I Choose the Skills Everyone Else Rejects

Chapter 71: Seventeen Streets

The first order was simple. Get everyone east.

The second contradicted it less than four minutes later.

WESTERN EVACUATION SUSPENDED

CIVILIANS REMAIN AT VERIFIED LOCATIONS

Nate read the message twice.

Joss leaned over his shoulder. "That’s going to go well."

Darek was already talking to West Operations. "You can’t evacuate through roads that stop connecting to the same places," he said. "Keep shelters where they are until Survey gives us corridors."

A voice answered through the communicator. Nate only caught part of it. "...three shelters already moving..."

"Then stop them." Darek’s tone changed enough that the municipal coordinator beside him stopped arguing with a police officer. "People moving blind are becoming rescue calls. I don’t need more rescue calls." He disconnected.

The apartment tower three blocks away continued changing. Its western face had settled into brick. The eastern half remained modern concrete and glass. Someone on a balcony was screaming for help. Nate could see why. The balcony belonged to the building’s old version. The apartment behind it did not. A solid wall separated the resident from the interior.

Joss put his helmet back on. "Please tell me that’s somebody else’s problem."

Darek looked at him. "Merin."

"Had to ask."

They started toward the tower. Nate followed. Behind them, the tram station filled with municipal workers marking the displaced entrance with temporary barriers. The father who had waited for his daughter was walking east with one hand wrapped around hers. The girl looked back at the impossible stairwell until the crowd hid it.

Varen’s sirens continued above them. No panic now. Something stranger. People were learning the rules while the rules were still changing.

The tower had three hundred and twelve registered residents. Only eighty-seven were supposed to be inside during the shelter order. Nobody knew how many were still accessible.

A building manager stood outside with two police officers and a tablet full of apartment numbers. "Floors nine through thirteen have partial alterations. Elevators stopped at eight."

Darek looked up. "Fire stairs?"

"West stair exists. East stair doesn’t."

"Doesn’t connect?"

The manager shook his head. "Doesn’t exist anymore."

Joss sighed. "That’s impressively inconvenient."

A woman wearing slippers pushed through the police line. "My husband is on eleven."

The manager recognized her. "Mrs. Harrow, we’ve got his unit."

"Then get him."

"We’re working on it."

"He’s seventy-three."

Joss looked toward the tower. "Apartment?"

"Eleven-zero-six."

He checked his harness. "I’ll take that floor."

Darek nodded. "Calder with me. You handle extraction."

Nate looked at Joss. "You’re going alone?"

"There’s a municipal team coming up behind me."

"You’re Second Circuit."

"So is half the reason they pay me more than them." He headed inside.

There was no bravado in it. Joss had a job. Nate was beginning to understand that Varen’s hierarchy wasn’t just combat strength. A Second Circuit extraction specialist could earn more during one emergency week than some civilian workers made in months, because when a building stopped obeying its own floor plan, somebody still had to bring people out.

The city had built entire professions around people like him. Nate had known that in theory. It looked different when someone else’s husband was waiting on the eleventh floor.

Darek took the west stairs. Nate stayed behind him.

The first eight floors were normal. People had already gathered in hallways with emergency bags, water, coats, medication. Nobody asked why the armed men were there. A teenager on the sixth floor was helping an older neighbor carry an oxygen unit. A little boy asked Darek if the building would disappear.

Darek stopped. "No."

Nate looked at him. Darek continued climbing. The boy’s mother pulled him back toward their apartment.

When they reached nine, Darek spoke quietly. "You don’t know that."

"No."

"Then why say it?"

"Because he needed to walk downstairs."

Nate didn’t have an answer.

They reached the ninth-floor door. Darek opened it.

The corridor beyond belonged to a different building. Wallpaper instead of painted panels. Old brass numbers—yellow light. The smell changed too. Dust, cooking oil, something floral.

Nate stayed in the doorway. "This isn’t just structure."

Darek touched the wall. The wallpaper was real. "People lived here."

"Maybe still do."

Darek looked at him. Nate pointed. A pair of shoes sat outside one apartment. Old-fashioned. Dustless.

Then somebody coughed behind the door.

Darek raised one hand. "Field Command." Silence. He knocked. "Anyone inside?"

A lock turned. An older man opened the door. He wore a white undershirt and held a kitchen knife. His eyes moved from Darek to Nate. "What happened to the lights?"

Nate frowned. Darek didn’t. "Sir, what year is it?"

The man’s expression sharpened. "What kind of question is that?"

