Bright, fluorescent lights blinded me. The blackness was banished, surrounded by white. Something hard gripped my face, shoving air into my mouth, my nose. I gagged, coming awake with a massive gasp followed by a violent series of coughs. 

Bits of dull-blue dust exploded from the inhalation ports of the oxygen mask like a dragon’s exhale as I hacked, my lungs tight and dry. 

Wait, oxygen mask? The disorientation twisted into full-blown panic. No. This couldn’t be happening. I looked down at myself, at my body. The IV, the monitor, the bed. The ambulance ride that must have brought me here. We didn’t have insurance, and doing some frantic math in my head I realized I was looking at from anywhere between $2,500 to $10,000 minimum.

Shit. Shit. I couldn’t afford it. We couldn’t afford it. Even the lowest number would wipe out my meagre profits from Nick’s tip sheet and the highest would put us on the street. There was... something that happened. My memory was fuzzy. A natural disaster? A meteor? 

It slowly came back to me. That’s right. It had exploded before impact, showering the city and street with massive plumes of dust that reminded me of the immediate aftermath of the oil refinery in Beirut. And I’d been thrown from the resulting blast. 

Experimentally, I leaned forward and winced, a sharp pain emitting from my chest beneath a thick bandage. Cracked rib. I had green-purple bruising all over my side and my shoulder throbbed from where I must have landed. I struggled to my feet and wheeled the IV stand towards the window. 

I’d expected to see husks of collapsed buildings as far as the eye could see. But the Dallas skyline was intact. The Bank of America plaza building had collapsed, damaging some nearby structures but at least from this perspective, everything else looked mostly whole. 

That was almost worse. The disaster had been a freak incident, unlike anything I’d ever heard of. There would be an inevitable compensation fund, but that would take time, and there had been clear examples in the past when it had taken an upward of a decade for lawmakers to establish anything remotely approaching a working solution.

Then, as if to punctuate my rising panic, the text box appeared.

<System Notification—>

I slapped the message away, retreated until my back slammed against a wall. Panic mingled with anxiety and I began to hyperventilate. 

Head between my legs, I tried to come to grips with how bad the situation was. The only thing that could possibly make my current circumstances worse had happened: There was actually something wrong with me. Hallucinations. And not the fun, walls are slightly shifting and why did I leave the remote in the fridge kind. It was a hard delusion, tied to the dream I’d had the previous night. They’d want to keep me overnight for observation. It had to be a psychological issue, which would take time to diagnose and evaluate, and that was how ten thousand dollars turned into a hundred. 

Hurriedly, I crawled to the foot of the bed and checked my chart. Below the listing of blood pressure and notes there was a bullet-point list detailing my condition: Severe smoke inhalation. Fractured rib. Dislocated shoulder. Exposure to an unknown substance. But I almost cried with relief when I found the field listed as M. Unidentified Adolescent. They didn’t have my name. That cinched it. I had to get out. Now. 

It took a few painful moments for me to remove the IV. My head pounded under the intensity of the lights. My half-folded clothes and belongings were in a plastic bag placed haphazardly on a nearby seat. I got the feeling that whoever placed them there had been called away which was likely the reason my name and information hadn’t been lifted from my wallet. 

The text box reappeared as I struggled back into my ruined clothes. I tried to push it away again but it shifted, moving out of my reach but remaining in my sight. I turned away from it, refusing to acknowledge the delusion when it moved to stay in my eye line. It scrolled slowly, as if it knew I couldn’t help but read it. 

<System Message: CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE AWAKENED THE AQUARIUS CLUSTER.> 

That stopped me flat, one-leg in to putting on my pants. For the first time I doubted what I was seeing was merely a product of a damaged mind. There were few things I took less stock in than astrology. Unless my subconscious was being ironic. Could a subconscious even be ironic? 

<THIS IS NOT A HALLUCINATION.>

Apparently, the answer was yes. But Rene Magritte wanted his joke back. 

<FOR YOUR REBELLION IN THE FACE OF IMMINENT DEMISE, YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE TITLE: BORN NIHILIST.> 

“Could have told you that,” I muttered. My pants were on. My shirt was ruined, but hopefully the hospital would be too busy for anyone to notice. In my haste, my eyes lingered on the underlined title and the text expanded. 

<BORN NIHILIST: Augments the user’s existing proclivity to remain calm and rational, even in the worst of situations> 

I tried not to think about the fact that I did feel strangely calm. I was panicking, yes, but it was strange that I wasn’t still hyperventilating on the floor, folding to the ever growing external pressure. I dealt with pressure well, until it grew so excessive and overwhelming that I broke down completely in a series of escalating panic attacks. Yet somehow, I was coping.

<YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE TITLE: JADED EYE.> 

I glanced at it and immediately regretted doing so after reading the first line. 

<JADED EYE: A trite yet tragic event has twisted the user’s ability to see the world through a clear lens—>

“Fuck off!” I swiped at it, but it danced away and the text continued to scroll. 

<—which is further augmented, making them adept at identifying traps and avoiding ambushes. However, the difficulty accepting good things at face value will also increase.> 

“Accept my ass.” 

