Abraham jolted awake as if something had shoved him hard in the chest. He sucked in air violently, his lungs burning, his heart hammering against his ribs with such force that for a moment he was certain it might tear through bone and skin. Sweat drenched his shirt, clung to his neck, soaked the pillow beneath his head.
His body ached. There was punishing soreness in his shoulders and thighs, a sharp throb along his right forearm that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
For several long seconds he did not know where he was.
The ceiling above him looked unfamiliar, flat and pale, swimming slightly in his blurred vision. Everything was too quiet, unlike the chaos he just woke up from.
He expected smoke. Expected the metallic stench of blood thick in his nose. Expected darkness punctured by distant, distorted lights. His mind reached for concrete and fire and the heavy weight of a red extinguisher in his hands.
Instead, morning light filtered softly through the thin curtains, striping the room in gold. Outside, traffic hummed in its usual restless rhythm. A motorcycle revved. Somewhere down the street, a vendor shouted half-heartedly about fresh bread. A neighbor's metal gate clanged shut with a familiar screech.
He lay there, chest rising and falling too quickly, eyes darting around his small bedroom as if expecting it to peel away and reveal something else beneath it. The desk sat where it always did, cluttered with papers and a cracked mug. The wardrobe door was slightly ajar. His phone lay on the nightstand, dark and harmless.
Then he heard it. His mother coughed in the kitchen. It was a dry, persistent sound, followed by the faint clatter of utensils and the hiss of a kettle. That sound anchored him more than the sunlight did. It cut through the panic like a rope thrown to someone drowning.
He breathed a sigh of relief. It was just a dream.
Of course it was. A stress hallucination stitched together by anxiety and late-night paranoia. He had read too much into a strange email, let his imagination spiral. The human brain could conjure vivid nightmares under pressure.
He had been unemployed for months. His mother's health was fragile. The mind cracked under that weight sometimes.
He forced himself to breathe more slowly.
Inhale slowly through the nose.
Exhale slowly through the mouth.
Just a dream.
A knock came at his bedroom door.
"Abraham?" his mother called, her voice muffled but clear. She opened the door.
"You took your time in the bathroom. Let's have breakfast before it gets cold."
"What?" slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it.
She looked at him, a bit puzzled.
"I came to check on you earlier. You weren't in bed. I thought you were in the bathroom."
But he wasn't, he didn't remember. He pushed himself upright slowly, his muscles protesting the movement. The soreness was there, as if he wasn't sleeping but had just came from a marathon. His forearm throbbed sharply as he shifted his weight.
"I—I must've gone back to bed," he said, though his voice sounded distant to his own ears.
Another cough. "Hmm," she replied. "Come out when you're ready."
His mother's face was taken by confusion and surprise, as she scrunched her eyes at him. Her eyesight was getting bad.
"What happened?" Abraham asked, fearing.
"What's that on your face?" She took a step inside the room.
His gaze drifted toward the small mirror mounted beside his wardrobe. It reflected a narrow slice of his room and part of his own shoulder. Slowly, as if fearing what he might see, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
His knees felt unsteady.
He took a hesitant step toward the mirror.
At first, he saw only the expected, his hair damp and disheveled from sweat, his eyes wide and shadowed from poor rest. But then something darker caught his attention. A smear along his cheek. Near his jawline, something darker had dried in uneven flakes.
Blood.
His stomach dropped violently.
"Are you okay?" She was coming closer. "Did you fall?"
He couldn't answer. His eyes traveled downwards. The sleeve of his shirt felt stiff against his skin. He looked at his forearm and saw the fabric darkened in irregular patches.
His pulse roared in his ears, sheer horror on his face.
"I'll be there, Ma," he said abruptly, his voice tight. "Just....just give me a minute."
He brushed past her before she could question him further and hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with trembling hands, locking it.
The overhead light flicked on with a harsh click, flooding the small space with white brightness.
He looked at himself fully now.
The soot was worse than he had first realized. It smeared along his cheekbone and temple, faint but undeniable. Dried blood traced a thin line from the corner of his jaw down towards his neck. The memory of people falling to their death in front of him flassed.
His hands began to shake, as he rolled up his sleeve.
A deep bruise bloomed along his forearm, purple and angry, the skin slightly swollen. Just below it, a shallow cut had crusted over, edged in dried brown.
He touched it. Sharp pain flared immediately.
He hissed under his breath and jerked his hand back.
"This isn't possible," he muttered, but the words sounded hollow.
He turned on the tap and thrust his hands under the stream of water. He scrubbed hard, watching as the water running into the sink slowly tinged pink.
His breathing grew uneven.
The memory came back not in images at first, but in sensations. The weight of the extinguisher in his grip. The jarring vibration traveling up his arm when metal struck metal. The resistance of something solid giving way under repeated force.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
"It wasn't a dream," he whispered to the empty bathroom.
The words echoed softly against tile.
He opened his eyes and met his own reflection again. He barely recognized the expression staring back at him. Shock, yes. Fear, definitely. But something else lingered beneath it, a dawning understanding.
He had been there. It had happened.
He lifted his injured arm again and examined it closely. The bruise was there and ut was the biggest proof that it had happened. His body remembered even if his mind wanted to deny it.
"What did I do?" he whispered.
Outside the bathroom door, his mother's voice carried softly through the wood. "Abraham? Are you alright in there?"
His thoughts snapped and he forced his voice to steady. "Yeah. Just...just taking a shower."
There was a pause, then a gentle, "Don't take too long. Food's getting cold."
He stared at his reflection one last time before stepping into the shower, turning the water on hotter than necessary. Steam began to fill the small room, fogging the mirror until his distorted outline was all that remained.
