BEEPBEEP-! BEEPBEEP-!
Repeated rhythm of the alarm jolted me awake. Warm sunlight was pouring inside through the slit of window's curtain.
Thanks to Wilson's medicine and Ilyas' constant guiding, my insomnia was getting better. Painful headache and numbness that had been haunting me for the past year had gone, increasing my quality of sleep.
I rubbed my eyes and got out of my bed. When I went out from the room however, I noticed the sound of ruckus coming from the kitchen.
"Wilson? You're back?"
"Morning, Ethan. Did you sleep well?"
Wilson was holding a frying pan while rummaging through the shelf.
Since the agreement between his company and the bureau was finalized, this brother of mine had been going in and out the country for business. But whenever he came back, he always holed up inside his company's branch office, so I hadn't seen him for days.
And somehow, he had suddenly showed up in my kitchen without notice.
"What are you making?"
"I want to fry an omelette but I can't find the right frying pan, ahaha."
Wilson smiled sheepishly as he tried to hide the mess behind him.
The kitchen was filled with scattered cooking utensils that looked like a shipwreck. A bowl of egg mixture stood out over the flour-covered countertop.
"Are you sure you're not making bread instead of omelette? Why is there so much flour in the egg?"
"Huh? I thought you were supposed to add flour for texture?"
"Huh?"
Who told him that?
We both had the same flabbergasted look on our face.
GROWL-
"Ah."
Wilson's stomach rumbled with earth-shattering magnitude. I chuckled as I moved my arm, "Can you wait 20 minutes? I'll cook you some breakfast."
Wilson beamed with joy when he heard my offer. He nodded and waited patiently at the dining table, eyes glued to me.
I threw any unused cooking utensils to the dishwasher and started cooking based on what ingredients Wilson was using just now.
Egg mixture, some cheese and butter.
Racking my brain, I pulled out a few more ingredients from the fridge. And before long, savory sweet smell filled the kitchen.
"Here, enjoy your meal."
It was pancake topped with butter plus omelette and sausages on the side.
"Looks delicious, thanks lil bro."
Wilson dug in right away, munching the food like a rare delicacy and savoring every bit of it. Seeing him eat with delight brought a smile to my face. I peeled an apple for myself and sat down in front of him.
"You look better these days."
"What do you mean?"
"Your complexion I mean. Before, every time I saw you, you were always ill. It's great to see you having a good sleep and becoming healthier now."
Wilson gazed at me with relieved eyes which made a pang of guilt hit me. I had been a source of his worry since I became an esper, but he kept up with my selfishness and went as far as studying medicine to find his own way to help me.
"It's all thanks to you."
I patted his hand – this gesture conveyed every gratitude I had toward him until now. With my health now improving at a noticeable rate, Wilson could finally feel at ease.
He's really a brocon.
And a brocon brother I was proud of.
.
.
Morning gym and meditation were already a routine for us three, but now, we had another member joining us.
Though Ilyas struggled a lot in the gym, once we hit the meditation center, we could only bow down in awe at his resilience in enduring leg cramps and meditating with focus.
Once we were done, the four of us went to the bureau together and gathered in the meeting room for today's raid with Shelly.
That was the plan.
Until hell broke loose.
RIIINGGG!!
'This signal-'
[Announcement to all espers in the bureau. Please go to the building's rooftop. A rupture has opened in the sky near us. I repeat-]
Emergency alarm blared all over the building – followed by an announcement. With no hesitation, we climbed up the emergency stairs to the rooftop.
Few other espers had arrived before us, their gaze was focused on the horizon.
A torn red sky was seen, but its surrounding was fractured and blurred. There was no monster pouring out of it, but a part of District 2 got swallowed by the rupture.
"Ethan, perfect timing."
"Harold, what's the situation?"
"My team is assessing the threat level of that rupture. Can you attack it for me? We need to know if evacuation is possible."
"On it."
I walked forward and controlled a small amount of blood toward it.
Once it touches the tower however, I felt chills and my connection to my blood was immediately cut off.
"How is it?"
Harold asked and I shook my head.
"It's not taking any damage to my attack, moreover, I didn't sense any human presence around it."
When I announced it, murmurs of the others entered my ear, most of them were concerns. But it was immediately silenced by Francis.
"So the citizens around it could be considered dead. Harold, tell the evacuation team to prioritize evacuating the surrounding citizens instead."
"Yes sir."
Francis walked up to us, not batting an eye at anything other than the rupture in the sky. He asked one of Harold's division team members.
"What's the threat level?"
"The frequency indicates an SS-Rank or maybe even higher, it has just crossed the world and hasn't fully manifested."
Rupture's manifestation wasn't always successful. Sometimes when two worlds collided and the tear between worlds was small, the two worlds would try to fix themselves as fast as possible and prevented any things from going in and out of the world.
With this defense mechanism, whenever ruptures manifested, espers just had to hold off the monsters pouring in until the world closed its damaged reality within a few minutes or hours.
This time however, wasn't just as simple as that.
The fractured reality slowly smoothed itself out, the blur in the air lifted and revealed what it was hiding.
A tall black infrastructure had planted itself in the center of the city.
"A tower?"
The tear in the sky behind it slowly closed, leaving the tower standing tall.
Francis urgently asked, "The manifestation status?"
"The frequency is stable! It has 100% manifested in this world!"
'It's not monsters but a tower?'
"Harold, Ethan, to the meeting room." Francis' tone was firm, "We need to discuss this."
This incident marked the first ripple of change in this world.