Seattle was eerier when there was time to look around. There was a huge lineup of crashed cars on 5th Avenue, as it was one block away from Spring Street, which led to I-5 north, the highway people had to take to get out of dodge. The door of a Subaru Forester was swung open, with a fist dent in the side of the hood. The car had crashed into a white Tesla, which clearly couldn’t auto-navigate around a maze of cars. These small details painted a vivid picture in my mind. I felt like I was there, amidst the honking and yelling as people tried to get onto the highway, many abandoning their cars after an hour of blaring horns.

  Now, it was silent save for the sound of a McDonald's bag dragging southeast down 5th Avenue, briefly passing by Columbia Center Tower.

  Brooke shivered when she saw the skyscraper’s entrance. The glass walls were dirty white with spider webs, a disturbing sight I didn't want to relive. She wouldn’t want to relive it, either. Her brother's corpse was just around the bend, killed by one of the spiders inside that building, and that was sure to spark tension between us. So, I coughed as we passed Cherry Street, capturing her attention. Jacob opened his mouth to draw her attention back to the street, but I warned him with my eyes that I'd bash his skull in if he said a word. He wisely chose to keep silent and move on, weaving between cars and buses on the way to Uwajimaya. That lasted another half block before Troy hopped ahead of us.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” he said, jumping onto the hood of a crashed Porsche. “Why don’t we discuss why we were teamed up? I mean, we were grouped up for a reason, right?”

  I stopped, watching Troy spin his katana like a tap dancer with a cane. I didn’t want to discuss things that could spark discord, but Edgar’s warning about Brooke had drilled into my brain. I wouldn’t blame her for doing what she had to do to survive a bad team, but she was currently on a bad team—and I was in it. That’s when her action transformed from a them problem to a me problem, and I had to know the truth. So, I nodded.

  “I’ll go first,” Troy said. “This kid…” He pointed the katana at Jacob. “Killed my girlfriend.”

  I whirled to face Jacob.

  “I didn’t kill her!” he cried.

  “Yeah, you just watched her die instead of doing anything,” Troy said. “Was it fascin~ating? Watching her blood squirt everywhere? You certainly watched ‘til she stopped breathing. How long did it take her to die? Three minutes? Maybe more?”

  Jacob stumbled backward. “N-No,” he said. “I-I didn't.”

  “Yeah, that's the problem.”

  I grinned at Jacob viciously. “So that’s why you keep blaming me. You're looking for someone worse than yourself. Aren't you? You are. But you're unable to find someone, so you're—”

  “You cut him in half!” Jacob yelled. “That's a fact. His body's right over—”

  “Stop!” Brooke screamed. “Don’t bring it up!”

  “Hoh ho!” Troy exclaimed, jumping off the hood of the car. “It seems we know the sore spot for two ‘ve ‘em. You, my friend, have got a two’fer.” He pointed the blade at me.

  “Point that thing at me again, and I’ll take it away,” I said.

  Troy’s lip curled, briefly exposing his internal hideousness. His dark expression then disappeared, replaced by a bright, chilling smile. “And you?” he asked Edgar.

  “Who me? Nah, nothin’, wey. Chica here just set us up. She’s got clairvoyance, or some shit. Says she can see top-down. So we trusted her, right? We’re walkin’ around, following her instructions, and she’s suddenly like, ‘Nah, let’s go this way, it’s cool.’ And so we did. Next thing we know, we were run down by some mean ass perros. Six of the fuckers. Half the team gone”—he snapped his fingers—“like that. And where’s chica? Nowhere—that’s where. Then I get to the library, and sure as shit, she’s right there, actin’ like nothin’ happened. Fucked up is what it is.”

  I slowly turned to Brooke, who was shaking her head slowly, eyes trembling in fear. “No… that’s not true,” she said.

  “Nah, it was perra,” Edgar said, using the word for female dog. “That’s how it happened. Two of ‘em grabbed Toben. You remember him? They played tug of war with ‘em, chica. Ripped ‘em apart.”

  Brooke shook her head again. “Don’t lie. There were two dogs. Two. There’s no way you couldn’t’ve handled them.”

  “And so she admits it!” Troy exclaimed, waving his sword like a circus ringmaster. “She set ‘em up!”

