[Even if you’ve lost everything, you still want to keep going.]

  [For your mother and father. For your sister. For your uncle.]

  [Take another step just for them.]

  [Keep holding onto those you consider precious.]

  [Because…]

  [They are your treasures.]

  [Your Mementos.]

  [So please, Alexander Shen, survive.]

  ***

  “Alex.”

  I ignored her.

  “Alexander.”

  I ignored him.

  “Yo!” Until my sister yanked the pen out of my hands, and before I could say or do anything, she took the rest of my writing utensils too. “Didn’t we tell you to stop scribbling and actually take a break for once?”

  I clicked my tongue, eyeing the thick roll of multi-colored pens and pencils in her hand. “I was getting my last thoughts down—”

  “‘Last thoughts,’ my ass.” Rudely, she tossed everything onto another table. A few pens rolled off and flatly bounced on the floor. “When Leo kicked you to the curb, was that a signal to work from home? Hell no! She wanted you to rest! R-E-S-T, rest! Not whatever you’re doing—what the heck are you doing anyway?”

  Uncle Ali helped himself to my journal without asking. He squinted at my mad scribbling and tilted his head to the side like that would decipher the message. “I don’t want to offend you, but your job isn’t to unravel the mystery. It’s fieldwork.”

  He put my journal down and I snatched it back up, looking over my disturbed thoughts. “What else am I supposed to do? I finally have downtime. I have time to think about the past few days and organize what I've learned."

  Uncle fidgeted with his fingers out of habit. “While I don’t disagree, just because you overworked your body, it doesn’t mean your mind’s raring to go. Believe me, we’re all eager for answers since after the first attack—”

  “Exactly!” I slapped my hand against the pages. “I’ve been trying to answer that since I woke up. The Mother can’t be randomly targeting her victims; we’ve all been weirdos one way or another. What do we all have in common? Fuck if I know!”

  Thea threw her arms up. “You got him started—”

  “Someone has to wrap their head around this.” I flipped through the past few pages, filled with theories and anecdotes. “Our Alts, they’re reflections of an unrealized history if you want to sound fancy. Seraph? Nathan passed before he could become Kosmos. Jin Tianyou? He would’ve died if his mother had finished strangling him. SH? I… I don’t know, but it has to do with her lost memories—”

  “What about Primordial Plaza?” Uncle asked. “From what I've been told, its description didn’t match anything in the local bestiary.”

  “It didn’t, and that’s why it’s so weird. Why can we figure out the Alternates’ origin now? What changed? I…” I pressed my teeth together then rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t have all the pieces yet. It’s… This ‘Mother’ has a really cruel sense of humor, I guess.”

  Althea shrugged her head side-to-side. “I mean, yeah. Who wants to think 'bout a future where everything went wrong?”

  “Yeah, well…” My journal returned to the coffee-table and I sat on the edge of Leo's couch, trying to unravel the knots in my head. “It’s more like a mirror: you see all of you, the good and the bad. It makes you think. Seraph, Jin Tianyou, Silverhonor, they were served fresh reminders of why they’re in the business. Charity, strength, memories. Then you come to us, and I’m wondering, ‘Exactly what the fuck is the Mother trying to show me? What does she want from me?’”

  “You know why we’re doing this,” Uncle Ali said. “You don’t need an Alternate to convince yourself of that.”

  “I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it.” My voice trailed off, and I briefly shut my eyes.

  We were Angels for a reason: to become stronger in anticipation of our enemies, to be protected, to be as good as we could be—to one day achieve the elusive peace from the whirlwind called “life.” But after spending hours thinking about this, something felt wrong. I wasn't at ease, but then again, when was the last time I was comfortable with myself?

  Maybe deep down in my twisted self, these words were a lie. I didn’t believe in them as much as I should. There was a chance that I’m a worse man than I realize, simply waiting for the next hammer to crack the shell and reveal a demon inside. A monster, like what Jin Tianyou had foreseen. And everyone else would scream in terror realizing I was a fake, that my motives were an imitation compared to theirs and far more corrupt and degenerate than any of us had imagined.

