Rain fell like it had a personal grudge.
It came down in hard, slanted sheets, smashing against crooked gravestones, slick marble angels, rusted fences, and the broad back of the lone man hunched beside a clogged drainage grate near the edge of the cemetery.
Water ran off the brim of his cheap cap in streams, slipped down the back of his neck, and disappeared beneath the collar of his thin work jacket. His gloves were soaked through. His socks had surrendered an hour ago. Every inch of him was damp, cold, and one step away from mutiny.
"Man... why the hell do I have to work in these conditions?" he barked at nobody and everybody, jamming the iron rod deeper into the clogged drain.
"Those bastards... am I not human too?!"
The rod struck something soft and rotten in the grate below. A thick bubble of black water rose up with a wet burp, then burst across his boots.
He stared at it in offended silence.
Then he looked upward through the rain, as if the heavens themselves were taking customer complaints.
"Unbelievable."
The gravekeeper, whose name was Marvin though nobody here ever bothered to remember it, yanked the rod back and jammed it down again with enough force to suggest he was imagining his supervisor's face at the bottom of the drain.
If someone had told him three months earlier that his life would eventually involve unclogging drains between graves while fighting for his soul against pneumonia, he would have laughed in their face and kept scrolling job listings. But the pay seemed decent. Not amazing, not noble, but decent.
"Simple night groundskeeping," the listing had said. "Quiet environment," it had said.
Quiet.
Marvin scraped soggy leaves and mud out of the grate with a gloved hand and flung the mess aside. The rain immediately washed it back toward him.
He stared.
Then he slowly turned his head toward the rows of graves looming around him.
A gust of wind hissed through the cemetery, making the wet branches overhead rattle against one another like dry bones in a jar.
Marvin froze.
From somewhere out in the dark, beyond the nearest line of gravestones and black yew trees, came the sound of an animal.
A low, strange cry.
His head snapped toward the noise.
The rain pounded harder, flattening the grass in violent bursts. The weak yellow light from the maintenance lamp near the path barely reached him anymore. Beyond that circle of light, the cemetery seemed to dissolve into shifting gray and black shapes.
Marvin swallowed.
"That was a fox," he said aloud.
The storm answered with another distant cry, longer this time.
He tightened his grip on the rod.
"Forget this. I'm not paid enough to be scared of squirrels with vocal issues."
He jabbed the grate again.
The drain gave a belching gurgle and finally began to swallow some of the pooled water around it. Marvin let out a shaky breath that almost became relief.
Then his eyes wandered over the graves around him again.
"Look at this," he muttered bitterly, waving one hand at the rows of polished stones.
"These dead people are treated better than I am. Nice plots. Flowers. Peace and quiet. Me? I'm ankle-deep in cemetery soup at midnight."
He pointed accusingly at a grave with a marble vase beside it.
"How is this fair?"
The storm cracked overhead.
Marvin flinched so hard he nearly dropped the rod.
"Wonderful," he whispered. "Absolutely wonderful."
Then, from behind him, came a sound.
THUMP.
It was not loud in the way thunder was loud. It was worse than that. Heavier. Closer. The kind of noise that felt physical, like something large had struck wet wood or landed in soaked earth with intent.
Marvin went still.
Very slowly, he turned around.
Nothing but graves, rain, darkness, and the warped shadows of trees shifting in the wind.
He squinted.
A narrow gravel path cut between the rows. Beyond it sat a cluster of newer graves, the soil around them still darker and fresher than the older ones.
Rainwater had gathered in shallow pools over some of them, reflecting flashes of lightning like broken mirrors.
Marvin licked his lips.
"Hello?"
The word came out pathetic.
He cleared his throat.
"Hello?!"
No answer.
Only the storm, and the slow drumming of water on stone.
He took one cautious step forward.
Then another.
The rain grew heavier still, crashing against the ground in bursts so hard it seemed the earth itself was boiling.
Marvin raised the rod in front of him like a weapon, though the way his hand trembled made it clear he had never won a fight in his life.
"Listen," he called into the dark, voice fraying around the edges, "if this is one of those kids trying to scare people, I'm warning you, I've got..."
He glanced at his pocket.
"I've got a tazer!"
A sudden white blaze tore across the sky.
Thunder followed instantly.
