I Choose the Skills Everyone Else Rejects

Chapter 70: The First Tide

Varen’s western warning sirens had three tones. Nate knew the first two. Evacuation. Structural failure. The third started while he was halfway down the stairs, lower than the others, long enough that people stopped moving before the announcement came.

"Unclassified field event. Western districts shelter in place until route verification."

Nobody on the stairwell seemed to know what that meant. Neither did Nate.

A woman two floors below looked at the emergency display beside the door. "What happened to evacuation?"

Someone behind her answered, "Routes aren’t verified."

"Verified for what?"

The screen changed before anyone answered. A city map appeared. Four western roads were red. Two were grey. One disappeared while Nate watched. The woman went quiet.

Nate continued downstairs. His terminal vibrated. Darek.

WEST OPERATIONS. NOW.

Another message arrived before Nate reached the next landing. Use interior route. Don’t take a street because the map says it’s there. That one sounded more like Darek.

West Operations had stopped pretending to be an office. Field tables filled the lobby, survey screens covering one wall. The temporary medical station had expanded into what used to be a waiting area, folding partitions separating six treatment spaces. A civilian construction company was unloading structural braces beside two Field Command transports. Nate recognized their logo. They normally repaired transit stations. Today they were reinforcing an Awakened operations center. That told him more about Varen than the sirens had.

Darek stood over a projected city map with Tessa. A man Nate didn’t know was beside them, eating something from a foil wrapper while still wearing an extraction harness.

Darek saw Nate. "Your knee?"

"Works."

"That wasn’t the question."

"It’s swollen."

"Better."

The stranger looked between them. "You two always do this?"

"Unfortunately," Darek said, then pointed at the man. "Joss Merin. Extraction."

Joss raised the foil wrapper in greeting. "Second Circuit. Logistics, breaching, carrying people who thought ’shelter in place’ was optional." He looked at Graveshare. "The black arm gives it away."

"Nate."

"I know."

Joss took another bite. Nate looked at his harness. Several clips had been replaced recently, one strap patched with tape that didn’t match the rest.

Darek tapped the city map. "Focus." Five districts had now been divided into colored blocks. Green meant route confirmed. Yellow meant pending Survey. Red meant structural movement. Grey had no legend.

Nate pointed at one. "What’s grey?"

Tessa didn’t look up. "We lost confidence in the map."

"That’s a category?"

"It became one forty minutes ago." She enlarged a western intersection. The road grid overlapped itself.

"That’s two streets."

"It’s one street."

"There are two."

"Yes."

Joss finished his food and crumpled the wrapper. "See why they pay Survey?"

Nate looked at Tessa. "How much?"

She finally looked at him. "Not enough." Then returned to the map. That sounded more convincing than any explanation of Survey’s value.

Darek indicated three blocks near an old tram station. "Municipal shelter. Two hundred and eighteen registered civilians. Route Seven was cleared eighteen minutes ago."

Tessa zoomed in. "It isn’t clear anymore."

"What changed?"

"The station entrance moved."

Joss picked up his helmet. "Again?"

"Thirty-one meters."

He stopped. "That’s more than yesterday."

"Much."

Darek looked at Nate. "You felt something underground before the changes." It wasn’t phrased as a question.

"Rejected resonance." Tessa glanced over, and Nate immediately regretted the wording.

Darek noticed. "Whatever you call it privately, can you feel it before things move?"

"Sometimes."

"How early?"

"I don’t know."

Joss clipped his helmet to the harness. "Excellent. Love measurable assets."

Nate ignored him. "Where are we going?"

"Route Seven." Darek looked at Tessa. "You’re staying."

"No."

"Your map team needs you here."

"They have the map."

"They have six maps. They need someone willing to admit when all six are wrong."

Tessa didn’t like it. She also didn’t argue.

Darek pointed at the transport. "Merin with us."

Joss groaned. "I just sat down."

"You ate standing."

"Exactly. I was working toward sitting."

The western districts didn’t look like a disaster zone yet. That made them worse. Shops were closed. Traffic signals still worked. Apartment windows glowed above empty streets. A cafe near the tram line had chairs stacked behind its windows and a handwritten sign taped to the door.

CLOSED UNTIL ROUTES STOP LYING

Joss saw Nate reading it. "They opened for six hours yesterday."

"What happened?"

"Kitchen ended up with two exits."

"That sounds useful."

"One opened into a wall."

Three streets later, the city changed. A row of buildings no longer met the pavement evenly, one entrance sitting almost a meter above street level. Temporary ladders had already been installed. Municipal workers painted new route arrows directly onto walls because road signs had become unreliable. At an intersection, an insurance crew photographed a building while its owners argued with a city official.