  Even after all the drama and gray-hairs, I still couldn’t be honest with myself, huh?

  “You know what would really help with thinking?” Thea said and suddenly patted my back. “Pizza. That’s why we annoyed you: we got pizza getting cold in the kitchen. C’mon.”

  Food would cheer me up a little bit. I groaned and got to my feet. “Fine. I’ll take a small break before going back to the grind.”

  “Food always works,” she chimed and went into the kitchen first.

  Uncle pulled his phone out and frowned. “I need to answer this. Go on ahead."

  We didn’t pry—least, I didn’t pry because Thea already helping herself to lunch. On the counter, we had a selection of three steaming boxes from a local place Leo had mentioned the other day: knowing our habits, it was one meat, one supreme, and a mystery box. However, I noticed a small container on the table. Wings? Maybe a dessert or something?

  "Needed something sweet?" I asked and picked up the box— "Holy shit, this is heavy. What the hell did you order?"

  "No idea. The receipt didn't say anything about dessert; who knows, maybe the pizza-guy has a crush on Leo and gave her a loaded pastry with cream."

  "That's one of the most disgusting things you said—sheesh, have you tried opening it?" Even with my strong fingers, the lid refused to reveal the treasures inside. Whoever had a crush on Leo, they fucking glued the thing shut. It shouldn't be this hard to open a damned box.

  "Stop being dramatic." Thea took the dessert from me. "It's just a box—what the hell, did they glue this thing?"

  "That's what I thought."

  "Alright, I'm breaking this shit open. Watch." Thea placed the box on the counter and dug her fingernails between the lid and bottom. After finding a good grip, she flexed the muscles in her forearms, then pulled, pulled, and pulled.

  Fortunately, today was not the day the Shens would be defeated by a fucking box.

  It snapped open, violently. Much to our disappointment, the mysterious dessert wasn't worth the labor. It was...

  It was some sort of device.

  Said device was glowing purple.

  “THEA—!”

  The light burned into my retinas, and the ground fell out underneath my feet.

  ***

  After being suspended in oblivion for less than a second, my feet found solid ground and my sister's stupid slippers joined me. Everything was backwards. Stomach flipped upside-down, lungs turned inside-out, all my organs just finished a game of Twister and gave me bad nausea. The sensation wasn't new to me. The same went for its sidee-effects.

  Teleportation sickness.

  A box teleported us. Not the strangest sentence I uttered.

  Regardless, fuck my life. I had today off and this happened.

  “Shit, we nabbed Conqueror too?!” a voice cried from behind.

  Through my dizziness, I discovered a couple startling facts: we'd been teleported into an abandoned warehouse likely in an isolated part of the city, and our kidnappers had been authorized through a warrant. We, the criminals, stood on a wired-up black mat over grimy concrete—likely a teleportation tool to prevent any fuck-ups—as floodlights beamed down on top of us. A makeshift perimeter boxed in us: crates, deployable cover, and other junk they'd brought from outside. It provided a shitty firing-line where we were the convicts about to be executed.

  We had fourteen-ish hunters: uniformed agents sporting ballistic vests. Some were strapped with standard-issue rifles while others had only their service pistol. Orders flew over their heads by a restrained yet panicked voice. Move, cover this, cover that, stay calm, stay fucking calm. They spread throughout the perimeter, acquiring a wider range of angles to prevent a painless escape. At least fourteen barrels pointing at us with fourteen sets of eyes waiting for an excuse to pull their triggers.

  It depended on the eight-fourteen sweating bullets. From the last time I saw him back at our old apartment, he had an unkillable smile. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  Agent Dietrich raised a hand and looked toward his tense subordinates. “Stay cool! Stay fucking cool! This is within our parameters. In fact, it's even better.”

  The temperature cooled a little bit. Nobody was itching to start a firefight, but nobody wanted to holster their irons either. We were dealing with international agents, likely officers from the Anomaly Bureau. Due to the loose definition of anything anomalous, they encountered a wider range of threats than the eight-fourteens even; thus, they had the training to apprehend Slayers. Whether or not they practiced to specifically capture Conqueror and Little Brat remained to be seen.