<Confirmation: The title Jaded has replaced Nihilist as a primary title. The primary title can be rotated every six hours.>

Okay, no. Any doubts that this was a delusion suddenly faded as my mood further soured. No one was better at mocking me than I was. And this was feeling increasingly like a cruel joke. In fact, most of this wasn’t adding up. There was radar, satellites, thousands of telescopes pointed at any given section space at any given time. Something that big just slipped past everything? 

There was no way. It wasn’t just the text box. This whole thing was the delusion. There had never been any meteor, any impact, any ambulance ride. This wasn’t happening. In all likelihood I was strapped to a gurney somewhere, drooling—

I stopped myself just shy of dissociating completely. If I went down that road there was no coming back. I needed to accept what was closest to reality, and reject the clearly fantastical elements. Namely, the text box that still danced in my vision. 

<Congratulations: Between the confluence of your answers in the maw and your titles, you have unlocked an alternate class.> 

Really, subconscious? The old protagonist unlocks OP class at the beginning of the story and steamrolls trope? You going to give me an evil eye and let me trade my soul to the devil for a demonic army next? 

<Alternate classes can be powerful. Their strength is in their utility. But be wary, they are not as uncommon as you might think.> 

That almost sounded like a direct response to my thoughts. Maybe, if I could learn to warp the hallucination I could minimize it, lessening the effect. At the very least ensuring I didn’t have half-assed RPG text popping up in front of my face at the worst possible time. 

I focused my thoughts to a laser point, trying to direct them at the text box and sneered. So what is it? Necromancer? Blood-bender? Vampire? Death Mage? Dude-who-kills-everything-he-touches?

<System Notification: You have unlocked Ordinator as a primary class. Do you wish to proceed?>

I was about to spit an expletive laced negative, then bit it back. It took me a moment to realize why. My paranoia had wrapped back around on itself. 

I’d been beating my head against the wall over the last year trying to cram in all necessary knowledge to be able to crush the MKAT, and some of that knowledge came back to me now. Every psychological disorder that I studied featuring hallucinations—schizophrenia, psychosis—had one thing in common. They always started small. Maybe you’d find the house wasn’t like you’d left it, or you’d hear inaudible voices. You started out wondering if the aliens were after you long before they actually arrived. None of that had happened to me. 

So what had happened to my ramp up? 

I reread the text again. This time, when I focused on the Ordinator class text there was no expanded information. The so-called system had given me all the information it was willing to. And unlike in my dream, there were two options. 

<YES | NO> 

I didn’t buy it. Any of it. But it was like Pascal’s Wager. In the most likely scenario that the system was a delusion, saying yes or no was a net zero. Maybe selecting yes in this case would be buying into the hallucination, giving it more power. But things were already this bad. Alternatively, if the decimal level possibility that this was real somehow happened to be the case, and I said no, I was actively fucking myself out of a clearly stated benefit. 

All that assuming that in this wackass scenario, the system could actually be trusted. 

Damn, my head hurt. 

I gave it one more second, then made my choice. The response was immediate. 

<Confirmation: User has accepted the contract.>

Wait, what contract? No one said anything about a contract. There wasn’t a damn EULA. 

<Notification: User has chosen Ordinator as a primary class.> 

<Notification: User has reached Level 1.>

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<Ability Unlocked: Probability Spiral, Level 1.> 

I waited but nothing happened. What the hell? I expected a wall of text with tritely named starter abilities. Instead I got the mouthful that was “Probability Spiral.” Before I could focus in on the ability to expand the description there was a stampede of footsteps approaching from the outside hallway. With dawning horror, I watched through the frosted glass window facing the hallway as a dozen black figures moved across my view with military precision, holding shapes that could only be one thing. Rifles. 

My skin prickled, goose flesh forming on my arms. What was happening? 

I pressed my back to the wall, waiting, listening. There was a bang that rattled the floor and startled me. They’d just broken in to the adjacent room. A muffled voice yelled something indistinct. I crawled to the adjoining wall and pressed my ear against it. 

“—Put it down.” The voice was gruff, harsh. A controlled yell. My father would have called it cop voice. 

“I can’t!” I heard someone yell back, panicked.

“Put the weapon down now!” 

“Please!” The man sobbed. “Help me—“ 

I jumped at the sudden explosion and held my hands over my ringing ears. Bits of detritus rained down on my head. Still stunned, I looked up to see a hole torn in the plaster. It wasn’t until I looked over to the opposite wall and saw the squashed copper bullet lodged there that I realized what had happened. 

He was begging for help and they killed him. Holy shit. Someone just died. 

My heart jackhammered in my chest. Somehow, this was different than the meteor strike. That had been too hard to fathom. Comparatively, the police shooting my next door neighbor—a man who had likely been injured in the same event I had—felt far more visceral and real. 

The text screen disappeared as soon as the violence started. Maybe my mind was too occupied to hallucinate. None of that mattered right now. What mattered was that I needed to get out before the SWAT team finished up in the room. 

