The school was a fairly large one, all things considered, boasting multiple three-story rectangular buildings scattered around a sprawling campus. Luckily, it seemed class hadn't been in session when all this insanity kicked off. Maybe it was a holiday or something. John had been out of school too long to bother keeping track of that kind of thing.

Whatever the case, there were few blood stains in the place. That wouldn't have been a nice sight. However, pretty much all the windows had been shattered and literally all the doors had been smashed off their hinges, as if the monsters had come charging through here just to double-check every nook and cranny.

Doug strode through the place like he owned it, shoulders squared, head held high. Glass shards covered the floor, but he stepped on them bare foot like the ground was a plush carpet. He even casually chatted with them, making no attempt to keep his voice down.

"I haven't had the chance to compare notes with anyone from outside of Watford yet, so I'm curious to hear what you lot have been up to. See if I can start to wrap my head around this whole mess, ya hear?"

John settled for a grunt in reply. He was still walking side-by-side with the old man, forced to match his long strides through the school's corridors. The other three trailed behind.

"Maybe we should wait until we've met up with the others?" Lily offered in a tentative voice.

"You're not wrong," Doug said, grinning over his shoulder at her. "But there are a couple of things I want to ask that I'm not sure those two want to hear. Or, well, maybe it'd be better to say they'd get mad at me for talking about it in front of the kids. I reckon they're practical enough to understand we need to ask these things, eh?"

John grimaced with trepidation. "What questions are these?"

Doug raised the hand nearest to John and pointed its index finger directly upwards. "Well, most pertinent and more than likely most disturbing: how many people have you seen out and about in the last, say, twenty-four hours?"

A brief silence followed his words. Judging by the decrease in crunching glass behind him, at least one of the others had stuttered to a halt.

"Not many," John said, grimace deepening.

"Try to put a number to it," Doug said. He was still grinning, but the expression had that dark edge to it once more. "Humour me."

John thought back, trying to get a feel for when, exactly, twenty-four hours cut off. They were approaching 10PM now. At that time yesterday, he would have been asleep under the power of Rest. After that…

"Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention," John said. "But I think my answer might be zero."

He looked over his shoulder at the others.

"I've seen glimpses," Jade spoke. She shrugged, but the movement was stiff. "Never anything directly, really. But hints that there are people out there, ya ken? Stuff that looks freshly disturbed and that."

Lily's brow was furrowed in thought, her gaze on the ground. "Things were really noisy for a while, but it had mostly died down when we woke up this morning." Her voice trembled. "Does that mean…" She trailed off, looking around at them helplessly.

"Think I might have seen a car moving, way off in the distance," Chester muttered, but he didn't look or sound confident about it. He shook his head. "Maybe people are just hiding. Or they've fully escaped into the countryside."

"We've been keeping to back alleys and gardens and stuff, staying away from main roads and busy places," Jade agreed. "Surely everyone else would have the common sense to do the same."

"But if not," Doug said gravely, "it may be that there really isn't very many people left." He shrugged, striding on. "Ah well. Maybe it's not a helpful thought to consider, after all. C'mon, then. This way."

Doug led them to the cafeteria, then through the kitchens into a storage room at the back. Boxes of supplies were piled high, and John surreptitiously snatched some into his Inventory as he passed by. Tens of kilograms of snacks and drinks would have to come in handy at some point.

"I told you I'd find them no problem," Doug called out as they crossed the room. "My ears can pick up a rat shitting on the other side of the ruddy Channel, now!"

They found the rest of Doug's group nestled deep within the supply room, hidden away behind a wall of assorted boxes they'd stacked up. None of them elected to reply until a small door had been opened up to allow John's group and Doug access to the little hiding spot.

John couldn't help admiring the cosy little spot they'd made for themselves in such a short span of time. They'd piled up boxes and covered them with blankets as bedding, gathered a bunch of sweets and snacks in a pile on the floor at the centre of the space, and even had a bunch of little glow sticks scattered around the place for lighting. Other than that, it was kind of dark.

