Monday, April 1st, 2069

  “Why me?” I asked stupidly, my voice trembling in a way I didn’t like but wasn’t in control of. I felt a surge of pride that I got words out but immediately brow beat myself for that feeling. My life was at risk, and I needed a way to escape, not useless questions.

  “I already told you twice now. Did you think you're special? That you get to skate through life without consequences? Maybe the third time’s the charm. We told you we’d be seeing you soon, Brodie Flacarada. Well,” the black-garbed man responded, jamming the gun deeper into my ribs, forcing out a grunt of pain, “here we are.” His voice was colder than the receding chill of the Canadian winter.

  “I pissed you off? That’s what this is about?” I answered and then realized what he must be referring to. This was The Shop from SwiftGram. I blinked a few times, trying to decide if that was a good thing. Thanks to the news article, I had feared this was the serial killer, but surely a disgruntled Swiftie was better to deal with, right?

  My brain couldn’t truly decide, and The Shop didn’t respond to my squeaked question. I was left floundering with my own stupid mental back and forth. Surely, I should be thinking about more pressing concerns, like the gun currently digging into my side.

  We entered the alley, and soon took a turn I didn’t know existed, moving further off the already less-frequented shortcut and into the deeper recesses of the backs of the school buildings. I tried to stiffen up and drag my feet, but The Shop simply walked a bit more purposefully, half dragging and half carrying me.

  “Come on man, you don’t want to do this!” I shouted over the sound of my rubber soles scraping on asphalt. The pressure of the gun in my side withdrew, and for a split second I thought I’d gotten through to the man with my simple plea, but then something hard and sharp smashed into the back of my head.

  My world spun, and I lurched forward as he released his hold on my arm. Thanks to the hit, and without the support he was giving me, I took three stumbling steps before gracelessly crashing face first into the wet alley asphalt.

  I fought to stay conscious and either won against the intrusive darkness, or hadn’t been hit hard enough to succumb, because I managed to spin around and begin crab walking in the same direction of my fall. I somehow managed to keep a good awareness of my directions because I was in fact gaining some space between myself and my attacker. Right up until my back bumped into a wall.

  “No shouting,” the man said with a wave of his pistol, “and no trying to escape, or I put a few holes in you and then Husk you.”

  My body froze up again as my mind helpfully tried to decide which of his threats was worse. Losing my connection to the world by becoming Skill-less, which would lead to a slow, agonizing death in a downward suicidal spiral, but might be survivable—or bullet ridden?

  To say that I was less than impressed with my body’s current response to danger was an understatement, and I used that surge of negative emotion at myself to get my feet under me and stand up.

  “Easy there, big guy,” The Shop said as he trained the muzzle of his weapon back to the center of my chest. I could tell he was being highly sarcastic—but it did highlight that I was physically larger than he was. Not that it mattered if he had an Awakened Skill and Stats, but I doubted the latter. The Shop continued, “We don’t want any mishaps. Look, there’s no guarantee that me using your Mana will hurt you. I just need a bit to activate my Skill, and then I’ll let you on your way, deal?”

  My eyes narrowed as they took in his gloves, tearaway pants, and boots. He looked more like a murderer than someone who was assaulting me for a bit of Mana. We’d been told how to spot Mana addicts, people who may attack you to steal your Mana. People who didn’t think of the consequences of their actions and often left broken Skill-less people in their wakes, from what they viewed as something ‘harmless.’

  This guy didn’t have a single one of those signs I’d been taught to look for.

  “You don’t look like a person who’s out here for a quick Skill activation,” I said, surprised that my voice came out so calm.

  “You dare compare me to those filth? I’m not some useless single-Skilled Awakened. I’m a Paragon, one of the chosen few. Someone that is already above ninety-nine percent of humanity. I’m the one who can make other Paragons and will one day stand atop this world! Now, did you know that a Mana Pool’s Gift is still active after death?” the man retorted with a bored wave of his gun.

  I instantly felt faint. That psychotic monologue conveyed so much more than I ever wanted to know. It did more than simply suggest that this Shop had killed someone and taken their Mana from them afterward. It also conveyed that he was likely one of those beyond rare people who had multiple Skills Awakened. I’d never heard the term Paragon before, but through context, I figured it was something he was using to make himself feel superior. That thought was even more terrible. He was thinking of me as some sort of ant, below his notice. The fact that he got two or more Skills without a Mana Pool was devastating. Comparing him to a Mana Addict was unfair to the addicts…

  Somehow, this final injection of fear spawned something primal and ferocious in me. I growled as I felt a wave of heat rush outward from my chest. I wasn’t going to let this guy have his way. “Then why haven’t you shot me already?”

