All my training, every cop instinct I'd honed over six years of sorting the world into neat little boxes labeled "threat" and "no threat," just evaporated. My internal processor didn't just blue-screen; it melted. My eyes locked on the splintered ruin of the chicken coop, but the data wouldn't parse. Coop. Dust. Bull. And a shape that didn't belong.

  Please be a trick of the light. Please be heat shimmer. Please be literally anything else.

  I hoped it was a trick of the light, but it wasn't. I couldn't have been more wrong because what I saw was impossible.

  A twelve-foot lizard-like creature clawed its way out of the wreckage, emerging from the destruction like a nightmare tearing through tissue paper. Its scales were the color of moss and malice, shimmering under the harsh sunlight with an oily, iridescent quality that made my eyes hurt to look at directly. A long, forked tongue, black as tar and thick as my forearm, flicked from its mouth, tasting the air with deliberate, hunting precision.

  Beady yellow eyes, holding all the warmth and compassion of a tax audit, protruded from its wedge-shaped head. They darted around with an intelligence that was somehow worse than mindless hunger, a cold calculation that said this thing wasn't just hunting. It was thinking.

  What the actual fuck is that?

  My cop brain, the part that had been trained to observe and categorize, tried desperately to make sense of what I was seeing. Reptilian. Bipedal. Muscular haunches. Long tail for balance. Clawed forelimbs that looked designed for tearing. The mouth—Jesus Christ, the mouth was full of teeth that belonged on a shark, rows of them, serrated and gleaming wet in the sun.

  Monster.

  The word detonated in my mind, echoing Michael's frantic screams with a horrifying, undeniable clarity. It was real. It wasn't bath salts. It wasn't a psychotic break. It wasn't a guy in a costume or some exotic animal escaped from a private zoo. It was standing right there, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, in a field that was supposed to be filled with goddamn chickens.

  My body moved on its own, training taking over where conscious thought had failed. My feet pounded the gravel, carrying me back toward the cruiser in a sprint fueled by pure, animal panic dressed up as tactical retreat.

  "Get in the ambulance and go!" I yelled at the paramedics, my voice cracking with an edge of hysteria I barely recognized as my own. Michael had thankfully gone quiet again, his body limp on the stretcher, unconscious or catatonic—either way, better than screaming.

  I reached the cruiser, yanked the door open hard enough that the hinges protested, and had the AR-15 in my hands in seconds. The satisfying click-clack of a round chambering was the only sound in the universe that made sense anymore. The familiar weight of the rifle, the textured grip against my palm, the cool metal of the charging handle—these were real things, solid things, things I understood.

  I brought the rifle up just as the creature's yellow eyes locked onto our position with a predator's focus that made my bowels clench.

  Center mass. Breath control. Squeeze, don't pull.

  I flicked the safety off and squeezed the trigger, sending five rounds downrange at its head. The rifle bucked against my shoulder with each shot, the reports cracking across the field. Dirt kicked up twice—wide of the mark, my hands shaking more than I wanted to admit. But I adjusted, muscle memory overriding panic, and the last three rounds struck home with flat, loud thunks against its skull.

  The creature barely flinched.

  It shook its head as if annoyed by a fly, a quick, irritated gesture that was somehow more terrifying than if it had roared in pain. The impacts left no marks that I could see. No blood. No shattered scales. Nothing. Just faint dust where the bullets had struck and... nothing.

  A cold spike of disbelief, of pure wrongness, shot up my spine and lodged itself in my brain stem.

  That's not possible. 5.56 NATO at seventy-five meters should penetrate. Should cause trauma. Should do SOMETHING.

  It roared, a challenge and a promise, the sound rattling the windows of the cruiser. Then it charged, those powerful hind legs churning up divots of grass and dirt, closing the distance between us with a speed that didn't match its size.

  Shit shit shit.

  Plan A, put bullets in the bad thing, was failing spectacularly. I switched my aim to its chest, firing another ten rounds as it closed the distance. Green ooze, thick and viscous like antifreeze mixed with motor oil, seeped from the new holes punched in its torso.

  Good. It could bleed. Which meant it could die. If it bleeds, we can kill it. The Arnold Schwarzenegger quote grounded my resolve, gave me something to hold onto besides the screaming void of panic.

  But the creature didn't act like it could die. It didn't slow, didn't falter, not a single step. It bounded toward us, its gore-speckled face pulling back to reveal razor-sharp teeth the length of my fingers, each one designed by evolution or God or whatever the fuck made this thing to tear flesh from bone.

  Fuck. I need a softer target.

  My eyes appraised the beast as it charged, looking for a weakness, any weakness. But I saw armored skin from head to toe, thick overlapping scales that my rounds were bouncing off like I was throwing pebbles at a tank. And its head was now bent low, covering its chest, protecting the wounds I'd already made.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My mind raced for a solution, but all I saw was the tendrils of flesh, intestines, I realized with a sick jolt, hanging from its mouth. Remnants of its last meal. The bull. I swallowed nervously as the creature filled my sight, a wall of muscle and teeth and impossible rage bearing down on me.

  At thirty meters, it roared again, its jaws opening wide.

  Big mistake, ugly.

  I fired my last ten rounds in one continuous burst, the rifle screaming in my hands as I emptied the magazine. I aimed for its open mouth, for the soft, pink flesh of its throat. Five shots went down its gullet, punching through the soft tissue. Five more impacted the roof of its mouth, tearing through the unarmored flesh. Green fluid erupted from its jaws as it let out a high-pitched cry that was more surprise than pain.

  Its momentum was unstoppable—an avalanche of scale and muscle that was going to flatten the spot where I was standing whether I'd hurt it or not.

