Amalia had gone; she needed to prepare.

  Chaos slowly shifted into coordinated movement. A radio on the floor crackled to life:

  “Team Six, buses in five minutes.”

  Ashe didn’t even turn his head. He let out a soft sigh and stayed where he was, letting the sounds smear together into one dull blur. His feet still rested on the edge of the mat, the plastic chair clinging to his arm with dried sweat.

  Footsteps approached. He turned toward them, half expecting a familiar hand on his shoulder, a word of comfort.

  Too heavy. Too erratic.

  They passed him by and vanished back into the chaos.

  He swallowed, the pit in his stomach growing heavier, more unbearable.

  His mind emptied again, emotions turning faint and distant; every time one tried to surface, he shoved it back down to where it couldn’t move.

  He forced himself to focus on the pain instead. His head pounded where the large gash split his left cheek; even with the bandage and the painkillers, he could hear the constant, steady thud of blood moving through him, loud in his ears like a second heartbeat.

  Bit by bit, the guildhall grew quieter. The pounding of boots, the wail of sirens outside, the clipped, shouted orders—all of it faded away. Until finally he was sitting there alone, the silence pressing in, and a new fear crept up on him: that without the noise, his memories might come back. The smell of blood, the crunch of breaking bone, that cold creature—it all clung to him.

  A nightmare he feared would never let go, a despair he wasn’t sure he’d ever crawl out of.

  Then a voice, ragged and old, cut through the silence. A welcome distraction.

  “Kid, we gotta move you to the secure housing unit.”

  He frowned. “Secure housing?”

  She was clearly nodding—he could hear the fabric of her collar rasp against her neck. She’d forgotten he was blind, but he didn’t bother pointing it out.

  “It was determined that a non-human actor was responsible for your…” The words trailed off, hanging there, too fragile to finish, like saying them out loud might snap him in half. She coughed, gathering herself. “Your attack. Because of the timing, command believes it was one of the other species. They’re currently looking into how that was even possible.”

  Ashe doubted it. Deep in his bones, it felt like something else. Someone else. But he kept that to himself. If there was one thing he didn’t want, it was more time in a cage, observed, studied, picked apart by prying eyes. But he also knew this was the safest option he was going to get.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He picked up his things and followed her. Her steps were short, more of a shuffle than a walk. She smelled faintly of old age and lavender, with a heavy layer of cigarette smoke over the top.

  Her first words wobbled; by the next word they had flattened into something practiced.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Silence stretched while he searched for the right words.

  “It was cold. Dead. Like how I’d imagine a ghost,” he said at last. “Its skin was clammy, almost slimy, and it could… condense and disappear. Like it wasn’t really there, and then it was.”

  He could hear fingernails rasping against skin in the silence that followed, like she was scratching at her own arm while she thought. When she finally spoke, her voice was careful.

  “How did you get away? It seems impossible for someone like you…” Her words trailed off, unfinished.

  “Blind,” Ashe supplied quietly.

  He swallowed. “I mean… I think I was lucky the rule change happened right then. I was already awake, so I could move before anything happened. But maybe if I hadn’t been awake, they would’ve been… alive.”

  The last word caught and tore its way out of him, emotions rising like a wave he couldn’t outrun.

  A stiff, awkward hand settled on his shoulder. She wasn’t used to comforting anyone—he could tell from the way her fingers just rested there, rigid and unsure. But somehow, the contact stopped the tears from breaking loose. He pushed back against the feeling, shoving it down.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Before Ashe realised it, a heavy metal door creaked open in front of him.

  He stepped inside. The room was cold and damp. When he stretched his arms out, his fingertips brushed both walls at once. Small. Stale.

  He traced the room slowly, palms on the walls. Rough stone met his hands, uneven but solid. The bed was carved from the same stone, topped with a thin mattress he knew his weight would press straight through. The desk was a narrow slab, barely more than a ledge, but his fingers soon found a charging port set into its side.

  It wasn’t much.

  It was enough.

  “Are you okay alone?” She said.

  Ashe nodded in silence as he fell onto the bed.

  The door shut and a small gust of air brushed past him. That was it. His new home.

  He hoped sleep would roll over him, that he’d drop straight into a dreamless void. Instead his muscles twitched and his mind kept running laps. In the silence, the coppery smell of blood filled his thoughts, and the prickling sense of being watched crawled up his spine.