The lightning struck somewhere nearby with a savage crack that split the night in two.
Marvin screamed.
A full, high, unguarded sound ripped out of him as he lurched backward in blind terror and tried to run. His boot caught on something hidden beneath the flood of rain and mud.
He went flying.
His body slammed over the corner of a gravestone and crashed hard into the muddy ground beyond it. The iron rod spun out of his hand and vanished into the rain with a wet splash.
Marvin groaned, dazed.
Then he realized something.
His foot was still tangled.
He looked down, breath hitching.
At first all he saw was mud. A slick mound of fresh, rain-churned earth where the edge of a grave had begun to collapse inward. Then the lightning flashed again, and the shape sharpened.
A hand.
Mud-caked, pale beneath the grime, with bloody knuckles and dirt packed beneath the nails.
It was sticking out of the grave.
Marvin's entire body locked up.
His lips parted soundlessly.
Then the hand twitched.
A finger bent.
The wrist strained.
Slowly, horrifically, the arm dragged upward from the grave as if something beneath the earth were pulling itself toward the surface one clawing inch at a time.
Marvin inhaled so sharply it made a whistling sound.
"Z-z-z-z-"
Another flash of lightning illuminated the whole scene.
And rising from beneath that ruined patch of earth came the top of a head, then a second arm, then the slick outline of shoulders and a torso climbing out frantically through the mud.
"ZOMBIIIEEE!!"
The shriek burst out of Marvin at such volume and pitch that even the storm seemed briefly offended.
Warmth spread down his already drenched legs.
He did not need to check to know what had happened.
His eyes rolled back so hard it was almost athletic.
And then, with a wet little gasp of pure ancestral defeat, Marvin fainted face-first into the mud.
For a few seconds, the only sounds were rain, thunder, and the desperate scraping of hands against soaked earth.
Then Xander hauled himself the rest of the way out of the grave.
He emerged like something reborn by violence and terrible luck, soaked through in funeral clothes that had once been white and were now mostly brown.
He staggered forward on trembling legs, boots sinking into the wet ground.
His shirt collar and the torn edge of his dress shirt were pulled up over his mouth and nose, shielding him from the mud and stale rot he'd clawed through on the way up.
Wet strands of dark hair clung to his forehead and cheeks. Rain washed dirt off him in thin brown rivulets.
"Holy shit..." he muttered into the soaked cloth over his face.
His voice came out rough, half muffled, but undeniably alive.
He turned and stared at the open grave behind him, chest rising and falling.
The coffin lid, now shattered from the inside, was buried under collapsed dirt.
A broken spray of red roses lay trampled in the mud near the headstone. His own name was etched there, slick with rain.
Xander squinted at it, then glanced down at his bloodied hand.
Then at the unconscious gravekeeper lying ten feet away in a puddle of his own fear.
Then back at the grave.
"Getting out of there," he said, breathing hard, "was a lot harder than I expected..."
Rainwater streamed off Xander's hair and down the back of his neck as he walked over to the unconscious gravekeeper, chest still rising and falling from the effort of clawing his way out of six feet of wet earth.
Then a red notification blinked in the corner of his vision.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]
The skill: [Hyper Adaptation] has triggered!
+1 Strength
Xander blinked rain out of his eyes.
"...Seriously?" he muttered.
He flexed his fingers again, then experimentally curled his hand into a fist.
His knuckles still hurt like hell from smashing through the coffin, but there was a faint new solidity in the motion, like something inside him had adjusted while he wasn't looking.
A laugh almost escaped him.
He had crawled out of his own grave, resurrected by a stolen divine system and an illegal gene experiment, and apparently his body had decided to reward the effort with a strength increase.
"Good to know grave-digging counts as training."
Another gust of rain slapped across his face. Xander lowered the torn edge of his dress shirt from over his mouth and nose and turned back toward the man lying in the mud.
The gravekeeper had collapsed hard. One cheek was half buried in sludge, his cap nowhere in sight, his body twisted awkwardly beside a gravestone.
He frowned and walked over.
"Why is this guy taking a nap here...?"
He gave the man's leg a tentative nudge with his foot.
"Hey. You okay, dude?"
No response.
The man didn't even groan. He just lay there bonelessly, rain drumming against his back.
Xander crouched, ignoring the protest from his tired body, and leaned closer. The guy was breathing. Fast, shallow, but breathing.