  His eyes, the only part of his face I could see, glinted with amusement and I could just tell my question had made him want to smile. The wave of heat grew, and I didn’t even shiver looking into that frosty gaze.

  “Look at you, being observant,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his words. “I’ll tell you a secret: the Mana starts to fade quickly in death. It puts me on a timer, and I need something of a more permanent connection to activate my Skills.”

  Even with the growing, strange heat, I shivered.

  The man moved then, seeming to close the few steps to me in a blink. I realized then that his left glove had the palm cut out of it as he grabbed my wrist. “Plus, since I’m being honest, I need to draw from you while you’re alive to fulfill the conditions of my Skill.”

  I opened my mouth to scream but a jab of his other hand still holding the gun penetrated into my stomach, effectively driving the air out of my lungs and silencing my intended shout.

  My teeth clicked together, and I almost bit my tongue as I tried to double over. Now that he was closer, I could smell the greasy sweat and even see a bit of it on his forehead and the bridge of his nose that was just visible inside of his hood. He was definitely a Mana Addict…

  One of those who desperately needed to feel their Skills activate just one more time. If Dave’s earlier analogy about ‘seeing’ could be used—then Skill activation was said to be the next level of bliss.

  My shaky inhalation through my nose brought with it a horrible stench and I wondered if I had wet myself, or if someone had recently used this part of the alley as a restroom. If it was the latter, I hoped another individual might do the same, and soon. I prayed desperately just for such an event. Then my brain blanked.

  That part of me in my chest. The piece that changed on my eighteenth birthday shuddered as the Shop mentally seized it. I felt the moment he formed a connection between his Skills and my Pool. It was like an electrical circuit being completed. I felt the connection but blinked as nothing happened.

  This was how it felt when someone accessed your Mana Pool? Had I been concerned for nothing? I’d always assumed there would be danger or pain involved with someone accessing your Pool. You know, with the risk of it breaking and leaving you husked—

  Then the switch was flipped, and the pain began. It was the exact opposite of my eighteenth birthday. I felt the moment that my Pool began to crack. I could tell in that moment that the Shop was attempting to pull all my Mana out in a single go.

  The fracturing pieces of my pool shook, and I heard what I could only describe as a low humming growl. Instantly, I knew it came from inside my chest. Was it the sound of my Skill shattering? Was I going to be one of the Skill-less?

  An awareness wrapped around the ‘conduit,’ the fracturing Pool, and my chest. Like a fist, it squeezed, creating a pressure that closed the cracks in my Mana Pool. In that moment, I thought I understood what activating a Skill felt like. Was this just by association because the Shop was activating his Skills?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Ten Mana, that’s it? How is this a highly-valua—"

  The Shop’s words cut off abruptly. Simultaneously, the force from the pistol pushing into my stomach lessened. The two in conjunction made my eyes fly wide. They were still filled with water from the earlier pain, and so I wasn’t surprised to see stars. Yet the stars I saw didn’t behave like I would have expected. They acted like real lights hovering atop the black-clad man’s jacket. I saw three orbs overlaying his chest. One was fist-sized and orange—it looked like a small sun—and the other two were marble planets orbiting around it. They glowed gray and green.

  As I blinked, the stars doubled. Then the newer three spheres seemed to be gripped by the invisible pressure that I was still exuding. The pressure almost looked like the jaws of some terrifying creature made from nothing. It was impossible to discern the ‘outline’ of black on moonlit night. A growl was still reverberating through my chest. The smaller two stars collapsed into the larger sun before shooting toward me. Almost seeming to be ‘swallowed.’ I might have flinched if I didn’t think I was imagining everything.

  The gun’s muzzle, which was still pressed against my stomach, slipped further as The Shop’s mouth dropped open and his face paled. The slipping continued and the pressure let up. Was he distracted enough that I could disarm him? I took Muay Thai, was physically larger than him, and went to the gym to maintain my physical appearance, so surely, I could use that—right?