Nate caught part of it through the open transport window.

"You can’t classify the apartment as lost if I can still see it."

"Sir, your apartment is currently accessible through a different building."

"It’s still my apartment."

The transport moved on. Nate looked back. Joss followed his gaze. "Claims offices are going to be fun."

"Who owns something if it moves?"

"No idea."

"You work extraction."

"I move things. Lawyers decide who gets angry afterward."

Darek sat opposite them, checking his equipment. "Save the philosophy."

Joss looked offended. "That was property law."

Police barriers blocked Route Seven. A municipal coordinator waved them through. Beyond the barrier, thirty civilians waited beside the tram station instead of inside it.

Darek jumped out. "I thought this was a shelter."

"It was," the coordinator said.

"Why are they outside?"

She pointed. The station entrance had moved. Nate understood what Tessa meant. The stairs still descended beneath the street. They started thirty meters from the building they belonged to. Where the original entrance had been, there was now only pavement, no hole, no concrete scars, nothing at all.

Joss walked around the new stairwell. "That’s rude."

The coordinator didn’t laugh. "We have sixty-three below."

Darek stopped. "People?"

"Yes."

"Why weren’t they brought out?"

"We tried." She pointed toward the stairs. "The lower platform doesn’t connect to this entrance."

Joss stared down. "Then what does?"

"We don’t know."

A man near the civilian group shouted. "My daughter is downstairs."

The coordinator turned. "We know, Mr. Elsen."

"You said that twenty minutes ago."

"And shouting hasn’t shortened it."

He started toward her. A police officer moved between them.

Nate looked at Darek. Darek was already descending. "Merin." Joss followed. "Nate, behind us."

They went down.

The stairs ended after twenty-four steps, not at the tram platform but at a corridor Nate had never seen. Old tile walls. Utility pipes. No signage. Joss ran a hand along one tile. "Municipal?"

Darek looked at the ceiling. "Older."

Nate felt it. Pressure behind his sternum. Weak. He stopped. Darek noticed immediately. "What?"

"Something’s here."

Joss looked around. "I’d gathered that from the mystery tunnel."

Nate stepped forward. The pressure increased. Forsaken Claim opened.

REJECTED RESONANCE DETECTED

He didn’t need the rest. "Back."

Darek looked at him. "Why?"

"I think it’s about to change."

Joss’s expression lost its humor. "How sure?"

The floor moved. That answered him. Tiles cracked somewhere ahead. The corridor stretched. Nate watched the far wall slide away, with nothing physically moving between them. Ten meters became twenty. Then thirty.

Joss swore. Darek grabbed Nate’s vest before he could move forward. "Wait."

A scream echoed from somewhere beyond the corridor. A child’s voice.

Darek released him. "Now we move."

The corridor didn’t stay the same length. That became obvious within the first minute. They ran thirty meters. The far wall remained thirty meters away. Joss slowed. "This is stupid."

Nate felt the pressure again. "Stop." They stopped. The corridor shortened. Fast. The far wall came toward them. Joss stepped back. Nate didn’t.

Something was wrong with the pattern. Movement. Distance. Forsaken Claim pulsed. A rejected Skill had left something here. He didn’t know which Skill, but the corridor reacted as they moved through it.

"Darek."

"Talk."

"When we ran, it stretched."

"I noticed."

"When we stopped, it closed."

Joss looked at the wall approaching them. "So?"

Nate watched it. "If it reacts to displacement..."

Darek understood first. "Walk."

They moved slowly. The corridor still changed. Much less. Joss looked at Nate. "Your weird thing tell you that?"

"Partly."

"Very scientific."

They continued. The wall stopped retreating. After forty steps, they reached a doorway. The tram platform was behind it. Sixty-three people had been trapped there. A woman in a transit uniform was organizing them into groups. She saw the Field Command marks and came over. "Finally."

Darek looked around. "Any injuries?"

"Two falls. One panic attack. Power’s been stable."

A little girl sat on a bench beside an older man. The same girl the father above had probably been shouting about.

Joss checked the exit behind them. "How many can we move at once?"

Nate looked at the corridor. "Maybe not many."

Darek turned toward him. "Why?"

"The more movement, the stronger the response."

The transit worker frowned. "What response?"

Joss pointed at the impossible corridor. "That."

She stared at him. "I was hoping you understood it."

"Give us a week."

Darek walked toward the civilians. "We take ten."