  “They were threatening to kill me!” Brooke yelled, turning to Edgar. “Especially you! ‘Hey, we should probably ease up on ‘er. She’s gonna tell everyone we beat ‘er up.’ Nah, wey. Chica’s not goin’ nowhere. Best to get rid of ‘er before she causes problems.”

  “Which was an excellent call, in retrospect,” Troy said, grinning widely. “Don’t you think?”

  “He said that first!” Brooke snapped. “It was self defense!”

  “I think you should watch that tone,” Edgar said, walking toward her.

  Brooke unsheathed her rapier, and Edgar laughed.

  “Oh girl, you best put that thing away,” he warned. “If you don’t—”

  I stepped between them. “That’s enough.”

  “Enough? Listen, vato. That ain’t your girl. You keep ‘er around, she’ll feed you to the dogs. That ain’t no claim, homie—it’s history.”

  Troy puffed out his lower lip. “Yeah. He’s kinda got a point, doesn’t he? I mean, at least richie here’s only a useless worm. She…” He pointed his katana at Brooke. “Is a liability.”

  Things turned gravely serious. The rules didn’t say anything about not killing each other—and Brooke’s cornered expression said she knew it.

  “Not if we ignore her,” I argued. “Like I said: what happened between you two is your business. Sort it out outside the library when we get back.”

  I wasn’t sure why I was standing up for Brooke. Maybe it was just circumstantial. She set Edgar up—but it was probably justified. Edgar was a gang member who defaulted to violence; I wouldn’t put it past him to kill a witness. So, yeah, I was sticking up for her. Whether I’d trust her was a different matter entirely.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Edgar said dismissively. “It’s not like we’re gonna kill ‘er or nothing.” He swung his sledgehammer over his shoulder and looked at me. “I needa piss. So wait here.” He walked away, mumbling, “Ese cabrón no tiene ni pizca de sentido común,” under his breath. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I figured he was calling me stupid by his tone alone. Soon, he disappeared behind a double-decker bus, cooling the atmosphere.

  I turned to Brooke. “What’s your class? Don’t lie: You don’t have a single friend here.”

  She swallowed. “I’m a seer. I have the ability to track beasts and see top-down from the sky. I was using that skill for the others, but they started to abuse it. They didn’t let me level up, and started beating me when I was exhausted and wanted to rest.” She lifted her sleeve, exposing dark purple fingerprints on her bicep. “At some point, people started getting paranoid that I’d rat them out to other Chosens, so they were conspiring to kill me. I just led them into a diversion. I swear to God they could’ve handled it.”

  That explanation sounded plausible to me, given Edgar’s personality and the bruises. Troy wasn’t so convinced.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, glancing toward the bus Edgar had gone behind. I tried to follow his eyes, but Troy slammed his blade against the ground, capturing my attention. “But you did set them up. And trust here is key. Because now you’re in my group—and I don’t want to be set up. Get it?” He walked toward her.

  “W-Wait!” Brooke took a stumbling step backward. “I promise I wouldn’t. Honest!”

  Troy stopped and laughed when she shielded her face with her hands. “Whoa, calm down,” he said. “That bruise convinced me. I was just testing you.”

  I sighed. Then, I turned to Brooke, only to freeze up. There was a warping shape behind her. It was Edgar: he was invisible, but my perception slowed the warping distortion in the air, making him clear as day to me. He pulled back his sledgehammer for a horizontal swing.

  “Wait!” I yelled—but it was too late.

  Edgar’s sledgehammer smashed into Brooke’s skull like a baseball bat, sending everything but her lower jaw splashing across the street.

  My mind immediately expressed regret in two choppy parts of the same sentiment:

  (If only)

  (I had)

  That’s all it took to accidentally trigger the skill that had been hidden by three question marks since the beginning.

  You have unlocked a new skill.

  Unique skill “Beta Fork” has activated.

  All of Brooke’s blood and skull and brains suddenly reversed as if someone had hit the rewind button on an antique VHS player. Her skull rebuilt itself in a single second, returning her face to normal, allowing everyone to see the look of shock she had with eerie clarity. Then, time resumed—leaving everyone bewildered.

  Edgar stood with his sledgehammer pulled back, ready to swing, but never having done so. “What the fuck?” he said.

  Those words smashed into my skull like his sledgehammer, triggering a violent headache. Despite that, adrenaline took over, and I charged him. I cocked my fist and punched him in the chest with my full strength, demonstrating our profound power differential.

