I settled into the passenger seat, resting my rifle between my legs, barrel pointed safely at the floor. "I'm going to figure out what's going on with that weird screen."

  Time to see what's behind curtain number one.

  The rational part of my brain, the part that had spent six years learning to be suspicious of everything, was screaming that this was a bad idea. That poking at hallucinations was a fast track to a psych eval and a desk job. But the cop in me, the part that needed answers, that needed to understand, was stronger.

  Menu, I thought, feeling slightly ridiculous.

  The blue screen snapped back into existence with the same unnatural smoothness, more detailed this time. Not just a notification, but an actual interface. Like someone had installed an operating system directly into my brain.

  Name: Elias Stormson

  Age: 26

  Level: 1

  Class: None

  Title: First Kill

  Stats:

  Strength: 28

  Health: 30

  Agility: 24

  Stamina: 24

  Mana: 14

  Available Stats: 10

  Access inventory to view items

  I stared at the screen, my mind trying to reconcile what I was seeing with anything that made sense. I'd played enough video games in my younger days, back before the Academy, before the job consumed every waking hour, to recognize what this looked like.

  A character sheet. Like an RPG. Like fucking Dungeons & Dragons made real.

  Strength, Agility, Stamina. Those were self-explanatory enough. The higher the number, the stronger, faster, tougher you were. Basic video game logic. But Mana? What the hell was Mana? Some kind of wizard juice? Magic power?

  Because apparently we're just accepting magic as a thing now. Sure. Why not. We've already got dinosaurs that bleed green. Might as well throw in spellcasting.

  I filed that information under the rapidly growing category of "Things That Make No Goddamn Sense" and focused on the last two lines.

  Available Stats: 10.

  Access inventory to view items.

  Inventory. Another gaming term. A place to store items that somehow didn't take up physical space. My hand instinctively went to the gear on my belt—magazines, cuffs, flashlight, knife. All still there, solid and real.

  So what the hell was in this "inventory"?

  Inventory, I thought, focusing on the word like it was a command.

  The screen flickered, shifting to display a grid of empty grey boxes under a single heading: Inventory. All of them were empty except for one in the top-left corner. It held a small icon of a wrapped gift box, like something from a birthday party. The image was almost cheerful, completely at odds with the corpses of nightmare creatures we'd just left behind.

  A reward box. Right. Because apparently killing monsters gets you presents now.

  I felt a surge of morbid curiosity, the same impulse that made me check corners and open closed doors despite knowing what might be waiting. Without thinking too hard about it—because thinking would mean questioning, and questioning would mean acknowledging how completely insane this was—I reached out with my hand and tapped the icon on the intangible screen.

  My finger passed through empty air, meeting no resistance. But something registered, some invisible connection between my intent and the interface.

  With a soft thump, a physical object dropped into my lap.

  My body reacted before my brain caught up. I jerked backward, nearly throwing the thing across the car, my heart rate spiking as my hand instinctively reached for my sidearm. Threat something appeared out of nowhere threat—

  It was a blue and white box, about the size of a shoebox, and it felt impossibly light. Almost weightless, like it was made of styrofoam or cardboard. But it was there, solid and real, sitting on my thighs where nothing had been a second before.

  What the fuck, what the fuck, what the—

  Kira jerked the steering wheel, the cruiser swerving slightly as she caught the movement in her peripheral vision. "What the... Where did that come from?" she stammered, her eyes wide as they darted from the road to the box and back again, trying to process what she'd just witnessed.

  "It was in my inventory," I replied, my voice a quiet murmur that didn't match the hammering of my heart. My own shock was a cold weight in my stomach, settling like a stone. This was real. Not a hallucination. Not a concussion. A real, physical thing, summoned from a screen that didn't exist.

  I just materialized an object out of thin air. In a police cruiser. On a Tuesday afternoon.

  The absurdity of it would have been funny if it wasn't so terrifying.

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  A new white screen materialized above the box, the text sharp and clinical against the afternoon light filtering through the windshield.

  Reward Box. The first reward boxes will be based on the Player's attributes until the player chooses his class. Future reward boxes will then be based on the Player's class.

  The screen vanished after a few seconds, dissolving like smoke.

  "You going to open it?" Kira asked, her voice a mix of awe and trepidation. Like she was watching someone defuse a bomb and couldn't decide if she wanted to see what happened next.

  My caution was at war with a curiosity so intense it was almost a physical ache. The cop in me wanted to bag it, tag it, send it to evidence and let someone else figure out what the hell it was. But the human in me, the part that had just killed a monster and earned some kind of cosmic achievement award, needed to know.

  Curiosity won.

  I pulled the lid open, my hands steady despite the unreality of the moment.

  A brilliant white light, clean and pure like fresh snow in sunlight, poured from within, shining up into my face. It was warm, almost inviting, and for a moment I half-expected angels to start singing. Hesitantly, I reached my hand into the glow, expecting... what? To touch nothing? To find the box empty, the light just an illusion?

  The inside of the box felt warm, and strangely, much deeper than its physical dimensions suggested. Like reaching into a pocket that went on forever. My fingers brushed against something hard and cool, metal, with a texture that felt both familiar and alien. I instinctively curled my hand around it; the object's grip fit perfectly in my palm, like it had been made for me specifically.

  A weapon.

  I pulled my hand back slowly, carefully, like I was drawing a snake from a hole. The first thing to emerge from the light was a hilt, wrapped in dark, practical leather that was soft and worn, like it had been used for years. I kept pulling, revealing a gleaming, two-foot-long, double-edged sword. The blade caught the afternoon light, throwing reflections across the interior of the cruiser.