  Either way, I didn't like the position we were in. Little dangerous.

  “Hey, Alex,” my sister hissed, tugging on my sleeve. “I count fifteen malies. Dunno what their rules of engagement are, but this is a shitshow."

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Obviously, this was a bold fucking move even for internationals. Did they prepare anything else? Barriers, turrets, bugs? Or was this an impulsive decision from Agent Dwyer? Too many questions in my head, too little time.

  "Let me do the talking," I whispered to Althea.

  Slowly, like the filthy criminal I was, my empty hands were on display.

  Agent Dietrich eyed his subordinates—an eight-fourteen leading malies, could we do anything with that?—and approached the perimeter. Unlike his good men and women, he was kind enough to not produce iron. Instead, he tucked his hands underneath his vest. “I thought you’d be with the others, Conq.”

  “I wanted to spend time with my family,” I said and lowered my hands slightly so my arms wouldn't get tired. “Never thought we’d be victims of an arrest-port, though. You must’ve found a friendly judge to sign off on it, or are you taking inspiration from the States?”

  Dietrich cracked a small yet strained smile, then flicked toward my sister. “We caught you entering the Jins’ place.”

  Althea was gathering information on our surroundings while trying to act natural.

  I rose my voice, "Maybe I did, but my sister doesn’t know the color of their front-door. What warrants porting her with a fucking pizza-box?”

  “Does that matter at this point?” Dietrich pulled a hand from his vest and rested it on his hip, a few inches away from his sidearm. “We never thought we’d snatch you, so call it a lucky break. Now, let’s not make this difficult—”

  “What if I decided to be an asshole about it?” I snapped and observed the agents’ reactions. They tensed, their expressions permanently frozen in a stiff sneer, and their trigger-fingers wandered closer to execution.

  Dietrich laughed and shook his head at me. “Fine by me, it’s your rap-sheet we’re talking about. I just wouldn’t advise it. We’re not people you fuck with, Conq, so stop playing ‘round and—”

  I shared his same shitty laugh. “What if I think you fuckers are crossing the line like how you always do? We break the law, you break the law, what’s one more to the count—?”

  “Stop FUCKING with me!” He furiously thrusted a finger at my head and kept it there like a laser-pointer. “You know what the hell is going on, you dogshit fuck. Are you demented or plain stupid?! These breakthroughs might spawn a real outbreak! A real one! Was Hangzhou not enough for you? You wanna go through another outbreak and see thousands dead like Mommy and Daddy?!”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. These guys were good at shit-stirring, I’ll give them that. Way better than me. Should’ve known they would pull the Hangzhou card sooner or later. Just rubbing salt on the wound, huh?

  “All it took was a few stupid people to nearly end the world, Conq. Just a few. I don’t know what the Angels told you, but it’s all horseshit. Think about it! Think about what your parents would’ve wanted—”

  “You don’t know a single fucking thing about them,” and I let myself slip, but the genie was already out of the bottle.

  Thea tapped my foot using hers. I know. I know I should have a clearer head when talking to this motherfucker, but mentioning Mom and Dad again forced me beyond irritation. To have their names even be mentioned by an eight-fourteen was unacceptable.

  “We know a lot of things about Bastien and Xingyu, Conqueror! Their whole life-story!” Dietrich exclaimed with a punch-begging smile. “They lived pretty rough lives, so to think their kids are wasting ‘em like this? I’d be disappointed—”

  A scream.

  Sharp, terrified.

  A human scream rattling through the warehouse's thin walls.

  It almost didn’t sound real. It sobered me, sobered all of us, as we dumbly searched for the source.

  “What the hell was that?” one of the agents said—

  A second scream louder than the first—a different person—the coarse voice scratching at our ears.

  Fourteen barrels searched, and we were no longer their biggest concern.

  I pressed my back against Thea.

  Dietrich grabbed his radio and a circus of voices spilled from the speakers, blending together into a mortifying squall. He winced, forced his face back a few inches, then came back in. “Can anyone report—?!”