"Humor me."

He gave the year.

Nate felt cold despite the building heat. Twenty-six years earlier.

The man noticed their uniforms. "What happened?"

Darek lowered his voice. "What’s your name?"

"Arno Pell."

Nate checked his terminal. The current resident registry loaded slowly.

ARNO PELL. FORMER RESIDENT. DECEASED NINETEEN YEARS AGO.

Darek saw it too. Neither spoke.

Pell looked between them. "Are you coming in or standing there?"

Nate felt Forsaken Claim press against his chest. Weak. Diffuse. This wasn’t a living Skill proposal. Something underneath Varen was reconstructing more than concrete.

A voice crackled from Darek’s communicator. "Twelve actual residents recovered on ten. We have one missing on nine."

Darek looked at Pell. "Sir, stay inside."

"Why?"

"We need to check the building."

"I’ve got work in three hours."

Nate glanced at the knife. "Maybe don’t go to work."

Pell stared at him. Darek moved before the conversation got worse. They closed the door.

Nate waited until they were several meters away. "He’s dead."

"I saw."

"Then what was that?"

"I don’t know."

"He thought it was twenty-six years ago."

"I heard him."

Nate looked back at the apartment. "We’re leaving him?"

"We don’t know what happens if we pull him out." Darek kept moving. "And there are living people upstairs."

It wasn’t cruel. That made it harder to argue with.

Tessa called as they reached ten. Her voice came through Darek’s communicator, fast enough that she was probably working while speaking. "I need confirmation. Have you encountered reconstructed occupants?"

Darek stopped. "One."

"Alive?"

"Define alive."

Nate heard typing. Tessa didn’t react to the wording. "Does he respond normally?"

"Yes."

"Current resident?"

"No."

"Identity?"

Darek gave it. Silence. More typing. "Arno Pell died nineteen years ago."

"We know."

"I’m seeing similar reports."

"How many?"

"Five possible. Two verified identities."

Nate leaned closer. "Do they remember dying?"

Tessa heard him. "No idea."

"What are they?"

"No idea."

"You sound happy."

"I’m not happy."

"You sound like Seris."

That got a pause. Then Tessa said, "Seris is currently trying to break into a restricted historical archive because municipal records don’t go back far enough."

Darek almost smiled. "Is she succeeding?"

"She says that’s an insulting question."

Nate could picture it too easily.

Tessa continued. "Do not physically relocate reconstructed occupants unless necessary. We don’t know whether they persist outside the affected geometry."

Darek looked at Nate. "There’s your answer."

Nate glanced back toward Pell’s apartment. "Temporary?"

"Unknown."

"Do they know they’re reconstructed?"

"Unknown."

"Can they hurt people?"

"Calder."

"What?"

"You’re doing it again." Tessa sounded tired rather than angry. "Asking me questions because you want somebody to have answers."

"I don’t."

Then she disconnected.

Nate stared at the communicator. Darek kept walking. "She’s right."

"I know."

"Good."

Nate almost replied, then caught himself. There was no reason to.

Floor eleven had split lengthwise. One half belonged to the modern tower. The other belonged to something older. Apartment 1106 sat precisely between them.

Joss was already there. He had removed part of the doorframe. The elderly husband was sitting on the floor inside with a municipal medic.

"Heart episode?"

Joss shook his head. "Bad fall. Hip, maybe."

The older man looked irritated. "I’ve broken a hip before. This isn’t one."

The medic touched his leg. "You’ve also been wrong before."

"About my own hip?"

"Apparently."

Nate looked beyond them. Half the apartment was modern. The kitchen wasn’t. A wooden table occupied space where the current floor plan showed a bedroom. Photographs hung on the wall. Different family. Different furniture.

The older man pointed toward them. "Those aren’t mine."

Joss glanced at Nate. "That’s why I don’t do research."

One of the photographs moved.

Nate stepped closer. Not the picture. Someone reflected in its glass. A woman stood behind him.

Nate turned. Nobody. He looked back. She was still in the reflection. Older. Dark hair tied behind her head. Watching the room.

Nate’s chest tightened. Forsaken Claim reacted.

REJECTED RESONANCE DETECTED

The woman raised one hand. A cupboard behind Nate opened.

He moved away. "Joss."

Joss saw his face. "What?"

"Get him out."

The older man objected. "I’m not finished being examined."

The medic was already helping him stand. Joss didn’t ask why. That was one thing Nate liked about competent people. They could ask later.