I scrambled to my feet and snuck to the door. I was about to pull it open when an almost tangible blanket of anxiety stopped me. It was the same exact feeling you get when you enter a room and conversation grinds to a halt, every head turning to stare at you, silently challenging your decision to grace their presence. 

It’s probably SWAT. They’ll have someone posted outside. Maybe multiple people. If someone asks me for my ID, I’m screwed, and there goes my plan of never being here.

It was my voice, but it was different than usual. Paranoia applied and turned outward rather than inward. Strange. But running through it again, it wasn't unwarranted. 

I needed a distraction. Something to buy me a moment.

Of course. It was a hospital. There had to be doctors on the way, and they'd be allowed to work as soon as the guy next door was “secured.”

Okay. I leaned my head against the door. Then something else came to me. Wait. Why aren't they using subsonic ammunition? More importantly, why was he shot? “Drop the weapon.” Answered with “I can’t.” He didn't sound insane, just distraught and terrified. It's an emergency situation so the hospital would be filled floor by floor. I'm at least six floors up so I wasn't the first one rescued. Maybe they started picking up the people around the fringes first, then made their way inward, which would mean I was likely one of the last. More importantly that means everyone—and specifically my neighbor was more than likely a victim of the blast. What if the fallout changed us— 

Fuck, I was losing it. I'd entertained the delusion and now my mind was fraying. Two figures in white coats sprinted toward my neighbor. 

As soon as I heard raised voices I moved. The door clicked open and I turned the opposite way, catching snippets of furious dialogue, one-sided. The black orb-like cameras were placed in obvious locations, and I somehow knew where they were pointed. I weaved a zigzag path around them, making sure my exit left no evidence.

I dared a look up at the convex mirror mounted above the upcoming cross-hallway. I caught a glimpse of myself. My dark hair was matted and my brown eyes were wild. 

Worse, I saw behind me. A single SWAT guy trailed me, head cocked to the side, speaking quietly into his radio. My face flushed. Dammit, not now. I'm so close. I kept my pace even despite my pounding heart, moving with confidence. 

I made it past the computer desk at the front without turning a head. There was a ding and the elevator doors closest to me opened. It was going up, not down, but I didn't have the luxury of being picky. Three women in business casual walked out and I squeezed between them.

“Hey!” A deep, gruff voice. The SWAT guy. It had to be. 

I slammed my hand down on the “close door,” button and backed away. SWAT guy was caught behind the three women and pushed one of them aside, trying to get to the elevator before it closed. The last thing I saw was his outstretched hand.

Thing was, I knew this hospital. I knew the floor I stepped out at was the ICU. And I knew it had a back stairway that led out to the parking garage. 

I accidentally looked at the woman at the floor desk and felt a jolt of alarm as her eyes went to my ruined shirt. “Hey, sir?” 

I blew past her, walk blasting into a run.

“Sir you can't be back there!”

I'd reached the stairway and the door had nearly closed when I heard her call out one final time,

“He went that way!”

SWAT guy had found me. If I pushed this any farther they'd be able to charge me with attempting to elude an officer and resisting arrest. Still, there was a chance.

I flew down the stairs two at a time, clinging to the unevenly painted guardrail. In seconds footsteps pounded behind me. 

I shouldered through the heavy door and into the garage, my side stinging from the impact. Needed to hide before—

“Not one more step.” The deadly ire in his tone spoke volumes and I knew before I turned around that the barrel of the rifle was pointed at my chest. 

I held my hands up. No need to make things worse. “Okay.” 

“You're one of them.” The anger in his voice took me off guard.

“I... don't know what you mean.” I said, but the truth was I could guess. 

He lowered his rifle, and unbuckled his helmet, taking it off his head. His face was twisted in an expression that was the very picture of hatred. A scar ran vertically across a nose that had been broken one too many times. 

“Wanna guess how many friends I've lost today?” He seethed. “Too fucking many.” SWAT guy dropped his helmet to the floor with a clatter, then brought his rifle back up. His finger was no longer on the guard, but on the trigger itself. Reality began to dawn that he had no intention to arrest me.

“What the hell?” My voice cracked. “I'm just a kid, man. Please. I don't even know what you're talking about.” 

“Yeah you do. The people closest to the impact came back wrong, changed. And you're one of them.” 

I watched his eye down the barrel of the scope and realized he was aiming for my head. My mouth was dry. Suddenly my mind shifted, and everything recontextualized. None of this was really happening to me. My arms, my legs, my chest, none of them were mine, none of them were under my direct control. I was someone else, far away. But in that moment, in the stillness, I realized something had changed. 

I didn't want to die. I wasn't willing to let it happen like I had before.

“Please. Don't.” 

His finger tightened on the trigger. Time slowed down, dilating exponentially. I could see it in his face. He wouldn't change his mind. And he had already made the call.

He was too far away for me to reach. Every car I might take cover behind was too far to be viable. I had no real options besides one that that wasn't real at all. 

The me that was not me reached out with a single hand. Mentally, I called out for the ability right as he pulled the trigger.

Probability spiral.

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