It was always a good day in Building Maintenance when the 34th floor needed something. Those were the Easeway offices, and they actually had the we're-a-family culture that so many other businesses tried to fake and failed at. The smiles were real, the jeans weren't just on Friday, and one time when I came in to fix a rattling vent late in the day right before their Christmas party, their head of operations had brought me a little plastic glass of champagne and a couple of those really good mint chocolate truffles. Not like those dicks at Maxibank down on 22 who looked at me like a walking fart every time I came in with new water jugs. Those guys were the worst.

Today Easeway needed new toner for the copier. Much nicer than a busted toilet or mopping up kid puke. A toner change was ten minutes – fifteen if I played it right – of easy chat and simple work. No heavy lifting or awkward bends to get under anything. Plus, I might get to see Red. She usually took a cup of coffee around this time of morning. A fella could hope, at least, and brother, you best believe that I did hope.

Her name was Jules. I only learned that by overhearing people call to her. It was a perfectly decent name, but in my head she would always be Red. That crazy, perfect mane of copper curls demanded it. She was heart-stoppingly pretty, somehow managing to look like a million bucks even in simple office attire. She was tall, toned, green-eyed, and had a face that made me wonder why she was working for a boring, lame-ass nonprofit instead of modeling for Chanel or Victoria's Secret or something. She nodded to me in passing once with a tiny, sly smile, and goddamn, I thought I might die on the spot. She made me feel fifteen again in all the best ways, and from the attention she got from her coworkers, male and female alike, I wasn't the only one.

The receptionist kid was plenty nice, waving me on through when he saw my worn BM coveralls and the large, flat toner package in my arms. "It's the copier right by the break room," he said with a smile. "I think there's still some muffins in there from this morning's meeting if you want one."

I gave him a thumbs up and breezed past into the wide main room of the open-plan office. It was like any office ever, except maybe a little less soulless than most. There were floor-to-ceiling glass dividers scattered throughout to look fancy without making the room feel smaller. My head was on a swivel from the second I walked in, but… no Red. My heart sank a little. It wasn't like I was obsessed or anything, but another one of those smiles would have turned this from a regular-ass Thursday into a day I'd remember.

Tough shit, buddy. Do your job and stay out of the way. I was on shift with Doug and Melissa; that meant episodes of Dragon Ball during lunch, so there was that, at least. We were about to start the Emperor Pilaf arc, and maybe I'd get a good cheesesteak from Ari's sandwich cart over on the corner of Sullivan and 3rd. It'd be a good day. My hands worked on autopilot inside the copier. A glance inside the break room showed a plate on the counter piled high with muffins with the crumbly stuff on top. I ducked back into the guts of the machine with a smile. Yeah. It'd be a good day.

"Excuse me," said a quiet, pleasant voice behind me.

I looked back, and there she was. Red. I banged my head on the frame of the copier trying to turn around, but I barely felt it. She was wearing a forest green pencil skirt and a cream top. The morning sun was right behind her through the windows, making her incredible mass of hair a halo of flame. Her perfect lips were quirked in a polite smile. She looked like a goddamn angel.

"Hi," I said. I sounded stupid. An ape grunting at a statue of Venus.

"Hi, uh…?" she said, raising her eyebrows.

I literally blanked on my own name for a second, just staring at her. "Decker," I finally said, plucking at the name tag on my coveralls. "Name's Decker." I stuck out a hand, realized it was covered in black toner dust, and jerked it back. "Sorry."

"No worries," she said, beaming. "What's the ETA on old Bertha?"

It felt like it took a year and a half for my brain to register that she was talking about the copier. "Five minutes," I said. "Maybe less." God, I'm an idiot.

"Perfect," she said, making an adorable little OK sign with her hand. "Thanks!"

She turned and swanned away back toward her desk, leaving me gaping like a fish in her wake. My heart was hammering and my mouth was dry. I shook my head and turned back to my work. I was hopeless. Tongue-tied. I managed all right with regular girls, but I wasn't sure Red and I were even the same species. Still… hot damn, I'd actually spoken with her. This was going to be a day to remember after all.

I AM SO SORRY.

It was a loud but gentle whisper; somebody must have leaned in close. "No problem," I said to whoever it was. "I'll be out of your way in just a sec." Lots of folks needing the printer, apparently. I peeked back when I had a second but didn't see anyone standing there. I felt dumb all over again. Had I responded to someone that wasn't talking to me? I finally got the toner cartridge latched in and extracted myself from old Bertha, wiping my black-smeared fingers on the all-purpose rag I kept hanging out of one pocket. Everyone nearby was looking around in confusion, as if the voice had spoken right behind them too.

IF THERE WERE ANY OTHER WAY, I WOULD TAKE IT. PLEASE KNOW – EVEN IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT – THAT THIS IS FOR THE BEST.

