The air was thick with smoke and static.

  Jackie gasped awake on his condo floor, drenched in sweat, heartbeat echoing like war drums in his ears. His limbs were shaking not from fear, but from something… foreign humming beneath his skin.

  “System… initialized.”

  “Welcome, Tech Warden: Zero.”

  “Base blueprints uploaded.”

  “Status: Unarmed. Power Level: Sub-Zero.”

  The voice in his head was metallic but calm, like a sentient machine whispering directly into his thoughts.

  He blinked. He was still Jackie. An office worker. Consultant. An overworked engineer who made CAD models and reviewed floor load specs. The kind of guy who memorized serial numbers better than birthdays.

  Now… he apparently had a “class.” A system. A mission.

  “No… This isn’t real. This is a dream. A fever.”

  He slapped himself. Once. Twice.

  Still awake.

  A crash echoed outside his building. Gunshots. Screams. He staggered to the balcony and looked down.

  A man was running across the parking lot only to be yanked backward by something unseen. His body lifted into the air and twisted unnaturally before vanishing into the fog.

  A second later, the creature emerged.

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  It looked human once, but the Rift had mutated it. A bloated torso, skin fused with glass shards, arms distended like cables. It dragged a second corpse like a toy. Its head snapped up. It had no eyes but somehow, it looked straight at Jackie.

  “Target locked: Proto-Ghoul Type 1.”

  “Recommendation: Avoid direct combat.”

  “Scan shows nearby component: Kitchen Microwave.”

  “Permission to convert into Pulse Trap?”

  Jackie blinked. “What?”

  “Say ‘Convert.’ Now.”

  “…Convert!”

  In a second, the microwave on his counter glowed. It disassembled itself in a blur of blue light, floating mid-air like magic. Circuits rewired. The magnetron core twisted into a sphere.

  “Trap deployed.”

  The beast burst through the building door snarling, breaking metal with its limbs, clawing through stairs like a rabid dog. It was coming.

  Jackie grabbed a kitchen knife, then dropped it. Useless.

  His hands trembled as he backed against the wall. He felt his breath getting faster, more shallow. Tears threatened to spill. He was no fighter. He hated blood.

  Then he remembered the screams outside. The bodies. The pulse. That feeling when his brain was overwritten with a blueprint for something greater.

  “Be scared. Be weak. Or adapt.”

  “Let the world end. Or fight.”

  He looked at the trap.

  “Activate.”

  The creature slammed through his front door.

  It lunged.

  The trap pulsed.

  BOOM.

  A shockwave exploded through the condo. The creature flew back through the doorway, crashed through the corridor wall, and dropped into the hallway below. It twitched. Fried. Dead.

  Jackie fell to his knees. Breathing hard. Gasping. Alive.

  “Target eliminated. Skill unlocked: Basic Pulsefield Engineering.”

  “Class Name Unlocked: ZERO.”

  He looked at his hands. Shaking. Bloody from debris.

  “This… isn’t a dream.”

  He had made his first kill. And his first choice.

  To live. To adapt. To fight.

  He was no longer just Jackie, the office drone.

  He was Zero, the Tech Warden.

  And the apocalypse had only just begun.