The transit worker followed. "I have sixty-three."

"We’ll come back."

"How long?"

Darek looked at Nate. Nate hated that. "I don’t know."

The woman pressed her lips together. Then turned. "Families with children first." No argument. No speech. People started moving. That was what living in a world with Awakened emergencies looked like. Everyone already knew somebody had to go first.

The first group reached the stairs safely. The corridor stretched once when a child ran. Nate caught him before he got five steps. "Walk."

"My dad’s outside."

"I know." The boy looked ready to ignore him. Joss crouched. "Your dad waited half an hour. He can survive another thirty seconds." That worked. They moved.

At the surface, the father nearly knocked over a police officer reaching his daughter. Nate looked away before the reunion finished. Darek didn’t, only for a second. Then he turned back toward the stairwell. "Again."

They went down. Second group. Third. The pressure behind Nate’s sternum grew each trip. Not because the resonance was strengthening. Because something else was approaching; he realized it during the fourth extraction.

"Stop." Joss froze. Darek looked back. The civilians behind them stopped too. Nate listened. Nothing. Then a faint clicking came through the tiles.

Joss unhooked a short breaching tool. "That’s not a corridor noise."

The wall beside them bulged. A pale limb punched through. People screamed. Darek moved first. The creature tore itself into the corridor, smaller than the ones from Western Access, same pale armor, same vertical mouth. But one side of its body had changed. Its rear limbs were too long, and every time it moved forward, the corridor stretched with it.

Nate understood. It had absorbed the local pattern.

"Get them back." Joss moved toward the civilians. Darek opened his Circuit. The creature lunged. Nate moved with him.

Killing Step. The corridor lengthened under their feet. His timing went wrong immediately. The creature’s limb crossed his path. Nate shifted current halfway through the step, his correction coming late. The claw caught his vest and spun him into the wall. His shoulder held. His ribs did not appreciate it.

Darek’s baton struck the creature’s head. The body folded. Then stretched with the corridor.

Nate pushed himself up. The civilians were retreating slowly. Joss wasn’t simply escorting them. He was controlling their pace. "Nobody runs!"

A woman shouted, "It’s coming!"

"I can see that!"

His Skill activated. Nate felt the change through the floor. The group moved differently. Not faster. More evenly, weight distributed, steps synchronized just enough that the corridor stopped reacting violently to individual movement. Nate understood why an extraction specialist mattered. Not because he carried people. Because he could move groups through places where panic killed them.

Darek hit the creature again. "Nate!"

He went. This time he didn’t try to force the direction change. He watched the creature’s elongated rear limb, waited for commitment. Killing Step. One controlled correction. Mourning Edge entered beneath the front plate. Dark fluid sprayed. The armor began returning. Nate kept the blade inside.

Darek saw it. His baton came down. The plate cracked. Again. The creature’s mouth opened, threads unfolding. Nate pulled Graveshare free and ducked. Darek caught the head with both hands. His Circuit surged. He drove the creature into the floor. Nate struck the exposed center. The pale body went still. The corridor contracted. Fast.

"Move!" Joss shouted. This time everyone ran.

All sixty-three civilians reached the surface. The last group emerged eighteen minutes after the first. The father with the little girl was still there. So were most of the others. The municipal coordinator counted everyone twice before letting the police move them toward the eastern route.

Nate sat on the edge of the displaced stairwell. His knee hurt again.

Joss dropped beside him. "You do that often?"

"What?"

"Know a place is about to become impossible."

"No."

"Great." He drank half a bottle of water, then handed the rest to Nate. Nate took it.

Darek was speaking with the coordinator. Something changed in the crowd. People started pointing west.

Nate stood. Three blocks away, the side of an apartment tower shimmered. For a moment nothing happened. Then six balconies disappeared. Older balconies appeared in different positions. Laundry lines. Different windows. A faded advertisement painted across brick that hadn’t been visible in decades.

The building had not collapsed. It had become an earlier version of itself.

Cars parked beside it screamed alarms as concrete shifted around them.

Tessa’s voice came through Darek’s communicator. "West team, we have simultaneous events."

Darek looked at the tower. "How many?"

A pause. "Eleven confirmed." Another pause. "Seventeen."

Nate felt Forsaken Claim. Once. Twice. Then everywhere across Varen.

REJECTED RESONANCE DETECTED

The municipal screens around the intersection went black. When they returned, every western district had changed color. Not red. A new designation.

REJECTION EVENT

Nate stared at the city. The first anomaly beneath Sector Three had been a warning.

This was something else.

Varen had started choosing again.