"Wonder what happened to him..."
His gaze drifted briefly toward the grave he had just climbed out of.
Then back to the man.
"Damn it," he muttered. "I can't leave him like this."
The storm was getting colder by the minute.
"Poor guy's gonna catch pneumonia before he even wakes up."
Instinctively, Xander reached into his pocket for his phone.
His fingers closed on a handful of wet dirt.
He stared at it for a second, then slowly pulled out the muddy clump and let it fall from his hand.
"...Right," he said flatly. "People don't typically get buried with their phones."
That would have been a very useful funeral tradition. Shame no one had consulted him.
He sighed and started checking the gravekeeper's pockets instead.
The process was made more awkward by the fact that he was looting an unconscious cemetery worker in the middle of a thunderstorm while dressed like a deceased groom.
If he'd had any spare dignity left, this would have been where it slipped and broke its neck.
The man's jacket yielded a phone first. Then a worn leather wallet. Then, clipped near his belt and half-hidden beneath his coat, a taser.
Xander paused.
He picked the taser up and turned it over in his hand.
Compact. Decent grip. Still dry enough under the casing to maybe work.
"Okay," he murmured. "That's useful."
He set it aside for the moment and focused on the phone. It was locked, naturally.
He looked at the unconscious man. Looked at the phone. Then back at the man.
Then he lifted the phone in front of the guy's face.
The screen unlocked.
He popped open the wallet next. Inside was a work ID, a driver's license, a few crumpled bills, and the sort of depressing reward card collection that only truly exhausted adults seemed to accumulate.
He held up the ID to the rain-blurred light.
"Marvin?" he said. "What the hell are you doing lying here?"
The unconscious Marvin offered no defense.
Xander tucked the wallet against his knee and glanced around the cemetery, then down at himself, then at the open grave not far behind them.
A long silence followed.
"I just came back to life," he said at last, "and I'm already part of a crime scene?.."
Another flash of lightning whitened the cemetery, throwing every gravestone into sharp relief for half a breath. Thunder followed close behind.
Xander checked Marvin's breathing again. Still alive.
He rose unsteadily, nearly slipping in the mud, and hit the emergency call button on Marvin's phone.
The line connected fast.
"911, what's your emergency?"
The woman's voice sounded brisk and slightly tired, like she'd been dealing with everyone's nonsense since sunset and had run out of patience around midnight.
Xander glanced down at Marvin, then at the cemetery around him.
"Uh," he said. "I found this guy passed out in the cemetery."
A pause.
Then, "Sir, what cemetery?"
"The big one on the outskirts of Apex City...I think"
The line went quiet for a second, and Xander imagined the dispatcher narrowing her eyes at her screen.
"Police and medical response are on the way," she said. "Stay where you are if possible. By the way, sir... what are you doing at the cemetery at three in the morning? And what is your name?"
Xander opened his mouth.
Paused.
Then said, with complete sincerity, "Me?.. Just hangin' around."
And hung up.
He lowered the phone and frowned at it.
"Don't ask so many questions, lady. Jeez."
He slid the phone and wallet back into Marvin's pockets, patting them down securely so they wouldn't fall out. Then he hooked his hands under Marvin's shoulders and started dragging him toward the nearest tree with enough foliage overhead to offer at least a little shelter from the rain.
It was harder than it should have been.
Partly because Marvin was dead weight. Partly because the ground was a swamp. Partly because Xander himself had, very recently, been dead.
"Come on," he muttered between breaths. "Help me out here, Marvin."
Marvin refused.
With some effort and a lot of grunting, Xander finally got him propped into a sitting position against the trunk. Rain still found its way through the branches, but not as brutally as before.
Xander stepped back, looked him over, and gave a small nod.
"Good luck, buddy," he said. "Hope you don't catch a cold."
His gaze dropped to the taser again.
A beat passed.
Then he picked it up and slid it into the inner pocket of his ruined suit coat.
"I'm gonna borrow this, Marvin," he said. "I may need it."
With that, Xander turned and started toward the cemetery exit.
The grounds stretched ahead in slick rows of black stone and swaying trees, all distorted by the downpour.
Water ran along the pathways in thin currents. In the distance, a weak yellow glow flickered through the rain, warped and blurred but steady enough to guide him. Probably the main gate lamp.