  His eyes seemed to spin, and what little of his face I could see paled further. Multi-Skilled attacker or not, I needed to move.

  Now!

  In a quick motion, I grabbed the gun’s muzzle and shoved it out to the side of my stomach, sucking in my abdomen as much as I could. The Shop’s muscles tensed spasmodically, but thankfully the man’s finger had slipped out of the trigger guard. So, the gun didn’t fire. I brought up a free knee to ram it up between his legs. I felt the impact that resonated through my own body.

  His mouth had been opening to shout something at me, but instead a crying groan of pain escaped. I used my bracing leg to hop and brought my grounded leg’s knee up, even as my other leg returned toward the asphalt. Either I was more Skilled at Muay Thai than I thought, or I got lucky. The Shop was in the process of curling up around his injured groin, which meant he was dropping his head. My knee drove up into his falling face, meeting the softness of his nose before colliding with the skull behind it.

  There was a moment of resistance from the skull before it gave in as well. Any tension in the disgusting man’s arms drained away as his body went limp. He fell to the ground like a dropped stuffed animal. The gun slipped through his fingers, remaining in mine. I flipped it around and pointed it at the downed man.

  I could still feel the strange pressure and hear the low, humming growl. But the imaginary image of the dark shape was gone. Had this man broken my Skill? My stomach lurched, but I bore down against the nausea with everything I had. I would not throw up. Not right now, at least.

  My hands shook violently, making the muzzle of the weapon jitter on and off his unmoving form. A part of me wanted to pull the trigger. To shoot him for what he might have done. Another part wanted to rush off to a UNMH assessment center and find out if I was indeed Skill-less. Instead, something else took the reins of my actions, and whatever was growling cut off all my other thoughts.

  As if I was watching someone else in control of my body, I watched as the gun instantaneously stopped shaking, and one hand removed itself from the grip. Somehow, I’d adopted a shooting stance that I only recognized from movies that had won awards for their high level of technical proficiency on-screen. The freed hand calmly reached into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out my cell phone, bringing it up to my face to efficiently unlock and dial one-nine-nine.

  “One-nine-nine, what’s your emergency?”

  “I—I,” My voice, unlike my cold and detached body, didn’t seem to be capable of stringing together words, let alone explaining that I had just been held up at gunpoint for a Mana Connection.

  “Calm down, miss,” the operator on the line said. “Can you tell me your location?”

  Miss? Was my voice that high pitched? It startled me enough that she got a response. “Phoenix Academy.”

  “Good, good. Can you try to explain what’s happened?” the operator coaxed.

  I opened my mouth, but my throat seemed to have inherited the earlier shaking of my hands. I felt my vocal cords constrict and relax in rapid sequences as I began to try to explain.

  “I—held at gunpoint—Mana Addict—between class and dorms.” I managed to get out.

  “Okay, sir. Can you give me your exact location? We’ve already got units on campus.”

  At least I was back to sir. I took that as a win, even as I thought how strange it was to focus on that in a situation like this.

  “Alley—Quad and Cafe…” I stuttered out.

  “Okay, stay on the phone with me. Officers are en route.”

  She kept asking questions of me, and I attempted to give responses, but eventually I broke down into nervous sobs. What if I was husked? Skill-less? It was a strange thought considering I felt even more connected to the World currently. Still, it felt like I was watching my body from outside of it, and so I couldn’t be sure. It reacted and I just watched. Whatever was going on, I didn’t even manage to form two coherent or logical thoughts together before I heard booted feet approaching, followed by a shout.

  “Put the weapon down!”

  With a snap, my out of body experience ended. I found two cops holding hands at the entrance to the alley. The lead cop’s hand glowed with blue light in a threatening manner. It looked like a magic Skill, and it was pointed right at me. I dropped the gun and the phone, placing my hands immediately high above my head.

  “I called you! I called you!” I shouted repeatedly.

  Again, I must have lost track of time because I suddenly felt a hand on one of my arms. I jumped and pulled away, the memory of the greasy Shop’s hands on my wrist too fresh in my mind. The grip grew harder as I tried to pull away and then wrenched my hand behind my back.

  I fought it, until I realized that it was the cop. Then I let him move both arms behind my back without a fight. I heard clicks as something tightened around my wrists. The officer helped me to a nearby wall and sat me gently against it.