Light enough to see the Asian man with his pristine white martial artist's robes—Sam, he recalled—standing with his arms crossed in front of the blanketed space where the two children sat. Meanwhile, the black woman in the incredibly revealing black bodysuit was in the centre of the room, aiming a glare at Doug.

"Yeah, yeah, I brought them here. Don't get your knickers twisted about it," Doug said, unbothered by her anger. "They're not like those little shits we ran into at the play park. Helped us out back with that spot of bother, didn't they?"

"You said you were going to find them," Alissa said. She had a strong Jamaican accent, and there was a mild glow-in-the-dark sheen to her red locks. "I do not remember discussing a full meeting."

"They've got a good plan cooked up." Doug gestured at John with his chin, grinning. "You'll want to be involved with what he's got going on. Trust me."

Alissa looked between them warily. "What kind of plan is this?"

"The kind where we take the initiative," John said, recognising his cue, "and kill a whole lot of monsters."

+400 Aura

A beat of silence passed before Alissa let out a sigh, her gaze trailing upwards as if searching the skies for strength. But she seemed to catch herself, her face twisting, before she smoothed out her expression, took a deep breath, and regarded John with a flat look. "I cannot deny that your words have their appeal. What is your plan?"

There was a brief round of introductions that skipped over the children before John launched into it, with Jade and Lily providing context—Chester didn't say a word, seeming to try and shrink into the corner of the impromptu meeting room. It took a bit of explaining, filling in background context on John's group and what they'd been through. Doug's grin was growing more and more feral as John described their trip through the Underworld and the slaughter they'd been forced to enact in order to escape with their lives.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"It was unfortunate that we couldn't kill more of them," John said, embellishing things a little bit. "I would have preferred to kill all the rats on that train before it departed, but the circumstances didn't allow it."

+400 Aura

"Maybe one day we'll have to go and take another trip on the tube, eh?" Doug said.

"It's inevitable," John said matter-of-factly, shrugging. "Long term, we're going to have to kill every monster in every portal out there if we want humanity to survive."

+400 Aura

Doug blinked at him, then barked a laugh. "I like you, kid."

They went through a brief diversion as they compared notes, so to speak, on their experiences with monsters, portals, and powers so far. John's group had only encountered six portals between them: Chester's at his gym, the two entrances to the Underworld they'd used, and the three they'd encountered only minutes ago back on Harrow's local high street.

The other group hadn't been so lucky.

"I've seen at least six blue portals alone, man," Alissa spat, after John explained the colour system his Soul Vision had revealed to him. "Two in different shop doorways—it opened at the Tesco's just as I was about to go inside!—one at a graveyard gate, another in the entrance to an underground car park, one more in the garage of a fuckin' house, and the last one was inside a church, in the arch before the altar. That's not even mentioning all the other colours. I've seen twenty, easy."

"Probably about the same, here," Doug said, rubbing his chin. His eyes panned across John and his companions. "Surprised you've seen so few."

John thought about that. "These were all in fairly busy areas, right? At least, they were before the monsters came."

"Yep," Doug said.

"We've mostly been cutting across residential neighbourhoods," Jade said, looking at John. "You think that's a factor? More portals in areas where more people were?"

John steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "It's been my working assumption. Seems like I was probably right."

Doug huffed a quiet laugh. "Well, we'd definitely noticed that weaker monsters came from blue portals, but we didn't know the precise order of the other colours. A yellow one opened up in my crappy old retirement home, right in the front doorway. Guess I don't need to feel bad that the thing that came out beat the shit out of me anymore, eh?"

John just shook his head, and Doug laughed again.

"They seem to all be in entrances of some fashion," Sam said, speaking up for the first time and thus drawing the attention of every occupant of the room to him. He had a soft voice, and a mild demeanour, but there was a feeling of inner strength to him, and he hadn't moved a muscle from his protective stance over the two children.

John was trying not to look at those two too much. They'd just send his imagination spiralling into grim possibilities, and he really, really didn't want to know.

"Doesn't have to be a real entrance, though, I don't think," Chester chimed in, as if hearing Sam speak had given him confidence to make his own first contribution to the conversation. "The first Underworld station was in a spot that didn't make sense, right?"

