expecting to hear the constant, droning hum of the server racks from the floor below, or maybe the distant chatter of the localization team you could normally hear near the vents. But the 40th floor of the Omni-Media Tower was completely silent. Terrifyingly so.
The air felt wrong. It didn't smell like the normal mix of ozone and breakroom coffee anymore. It smelled of dry, chalky decay. He looked around and realized how dusty his cubicle had become. All his classic anime figures and posters attached to the wall had a fine layer of dust and grit on them. He swiped his fingers across one of his favorite replica items—two twin pistols from his favorite video game growing up, Ebony & Ivory. His fingers came away coated in a thick layer of heavy, gray dust.
A spike of dread and ice-cold confusion hit him. What happened? Where was everyone? If they had all just clocked out and gone home, it had to have been a very, very long time ago. The work area looked like it had been abandoned for years.
Ace rushed toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, pressing his hands against the cold glass as the breath left his lungs completely.
Oh God. He hadn't just taken a nap. Everything was wrong. This didn't even look like his own world anymore.
The familiar skyline had been replaced by a jagged, rotting jawbone under a bruised and angry purple sky. Massive, pulsating vines snaked up the sides of hollowed-out, dilapidated skyscrapers, crushing concrete and steel. It seemed like nature had reclaimed the city, but then something terrifying had claimed nature. Far below, the bay—once pristine and beautiful—was an endless expanse of black, oily water that sat still and ominous, like a black mirror reflecting the dead sky.
A thick white fog drifted off the bay and into the streets. Ace peered down through the glass, his eyes straining to pierce the rolling fog. There were people down there. At first, his desperate brain tried to normalize the sight. Survivors, maybe? Something bad happened, an evacuation? But as he focused, a sickening dread settled in his stomach. There was something fundamentally wrong with those people. They weren't rushing to safety. They weren't commuting, scavenging, or going about any daily activities that would make sense. They were just... moving.
It was an ominous, broken mimicry of life. He watched a cluster of figures near an intersection exhibiting a terrifying, jerky locomotion. Their shoulders were slumped, their heads rolling unnaturally on their necks as they dragged their feet in an endless, looping pattern.
As the sheer horror of what he was seeing locked his joints in place, he could only sigh in relief that the nightmare was down there, and he was safely up here.
Scraaaape.
Ace froze. The wet, heavy drag of a shoe on a dusty carpet echoed from somewhere on the other side of the floor. A wet, clicking gurgle followed the noise.
Pure, instinctual fear hijacked his nervous system. He wasn't alone. The threat wasn't just downstairs; it was up here with him.
He needed a weapon, and he needed one immediately. He looked around his cubicle, but all he had were replica toys and anime foam swords—nothing that could actually defend him. Frantically searching his desk, his hand closed around the only dense object available: a solid brass statue of a hand holding a video game controller. It was a "Game of the Year" trophy he'd been awarded at an event last year. The wrist of the statue formed a perfect handle, and the brass controller on top was dense and heavy. He tested the weight. It was a perfect improvised mace.
His mind raced, catching on a sudden memory. The Director's office. That guy kept a signed, solid-ash baseball bat mounted behind his desk. It was probably the only actual, lethal weapon on the floor.
Ace crept out of his cubicle, keeping his center of gravity low. As he slipped past his chair, he took a fleeting note of his emergency work bag tucked under his desk. He was glad it was still there, even if he didn't remember exactly what was inside it. It wasn't a priority right now; his mindset was entirely locked on finding that bat.
He navigated the maze of dusty, abandoned desks and conference tables, avoiding the couches and collections of stuffed animals in the break areas. He passed the glass walls of the rec rooms, ensuring nothing was moving in the dark kitchen. He bypassed the main bathrooms, keeping a wide berth from the doors, and noted the dead elevator bank and the heavy metal fire doors of the emergency stairwell. Those were his only ways off the floor.
Finally, he reached the Director's office—a heavy oak door at the corner of the floor. The door was cracked open. He stealthily peered around the frame before fully entering the room. The office was cast in deep shadow. To his right, he noticed the side door leading to the Director's private en-suite bathroom was also partially cracked open. The dark, gaping sliver gave him an incredibly ominous feeling. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he acknowledged the threat and crept past it without investigating further.
He moved past the giant mahogany desk and looked at the wall.
Empty. The display hooks where the bat normally hung were completely bare.
Before panic could fully set in, his eyes darted around the room and spotted a display credenza against the wall. Resting inside a glass case was a collector's edition cosplay sword—a full-length, stainless-steel replica of Tensa Zangetsu. Ace and the Director were both massive Bleach fans, having spent half their lunch breaks nerding out over this exact prop. It was an unsharpened cosplay weapon, sure, but Ace quickly realized that the sheer weight of the solid steel basically made it a highly stylized blunt instrument. It would do significantly more damage than the trophy.
Ace crept over and examined the case. He struggled with the ornate latch for a second, trying to pry the glass up quietly, but the hinges let out a sharp, metallic squeak. He winced, ignoring the noise and telling himself it wasn't loud enough to carry.
As the case finally popped open, he paused, momentarily distracted by how unbelievably cool the black blade looked resting on the velvet. He reached out, his fingers extending toward the cold steel of the hilt—
Thump.