The scream is high-pitched, piercing, strident. It’s the sound of chalk on a chalkboard, amplified by ten. It drills into our eardrums, shattering the plain’s sacred silence with the force of an explosion.

  The echo bounces off the ruins. Fifty meters away, three Reapers wandering aimlessly stop dead.

  Their eyeless heads snap toward us. Their muscles contract. They drop into a sprinter’s stance, claws digging into the ash.

  The lizard shoots us one last smug look, folds its frill, and bolts into a mouse hole, mission accomplished. The bastard sold us out.

  I look at Kim and Chris. I see pure panic in their eyes. Chris opens his mouth to scream. Kim reaches over her shoulder for a rifle she already handed over.

  They’re about to run. If they run, they make noise. If they make noise, they die.

  Don’t move, I scream mentally, hoping my leader telepathy actually works. Above all, don’t move.

  Too late. The ground shakes.

  The three Reapers charge. They rush toward the exact spot where the scream rang out. Toward us.

  I see Chris’s muscles tense. He’s about to crack. He’s going to run. If he takes a single step, the crunch of his boots in the ash signs our death warrant.

  I have zero time to explain or play nice.

  I launch myself at him. I tackle him to the ground with everything I’ve got, my hand crushing his mouth, my weight pinning his shoulders into the dust. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Kim tensing to sprint. I shoot my leg out and sweep her hard. She hits the deck with a dull thud muffled by the ash.

  They stare at me with bulging, terrified eyes, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Chris struggles under me, trying to scream. I squeeze harder, my fingers digging right into his cheeks.

  Shut up, Chris. For the love of God, shut up.

  The ground vibrates harder and harder. The Reapers are thirty meters away. Twenty meters. They’re barreling down on us like flesh and bone freight trains. They’re going to trample us by pure accident, just because we’re blocking the path to the sound.

  I need to divert the aggro. Now.

  I scan the ground frantically. I need a projectile. Something heavy. Something loud.

  “[Observation of the Useless],” I project mentally.

  The world turns gray. Right in the middle of the ash, outlines glow white. Trash. There. Fifty centimeters from my hand. Buried under the dust. A rusted steel car rim.

  I let go of Chris’s shoulder, plunge my hand into the ash, and my fingers wrap around cold metal. It’s heavy. Dense. Perfect.

  The Reapers are ten meters away. I can smell their raw flesh and see the drool dripping from their jaws.

  I push up to one knee. I hold my breath. I tap into my 132 Attack points. My muscles lock up like steel cables.

  I lock onto a target. A white carcass with sleek lines, embedded in a brick wall. A Tesla Model 3. The glass roof is cracked, but the frame holds.

  I throw.

  The rim flies like a cannonball, cutting the air with a low whistle. Whoooosh.

  The Reapers are right on top of us. The shadow of the first one completely covers Chris. It raises a clawed paw to sweep the zone.

  CRASH!

  The rim smashes into the sedan’s windshield. Glass shatters. Metal twists.

  And then, the miracle—or the curse—of Elon Musk happens. The car battery must have had a tiny bit of juice left, miraculously preserved by the System, because “Sentry Mode” triggers.

  The headlights flash frantically and the car starts blasting Bach’s Toccata and Fugue—Dracula’s organ music—at max volume, layered with horrible electronic distortion.

  DUN-DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN! DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN!

  The Reaper freezes mid-lunge, its claw hanging ten centimeters from Chris’s face.

  Its ears pivot. Instantly.

  The other two stop dead, skidding in the ash and kicking up a gray cloud that blankets us.

  They snap their heads toward the car blasting the organ music.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “HROUUUUUU!”

  The scream they let out is completely inhuman. It’s a sound of pure predatory rage against this arrogant technology.

  They forget us. They forget the lizard. They forget everything. They pivot and charge the Tesla, galloping on all fours with terrifying speed.

  Three seconds later, they’re swarming the electric car. They throw themselves onto it, claws out, shredding the bodywork and ripping out the batteries to kill the music. Bach keeps screaming while they tear the car to pieces.

  We’re still here. Lying in the ash. Alive.

  I slowly peel my hand off Chris’s mouth. He’s shaking all over, tears rolling silently down his cheeks as he watches the Tesla get demolished.

  Thank you, Elon, I think very hard. I’ve talked a lot of trash about you, your rockets, and your ego, but today, sincerely… I owe you my life. Your Sentry Mode is humanity’s greatest invention.

  Kim lies frozen on the ground, pale as death, watching the carnage.

  I give them a slow hand signal. We move. Now.

  We crawl. We stay flat, slithering through the dust like worms, inching away from the death zone while the Reapers keep butchering an empty wreck.

  The alarm keeps screaming in the distance, drowning out our own noise. We bought time. We bought distance.

  The next few hours are a blur of pure tension.

  We walk slowly, step by step. We cross an ash field surrounding an isolated, old wooden farmhouse. A path of strange white sand is carefully laid out in the middle of the dirt, leading right up to the porch. A trail of abnormal softness, practically inviting you to walk without making a sound.

  The scenery changes to an abandoned foundry. A labyrinth of rusted pipes, cold furnaces, and metal grate walkways where every step rings like a mental gong in the absolute silence.