He headed for it at an uneven pace, boots sinking into wet grass and gravel.
The night felt different now that he was above ground. Colder. Larger. Too open after the coffin's crushing dark.
Rain struck his skin and clothes with shocking force, almost enough to make him miss the stillness underground.
Almost.
As he moved, his mind kept trying to split itself in different directions at once.
You died.
You came back.
You're alive.
You're a fugitive from your own funeral.
Also, you smell terrible.
That last one was especially true. Between grave dirt, rotten wood, blood, stale floral perfume from the casket lining, and whatever remained of the experiment that had been on him before all this, Xander had the distinct aroma of something the earth had rejected on moral grounds.
He grimaced and kept walking.
The yellow light grew clearer. At last the path opened onto the cemetery entrance: a towering double gate of black metal, each side made of thick vertical bars topped with cruel little spearpoints.
Rainwater poured down them in shimmering lines.
Xander came to a stop in front of it.
Then he reached out and shoved.
Nothing.
He planted both hands against the bars and pushed harder.
Still nothing.
The gate didn't even rattle. Locked tight.
"Fuck," he breathed.
He leaned his forehead briefly against the cold metal, rain dripping from his hair to the bars below.
"Of course it's locked."
He took a step back from the gate, breathing hard.
Then he heard it.
Faint at first, buried under the storm.
Sirens.
His head snapped up.
From somewhere beyond the cemetery walls, red and blue light began to pulse against the low clouds, smeared by the rain into soft bruised flashes.
The police.
Xander stared.
"Seriously?!" he hissed. "This is the only time the cops have to arrive on early. Just my luck."
His eyes darted along the fence line. Stone walls on both sides. Iron gate in front. No obvious side exit. No maintenance shed close enough. No loose bars. No miracle.
Only the gate.
And the sirens getting closer.
He took a few steps backward, eyes fixed on the metal bars as rain ran down his face.
"Alright," he muttered, forcing his breath to steady. "Let's see how good this skill is."
He activated Clarity of Vision.
The world sharpened.
A pale overlay spread across his sight like a translucent grid, lines and angles sketching themselves over the gate with inhuman precision.
Three red points blinked into existence at different parts of the metal structure, each marking an exact place for his foot or hand.
A clean trajectory formed between them, mapping the most efficient path over the top.
At the same time, he felt that strange mental stillness settle over him again, like all the noise in his head had been pushed into a neat corner and ordered to shut up.
His irises caught the reflected light with a faint green gleam.
Xander's mouth parted slightly.
"This is definitely helpful..."
The sirens were louder now.
He lowered his center of gravity and rolled his shoulders back. Mud still clung to his palms. His clothes dragged at him. His body was still exhausted, but the line of movement laid out before him looked almost absurdly simple under the skill's guidance.
He burst into motion.
Shoes splashing against wet gravel, he sprinted at the gate and launched himself upward.
His first foot landed exactly on the marked bar. The metal was slick, but the placement was perfect. He pushed off immediately, body rising higher, hand shooting toward the second point.
His fingers caught the upper railing.
For one breath, triumph flashed through him.
Then his soaked hands slipped.
Mud and rain turned the iron into glass beneath his grip.
"Damnit!"
His body dropped hard, slamming into the ground with a heavy thud that rattled through his ribs and sent pain flaring up both arms. Breath rushed out of him. Mud splashed across his face.
He rolled onto one side with a curse and looked up at the towering gate, rain hammering him flat.
The red points were still there.
Still taunting him.
A timer blinked in the corner of his vision.
42 seconds remaining.
Xander planted a hand in the mud and pushed himself back up, breathing faster now.
"I need," he muttered through gritted teeth, "to get the hell out of here..."
Xander crouched low in front of the gate agin, rain washing over him in cold, punishing sheets. His chest rose and fell in quick bursts.
He wiped his hands on his already filthy clothes, smearing away the worst of the mud. The fabric of his jacket was soaked through and gritty with dirt, but it gave him just enough friction to matter.
"Alright," he muttered, eyes locked on the path laid out by the skill. "One more time."
He backed up several steps, planting his feet carefully on the slick ground.
The sirens were louder now, not distant anymore but approaching with ugly purpose, their cry bleeding through the rain.
Xander drew a deep breath.
