Macon slept three hours.
His body decided that on its own. He woke up at six with the news still on his phone and a list of things to do that had formed in his head while he was sleeping.
He watched the news twenty minutes while drinking his coffee.
25,000 dead in Japan. He read it twice.
The Japanese army took too long to react. Too many meetings, too many protocols. The media was already blaming them for it. In China it was faster. About 700 dead before the situation was roughly controlled. In Russia even less, the tower appeared in the middle of the country and the army responded quick. In Korea there were videos going everywhere of people fighting monsters with their bare hands and winning. Normal people with things that shouldn't be possible.
And in France, no tower. Something else instead.
Caves.
Or rather doors. Openings dug in the ground all over. Each entrance different. One in the 13th with engravings nobody could read. One in the north suburbs that looked like an open mouth in the concrete. One filmed somewhere in the provinces with two columns of a black wood that existed nowhere in nature.
Journalists were calling them dungeons.
The word sounded stupid. But nobody found better.
Macon finished his work in two hours. He sent everything with a message to his manager: "Here's the work, I think you understand the situation." His manager replied twenty minutes later that yes and remote work was maintained.
He took a paper and wrote a list.
Food. Water. Medicine. Batteries. Candles.
He didn't want to panic. But he had Death Sight in his head. He had watched the gray suit man die. He had his own 101% on a photo. And now the world was changing live in front of him.
He would have been really stupid to not at least buy food.
He went to five different stores so he wouldn't look like someone stockpiling in panic. The result was still pretty impressive: two big bags of rice, canned food in large quantity, pasta, sugar, salt, oil, two packs of 24 water bottles each, basic medicine, flashlights, a battery radio.
It cost a good amount but he was well paid and spent almost nothing usually.
He took his car.
His parents house was in Chevreuse.
Forty minutes from Paris. A real town but surrounded by forests, far from the noise. His parents died five years ago, his father first then his mother six months later. He kept the house because he didn't want to sell. He came sometimes to take care of the garden or spend a night when Paris was too much.
Big house. Basement. Garden with fruit trees. An old generator in the garage nobody had used since the 2000s but probably still working.
The right place to store things.
On the highway almost every car had the news on the dashboard. Macon had connected the radio. He wasn't watching TV since he discovered Death Sight worked through screens too. He didn't want to see percentages on faces filmed live from disaster zones.
The radio described things he couldn't always picture. Monsters that looked like nothing known. An American general talking about an international military alliance. A Japanese journalist crying on air.
Macon drove and listened.
In Chevreuse he brought the groceries in, put things in the cupboards, checked what was already there. His mother's reserves. Canned food, oil, coffee beans, hermetically closed biscuit boxes.
He went to look at the generator. Old but maintained. He put fuel in from the cans in the garage. It started on the third try.
Still worked. Good.
He spent the afternoon organizing. He was arranging the basement when the earphones gave him something that made him stop.
Tutorials.
The journalist used that word. Survivors from the impact zones called it that. A system that appeared. Instructions. Monsters around the towers and now around some dungeons too. People who survived came out with abilities. Those who died didn't understand the rules in time.
First tutorials had been in Asia and Russia. Now they were starting in Europe. In France the dungeons were activating.
Macon looked through the kitchen window.
Calm garden. Fruit trees moving a little with the wind. Closed iron gate.
Everything normal.
He went back to his list.