"True," Lily said. "But that could be an anomaly? The Underworld was weird, mimicking the underground network and all."

Jade nodded. "Something we'll have to look into. See if the portals we're planning to clear out have alternate exits or anything like that."

"Otherwise, we'll be having to fight our way right back out through the high street," Lily said.

"Doable," John said on reflex.

+400 Aura

Doug chuckled.

Alissa did not. She uncrossed her arms, only to place her hands on her hips and lean towards him. "I saw you got great power at your disposal there, man, but don't get all cocky. Plenty of strong guys have died already, I bet. These monsters don't fuck around."

-400 Aura

John frowned. He'd lost more Aura in twenty minutes of interacting with this new group than he had in hours of being around Jade, Lily, and Chester. He was starting to think that a long term collaboration wasn't going to be tenable.

But he could use their added strength for what was to come. In future, hopefully he'd need no one.

"Speaking of power," Jade said, "what can youse actually do? You've heard all of ours, now." She paused. "Well, almost all."

John said nothing.

"Tough question to answer," Doug said, voice lacking the boisterousness he'd displayed thus far.

"My ability measures sex appeal. I will not repeat the word this thing actually uses," Alissa said through clenched teeth. She turned a glare on Doug. "There, now you have no excuse for keeping yours secret."

"Mine requires me to perform impressive feats of hand-to-hand combat," Sam said softly. "It is not appreciated."

Doug let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping. "Alright, alright. Kids these days. It's age. I'm on a ticking clock, but I steal extra time in weird ways. Happy?" He pointed at John. "What about you, eh? All we know is you're the most versatile fucker we've come across so far. How's that come about?"

John was careful not to share any discomfort as all attention fell on him. It took some doing to hold back a curse.

This was, in his estimation, the moment of truth… And he knew immediately there was no way in hell he was going to tell these people anything even remotely resembling said truth. There was nothing lamer than trying too hard to be cool, and if they knew that was exactly what he was doing, it would ensure he'd never gain any Aura from them again.

But he had to give them something, at this point. An excuse that would explain his actions and how he'd accumulated such considerable and versatile abilities in a relatively brief period of time.

His first thought was something like bravery or courage, but that left him with mixed feelings. Implying that he was scared all the time sounded another way to take away from his cool factor. It would still, ultimately, inform them he was putting up a front, and that all his behaviour so far had been acting. The reveal would recontextualise all their previous interactions and taint the future ones. Disastrous.

Next, his mind went to simply killing, as Jade had first thought. But it seemed an inadequate excuse for the versatility he'd been provided when Jade essentially had a killing system herself. Implying he was just better than her sounded like a bit of a dick move, but at least it wouldn't make them rethink his past behaviour in much of a new light. One to consider more.

After that, he cycled through a few options. Brawn, dominance, leadership, and so on. Mind probably stretched his thoughts out, dilating things, so only a few seconds had passed, but it felt to him like an entire minute had crawled on without him saying anything, and the first hints of panic were starting to rear their ugly heads. The whisper of goosebumps on his flesh, a twitch of discomfort in his stomach, a few beads of sweat on the back of his neck, the promise of clamminess in his hands. They were omens of oncoming disaster, and he knew he had to choose something.

And then an idea came to him.

"Helping people." John blinked. He only realised he'd blurted the words aloud when he saw the others react to them. Shit. Well, can't take it back now. "I get power from saving people."

They all took a little while to digest that. Alissa, Doug, and Sam had only just met him, so they pretty much took it in stride.

Chester, Jade, and Lily, though, showed a variety of reactions. Chester spent an awkwardly long time gaping like a fish. Jade was nodding to herself, as if in confirmation.

Lily, meanwhile, was looking at him with an expression he couldn't decipher. She looked away when he met her eyes.

"Heh," Doug chuckled to himself. "Well, what better way is there to save people than to wipe out these shitty demon things, eh?"

John cleared his throat. "Right," he said. "So, are you guys in?"

There was a round of nods, apart from Sam, who said, "I will look after the children."

Judging by Doug and Alissa's expressions, that had been expected and appreciated.

"Okay. Then here's how we're going to do this."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.