The air in Lark's apartment was thick and tasted faintly of stale ramen and desperation. It was a space so small that 'cramped' felt like an understatement; his kitchen counter was three steps from his futon, and the only furniture he owned was a fold-out table and one very rickety metal chair.
He was perched on that chair now, hunched over his aging smartphone. The screen glowed with the stark, flickering imagery of a low-budget horror flick, a grainy close-up of something that very much resembled a human kidney floating in murky water. Lark knew it was fake, but the atmospheric dread, combined with the apartment's peeling drywall and the sheer silence of the late night, was working on his nerves.
"Oh, come on, don't go down the well," Lark muttered to the phone, leaning in so close that his breath fogged the display. His usual weariness, the quiet heaviness he carried from years of fighting to just exist in this city, had been temporarily replaced by a tight, anxious knot in his stomach.
Just as the woman on screen raised a rusty, wet hook, the world decided to provide its own jump-scare.
A low, guttural rumble started deep beneath the building. It wasn't the rhythmic shudder of a subway; this was an uneven, sickening grind. The metal chair rattled violently against the cheap linoleum floor. Mild, perhaps, by the standards of this seismically active city, but enough to make the few plates stacked precariously on the drying rack clatter and threaten an avalanche.
"Shit," Lark breathed, grabbing the edge of the counter.
Then, silence. A deafening, total silence.
The phone screen was the last bastion of light. The tremor had passed, but in its wake, the world had been swallowed by absolute darkness. The air conditioner had died, the refrigerator motor had quit its perpetual hum, and the low, sickly yellow glow from the streetlights outside had vanished.
Lark immediately slammed the phone shut, the screen going black, refusing to be the sole target for whatever shadow his overactive imagination intended to conjure. He was already too rattled, too steeped in horror movie imagery to enjoy being the only source of light.
He walked to the single, grimy windowpane overlooking the city. A cold, heavy reality settled in his gut. It wasn't just his apartment. The sprawling, neon-addicted megalopolis was dead, rendered completely invisible beneath a blanket of oily smog and night. The entire grid was down.
"Well, I was absolutely sure I paid my electric bill this month," Lark said, his voice flat, the dry humor failing to lift the mood. He didn't wait for a reply from the empty room.
He looked back into the gloom of his kitchen. The outlines of the stove and the shadowy doorway leading into the rest of his dwelling suddenly seemed menacing. Every creak and shift in the old building was amplified tenfold.
Goddamn it.
This kind of large-scale systemic failure wasn't usually natural. It smelled like the recent chaos that had afflicted sectors across Tellus.
"It must be those wannabe villain bastards with superpowers again," he muttered, referring to the 'Awakened' the individuals whose random, physics-defying powers often caused as much destruction as they prevented, especially when they clashed over resources gleaned from the Rifts. Whether it was government-sanctioned heroes or independent vigilantes, someone had clearly overloaded the system.
Lark turned toward his room, intent on finding a candle or a flashlight, when a sound ripped through the sudden quiet of the hallway outside his door.
It wasn't a shout of anger or surprise. It was a primal, high-pitched scream, a sound of pure terror, abruptly cut short.
Lark stopped dead. The comedic jumpiness vanished. The exhaustion of his day job, the self-pity over his poor living conditions, it all dissipated, replaced by a cold, immediate focus only violence could bring.
He moved quickly, silently, crossing the kitchen. His hand automatically swept toward the cheap wooden block that held his few utilitarian kitchen tools. He grabbed the largest one, a rusted, six-inch chef's knife, its blade nicked and stained.
He crept to the door, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He didn't use the peephole; he simply cracked the door an inch, allowing a sliver of the hallway's inky darkness to spill into his apartment.
The hallway was a chaos of frantic, shadowed movement.
A woman and a man, clearly neighbors from the floor below or above, were stumbling, running toward the fire escape stairwell. They weren't fast enough.
Trailing them was an absolute ecological horror show.
It was a rat, yes, but one that had clearly exited a Rift and survived. Its body was nearly the size of a medium-sized dog, hunched and distorted under a patchy, wet coat of fur that looked like matted mud. Its tail, thick as a man's forearm, whipped against the floor with wet slaps. Its eyes were tiny, feral points of yellow malice, and foam frothed around its elongated, yellowed teeth. It moved with the twitching, disjointed fury of something afflicted with extreme rabies.
This was no pest. This was a nightmare given muscle and claw.
The monstrous creature closed the distance. It lunged for the man's calf, the sound of its snapping jaw like a trap closing.
In a flurry of desperate action, the woman screamed, wheeled around, and used the full momentum of her panic to swing a plastic stacking chair she'd somehow grabbed.
WHACK.
The chair connected with the rat's flank, making it hiss and momentarily stagger, giving the man a precious second.
"Get back!" the woman shrieked, instantly passing a small, square device, a taser to the man. She pivoted again, pulling a can of pepper spray from her pocket and laying down a cloud of chemical defense.
The rat ignored the spray, its eyes watering and its rage intensifying. It shook its heavy head and leaped past the chair, zeroing in on the man again.
The man reacted instantly, pressing the taser against the rat's exposed side. Blue arcs of electricity crackled across the filthy fur, smelling like burning hair and ozone. The rat convulsed, letting out a raw, squealing sound that drilled into Lark's ears.
But it wasn't enough. The thing was too large, too enraged.