The whisper echoed inside my head, but obviously everyone else heard it too. People were standing up and looking around. I was looking in Red's direction, of course, who happened to be near the window that looked out over most of the city's skyscrapers. I saw something round drop from the sky maybe ten blocks over. It was the size of a car and pure black all over.

It exploded.

The world went white, and a roar like a thousand jet planes filled my head. I felt myself blown backwards like a fist the size of my whole body had whacked me. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't see. I flew like a rag doll, my shoulder clipping on the doorway to the break room and sending me spinning. Every color I'd ever seen and a bunch I hadn't coursed through the blackness behind my eyelids. I felt waves passing through me as if reality itself were warping. You know that feeling you got when you had to get an X-ray as a kid, and your imagination told you you could sense the radiation, even though that's bullshit? This was like that, but real. I could feel entire spectra of existence shift within me. Someone had hooked the inside of my belly button to a neutron star and was passing me through a black hole a piece at a time. Was this what death felt like? Zero stars, will not be returning. But my shoulder hurt really goddamn bad, and something was squishy around the back of my head. That didn't sound like being dead.

Vision and hearing gradually returned. I was staring at the pasteboard ceiling of Easeway's break room, except half of the tiles had fallen out of the metal frame, and several of the ones still hanging in there were on fire. I expected screams, but instead everything was eerily silent. I groaned. My left shoulder felt like a war zone, but I was more scared about the mushiness at the back of my skull. An irrational part of me screamed at me to ignore it, don't touch it, your brain is hanging out the back of your skull and you're gonna die – but I ruthlessly squelched that voice and reached up with my good right arm to feel what I could feel. My guts froze when my fingers touched the lukewarm mess, but the back of my head felt hard and solid. It hurt, but no worse than most of the rest of me. Bringing my fingers in front of my face, I saw smears of dark blue amid crumbles of white. Brains don't look like that, dumbass. I stuck a finger in my mouth and laughed out loud with relief. Blueberry muffin. I'd been saved from smashing my skull on the break room counter by a pile of oversized Costco pastries. The crumbles had never tasted so good.

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I gingerly got to my feet, cradling my left arm with my right. I squeezed along my upper arm with my good hand, looking for a break. Those years in Boy Scouts might have given other kids years of trauma, therapy, and lawsuits, but somehow I'd missed all that and gotten a solid grasp of first aid and how to tie a bunch of really useful knots instead. I thought the shoulder might be dislocated. I hoped so – that'd be easier to deal with than a break. I stumbled out onto the main floor of the Easeway office. All the outside windows and a few of the interior glass dividers were shattered, leaving me open to the skyline air; a light breeze wafted random papers lazily about the room. Every single person in the office was either stretched out on the floor or draped over a desk. Are they all dead? I saw one guy with his head at a weird angle that might have broken his neck on a desk edge when falling, but the rest…? There were very little blood. There was no way I was the only one that had survived that blast.

For that matter: what the hell? It couldn't have been a nuclear bomb, or I'd have been a greasy shadow painting the inside of this building's empty shell. All the buildings nearby were still standing, and as far as I knew, nukes didn't leave endless rainbows radiating outward from the point of explosion all across the sky like some cartoon version of an acid trip. Those colors weren't right. There were some of them I didn't have names for, and they made my eyes hurt. I wandered closer to the busted out windows, transfixed by the impossible sight.

YOU REALLY AREN'T GOING TO LIKE THIS NEXT PART, came the gentle voice.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. Whoever it was that could talk inside my goddamn head had apologized right before bombing the shit out of downtown, and now – after a literal rainbow firestorm – he was saying it was the next part I should worry about?!

Red scrambled to her feet on the other side of the nearest desk, her back turned, her red hair a crazy tangle that was somehow still alluring despite being sprinkled with pulverized pasteboard.

"Oh, thank God!" I said. "Are you hurt?"

She turned around, and we both screamed.

Let me be clear: I am not a hideous person. I'm not winning any pageants or getting recruited by talent agents, but I look fine. Normal, I think, even when I've just been blown up. There is nothing in my appearance that should have sparked the howl of raging hate and bloodlust that erupted from Red's mouth.

I feel like my scream, on the other hand, was pretty frickin' justified. Mere moments before Red had been a friendly, mysterious, model-pretty woman who I had zero chance of getting with and no intentions of pursuing except maybe in a daydream or two. Now, her pale skin had darkened to a waxy gray, her eyes had turned completely white, her flesh had the texture of gas-station jerky, and her jaw unhinged to show a row of yellowed, jagged teeth.

"What the fuck?" I screamed, backing up, clutching my bad arm with my good one. My back rammed into one of the still-solid glass dividers after three steps.