  Four hours of walking on eggshells. Four hours of watching white silhouettes prowling the horizon.

  Finally, the scenery shifts again. We leave the open plain and enter a dense urban zone. Gutted buildings, streets choked with rubble. A concrete maze. The map shows the door is exactly 200 meters away. We’re almost there.

  I slowly get to my feet, staying crouched behind a low wall. Kim and Chris follow suit. We exchange a look. The final stretch.

  We slip into a narrow alley.

  Suddenly, a weight drops onto my shoulder.

  Slimy. Wet.

  I turn my head in slow motion.

  Sitting right on my shoulder is a toad. Big as a fist, purple, and covered in pulsating pustules. It stares at me with its globulous yellow eyes. It opens its mouth.

  I recognize that look. It’s the exact same one the lizard gave us.

  I don’t even have time to grab it.

  “CROAK! CROAK! CROAK!”

  The noise is atrocious. It’s an organic police siren screaming directly into my ear. I grab my shoulder to rip it off, but it’s stuck. Its skin secretes some kind of superglue I can’t break.

  “CROAK!”

  The echo bounces off the building facades.

  Instantly, the ground starts to shake.

  In front of us. Behind us. On the roofs.

  “THEY’RE COMING!” Kim screams, shattering the rule of silence since it’s totally useless now.

  White shadows surge from every direction. Reapers. They leap from roof to roof, smashing through walls, converging right on me. On the noise.

  I’m a living GPS beacon.

  I look at the door at the end of the street. I look at Chris and Kim. If they stick with me, we all die.

  I make the call in a split second.

  I shove Chris violently toward the exit.

  “RUN!” I scream over the toad’s croaking. “RUSH THE DOOR!”

  “No! Uncle Ben!”

  “GET OUT! I’M PULLING AGGRO!”

  I leave him no choice. I spin around and sprint in the opposite direction, diving down a side alley.

  I run. I run harder than I ever have in my entire life. With my 74 Speed, the landscape blurs in my peripheral vision. The toad keeps screaming on my shoulder, a howling beacon broadcasting my exact coordinates to the entire floor.

  “OVER HERE, YOU BAGS OF BONES! COME HIT THE JACKPOT!”

  I see the shadows shift direction. The Reapers have locked onto me. I just became the absolute center of their universe.

  I hear the ground explode behind me. They’re bounding forward in massive leaps.

  I dive into a narrow alley barely wide enough for my shoulders. It’s my only salvation. These freaks are three meters tall and wide as trucks.

  CRASH!

  The first Reaper smashes into the alley entrance, wedging its massive shoulders into the concrete. It screams in rage, clawing the walls and raining down bricks. But the rest of the pack keeps coming. They climb the buildings, running vertically up the facades to flank me.

  I look up. They’re right above me, vaulting from roof to roof, ready to drop on me the second I hit open ground.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  I spot an opening on the left. A blown-out window on the ground floor of a ruined building. I don’t slow down. I dive right through.

  I clear the frame, rolling across a floor littered with broken glass.

  BOOM.

  A split second later, the ceiling caves in. A Reaper just landed exactly where I was. Its claw plows through the floorboards, missing my heel by centimeters.

  I bounce up without breaking stride, sprinting across the apartment. I hurdle an overturned sofa and slide under a collapsed beam. The monster roars behind me, smashing through interior walls like tissue paper.

  It’s fast. Way too fast. Even with my boosted stats, I feel its putrid breath hot on my neck.

  I burst out the other side of the building, crashing through a shattered bay window. I land outside in a small, open-air square choked with rubble.

  The exit door is right there. Dead ahead. Fifty meters away.

  Kim and Chris are already waiting, hands on the handle, screaming my name.

  But between me and the door is a dead zone. An open square. Zero cover.

  And up on the surrounding roofs, two more Reapers are prepping to leap and intercept me. They calculated my exact trajectory.

  “It’s now or never!”

  I don’t hit the brakes. I accelerate. I dig deep into my stamina reserves, my boots kicking up thick clouds of dust.

  The two monsters on the roofs jump. I watch them in slow motion, claws fully extended, dropping toward me like flesh-missiles to cut off my escape.

  I can’t dodge them.

  So I do the absolute last thing they expect. I throw myself flat on my back, sliding across the ash like a soccer player going in for a slide tackle.

  The two Reapers collide mid-air right above me with a sickening crunch of breaking bones, their claws snapping shut on the empty space where my head just was.

  I glide underneath, sliding right between their legs as they hit the dirt.

  I pop back up in stride, keeping all my momentum. The door is two meters away. Chris reaches his hand out.

  But the first Reaper—the one that chased me through the building—never slowed down. It crossed the square right on my heels. I feel its massive shadow wash over me. It’s right there. Its hand comes down.

  I jump.

  I smash into Chris and Kim full force, tackling all three of us right through the glowing green frame.

  The monster’s claws snap shut on empty air, slicing the bottom hem of my yellow vest a millimeter from my skin.

  Silence crashes back down brutally.

  We roll across the cold floor of a new room, alive, our hearts hammering hard enough to crack ribs.

  On my shoulder, the toad finally snaps its mouth shut and despawns.