It happened during a thunderstorm. My windshield wipers thrashed at full speed, revealing the highway lines every other second, and the frequent flash of lightning painted my entire windshield gold.

  “We should probably pull over,” Emily said, glancing up from her smartphone.

  I smiled faintly. “Yeah. It’d be pretty stupid to die right now.”

  My sister gave me a beaming smile as her iPhone’s screen lit with digital fireworks, a sign that yet another friend was celebrating the news that she was cancer-free. I shot her a smile back, flipping on my hazards. The dashboard light ticked back and forth like a metronome as we eased onto the shoulder of the highway, yellow lights flashing in the thick, milky rain. Once I thrust the car into park, I threw my head against the headrest, tight chest loosening, eyes tearing up slightly.

  “Cancer-free,” I muttered. “What a life.”

  Up until thirty minutes ago, the doctors had believed that Emily had a few bedridden years left. Then, I had rushed into the hospital after a business meeting, expecting the worst, only to receive some shocking news.

  It’s called spontaneous regression, her doctor had explained in his office. It’s extremely rare, and usually limited to a few types of cancer. Renal cell carcinoma, melanoma… But for leukemia? It’s unheard of.

  That’s all he could say about her cancer vanishing overnight because there was no scientific explanation. A miracle had saved my sister, plain and simple.

  I closed my eyes, listening to the thrash of rain and boom of thunder. It was aggressive, but right then, it almost felt comforting. So, I relaxed and made a silent prayer.

  Please, God—or whoever’s out there. Please don't take Emily’s future from her. And please don't take this moment from me. Just… stop for a moment. I need this.

  A blue screen popped up in my mind. It read:

  Wish Granted

  “Wish, what?” I muttered, opening my eyes. To my shock, a transparent blue box was still in my field of vision, partially obstructing my view of the dashboard. It read, “Wish Granted” without the slightest explanation, as if I had written down a wish in a lottery, and my name was drawn.

  Emily looked up from her phone. “What are you talking about?”

  I turned to her, eying her strangely. “What? You can’t see this?” I touched the blue screen, and my finger passed through it.

  “Noooo?” Emily replied, elongating the word questioningly. “What—Whoa!” Her voice suddenly became louder and more panicked as she repeatedly screamed, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!”

  I saw what she was yelling at immediately. A Toyota RAV4 had drifted over the median onto our side of the highway. A car on our side laid on the horn, swerving at the last moment to avoid the SUV. The RAV4, in turn, swerved to get back into its lane, only for its wheels to skid on the slick road, sending it spiraling toward us.

  I thrust my Honda Civic into reverse—but it wasn’t fast enough. The spinning car was about to hit us at forty miles an hour!

  Slow down! I screamed internally.

  Another blue box suddenly popped up in the corner of my vision.

  You have unlocked a new unique skill.

  Unique skill “Time Ghost” has activated.

  Warning! Skill “Time Ghost” requires a minimum of…

  I ignored the warning because everything was chaotic around me. Things had become paradoxically fast and slow. The immersive splash of rain became a slow, thump-thump-thump of war drums, announcing the arrival of the spinning RAV4, which was now approaching at three feet per second instead of sixty. At the same time, a transparent white ghost of the RAV4 continued toward us at normal speed. It did a full rotation before slamming into our Civic like a baseball bat.

  I threw up my hands in fright when it collided with us, but the ghostly vehicle didn’t hit our car. Instead, it sent a white replica of our Honda Civic (clones of Emily and me included) spinning onto the highway. A ghost of a driver then T-boned us at full speed, sending our car rolling. This scene was dead silent—a reenactment of what should've happened to us if time hadn’t slowed.

  A flash headache suddenly hit me, bringing me back to the present. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the RAV4 had started its rotation. It may have been moving slowly, but it was still moving toward us!

  I hit the gas pedal to escape. Unfortunately, our Civic moved slower than molasses. Seeing what would happen to us didn’t do jack to help us avoid it!

  “Stop!” I screamed.

  You have unlocked a new unique skill.

  Unique skill “Grand Lock” has activated.

  Warning! Skill “Grand Lock” requires a minimum of…

  Time stopped. Rain held suspended like streaking lasers. The RAV4 driver’s terrified expression was now clear to see. And yet, Emily and I—and a bubble around my car—remained unaffected. I had already pressed down the accelerator, so we lurched backward a few feet, the bubble restarting time everywhere it touched. Then, time resumed, and a mind-splitting migraine struck my head like Hephaestus’s hammer. I was out for the count after that—but it was enough.

  The spinning car missed my Civic by five feet, smashing into the concrete barrier we were parked beside. Rain crashed against my car’s windshield like machine gun fire. Emily screamed at the top of her lungs. Things were normal.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Or were they? I didn’t know. All I knew was that we had survived.

  My body went limp with relief, and I collapsed on the steering wheel. I heard the horn blare and Emily scream “Kyle!” but both sounds were distant, as if they were being pulled through a long tunnel. My vision blurred and became hazy—and then I blacked out.

  I wasn’t sure how long I was out, drifting in that endless black void. An hour, a day? It wasn’t clear. Yet I did recover at some point, and I was able to reflect on my brush with death. So close: I was so close to losing my sister a mere hour after she was declared cancer-free.