With an unholy shriek, the monster woman threw herself at me across the desk, leaping like a goddamn panther. It barrelled into my chest, clawed fingers scrabbling for my neck. Our weight spiderwebbed the already weak glass, and the lower half shattered. I slammed to the ground, crying out in pain. When I'd dreamed of Red going wild on top of me, this wasn't what I meant. Her nails were raking at my face, and she hiss and growled incoherently. Gathering my legs up underneath her, I pushed with all my strength, launching her backward.

She flew back, the top of her head clipping the broken sheet of glass, breaking off a bit and leaving even more cracks in it. She fell flat on her stomach right under it but immediately got back to her hands and knees, apparently eager to rip my entire body to pieces.

"Wait wait wait," I shouted, trying to get back up. I forgot for a sec about my shoulder and tried to use my left arm to lever myself, falling back with a gasp. Whatever Red had become was going to tear out my throat. I was never going to get that cheesesteak.

The upper half of the glass divider fell in a single piece from the ceiling and came crashing down on the back of Red's neck, instantly severing her head. Her body flopped down, gushing a deep red that turned the copper curls much darker. Her head rolled forward and bumped against my foot. A jolt of energy passed into me like a static shock, infusing me whole body with even more adrenalin than I already had.

"What the fuck?!" I shrieked. Somehow I got back to my feet. I couldn't take my eyes off the spreading pool of blood under her body. Her cream silk blouse was half red now. Squiggles of black formed in the blood pool and shaped themselves into words.

+10 EXP. Level 1 attained. 1 Stat Point awarded. Use your Soul Stone to assign Stats.

I stared at the words, blue screening. Nothing made sense. The world blew up and somehow I'd woken up in a horror movie. My breath was coming too fast, and my heartbeat hurt. Symptoms of shock, my distant inner Boy Scout said. Have victim lie down and elevate legs. Yeah… no. I wasn't gonna lie down in the pool of blood that had words in it.

All around me, still bodies began to shift and move. More of them were getting up.

I have never peaced out of a place so fast in my whole life. I was out the door and down the hall before I even realized I'd moved. The elevator button did not light up when I punched it. Of course. I booked it for the stairs. I got all the way down to floor 18 before any of the monster assholes made it into the stairwell. They seemed disoriented and sluggish until and unless they caught sight of me.

Somewhere in my mad downward run the sad whisper voice started back up. I HAVE RELEASED THE RAW MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE BACK INTO YOUR WORLD. MOST OF YOU, SADLY, WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TOLERATE THE INFUSION AND WILL BE RUINED. WEEP NOT FOR THE DEATH OF ANY THAT ATTACK YOU; THEY ARE ALREADY DEAD AND SIMPLY DON'T KNOW IT.

On the platform of floor 15 a fat monster wearing a tie made out of grandma's drapes came at me. I juked to the side and heaved him over the rail with my good arm, screaming obscenities. I was not going to die while I was wearing my work overalls, dammit. I sagged against the bars of the railing, hyperventilating. Out of nowhere came another surge of energy like an electric shock, wringing a cry out of me. The little security window in the door leading out to floor 15 glinted, and words formed out of nothing.

+10 EXP. Unassigned Stat Points remain. Use your Soul Stone to assign Stats.

HARVEST AS MUCH ENERGY AS YOU CAN FROM THESE UNFORTUNATES. THEIR SACRIFICE WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN, AND THEIR ESSENCE WILL BE PUT TO GOOD USE. THIS I CAN ASSURE YOU.

I had to kick and punch my way past a handful more of the business-attired magic zombies that had wandered into the stairwell before I burst out into the main lobby. A fleeting thought wondered if I should head down to the basement to check on Doug and Melissa… but on the other hand, hell no. Last thing I needed was to have to choke out the screaming corpses of my dead friends. I took a deep breath and ran full-tilt for the revolving doors through a milling crowd of confused zombies. They caught wind of me, but as I'd hoped, they were confused by the spinning partitions, slapping ineffectually against the glass.

I stumbled out into the street still looking backwards at the business-bro zombie trying to snake his arm around the divider to get to me. I didn't even see who it was that I barrelled into.

THIS NEW WORLD URRF–

I rolled over and found myself on top of a literal goddamn demon. Big horns, purple skin, pointy teeth, slitted pupils. Once again I tried without thinking to push myself up with my left hand – I'm a lefty; sue me – but instead of collapsing as I'd done the time before, I felt a burning all the way up my arm and an incredible sensation of power. Gasping, I looked ay my hand where it touched the demon. My left hand was now clawed, scaled, and purple. The demon looked about as shocked and scared as I was. It opened its mouth.

FUCKING HELL, WHAT DID YOU DO?

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