  A small blue label hovered over the blade like a price tag in a store window, the text crisp and impossibly clear.

  Rare Jian

  Jian. The word was vaguely familiar, tickling some memory from a martial arts movie I'd watched in college. Chinese, maybe? A straight sword, not curved like a katana. Sounds like a brand of cheap knockoff sneakers, the cynical part of my brain supplied, because apparently even dimensional magic and monster attacks couldn't kill my ability to make stupid jokes.

  I glanced down at the box, expecting to see more—armor, potions, a instruction manual titled "So You're a Monster Hunter Now." But it was empty, the brilliant light already fading, dimming to nothing. As I watched, the box itself began to flicker and fade into nothingness, dissolving like fog in the sun, leaving only the sword resting across my lap on top of my rifle.

  I had a magic sword. On top of my police-issued AR-15.

  The absurdity of it all was starting to feel less terrifying and more exhausting, like my brain was just giving up on trying to make sense of things and defaulting to acceptance.

  Sure. Magic swords. Why not. We've already got dinosaurs. Might as well have medieval weaponry too. Maybe there's a dragon somewhere. A nice dragon. One that doesn't eat cops.

  The sword was surprisingly light in my hand, perfectly balanced. I could feel the edge even without touching it, sharp enough to split hairs. The craftsmanship was flawless—no seams, no imperfections, like it had been forged as a single piece of metal.

  Now, how to put it away?

  The thought was practical, grounding. I couldn't exactly walk into the detachment carrying a sword like I was auditioning for a Renaissance fair. Did I have to tap an empty square on the screen with the blade? Think really hard about storage?

  As I pondered the logistics, trying to remember if any of my video games had covered this particular scenario, the sword vanished from my hands. Just... gone. One second solid steel, the next a memory of weight and texture.

  I looked at the inventory screen, which was still hovering patiently in my vision. The sword icon now occupied the square where the gift box had been, a small, neat image of a blade.

  "Cool" I whispered, a small smile tugging at my lips despite everything. I focused on the icon again, this time picturing the sword back in my lap, willing it to appear.

  It rematerialized with the same soft thump as the box, solid and real and impossible.

  "Very," Kira breathed from the driver's seat, her voice full of wonder despite the white-knuckled grip she had on the steering wheel. The look on her face was pure, genuine awe—the expression of someone watching magic happen in real time.

  I made the sword disappear again with a thought, and brought back the main menu. The stats screen resolved, crisp and waiting.

  Available Stats: 10.

  Ten points to spend. But spend on what? And what would they even do?

  The memory of that clean, humming energy when the blue screen had first appeared came rushing back. The way my exhaustion had just... vanished. The way my body had felt more, stronger, faster, like someone had turned a dial I didn't know existed.

  So these stats are real. They actually affect my body. This isn't just a game interface. It's... what? Augmentation? Evolution? Alien technology?

  I didn't hesitate. The image of that first lizard, its claws raking toward me, my bullets bouncing off its hide, was fresh in my mind. I'd been too slow to dodge its initial charge. Too weak to hurt it with anything but lucky shots to soft tissue.

  If this thing is real, if these numbers actually mean something, then I need to be faster. I need to be stronger.

  I pushed five points into Strength and five into Agility, the mental command as simple as thinking about it. The interface responded instantly, the numbers shifting up.

  Strength: 28 → 33

  Agility: 29→ 34

  Available Stats: 10 → 0

  It wasn't a tingle this time. It was a deep, cellular hum, like every muscle fiber in my body was being rewritten, overclocked, upgraded. A jolt of pure energy, clean and hot, flooded my system, washing away the last dregs of my earlier exhaustion and replacing it with something else. Something more.

  My uniform suddenly felt noticeably tighter across my shoulders and chest, the fabric straining at seams that had fit perfectly this morning. I flexed my hand, felt the tendons move with a smoothness that hadn't been there before, a responsiveness that was almost unnatural.

  Jesus. This is real. This is actually happening.

  I looked over at Kira, who was focused on the road ahead, navigating around an abandoned car in the middle of the street. "Do I look any different to you?"

  She glanced away from the road, her eyes doing a quick, professional scan of my face and body—the kind of assessment she'd been trained to do, looking for injuries or signs of distress. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open slightly.

  "You've gotten bigger," she said, her voice full of disbelief. She took another look, more careful this time, her gaze tracking from my shoulders to my arms. "I mean, you were always in shape, but... now you look like you have more muscle than you did this morning. What did you do?"

  "I assigned the stats to Strength and Agility," I said, the words feeling utterly insane even as I spoke them. I put points in Strength and now I'm physically stronger. Like a video game. Like actual, literal magic.

  The world had gone completely off the rails, and I was sitting in a police cruiser with a magic sword in my inventory and muscles I hadn't earned.

  Kira stared at me for a moment longer before her eyes lit up with that same competitive fire I'd seen after she killed her lizard. "Really?" Her voice was full of wonder and barely suppressed excitement. "I can't wait to see what mine do."

  She started to reach for her own menu, her hand moving in the air like she was touching an invisible screen, but I stopped her with a raised hand.

  "Wait. Let me drive first. You can experiment when we're not moving."

  She shot me a look, one that said she was filing this away for her next lecture about my controlling nature, but she nodded, understanding the practical wisdom. We were still in the middle of a crisis, still cut off from dispatch, still in a world where monsters were apparently real.

  Baby steps, Elias. Figure out one impossible thing at a time.

  As we continued toward the detachment, leaving the farm and its impossible corpses behind us, I couldn't shake a single, terrifying thought:

  If this is what killing two of those things does to us... what happens when we kill more?