  Banging metal, like someone brought a sledgehammer onto sheet metal but intensified tenfold. Vibrations ran up our soft, brittle bones. The whole fucking warehouse shook, rust and dirt and whatever-else falling onto our shoulders. Behind Dietrich, a protruding bulge formed on one of the walls. That wasn’t there before.

  Near the bulge was an open doorway, the metal doors having been propped open by cinderblocks, bringing in fresh sunlight.

  We stared at the white light.

  Dietrich let go of his radio. “What… What the fuck...?”

  Something walked in.

  It was a giant of muscle and meat—a physique similar to Mongrel—but unlike the Apex Predator, our new guest was in grayscale and his face was blurred, unidentifiable. His name was a mystery just like his missing colors. Everything was literally gray: skin, muscles, clothes. Hell, it looked like a knife had gone through his wardrobe for today and rendered them into grayed-out ribbons. As though envious of the prismatic world, he created his own colors: bright crimson blood and sparkling soot painted over his hard, stone-like knuckles.

  He turned toward the group, and while we couldn’t see his true face…

  He was staring at me and Althea.

  An Alternate.

  Dietrich pulled his sidearm and aimed it at him. “Identify yourself, fucker, or we will open fire!”

  The man stomped forward, shoulders down, and huffed.

  “I won’t ask again! Identify yourself and stand down! Stand the fuck down, or we’ll shoot!”

  He lumbered forward like a giant.

  “Light him up!” Dietrich fired the first shot.

  Our arrest turned into a range-day. It was impossible to hear anything over the echoing gunfire including Althea standing right next to me. My ears pulsed, a painful rod stabbed into my skull. Gunsmoke and dust filled the air and concealed the breacher. I think I heard voices, maybe Dietrich screaming or Thea saying we should port, but the gun-show didn’t last long.

  As soon as the first mags clicked empty, the agents stopped firing. Click, click, click, and thin wisps of smoke left the barrels like dying cigarettes.

  At least half-a-thousand rounds, but the giant was still standing after the dust settled. He was slightly hunched over, gray blood trickling from minor scratches and cuts. He wasn’t impervious to ballistics, but they were bee-stings. Alone, nothing much, but as I mentioned, half-a-thousand stings were nothing to sneeze at.

  The Alternate rolled his shoulders. Compressed brass showered the ground like pennies. He dragged a thick finger along his cuts, collecting his gray blood and rubbing the substance between his fingers and admiring the sight. While his expression was unreadable, he must've been grinning. "?▎ ▕ ▔▇█▍▊ ▔▇?▔'? ▄▍▎ ▕▆▇ ▔▎ ▊█▋▋ ▌▄?" He threw his head back, laughing distortedly. "▌▄?!"

  Dietrich was shaking his head, mouth parted as if he saw the Lord in-person. “Wha… What the fuck was that—?!”

  The Alt broke into a mad, barbaric sprint. Every step rumbled the earth and cracked the already crumbling concrete floor. The agents roared in panic, fumbling with their empty magazines and groping their vest for a second.

  Too slow, and the Alt was too fast.

  He was looking down on a puny international, the leader of the operation.

  Dietrich stared up at Death, and he had muscles larger than his legs. He was paralyzed, unable to raise his small, small pistol. “Oh Christ.”

  [Skill Activation: Mana Impact]

  A heavy fist lumbered downward like an axe on firewood, but the only thing that had split open was concrete. I’d barely managed to reach Dietrich in time, grabbing him by the back of his vest and pulling him back. He shrieked, the pistol bouncing out of his hands.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” I shouted. “Grab your incaps and port—!”

  A shadow dwarfed me.

  [Observation Lock - Mana Impact]

  Then a flying squirrel threw a knee into the Alternate’s skull, the [Impact] explosive. Enough that the big bastard took a step back from the force. A few more [Impacts] followed just as explosive as the first, all aimed at the torso, topped off with a desperate kick sending the fucker back a couple feet.

  The agents continued to stand there like useless mannequins, and Dietrich was practically dead on the ground.

  I pointed at him. “FUCKING RUN!”

  Dietrich gasped and looked around at his men. He shakily nodded, probably out of survival instinct rather than choice. That was all it took for them to turn tail.

  I turned around and inhaled, summoning the System.