Then he ran.
His boots pounded over wet stone and gravel, building speed. He hit the gate and jumped, his first foot landing exactly where the red dot marked it. The metal bar jolted under his weight. He pushed off instantly, body rising higher, hand shooting for the next point.
This time, when his fingers closed around the railing, he clamped down with everything he had.
The bars bit into his palms. His shoulders screamed in protest. Rainwater ran down his wrists and over his knuckles, but his grip held.
"Got you," he hissed through clenched teeth.
He jammed one foot onto the lower crossbar beneath him and looked up.
The final red point hovered just above the gate's top edge.
A timer glowed faintly at the corner of his vision.
23 seconds remaining.
Xander's pulse hammered in his ears. The approaching sirens felt close enough to touch now.
"Last chance," he whispered. "If I don't make this, I'm done for."
He bent his knees, tightened both arms, and shoved upward with everything he had left.
For one suspended instant, his body wavered between slipping and success.
Then his hands caught the top.
His fingers curled over the iron edge, rain-slick and freezing cold, and he hauled himself high enough to throw a leg over the gate. The red points vanished at once, the path completed.
"Hell yeah!" he breathed, half laughing from sheer relief.
Then he turned his head.
A police car was just beginning to swing onto the road leading toward the cemetery parking lot, headlights cutting through the rain.
The relief died instantly.
"Shit."
There was no time to climb down properly. No time to think.
Xander let himself drop.
Twelve feet of air vanished beneath him in a heartbeat. He hit the ground hard, shoulder first, pain exploding through his body as he bounced and rolled across wet gravel and mud.
"Ughh-!"
The world lurched sideways.
A notification flashed into his vision before he even finished the roll.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]
You've taken 7 fall damage!
he gasped, pushing himself up through the flare of pain.
His shoulder throbbed. One knee nearly buckled when he stood. Still, he forced himself forward, limping fast toward the tree line beside the road.
Branches whipped at his face and caught on his torn clothes as he slipped into the woods, ducking behind the thick trunk of a pine just as the first police car reached the gate.
Then a second cruiser pulled in behind it.
Xander pressed himself against the bark, breathing through his mouth, trying to keep quiet while rain dripped from his hair and coat in steady streams.
His body trembled from exertion, cold, and the fading aftershock of the fall.
Outside the trees, doors opened.
Flashlights clicked on one by one, their beams cutting through the rain and sweeping over the cemetery entrance, the walls, the gate, the road.
One officer strode to the lock while another played his light across the fence and surrounding ground.
"That was too fucking close..." Xander muttered under his breath.
He eased himself lower against the tree, hugging the shadows.
"Who are these guys and why the fuck are they here so early?"
His mouth twisted.
"Last time I was in an accident, they took thirty minutes."
The officer at the gate crouched and pulled some kind of tool from his belt.
The metal clinked faintly even through the rain. Another flashlight beam drifted toward the woods for a second, then away again.
Xander kept still.
The cold was starting to settle into him now that he had stopped moving.
It crept beneath his wet clothes and into his skin, a slow, invasive chill that made his teeth want to chatter. He clenched his jaw and tried to ignore it.
Then, with a sort of cosmic malice only the universe could manage, he felt a sneeze coming.
His eyes widened.
"No," he mouthed.
He pinched his nose with one hand and pressed his other hand hard over his mouth. His shoulders tightened. His lungs rebelled. His entire face scrunched with desperate concentration.
The sneeze built anyway.
He fought it with everything short of divine intervention.
It slipped out in a sharp, half-muffled burst.
"...tchh!"
Not loud, not truly, but loud enough in his own ears to sound like a gunshot.
Xander froze.
Outside the trees, one of the officers turned immediately toward the woods.
"What was that?" the cop asked, beam pausing. "You guys hear that?"
The flashlight started to drift in Xander's direction.
He ducked tighter behind the tree, every muscle locking in place.
"Holy shit," he thought. "I hope they didn't see me."
A new notification blinked into view.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]
Hyper Adaptation has triggered!
As a result, you've gained [Cold Resistance] (Rank-F)
[Cold Resistance] (Rank-F)
You have a slight resistance to cold environments.
Xander stared at it for a beat.
Then, despite everything, part of him wanted to laugh.
"How lovely."