As the water ran over him, he watched gray streaks spiral toward the drain. Faint traces of red followed.
And no amount of hot water could wash away the certainty settling into his bones.
Abraham stood under the spray longer than necessary, water pounding against his shoulders, sliding down his spine, washing soot and diluted blood into the drain. But no matter how long he stayed there, the memory pressed closer, insistent, clawing at the edges of his mind.
It returned in fragments.
A metallic clang, a sharp, distorted intake of breath. A voice that did not belong to anyone in the room and yet had filled the space completely.
[Eliminate one participant.]
The words landed again inside his skull as clearly as they had the night before.
He felt his stomach lurch. For a horrifying second, a single thought cut through him: The boy.
The boy with the shaking hands. The wide eyes. The desperate whisper, "Please."
Had he?
His mind recoiled violently from the possibility.
"No," he muttered under his breath, gripping the edge of the sink as the memory sharpened, unwilling to stay fractured any longer.
The hunter had moved first.
He saw it clearly now. The dim warehouse light reflecting off a visor. The deliberate, predatory shift of weight before the lunge. The hunter had not hesitated. He had advanced with the calm confidence of someone who had done this before.
The extinguisher had felt impossibly heavy in Abraham's hands. Cold metal and an a wkward grip. He remembered thinking he wasn't strong enough. That he would be too slow.
And then instinct had overtaken hesitation.
He had swung. The clang had vibrated through his bones as metal collided with metal. The hunter had staggered half a step, just enough being disrupted. Was he surprised or confused as if this was unexpected.
That had been all Abraham needed.
He had moved without thinking, it was ust forward momentum born from raw survival.
He had tackled the hunter low, shoulder slamming into armored ribs. They had crashed to the ground together in a brutal tangle of limbs and weight.
He remembered the sound of his own breath, ragged and animalistic.
The helmet had been inches from his hands. He had grabbed it, fingers scrambling for purchase, and yanked. It hadn't come off cleanly at first. He had pulled harder, fueled by panic, by the knowledge that if he failed now, he would die.
It had finally torn free.
The face beneath it had been human.
That part came back with awful clarity.
Sweat-slicked skin, eyes wide with surprise.
And Abraham had struck him anyway.
Desperately, as if something had taken over him.
The extinguisher rose and fell in his hands, heavy and unforgiving. The first blow landed against bone with a sickening crack. The second was less controlled. The third blurred into the fourth.
Somewhere to his left, the boy had screamed in terror, then moved.
Abraham remembered seeing him in his peripheral vision, clutching a jagged wooden shard like it was the only thing tethering him to life. The boy had struck downward, again and again, hands trembling but relentless.
It had become ugly fast.
It was violence Abraham had seen only in movies.
The hunter's arms had flailed once, twice, then weakened. A gurgling sound had escaped his throat, wet and wrong.
Abraham had not stopped immediately.
That was the part that returned now like a blade sliding under his ribs.
He had kept striking even after resistance faded. Even after the body beneath him stopped pushing back.
The extinguisher had grown slick in his hands.
The warehouse had fallen eerily quiet.
Then a white flash.
A translucent interface had flared into existence in that white space.
Adaptability: +3
Survival Instinct: +2
Physical Output: Above Baseline.
Emotional Suppression: Noted.
Reward Allocated.
The words had hovered without judgment anf praise.
He had fought and had survived. His knees weakened as he slid down tge coll toilet wall.
He had always wondered, in abstract terms, what he would do in a life-or-death situation. Everyone did. Would he run? Would he beg? Would he protect someone else?
Now he knew.
His hands covered his face, fingers digging into his scalp as if he could physically restrain the memory from replaying again.
"I killed someone," he whispered hoarsely.
The words sounded foreign.
But almost immediately, another voice rose inside him.
It was him or you.
He lowered his hands slowly.
"That doesn't make it better," he muttered.
If you hadn't swung, you'd be dead.
He exhaled shakily.
He watched the last faint traces of gray swirl down the drain. He scrubbed under his nails until the skin reddened. He cleaned the shallow cut on his forearm carefully, wincing as antiseptic stung the wound.
He placed a small bandage over it.
His mother glanced up from the stove as he entered the kitchen. "You look pale," she observed. "Did you sleep at all?"
"A bit," he replied, taking his seat at the small table.
The television murmured in the background, replaying coverage of the disappearances. His mother shook her head slightly. "More families reporting missing people," she said quietly. "It's frightening."
He nodded without really hearing her. His mind replayed the weight of the extinguisher. The crack of impact. The boy's ragged breathing beside him in the dark.
His phone vibrated suddenly against the table. He flinched hard, almost knocking over his glass.
His mother frowned. "What's wrong with you today?"
"Nothing," he said quickly, grabbing the phone.
A banking notification filled the screen.
He opened it.
$2,000 deposited.
There was no name or company tag, just a description.
Survival Compensation – Phase 1
His fingers went cold. It was real and it had paid him.
The room seemed to tilt slightly as numbers rearranged themselves in his mind. Rent covered. Medicine paid. Bills delayed for months suddenly manageable.
Another thought flased in his mind.
How many people disappeared last night? he wondered.
How many accepted? How many survived?
His mother peered at him. "What happened?"
He locked the screen before she could see.
"Nothing," he said, forcing a neutral expression.
He lowered his gaze to his hands resting in his lap. They were steady now, but they felt heavier.
Like they no longer belonged to the version of him who had woken up yesterday.
Like they belonged to someone who had already crossed a line, and discovered he was capable of crossing it again.