  [Loadout Equipped]

  A familiar [Combat Suit] covered me from head-to-toe, replacing my clothes. As I settled in, another distorted, harrowing laugh brought me back to reality.

  An Alternate. We were facing a second Alt together. This time with no help, reinforcements unknown, and with zero preparations.

  Me and Althea found each other. Her slippers fell off at some point and she didn’t have the luxury of a [Loadout]. Clearly, she’d rather be somewhere else but here—me too—but she clenched her fists and locked her jaw. We weren't here by choice, but we were going to finish it.

  I announced to the air, "Slayer System, [PM] Celestial Empress: 'Alternate. Uncle has our coordinates.'"

  [Message sent.]

  The Alt belly-laughed, and through the distortions, something about that laugh clicked in me. It was familiar. The cadence, the way he moved, it was so stupid and I hated it.

  "▔?▎ ▊█▃? ▏▋??█▍▆ ▇▄?▎,” said the Alt, looking between us. "▆▕▄?? █▔'? ▕▏ ▔▎ ▌▄ ▔▎ ▊█▋▋ ?▎ ▕? ▃??▋█▍▆?—!”

  [?▊█▋▋ ?▂▔█??▔█▎ ▍: ▌?▍? ▃▄?▔?▕▂▔█▎ ▍]

  The Alternate’s knuckles swelled with an unknown energy, rendering his gray skin translucent and revealing his blacked-out bones and veins underneath. He stomped forward and swung at the ground between us. The impact was like a grenade going off. Everything in front of me exploded into a thick cloud, concrete shrapnel flying everywhere and scratching my arms and cheeks. Instinctively I jumped back—

  A fist pierced through the cloud. I saw his fingers closer, now. They were scarred, and nostalgia hit me in the worst possible time. It was like staring into an old childhood drawing. "?▎ ▕ ▅█??▔, ▁█▆ ▁?▎ ▔▇▄?!"

  It was that brief moment of cognition that nearly killed me.

  Barely, my head turned away as the sharp knuckles ripped a nasty gash across my right cheek. Blood gushed down.

  Even now, the familiarity grew stronger. The way the Alt moves, the way he punches, I’d felt this before.

  Where… Where have I felt it?

  Another punch came my way, fast and quick. I know those movements. "?▇▄?▄ █? █▔?!"

  I can never mistake them for anyone else's. "▔▇?▔ ▇▄?▎ █?▌?!"

  They’re ingrained in my memory forever. "?▇▎ ? ▌▄, ▁▎ ?!"

  The last punch—somehow, I’d been avoiding them—came faster than the rest. It would’ve hit me square in the chest and probably broke all my ribs, but two arms hooked around the Alternate's own. Barely enough to hold the punch back and allowed me to avoid death.

  Althea gritted her teeth, pain and tears in her silver eyes. She was covered in bloody cuts. Her face, her arms, through her clothes. It was enough that, normally, I’d panic and start screaming and punching in a blind rage.

  But I didn’t.

  My sister said something but I couldn’t hear it. She was yelling at me, but the words were an indiscernible noise.

  I kept staring at the Alternate, seeing my ghastly reflection in the crimson blood streaked across his obscured face.

  He roared and hurled Althea in my direction. Acting automatically, I caught her. My arms and hands were wet. Impossibly wet. It was a sensation that could never be cleaned off no matter how many times you scrubbed yourself. Peel off your hideous skin, scar them into artwork, but you would stay dirty forever.

  I smelled smoke in the air, bodies and burned down cars, the excrements of monsters, and my own filth among them. The scent could never leave me.

  What’s buried will eventually resurface, no matter how much you cried or begged.

  Everything…

  “Why…”

  [Skill Activation: Mana Impact]

  I felt my knuckles cracking into something hard. “Why?!”

  [Mana Impact]

  “WHY?!”

  [Mana Impact]

  “Why does it have to be YOU?!”

  [Mana Impact]

  “Of all people—! Of all fucking people, why did she pick you?!”

  [Mana Impact]

  My fist was caught by his large hand, something he’d done so many times before. I squeaked. “What happened to you, Dad?”