The change was subtle, but immediate. The cold still pressed against him, yet it no longer felt like it was sinking knives into his skin. It became background discomfort instead of something that threatened to hollow him out.
Outside, the officer kept his flashlight trained on the trees for another few seconds.
Rain hissed through the branches. Leaves rattled.
Water dripped from every surface.
Another cop glanced over and said, "It was probably just an animal. The door's unlocked, let's go."
The first officer hesitated.
Then he lowered the beam.
"Yeah. Probably."
The three of them moved through the gate, flashlights bobbing as they disappeared into the cemetery.
Xander remained still for several more seconds, just to be safe.
Then he finally exhaled.
"Finally..."
He let the back of his head rest briefly against the trunk. His whole body felt wrung out, as if the grave, the gate, and the fall had each taken their own tax and none of them had bothered leaving a receipt.
"I should catch my breath," he thought, "then start moving again."
So he waited.
Rain drummed on the canopy overhead. His shoulder ached dully. The sting in his palms lingered. Beneath all of it, though, something else was happening.
A quieter sensation. Faint at first, then steadier. Warmth. Tiny pulses threading through his body where pain had settled deepest.
Regeneration.
The soreness from the fall began to dull. Not all at once, but enough for him to feel the difference. The sharp edge softened. The throb in his shoulder lost some of its bite. Even the raw ache in his knuckles seemed to ease by degrees.
Xander flexed one hand, then the other.
"Okay," he murmured. "That's... insane."
After a few minutes, he pushed himself upright and started moving through the woods again.
The ground sloped downward toward the road, slick with pine needles, mud, and loose roots.
Several times he had to catch himself on tree trunks to keep from slipping. The rain had thinned slightly, but only enough to shift from violent assault to relentless punishment.
Eventually the dense treeline gave way, and Xander emerged onto the side of a highway.
A metal sign stood near the shoulder, lit by the weak spill of a distant streetlamp.
[GAS AND FOOD, 1 MILE]
Xander looked at it for a moment, water dripping from his chin.
Then he turned toward the nearby highway exit and began walking.
The road stretched ahead in long wet ribbons of black, reflecting bits of yellow light wherever old lamps managed to reach it.
Cars passed only now and then, tires hissing through puddles, each one sending up a spray that caught the light and vanished behind them. None slowed. None looked twice.
To them, he was probably just some lunatic in a muddy suit wandering the roadside at three in the morning.
Which, to be fair, was accurate.
Residual mud still dripped from the ruined white fabric of his clothes as he walked. Water ran from his sleeves and cuffs in thin streams. Every few steps, his shoes squelched faintly.
His grave dirt had followed him onto the highway.
Xander shoved his hands into his coat pockets and kept moving toward the exit, alone beneath the storm, his funeral clothes hanging off him like the remains of another life.
By the time Xander left the highway shoulder and cut across the cracked edge of the exit road, the pain from the fall had faded completely.
He noticed it only after a few more steps.
The lingering ache in his shoulder was gone. The soreness in his ribs had disappeared.
Even the raw sting in his knuckles, which had felt scraped to the bone after pounding through the coffin, had thinned into nothing. He flexed his fingers once, then rolled his shoulder experimentally beneath the ruined jacket.
No protest. No stiffness.
His regeneration had finished the job.
"That is... deeply unfair to normal people," he muttered.
He kept walking.
Ahead, beyond the curve of the exit, a lonely gas station came into view.
Its neon sign buzzed faintly in the damp night.
[GALAXY MART]
A few pumps stood beneath a wide canopy lit by cold fluorescent panels.
Water dripped from the edges in thin silver lines. The whole place looked tired, like it had been awake too long and regretted it.
Aside from one dusty sedan parked near the air machine, the lot was mostly empty.
Except for two motorcycles near the entrance.
Xander slowed.
The gas prices glowed in angry red on the roadside board.
$7.50 / GAL
He stared at it.
"That's..criminal," he said under his breath.
Then his eyes drifted toward the convenience store windows.
The inside looked bright and mostly still from here, though the shelves and posters blurred together behind streaks of water on the glass. He shifted in his muddy clothes and grimaced at the sensation of cold fabric clinging to his skin.
"What are the chances this place sells clothes...?"
