In the year 2078, humanity made contact with something it wasn't ready for.
Nobody called them aliens at first. The government used words like "anomalous entities" and "dimensional irregularities" because calling them what they actually were would cause panic.
It caused panic anyway. The rifts opened without warning. Over major cities, over oceans, over quiet neighborhoods where families were eating dinner and watching television and doing all the normal things people do right before their world ends.
I was six years old when the first rift opened over New York.
I remember my mother grabbing me before I even understood what was happening. My father was already on the phone with his voice low and urgent in a way I had never heard from him before. We drove through streets that were emptying fast, people running in every direction, and I pressed my face against the car window and looked up at the sky.
It was splitting open.
That is the only way I know how to describe it. Like someone had taken a knife to the sky and was pulling it apart at the seam. And through that gap came monsters that made your eyes water if you stared at them too long.
The military responded. Then the awakeners responded. People who had manifested abilities after the rifts first appeared, men and women who could fight back wielding supernatural powers. My parents were two of them. My father was a mid-rank awakener with a reinforcement ability. My mother had a barrier type skill she had spent years refining. Together they were part of the third response unit deployed to the New York rift.
They never came home from that one.
I was seven when the government representative knocked on my uncle's door to deliver the news. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs listening and not fully understanding but understanding enough. My uncle went quiet in a way that scared me more than shouting would have. I didn't cry either. I think I was too young to know how badly I was supposed to.
The years after that blurred together. Moving between relatives who weren't sure what to do with me. Government assistance that covered just enough to keep things uncomfortable. News broadcasts every morning showing rift activity maps like weather reports, red zones spreading across the country like a slow infection. The war wasn't dramatic the way movies made it look. It was just constant. A permanent background noise that everyone learned to live with.
When awakener universities became the government's answer to the manpower problem, every kid my age started dreaming about their assessment. It was the only real path forward. High rank meant resources, protection, a real future. Even low rank meant something. It meant you were useful and the war effort had a place for you.
I dreamed about it too. I told myself my parents' abilities had to have passed down somewhere and that the assessment would show something worth showing.
I should have known better.
---
The results board at Vanguard Academy's annual assessment ceremony updated in real time. Name by name, rank by rank, the auditorium filling with applause or polite silence depending on the number that appeared. Rank 4. Rank 6. Someone in the front row got a Rank 8 and half the room stood up.
Stan watched from the back and waited for his name.
When it came up the board flickered for a moment like it was confused. Then it displayed the number and the auditorium went quiet in a way that was completely different from the polite silence. This was the kind of quiet where people looked at each other to confirm they were reading the same thing.
[0.]
Someone laughed first. Then it spread. By the time Stan stepped off the assessment platform the whole room was moving on, already losing interest, already treating him like furniture. The academy staff member who handed him his results sheet wouldn't meet his eyes.
That was three months ago. Things had not improved.
---
It was just past seven in the evening when they caught up with him behind the east academic building.
There were four of them. Jake Mercer led the group the way he always did, hands in his pockets, walking slow because he had never needed to hurry for anything in his life.
He was a Rank 4, the kind of number that made professors speak carefully around you and opened every door on campus without knocking. The three behind him were Rank 2 and above. His usual crew.
Stan saw them coming and stopped walking.
He thought about turning around. He knew what was coming either way but some part of him was tired of running from it. He straightened up and looked at Jake directly and that was apparently already enough to be annoying.
"There he is." Jake said it like he had been looking forward to this. "Rank zero showing up to evening training again. Who let you in?"
"I have the same right to use the facilities as anyone else." Stan said it steadily. He was proud of how steady it came out.
Jake tilted his head. "You hear that?" He glanced back at his crew. "It thinks it has rights."
The first hit came fast. One of Jake's crew caught Stan across the jaw before he had finished processing the conversation was already over. He hit the ground hard with his hands scraping concrete, and by the time he got one knee under him someone's foot connected with his ribs and put him back down.
He tried to get up three times. Each time they put him back on the ground harder than before. He stopped trying to speak after the second time because it only seemed to make them angrier.
From somewhere behind Jake, two girls were watching. His girlfriend and her friend, standing at a comfortable distance, recording on their phones. One of them said something Stan couldn't fully hear and both of them laughed.
Eventually Jake crouched down in front of him. Stan was on his side on the concrete, breathing carefully around what he suspected was a cracked rib.
"Kiss my shoes." Jake said it quietly. Like they were close friends having a conversation.
Stan stared at the ground and said nothing.
Jake stood back up. "Not even worth the effort." He glanced back at the girls. "Come on."
They left. The sound of their voices faded around the corner of the building. Then it was just Stan and the concrete and the distant sound of training dummies being hit somewhere across campus.
---
He lay there for a while. Long enough for the sky to go fully dark and kong enough for the pain to settle from sharp to a deep consistent ache that he could at least breathe around.
Eventually he got up.
He walked back to the scholarship dormitory on the far edge of campus, the one they put the low-ranks in because it was technically still on academy grounds. His room was small and the heater ran inconsistently and the window faced a maintenance wall. He had lived in worse.
He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at his hands for a while. He had scraped palms and bruised knuckles from where he had tried to block. Nothing that wouldn't heal.
He thought about his parents. He did that more than he admitted and wondered what they would say if they could see this.
He lay back on the bed without changing clothes and stared at the ceiling.
He was almost asleep when the light appeared.
It bloomed in the dark above him, a soft blue holographic screen hovering at eye level like it was waiting for him to notice it. He blinked but it was still there. He sat up slowly and it moved with him, it was clearly not a hallucination.
[Ding! Divine Cuck System Activated!]
[Steal Women to get stronger!]
Stan stared at the screen dumbfounded.
"What the fuck?"