  Edgar’s chest was like a rock, but my fist shattered his ribs as he flew into the bus, shattering the windows during the impact.

  You have killed level 23 human.

  The difference between Level 36 and 23 was simply incomparable. Not only was I evolved, but I had an additional 130 points in the Strength category—more than half his total stats. It was a rout.

  Troy saw the attack and acted. He opened a spatial portal—or what I assumed was one. It was a three-dimensional oval, like an American football. It was twice the size of a full-body mirror, and it warped the air around him. A second portal opened behind me, and I knew something was wrong in an instant. I dodged just as Troy shoved his katana in the first portal, blade shooting out of the second. It almost stabbed me!

  That was an impressive level of skill—but his speed couldn’t keep up with my wildly disproportionate stats. I turned and grabbed his katana with ghostly speed, yanking it out of his hands.

  He stumbled in the process, falling halfway through his portal—leaving his body split between two locations. His torso was beside me; his legs were by the Porsche he had jumped on. That position became gruesome when I soccer punted his skull, and the skill deactivated. The portals disappeared, slicing his body in half.

  Troy turned his head and saw his legs bleeding out ten feet away, and started shaking, screaming, “N-No… N-No no-no-no-no!”

  I wiped my mouth with my wrist, head pounding.

  “T-This can’t be h-happening,” he muttered. “It-it can’t. I-I-I was c-chosen. I-I was the one.”

  My head cracked again, making me stumble. I grabbed my forehead. “No… you were just… one.”

  “N-No… I had space. I controlled space. I controlled…” His face drained of color as the blood exited his body. “I controlled… I…”

  I wanted his soul force far more than his monologue, so I lifted the katana and swung. The blade was just as sharp as my Mana Sharpening. It cut straight through his neck, immediately leading to a chime.

  You have killed Level 26 human

  He was evolved, I thought, wondering what he had to do to cross that threshold. That's all I thought about. I didn’t feel the least bit remorseful for killing him—or Edgar, for that matter. If it was personal? Sure. That was one thing. But my action didn’t have the slightest thing to do with me or Brooke or Jacob. It was about Emily. There was no way I’d allow either of those sick fucks to get near her. So I killed them—action primal, protective, and raw. It was natural to me.

  Perhaps that’s the real reason that I defended Brooke’s decision to set Edgar up. From the moment I met him—I planned to do the same.

  My mind suddenly shook, and I experienced intense vertigo. My world spun, looping in half rotations as my ears rang. Things had gotten very serious.

  Why? I internally screamed. How much did that cost? A pop-up answered my call.

  Skill: Beta Fork

  Description: Summons entities from a divergent world line in which the current moment has yet to resolve. Consciousness from living entities is transferred to world line puppets. The alpha world line is abandoned.

  Usage Requirement: 300 INT, 300 PER for the first real-time second.

  But I have enough! I screamed within. Then I remembered the tutorial’s warning:

  (“You are able to use Mana Sharpening, but if you use your Paradox skills, you can permanently damage your mind, body, and core.”)

  Fuck! I turned to Brooke to see if she’d help me. It wasn’t likely. She was probing her head with her fingers, trying to process the fact that she had clearly lost her skull—but was somehow still alive.

  If my cracking brain wasn’t bad enough, my core suddenly pulsed, creating a surreal dysphoria within me. I suddenly felt my body drain of energy and experienced an intense desire to sleep.

  No… no. Fuck! Not here!

  There was no way that I would let myself black out for eight hours on the main strip outside of the library. Brooke and Jacob would certainly abandon me, and I’d probably be killed by random Chosens looking for a stat boost.

  This isn’t fair… I thought. This seriously isn't fair…

  I didn’t mean to save Brooke; maybe subconsciously, but not intentionally. I just planned to kill the two with full justification (Edgar for killing Brooke, and Troy for aiding him), but instead, this happened.

  “No…” I mumbled deliriously. I couldn’t fall into despair—I could fix things. “120 to PER,” I whispered. “121 to INT.”

  I unloaded 241 of my 260 Free points to bring both my perception and intelligence to a cool 500 each. I felt instant relief. The stat increases were so excessive that my mind and core balanced out. I laughed. I couldn’t fight—but I could stay conscious and find somewhere to rest!

  It was a nice thought. Unfortunately, something hard crashed into my skull, and I immediately blacked out.