The Overseer stared at the camera. With his mask in place, it was impossible to know for sure, but displeasure seemed to radiate off him at the mere mention of my class. Eventually, he waved a hand. “More on that later. This event will be the first of… many. No two are exactly alike. If you’ll direct your gaze to the heavens.” He pointed a bony finger upwards.

Everyone looked up. Only a few of the indigo comets were still visible, still heading in distinctly different directions. The smaller fragments were still on a direct collision course. And, if anything, looked even more numerous than before.

“All those golden objects, plummeting towards you? Pay attention to where they land. Many of them carry Illuminating Lux, a glowing crystal sphere of immense value you will need to fortify one of sixteen regions. These regions are highlighted on your map, which is new functionality you should find in the system screen. At the center of each region, you will find a receptacle. Your objective is simple. Fill the receptacle with Illuminating Lux. Once the receptacle is filled, the region will be considered fortified. If the receptacle in a region remains unfilled once the time runs out, however?” Overseer waggled a finger. “Well. Let’s just say you’ll want to avoid that.”

Before he even finished speaking, I’d pulled up the map. My lip curled.

Bastards.

At first glance, the map itself looked like a standard, more sci-fi presentation of a three-dimensional GPS map of the region. The vile part was how it was gerrymandered. Just like any city, Dallas had commercial and residential districts. There were blocks upon blocks of office buildings, where few people lived. On the map, instead of neatly dividing everything into squares, each region was a chaotic mess of uneven rectangles that were anything but uniform.

The intent—and implicit threat—was clear. Every single region included a large section of residential, where hundreds of thousands of people lived. Most of them would be NPC’s, teleported back. I stared down at the area around Pinecrest at the south-center of the map, where I lived.

Where my family lived.

“Normally,” Overseer continued, “We’d give you a full day. But I think a group of go-getters like yourselves can do it in half the time, right?”

Keeping track of the landing place of a few hundred flying objects was no small task. Talia had mentioned something about significant bleed-over between the realms. If that was true, maybe my newly acquired feat could help with recon. I went through the mental hoops required to activate and found a thread. It was fainter than it had been during the trial, but it was there.

I suddenly had the disorienting perspective of a bird flying high above the city. Some instinct in the back of my mind told me that this view was the best I was going to get, and any attempt to get closer would sever the connection, but I didn’t need to. Numerous descending golden objects were visible, as well as their trajectories. In an action that took far more concentration than expected, I split my view, fighting through the beginnings of a raging headache as I marked locations on my map.

Overseer continued to drone on as I polka-dotted the map with tiny white markers.

“You might ask why this is happening. The answer is simple. The trajectory of your species crossed the point of no return less than fifty years ago. At the current rate, an extinction event was likely to occur two centuries from now. This is a correction.”

My headache lessened as my split-view faded. I made a few last marks on the map from memory and looked up at the screen. The overseer was leaning forward, his manner somehow more amenable than before.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer. Almost empathetic. “To the ungifted. As your lot is more difficult given the circumstances, you will each find additional funds in your inventory. You are about to see the truth of these new celestials that walk among you. Divine or daemon. Heroes or scourges. What they can do, and what they cannot. Who will you follow? Will you follow them at all? That choice is entirely up to you. And for every event you survive, you will find those choices expanded.”

The pontification was meant to sound like mercy. To give hope to the NPC’s. I was willing to put money on the likelihood that the real purpose was far more sinister.

I checked the map one last time, looking up to confirm. If this was correct, an Illuminating Lux would land just down the street. I pushed my way through the crowd. Somewhere near the back, a baby was crying. Two people clung to each other. Most of them were just watching, transfixed on the screen.

Once I was clear, I walked away at a measured pace—it took every inkling of self-control I had not to run. Triggering a panicking stampede would be counter-productive.

I was about to pull up my contact list when the Overseer said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“One final note. Due to something of a logistical error, there is an Ordinator in your midst.” I looked back at the TV. Thankfully, the mask was in place, so I didn’t have to worry about keeping the expression of rage off my face.

Isn’t this difficult enough already?

“Unfortunately, there are rules. Though it is within our power, we cannot remove them while an instigation is underway. I can only show you what happens if an Ordinator is allowed to survive.”

The TV flickered, a series of videos beginning to play. The first showed an army of bipeds surrounded by alien flora and fauna. All at once, they turned on each other and began to fire weapons that shot bright-green projectiles. The TV flickered again, showing a biped with skin like liquid metal holding his hands out, unleashing hundreds of what appeared to be demons on a small group of survivors. Another—different from the rest due to visible magic use—unleashed a barrage of violet streaming lasers the size of electrical pylons into a fortress, which collapsed into dust and rubble moments later.

“They are parasites. Initially weak and craven in nature, they often hide in the shadows and attempt to disguise themselves—literally or socially. If allowed to fester, their power will multiply, and they will consume everything in their path, and threaten the very nature of the correction itself.”

I gritted my teeth, telling myself it could be worse. It would be more difficult to infiltrate if everyone was constantly looking over their shoulder, but so far, Slenderman hadn’t really incentivized them.

“Identify and kill the Ordinator, and find yourself with two possible bounties: Exemption from the Transposition, or gifted powers and advancement beyond your wildest dreams.”

And there it was. No one seemed overly attentive currently, more distracted by the sky and the image of the Overseer than the notion of rooting out whether the person next to them was the target in question. That would come later. After the harsh reality of what was happening began to sink in.

There were a series of harsh whistles, like a hundred bombs descending from orbit as the golden orbs began to land, the impacts that followed sounding more like explosions. I Instinctively covered my head and ducked into a nearby alley, a nearby blast showering the street with pulverized concrete.

I let take over, washing away my fears and anxiety as I rounded the corner, grabbing the golden sphere from the ground before anyone else could react.

As I stood up, the world around me had transformed into hell. A half-dozen imp-like creatures chased a panicking group of people down the street. In the distance, something that looked entirely too similar to a dinosaur leapt on a fleeing man and tore him to pieces.

A series of smaller staccato explosions began—that took a moment to recognize as gunfire.

I was about to withdraw my most recent purchase from my inventory—the one that had cost me nearly thirty-thousand selve—when the ground started to shake.

In the crossroads ahead, a massive stone fist as big-around as a redwood sent a handful of cars flying, others falling into the chasm, as it tore up through the ground.

The ground beneath me collapsed as the figure pulled itself up. Asphalt and sidewalk shifted as if the tectonic plates themselves were shattered, the newly sharp angle sending me rolling towards the massive statue as it emerged.