se: I Can Co

: The Sta

lept tha

survived the first week of the apocalypse - mismatched armor, salvaged weapons, and

oice carried none of that earlier composure now. "The stadium rift has been open six hours. It has not

physical blow. Even Bo Hai, standing a few feet from me with

objective is containment and evacuation of the surrounding bloc

efly against mine, grounding, and glanced over to find Han Xue already wat

ly Mei and I could hear. "Whatever happens out

" I said, onl

xactly how unimpressed s

-

ched its outer perimeter

ground itself seemed to hum with the wrongness bleeding out of the rift's core. Scouts from three other shelters had a

ns Present. Recommend cooperation over competition - sur

to figure that one out," I m

before Command's pl

ifteen feet tall, its form flickering at the edges like it hadn't fully decided to exist in our world yet. Where it stepped, concrete cracked an

lready gathering nervously in her palms. "T

cation: Rift-Born. Not native to this

category of nightmare. E

stinct, horrible sensation of being *chosen* out of the crowd a half-second before it lunged, not at Osei's fo

d the ground where we'd been standing erupted in violet-black fire an instant later, several

d under falling debris, and came up scrambling, heart hammering so loud I could bare

e it recognized something in me that none of the other hundr

ibiting targeted behavior toward Ho

as the creature's flickering form surged toward me

omewhere behind me, raw wit

d me like judgment given shape, and every instinct copied into my body - the dead cop's aim, the mutant's speed, the faint stone-grey harden

s override cost six months of host lifespan. Current thre

t Overri

f a second to decide whether whatever was left of

lly mine to control in this entire collapsing moment - hovered on the e