  I dove, hitting the gravel hard. A sharp pain lanced through my forearm as I rolled, a jagged piece of stone tearing a deep gash from wrist to elbow. Hot blood welled up immediately, soaking into my sleeve. I ignored it, adrenaline my only medicine, and rolled back to my feet, my hand going to my vest with practiced efficiency.

  Tactical reload. My fingers found a fresh magazine, pulled it free. I hit the release, my other hand catching the partially spent mag as it dropped—muscle memory from a thousand drills at the range. The used magazine went into an empty pouch on my belt. You never knew when you might need those last few rounds. The fresh mag seated with a solid click, and I raised the weapon off safe scanning for more threats.

  I raised the rifle to the now-motionless creature, my heart hammering so hard I could feel my pulse in my eyeballs. Was it playing dead? Was it even possible for something like this to die from bullet wounds?

  The silence from the thing was more unnerving than its roars. Not taking any chances, I fired half the magazine into its chest and the soft underside of its neck, the exposed flesh where the scales were thinner. The body vibrated with the impacts, green ichor spraying in arterial spurts, but it didn't move.

  I took a shaky breath, trying to let the tunnel vision naturally dissipate, trying to slow my heart rate from "imminent cardiac arrest" to just "extremely elevated." My forearm was on fire, the torn flesh screaming at me now that the adrenaline was starting to ebb. Blood dripped steadily from my fingertips, spattering on the gravel in a pattern that would have been evidence at a crime scene.

  Focus. Check the threat. Make sure it's down.

  I took a step closer, the rifle still trained on the creature's head. Its yellow eyes were glassy, unfocused. The rise and fall of its chest had stopped. Dead. It had to be dead.

  Then, without warning, a partially transparent blue screen materialized out of thin air, hanging in my vision like a bugged-out texture in a cheap video game.

  My finger instinctively went to the trigger as I almost jumped out of my skin, my training screaming "THREAT" at the sudden appearance of something in my peripheral vision. I stopped myself a split second before firing, my brain finally catching up to the fact that this wasn't physical. It was... something else.

  The screen hovered there, words glowing with a soft, ethereal light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  Congratulations on killing an invading monster.

  Registering as a New Player. You have earned the title "First Kill" in your area.

  All stats increased by 10, and a reward box will be placed in your inventory.

  To open the Menu, please say "Menu." Lesser Lizard -- 25 XP.

  I blinked. The words didn't vanish. They just floated there, clean and clinical and completely detached from the reek of blood and the mangled corpse lying a few feet away, green ichor still pooling in the dirt.

  Concussion, my brain supplied, desperately grasping for a rational explanation. Hallucination. Shock. Has to be.

  But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn't true. The screen was too clear, too solid. The text too precise. And there was something else—a tingling sensation that swept over my body, followed by a searing heat that burrowed into my bones like I'd just mainlined pure adrenaline cut with lightning.

  The bone-deep weariness from the shift, the ache in my lower back from too many hours in the cruiser, the adrenaline crash that should have been hitting me like a freight train—they weren't just gone. It was like they'd never existed. In their place was a clean, humming energy that made my fingers tingle and my vision sharpen to an almost painful clarity.

  My muscles felt coiled and ready, not tired. My mind was sharp, focused, not foggy. The world hadn't just stopped being exhausting; I had stopped being exhaustible. Like someone had reached into my body and turned a dial I didn't know existed, cranking it from "running on fumes" to "fully operational and then some."

  "Elias, your arm!" Kira's voice cut through my thoughts, sharp with concern.

  She was running toward me from the cruiser, her eyes wide with worry. But her focus wasn't on the impossible creature lying dead in the grass. It was on the blood now dripping freely from my forearm, soaking through my sleeve and running down to my hand.

  Before I could tell her I was fine, that I felt better than fine, felt incredible actually, she was already next to me with the cruiser med-kit in hand. Her hands were a blur of practiced efficiency, ripping open an antiseptic wipe with her teeth, cleaning the wound with firm, no-nonsense strokes that stung like hell but felt oddly grounding.

  She brought me by the hand to the cruiser, leading me like a child who'd scraped his knee, before forcing me to sit on the bumper. The sting of the antiseptic was a real sensation in the middle of all this madness, something concrete and understandable.

  She wrapped the gash tightly with gauze, her movements quick and sure, her brow furrowed in concentration. The optimist. Always patching things up. Always trying to fix what was broken.

  But my eyes were locked on the floating screen in front of me, reading and rereading the words, trying to understand their meaning.

  Invading monster?

  My eyes shifted to the dead lizard, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, that thick black thing resting in a pool of its own green blood. It was clearly the monster the screen mentioned. But where did it come from? And what the hell was this blue screen thing?

  I tried to touch the screen with a finger, reaching out slowly, half-expecting my hand to pass through it like a hologram. But I felt nothing. Just air. The screen was there, but it wasn't there. Not in any physical sense I understood.

  Kira finished her work and looked up, her green eyes searching mine with that mixture of professional assessment and genuine worry that made her such a good partner. "What the hell was that thing? And what are you doing with your hand? Did you hit your head?"

  Her brows furrowed as she ran her hands through my hair, her fingers probing gently for lumps or cuts, checking for signs of concussion. It felt nice. I shook the thought out before it could finish forming and pushed her hand away gently.

  "I'm fine," I said, but the words felt distant, disconnected.

  My eyes tracked from her focused expression, past the hulking corpse of the dead lizard still leaking green onto the grass, to the impossible blue screen that still hung in the air, patient and waiting.

  A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, sharp-edged and slightly manic. The sound of a man who'd just watched reality tear itself a new asshole.

  My name is Elias Stormson. I'm a police officer in Valen County, Colorado. And I think I'm losing my goddamn mind.