  He couldn’t explain it. Something about the attack felt wrong. It didn’t make sense; why would the other species be after him? He wasn’t in the top hundred. He doubted he was even in the top thousand. It had to be something else, and that thought only made the eerie crawling sensation in his legs worse.

  He couldn’t sleep. He wanted to move. He wanted to fight, to hurt something. But in here, there was only him.

  He knew that was a bad combination. So he started peeling off his clothes and slid under the covers, forcing himself to lie still.

  That was when his necklace began to vibrate. Another portal.

  He knew no one else was here. He was alone. He couldn’t.

  Could he?

  He lay there, tossing as the vibration buzzed against his chest.

  “Fuck it.”

  The words came out louder than he expected. He grabbed his clothes and forced them back on.

  He pressed against the door, half expecting resistance, almost hoping it would stop his self-destructive idea right there. Instead, it swung open with ease. He leaned out. No sound met his ears.

  Everyone must have already been assigned a portal; he figured it was usually patrolled much more strictly than this.

  A slight breeze brushed his face, carrying the smell of fresh air. A way out.

  He grabbed his walking stick and started walking. With each step his pace quickened, fear of being caught nipping at his heels. He knew there were so few people left around that it was unlikely, but that didn’t do anything to calm his mind.

  Then he heard it: faint footsteps. So there were still guards.

  He broke into a run, lifting his walking stick off the floor, afraid the tapping would give him away. He kept it low and swept it in front of him, relying more on the dull pricks of his pain-sense than on anything else.

  He took the stairs two at a time and followed the narrow hall by memory and guesswork.. Ahead, he heard the soft whoosh of an automatic sliding door.

  A faint warmth brushed his cheek. Morning light. Beyond it, the distant chaos of Melbourne streets. For a second, he considered turning back. He could almost feel the bed, the thin mattress, the pretend safety of stone walls around him.

  But going back wasn’t an option. Not now. Staying put would kill him on the inside long before anything in a portal ever did.

  He flipped his phone open. Linked to his necklace, it guided him with quiet prompts.

  Luckily, the portal was close. A little over a kilometre away.

  He turned left. As he walked down the street, he noticed how many people had the news playing out loud.

  The night’s events, the announcement about the rule change, had shaken everyone, not just the Jumpers. Ashe couldn’t help but wonder how people would have reacted a few years ago.

  No one screamed. No one cried.

  Only soft mutters and the constant flick of refreshed feeds filled the day. People were tougher now, more used to it. Or maybe they were just better at pretending that it didn’t bother them.

  As he tapped his walking stick along the sidewalk, Siri spoke again.

  “Turn left in two hundred meters. Then your destination is on your right.”

  He followed the instructions, but before he even reached the corner, he felt it. The air shifted, heavier, carrying the weight of something larger than him. Underneath the city smells, a faint hint of rot curled into his nose.

  As he approached the portal and the feeling of disgust grew, he heard the low murmur of people ahead. He had to shoulder his way through the crowd, quiet apologies swallowed by the noise.

  When he reached the front, two sets of hands pressed against his shoulders, trying to hold him back.

  He fumbled for his necklace. The moment his fingers closed around it, the pressure vanished; the hands snapped away and Ashe almost stumbled forward.

  “Sorry,” someone muttered behind him.

  He did not answer. He just turned his face toward the portal and walked. There was no room left in him for hesitation.

  Then, like every portal before, his feet left the ground. His stomach lurched and the world tilted. Smells and sounds dropped away behind a thick, muffled wall.

  Then the noise slammed back in.

  Metal clashed against metal. Someone screamed. Dozens of footsteps, shouts, the ragged chaos of a fight he had not been ready for, all crashed into him at once. He stood there, frozen, his legs glued to the ground as if he’d stepped into quicksand.

  The other species were here.

  He had let that slip from his mind, like an idiot. Some part of him had still expected to be alone, just him and whatever creatures the portal spawned. It was only an E-rank. He had imagined cross-species battles would stay in the higher tiers. He had been wrong.

  The ground beneath him lurched, like an earthquake focused on his feet. His precog flared, a dull spike of pain behind his nose that shot out through his skull.

  He stepped back on instinct, barely making it as a column of rock blasted upward where he’d been standing, wind from the impact brushing his chest and face.

  They had seen him. The next spike of pain rang out.

  “Shit.”