Not good, probably. But maybe a hoodie. A cheap T-shirt. A tourist sweatshirt with a galaxy on it and the word APEX printed too large across the chest. At this point he would have accepted almost anything that did not smell like graveyard runoff and old blood.
As he approached the entrance, the automatic doors standing just ahead of him, he caught a glimpse of himself in the darkened glass.
Mud caked the once-white suit. His hair hung in wet, tangled streaks. Dirt marked his jawline and collar. A faint shadow of dried blood still clung near one temple. Xander sighed.
"Yeah," he murmured. "We're buying something before sunrise."
He reached for the door.
Then a voice exploded from inside.
"Put the money in the bag, old man!! Now!"
Xander froze.
Another voice rose immediately after it, younger, sharper, jittery with adrenaline.
"Yeah, and no funny business, got it?!"
For one long second, Xander simply stood there in the drizzle, hand hovering near the glass.
Then a notification flashed in front of his eyes.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]
Quest started... [Heroic Resurgence]
Objective: Stop the robbers and save the clerk.
Rewards: 50 EXP, ???, ???
Failure Penalty: ???
Xander stared at the prompt in disbelief.
"Seriously?.."
"This night keeps getting better."
He squinted at the quest window.
"And why can't I deny the quest?"
No button appeared. No decline option. No polite little maybe later. Just the objective hanging there with all the cheerfulness of a loaded gun.
He grimaced.
For a brief, uncharitable moment, he considered walking away.
Then he remembered the elderly voice inside.
And the part of the quest labeled failure penalty: ???.
That line alone felt like the system leaning very close and smiling.
"Great," Xander muttered. "A hostage situation with mystery consequences."
He edged the door open just enough to slip inside.
The store smelled like coffee, wet floor cleaner and gasoline dragged in from the pumps.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A radio somewhere near the cashier counter was still playing low country music, absurdly calm beneath the tension.
Xander moved quickly and quietly, keeping low as he slipped behind the first aisle he could reach.
Shelves towered around him, crammed with chips, canned soup, energy drinks, cheap candy, and a number of pickled items. Water dripped from his clothes onto the tile in small dark specks.
He leaned just enough to peek around the edge.
Three men.
All in black. Black jackets, black gloves, black pants, ski masks pulled down over their faces. Two stood near the counter. The third hovered by the entrance side of the store, nervous energy practically radiating off him.
One of them had a gun.
Actively aimed at the old clerk's head while gripping the man by the collar.
The clerk looked to be in his late sixties, maybe older, thin and stooped, his gray hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His hands trembled as he shoved bills into a black duffel bag. His glasses hung crooked on his face.
"Hurry up!" barked the man with the gun.
"You tryna die over minimum wage?"
The clerk swallowed hard and fumbled another stack of cash into the bag.
Xander's jaw tightened.
"This is crazy," he thought. "Why is this station getting robbed of all stations?"
His eyes flicked over the robbers, trying to make sense of them.
Gunman at the counter. Probably the leader. Aggressive posture. Holding the clerk with one hand, pistol with the other.
Second guy stuffing cartons of cigarettes into a backpack from behind the register, moving fast and sloppy.
Third guy near the aisle side, restless, half-looking toward the door every few seconds like his nerves were on a timer.
Xander slowly touched the inside of his jacket where Marvin's taser sat hidden.
A weak smile ghosted across his face.
"Well," he thought, "at least I didn't loot that guy for nothing."
Then the third robber turned.
Not fully. Just enough to make Xander's pulse hitch.
The man's masked face angled toward the front of the store, then slightly farther toward Xander's aisle.
Toward the entrance. Toward the faint line of rainwater Xander had tracked in across the floor. Or maybe he'd heard the door. Maybe he'd caught movement in the reflection of the refrigerator glass.
Whatever it was, he was looking too close.
Xander ducked back behind the shelf at once, pressing himself flat against the metal rack.
In doing so, his shoulder brushed the display behind him.
A tiny sound clicked against the shelf.
He went still.
Slowly, very slowly, Xander turned his eyes upward.
A glass jar of pickles sat near the edge of the top shelf.
It wobbled once.
Then again.
The liquid inside sloshed.
Its label, featuring a cartoon pickle astronaut giving a thumbs-up, rotated toward him as if personally mocking his life choices.
Xander stared at it, every muscle locking up.
The jar tipped farther…