  I should have lost her in the same way our parents died—

  —but I didn’t.

  Something intervened. Magic, maybe? No. It was something more tangible.

  I was cogitating on the matter when white words appeared in the void. They read:

  Welcome, Kyle Taylor

  You have been chosen for the Adaptation Tutorial

  Days remaining until the apocalypse: 92

  Adaptation? I thought. Apocalypse? What the hell's going on? No one answered me. Instead, an esoteric message appeared in the void. It read:

  Class identified: Paradox

  Appraising class potential…

  Determined rank: S

  Choosing tutorial team…

  No suitable team found.

  Creating team…

  Team: Obsidian

  Members: 1

  Difficulty: Maximum

  Good luck.

  ***

  I woke to a cool breeze. A putrid stench mingled with the fresh smell of mist, and when I touched my skin, I found it studded with gooseflesh.

  I slowly opened my eyes. I wasn’t in a hospital bed—or my bedroom. I was on a rough carpeted floor, staring at an off-white ceiling marred by strange indents. "Emily?" I whispered, but got no response. I sat up. Where am I?

  I sat up to a chilling sight. I was in a conference room—a plain ol’ conference room like the ones found at Microsoft or Amazon or, really, any corporate office in the world. It had a long table for meetings and a widescreen monitor on the wall for Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. I had spent the last three years in these rooms as a data analyst for Microsoft. In fact, I was in one just yesterday, as indicated by the classic white button-up, black tie combo I was wearing before I went to the hospital. That said, unlike every other conference room I had visited, this one was a crime scene.

  The long table had been plowed by a harsh force, sending it spinning and crashing into the door. The widescreen had been stabbed by something shaped like a clothes iron, spider-webbing the obsidian screen with white fireworks. Whatever hit that screen also hit humans. I knew because the room looked like a Jackson Pollock painting: blood splattered over the eggshell walls in erratic patterns.

  "What the fuck?" I scuttled backward, only for something sharp to stab my back. I turned—and my heart stopped. The thing stabbing me was a window, or rather, a glass wall. Looking around, I realized I was in a skyscraper, in a fancy room with six-inch, double-laminated glass walls. It was the type of room you stood in with your hands behind your back, declaring you ruled over humanity. Only this room declared that something ruled over us, instead. A living entity had smashed into one of the room’s windows so hard that the whole wall had crunched and flown into the room, purple blood filling the window’s cracks.

  I had no idea what could do that, but judging by the Bowie knife-sized teal feathers scattered around the room, I could make an informed guess that it had wings.

  A crimson, semi-transparent pop-up box flashed into my vision. The screen had white words on it that read:

  Welcome to the Adaptation Tutorial, Kyle

  You will now begin your first tutorial

  Tutorial: Join the Chosens at Seattle Public Library

  Duration: 24 hours

  Description: Meet up with others participating in the tutorial at the Seattle Public Library.

  Requirements: Be inside the library when the time runs out.

  Reward: Unknown

  Penalty: Elimination

  The library? I stood and looked out the window for the first time, and that's when the terror began.

  Seattle, Washington, had become a post-apocalyptic wasteland while I was asleep. A ferry had crashed into Pier 55, buckling Pier 57 beneath Seattle’s famed Ferris wheel, leaving the wheel hanging over the bay at an anxiety-triggering angle. Buildings in Belltown had burned; cars had stalled. Skyscrapers had suffered what appeared to be missile strikes.

  I instantly thought of a disturbing message I had read in the void.

  ("Days remaining until the apocalypse: 92")

  What happened to ninety days? I cried within. And what the hell happened? I took three deep, thoughtless breaths and then scanned the city thoughtfully. Where's the library? If that's Rainier Square... that means that I'm in... Columbia Center. And if this is Columbia, the library should be... oh, God.

  Seeing Rainier Square Tower, the second-tallest building in Seattle, at eye level told me that I was near the top of the Columbia Center Tower, and since the Seattle Public Library was only a few blocks away, I had a prime vantage point to see the iconic geometric library building swarmed by two blocks of people in all directions.

  No, they weren't “people.” Not anymore. Most were soaked in blood, and they all moved slowly, hypnotically, crawling over each other in a grotesque display of communal identity.

  My mind vaguely flashed back to the words I had read in the void.

  (“Difficulty: Maximum”)

  That meant: this game, or whatever the hell it was, wouldn’t be easy. Judging by my location—the top floor of a building that had more than seven thousand visitors a day—it was going to be a nightmare!

  I closed my eyes, listening closely for zombies outside the conference room’s door. A light wind passed through the window, dulling my senses. It then fell still, and I could finally hear it: the scraping of desks, a series of moans, and, worst of all, the chittering. The chittering downstairs sounded like crickets, but it was far louder—guttural and booming. It reminded me that the entities I was dealing with weren’t normal. I looked to the open window again, reminded that a massive “bird” of some variety had smashed through a hurricane-proof wall, and still managed to eat the room’s occupants and fly away. Compared to those entities, a maze of zombies felt surprisingly manageable.

  The red tutorial screen flashed into my vision again.

  The tutorial will begin in 3… 2… 1…

  Begin.

  It was 8:00 am.