It recovered almost instantly, shaking off the residual shock and pivoting, its focus narrowing on the nearest, most panicked target, the man.
Lark didn't wait. The laid-back exhaustion that defined his existence vanished completely. He yanked the door open and charged, his movements cold and brutally efficient.
He roared, a sound designed more to distract than to genuinely threaten, and drove the knife forward, aiming for the massive creature's shoulder blade.
CLANG.
The blade hit bone and hide, but instead of sinking, it shuddered to a halt. The rat's skin was like hardened leather reinforced with calcified plates. The blow did nothing but earn him the full, terrifying attention of the beast.
The rat pivoted on its haunches, its mouth wide, revealing rows of teeth that were like splintered ceramic. The foam flew, and the stench of decay and sewage washed over Lark. The rat lunged for his throat.
In that microsecond of absolute terror, the moment where primal survival overrode conscious thought, Lark felt an impossible sensation travel up his arm.
The knife in his hand began to vibrate.
It was slight at first, a barely perceptible hum, like a distant idling motor. Then, as the rat's teeth neared his face, the intensity spiked. The vibration became a violent oscillation, so rapid the knife turned indistinct in the low light, producing a high-pitched, whining shriek that seemed to tear at the molecules of the air itself.
Adrenaline surged into his veins, lending him impossible strength. He plunged the vibrating blade downward, not aiming for the tough hide, but the vulnerable, yielding flesh of the rat's lower jaw.
The vibrating blade met the tough tissue... and slipped through like hot butter through grease.
It bypassed muscle, sliced through the bone of the mandibles, and continued vibrating upward, tearing through the soft palate, grinding and liquifying tissue as it traveled, until it exited the top of the creature's skull with a sickening, wet crunch.
The huge rat went rigid, its eyes instantly clouding over. The whining stopped as Lark's concentration broke, and the knife became just a knife again, buried hilt-deep in grotesque biological matter.
The rat collapsed onto the cheap carpet with a dull, heavy thud, its limbs spasming once before going still. A thick, dark fluid, more black than red, smelling strongly of sulfur and brine pooled rapidly around its twitching snout.
Lark wrenched the knife out, his hand shaking violently, showering himself in the creature's black, viscous blood.
He and the man stood gasping, sucking air into lungs that felt burned out. The only sounds were their ragged breaths and the dripping of the rat's entrails.
The woman rushed to the man, pulling him close and checking him frantically. "Are you alright? Mike, did it bite you?"
"No... no, Clara. Just terrified," Mike choked out, staring wide-eyed at Lark.
Clara turned to Lark, her face smeared with sweat and residual pepper spray burn, but her eyes were grateful. "Are you alright? Holy hell, thank you. Thank you for that."
Lark wiped the black residue from his face with the back of his hand, the efficient focus of the fight slowly ebbing away, replaced by trembling disbelief.
"Yeah, I'm alright. Glad we all survived that. Holy shit." Lark looked down at the steaming corpse. The horror video had been entirely insufficient preparation for this.
Mike stepped cautiously around the dead rat. "Thanks for saving us, man. I'm Mike, this is Clara. We owe you big time."
Lark was about to wave them off when a new sound asserted itself, a distinct, dragging, scraping sound coming from the lower levels of the stairwell, moving with brutal deliberation.
The rats were mobilizing. The power outage wasn't just a failure; it was a distraction.
"No time for introductions," Lark said, his voice regaining its cold edge. "There are more. You hear that?"
The scraping sound intensified. It sounded like something large dragging broken claws across concrete.
"You need to hide," Lark commanded, pointing toward his open apartment door. "Get inside my place. Lock the door. Don't make a sound."
Mike and Clara didn't argue. With another desperate look at the monstrosity on the floor, they scrambled past Lark and into his cramped, dark apartment.
Lark turned back to the hallway, his trembling slowing. He looked down at the stained, heavy knife in his hand.
He focused his gaze on his forearm, and concentrated. Just a gentle push of will, not knowing what he was trying to achieve, only remembering the feeling of impossible power.
His arm instantly stiffened. A low, internal tremor started deep in the muscle fibers, rising into his wrist. The knife responded, starting the same high-frequency, muted vibration. It didn't buzz loudly this time; it just shimmered slightly, emitting a quiet, almost musical sound pitched just above human hearing.
A slow smile, cold and predatory, stretched across Lark's lips in the pitch black.
An Awakened. He was one of them. The people with superpowers.
The scraping sound reached the landing below. Mike and Clara were safe, locked inside his door.
Lark felt the fear, but it was now laced with an exhilarating, savage eagerness. He was no longer the exhausted man scraping by, maybe now he could be more.
He gripped the vibrating knife tight, the sound a silent promise of violence.
Lark crept to the corner of the hallway, positioning himself near the stairwell's sharp turn. He peeked downward.
Glimpsed in the absolute darkness, illuminated only by the faint, diffused moonlight filtering through a distant window, was another monstrous rat. It was heftier than the first, its breath audible as a wet heave. It was slowly, methodically climbing the stairs, its long, muscular body dragging itself up step by step, its yellow eyes scanning the darkness for the source of the screams.
Lark steadied his breathing, making himself a statue carved of shadow and adrenaline.
He was hesitant only for a moment, the fatigue of his old life warring with the terrible exhilaration of his new one. But the image of the rat sinking its teeth into his neighbors solidified his resolve.
They want a fight?
Lark tightened his grip on the humming knife.
I'm ready.