His fingers brushed against the impossible light, and the world dissolved into pain and stolen time. It wasn't a simple shock, but a high-speed collision with another man's life. A searing cold plunged into his mind, dragging with it the scent of burnt coffee from a thousand lonely night shifts, the grating feel of a cheap polyester uniform, and the bone-deep weariness of a man named Marcus. The name wasn't a thought; it was a scar, branded onto his own consciousness.
A flicker of text seared itself across his vision, a clinical overlay on a world of agony.
`[Skill Ghost Consumed: [F-Rank] Basic Baton Handling (Passive)]` `[Cognitive Load Cost: 5]` `[Mnemonic Essence Cost: 10]`
The desperate survivor's fist, a meaty hammer meant to shatter his skull, was still falling. But Kai's body was no longer entirely his. His arm, which should have been slow and clumsy, snapped up with a brutal economy of motion he didn't possess. The block was jarring, sending a painful vibration up to his shoulder, but it worked. His world was a fractured mess of his own terror and the calm, practiced instincts of a stranger. He twisted, his feet moving in a pattern alien to his archivist's shuffle, and his hand closed around the cool, worn grip of the security baton on the floor.
The larger man grunted, surprised, and swung again. Kai's body pivoted. He didn't think, he just did. The baton came around in a tight, vicious arc, striking the man's knee with a sickening crack. It wasn't a hero's blow; it was the efficient, ugly work of a man who knew exactly where to hit to make a threat stop moving. The man howled, stumbling, and Kai's arm moved again, a swift, precise jab to the temple. The survivor crumpled to the floor, a heap of unconscious muscle and grease-stained fabric.
Silence crashed back in, heavier than before. The adrenaline drained out of him like a ruptured pipe, leaving a cold, nauseating vacuum in its place. Kai stared at the man on the floor, then at the baton in his own trembling hand. His stomach churned. A phantom weight tugged at his hip, the ghost of a sidearm that wasn't there. A wave of weary vigilance, so utterly foreign to his own cautious nature, washed through him. Scan the exits. Neutralize threats. Stay on your feet. The thoughts were his, but the voice belonged to Marcus.
He stumbled back, dropping the baton as if it were burning. The weapon clattered on the tile, the sound echoing in the dead quiet of the store. He leaned against a rack of stale chips, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He had survived. But something inside him felt irrevocably bent, a piece of foreign data corrupting his own core code.
A new sound cut through his ragged breathing—the deliberate crunch of a boot on broken glass.
Kai's head snapped up. A woman stood in the ruined doorway, silhouetted against the pale afternoon light. She was lean, her movements carrying a coiled stillness that screamed competence. In one hand, she held a length of rusted rebar, gripped not like a club, but like something she knew how to use. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, swept the scene: the massive man on the floor, the scattered supplies, and Kai, the physically unimposing survivor who was somehow still standing. Her gaze held no confusion, only a deep, pragmatic suspicion.
"You did that?" Her voice was steady, devoid of the hollow vacancy that haunted everyone else.
Kai opened his mouth, but the echo of Marcus whispered in his mind. Threat. Trained stance. Watch her hands. His body tensed, his eyes automatically flicking to the rebar, then to her feet, assessing her balance. It was an instinct he had never owned, a paranoia that felt both alien and terribly real.
He pushed himself off the shelf, raising his hands slowly. "He attacked me. It was self-defense."
Her eyes narrowed, missing nothing. "A man twice your size. You took him down without a scratch on you. How?" She took a careful step inside, her focus unwavering. She wasn't asking for an explanation; she was demanding data, and his story wasn't computing.
Kai's mind raced, trying to formulate a plausible lie, but it was like running a new program on a failing drive. His own logic was at war with Marcus's weary cynicism. Don't trust her. She's a threat. Everyone is a threat. He could feel a coldness seeping into his posture, a hardened edge that was not his own. He was the only one who remembered the world, yet in that moment, he felt like he was losing the memory of himself.
"I got lucky," he managed, the words feeling thin and hollow.
"I don't believe in luck," she said, her voice flat.
Before their standoff could escalate, a sound from the street outside ripped the tension to shreds. It was a shriek, a wet, tearing noise that clawed at the edges of hearing, utterly inhuman. It was a sound of broken things trying to scream.
Both of them froze, turning toward the doorway. A shape lurched into view, a grotesque caricature of a human form. One arm was long and spindly, ending in sharpened bone, while the other was a malformed stump. It moved with a twitching, bird-like gait, its head lolling on a neck that was too long, its jaw unhinged. It was an Aberration, a mind shattered and rebuilt from corrupted, conflicting memories.
The creature's vacant eyes scanned the store, its head cocked at an unnatural angle. It completely ignored the unconscious man on the floor. Its gaze swept past the shelves, the broken glass, and then it locked onto them. A low, wet gurgle rattled in its chest, a sound of recognition. It wasn't seeing people; it was seeing complexity, seeing the 'noise' of a mind that still worked and the lingering residue of a skill just used.
It let out another piercing shriek and charged.
The woman—Elara, a forgotten name from a forgotten life whispered in his head—spun to face the threat. But Kai's reaction was faster, purely instinctual. He didn't think of running. He didn't think of hiding. He snatched the baton from the floor, his knuckles white. His mind screamed with a borrowed memory he had never earned: the terror and adrenaline of a security guard facing down something that had broken through the perimeter. He raised the weapon, planting his feet in a defensive stance that belonged to a dead man, caught between a monster he couldn't fight and a stranger he couldn't trust.