  He looked me in the eyes and gave me a weak smile. “Just a precaution,” he said gently. “Just so you don’t accidentally hurt me or my partner, okay?”

  His eyes were a light brown that held a real warmth in them. I nodded once and then a second time in quick succession. His partner knelt beside The Shop and held two fingers on his neck.

  She grabbed a radio from her chest and clicked the button. “9L31. Suspect down. Pulse reedy. Request Ambulance.”

  “9L31, 10-4. Ambulance en route.”

  “9L30, 10-4,” this time the officer nearest to me responded. He looked me in the eyes again after he released the button. “Are you going to be okay here for a moment while I lock this alley down?”

  I swallowed audibly but then looked at the female officer kneeling above The Shop. I was safe if he was being watched, right? After a moment, I nodded. I stared blankly at the nearby wall, losing track of time once again as I tried to piece together my scattered thoughts. The darkness of the alley suddenly bloomed into a bright red-and-blue light show as cop cars and first responders drove cars into the space. The alley was necessarily wide to allow garbage trucks to get in and out to access the campus trash cans, so it wasn’t a problem for the many emergency responders to pack into the space.

  The next indeterminate amount of time became a blur of flashing red-and-blue. Officers put caution tape at each entrance to the alley and blocked them with diagonally parked vehicles. More and more bodies in uniform seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  First responders carefully turned The Shop over before getting him situated and locked in on a hard stretcher. They strapped his body in place and put something over his neck and face to either keep him from escaping or protect him from further damage. I didn’t know which, but I watched the procedure dully from my seated position against the wall.

  A few officers tried to come talk to me throughout the process, but for some reason I couldn’t make sense of their words anymore. I stared at the speakers, trying to put meaning to the sounds they made, but failed time and time again to hear them over the increasing sounds of growling in my ears. Eventually, the original officer came over and together with his partner helped me to my feet. Then they escorted me to a cop car near an entrance to the alley. The words ‘Police Interceptor’ stood out in stark relief across the passenger side door. What a weird name for a car. Were police really ‘intercepting’ so many things that it needed to be written across the car?

  “I’m going to cover your head with my jacket,” the woman cop said. It was the first clear words I’d heard in some time, but the sudden absence of the growling made me doubt my hearing. Cover my head? It wasn’t even raining outside. Suddenly, a small jacket was covering my head, neck, and back, leaving a small opening around my face. “So the other students don’t start snapping your picture.”

  A bit of force between my shoulders bent me forward and under something as they continued escorting me.

  “Brodie! Brodie, is that you?” I heard a shout nearby. It sounded like Dave, but turning my head didn’t move the jacket. The cops must have noticed my reaction though because they stopped for a moment.

  “Do you know him?” the male officer asked.

  “Umm, I think so. Brodie was on his way home after hanging out with me,” Dave’s voice responded.

  “Do you mind coming with us?” the officer asked. “We haven’t been able to get anything out of him. Do you have any contact information for his parents or guardians by chance?”

  “Yeah, Clara and Gary. That’s his mum and dad. Is everything okay? Is he okay?” Dave responded quickly.

  “We’ll explain in the car. Get in.”

  The officer lifted the ‘Police Line Do Not Cross’ tape, letting Dave, or at least his legs, duck underneath and move toward a police car.

  It wasn’t long before the female officer put a hand atop my head, and with a bit of force guided me into a cushioned seat of a different car. The smell of urine changed, morphing to urine mixed with a sterile car’s interior. At least that told me that I had in fact peed my pants. That fact somehow fit right in with all the other things that had happened to me over the past… however long it had been.

  The seat thankfully had some sort of plastic coating over it that my hands behind my back stuck onto. I felt the strap of the seatbelt get put around me gently, even as the cuffs got removed.

  “We’re going to get going very soon. We just need to fill out some paperwork with the help of your buddy, Dave. Okay?”

  I nodded, the jacket moving with my head. She didn’t take the item back, thankfully. The confinement steadied me somehow.

  When had the growling stopped? When had words started making sense again? I could recall this officer speaking with Dave. Maybe her words to me about the jacket?

  I leaned forward after I heard the door close, pressing my forehead against the cool plexiglass dividing the front and back seats and allowing the small jacket to shade me even further.

  My all-consuming thought now that I was left alone?

  Did I still have my Mana Pool, or would I soon start feeling my loss of connection to the world around me?