Darek entered. Nate pointed at the photograph. The reflected woman was gone.

"Something’s using the room."

Darek looked around. "Creature?"

"Maybe."

"Useful."

"Not especially."

The wooden table shifted. Its surface rippled and then returned to its previous shape. A crack in one leg disappeared.

Nate watched carefully. Restoration. Again. Different from the creature beneath Western Access, but related.

A cup fell from the counter. It shattered. Three seconds later, the fragments pulled together.

Joss stopped in the doorway. "Okay. I hate that."

The cup rose. Not into the air. Back onto the counter. Water returned inside it.

Darek’s expression changed. "Everybody out."

They moved. Nate followed until something struck the inside of his chest. Forsaken Claim. Stronger. He looked back.

The apartment was restoring itself, not physically repairing damage and reconstructing a previous state. The same cup. The same water. The same table. The same room. Maybe the same woman.

Nate suddenly understood the danger. "Darek."

"What?"

"If it restores the room..."

Darek stopped. The older man and medic were already at the stairwell.

Nate looked at the section of wall Joss had cut apart. The material was reforming.

"...then it might restore who was inside."

Joss stared. "I’ve been inside."

The doorway began closing. Darek grabbed his harness. "Move."

They ran. The old corridor returned behind them. For one instant Nate heard voices inside the apartment. A family talking. Normal conversation. Somebody laughing.

Then the wall sealed.

West Operations had forty-three active incident markers when they returned. Seventeen had become thirty-one. A large municipal screen displayed Varen’s western districts with black bands cutting across several neighborhoods.

Tessa stood at the main table surrounded by three Survey technicians. Seris was beside her, her hair tied back badly enough that strands kept falling across her face.

Nate stopped. "You got into the archive."

Seris didn’t look up. "Obviously."

Tessa glanced at him. "It took her sixteen minutes."

"Fourteen."

"You spent two complaining about access permissions."

"That was concurrent."

Darek put his helmet on the table. "Tell me what matters."

Seris finally looked at them. "These events aren’t random." She enlarged a city map. Historical layers appeared beneath the current streets. Old tram routes. Demolished housing. A hospital wing. An entire industrial block that no longer existed. The new anomalies overlapped them.

Not perfectly. Enough.

Seris tapped one district. "This building reverted to a configuration from twenty-two years ago." Another. "This road returned to an alignment abandoned thirty-one years ago." Another. "One hospital room reconstructed equipment removed twelve years ago."

Joss folded his arms. "And dead residents?"

Seris paused. "Some affected spaces appear to reconstruct biological states associated with them."

"That’s a very careful sentence."

"It’s meant to be."

Nate looked at the map. "Rejected Skills."

Seris met his eyes. "We have no proof."

"I felt them."

"I know."

Darek looked between them.

Seris continued. "What we can prove is that several events behave like functional effects rather than structural failures. Restoration. Position locking. Path extension. Possibly state preservation."

Nate understood. "They resemble Skills."

"Yes."

Joss looked at the map. "So the city has Skills now."

Seris rubbed her forehead. "No."

"You just said."

"I said the effects resemble Skill functions."

"Which means?"

"It means I don’t know what it means."

Joss nodded. "Much better."

Tessa changed the display. A new layer appeared. Property boundaries. Red claim notices were already multiplying.

Nate stared at them. "What’s that?"

"Ownership disputes."

"Already?"

Tessa looked at him as if he had asked whether gravity had already started. "One reconstructed building now occupies land owned by three different companies. A demolished warehouse reappeared around a current apartment block. Two businesses are claiming inventory that technically hasn’t existed for eighteen years."

Joss whistled.

Seris leaned against the table. "And we’re less than three hours into the event."

Nate looked through the operations windows. Varen was still there. Lights. Buildings. Traffic on the verified eastern roads. Nothing about the skyline suggested that pieces of the city’s past had begun returning inside it.

Darek’s communicator chimed. He read the message. His face changed.

"What?"

Darek turned the screen toward them.

FIELD COMMAND PRIORITY

ALL WESTERN RESPONSE TEAMS

SECONDARY RESONANCE RISE DETECTED

ESTIMATED EVENT WINDOW: 11 MINUTES

The room became louder immediately. Technicians called routes. Tessa started assigning survey teams. Seris grabbed her terminal. Joss picked up the foil wrapper he’d left earlier, saw it was empty, and looked genuinely disappointed.

Nate stared at the countdown.

Eleven minutes.

The first Tide had not ended.

It had only gone quiet.