The juice box had cost three crumpled coins from the bottom of her coat pocket. The corner market was pulling down its metal shutters as Maria dashed under the gap, hearing the old owner curse something about kids wandering the streets after ten.
She just wanted to drink her juice while sitting on the low wall near home. Her mother was working the second shift at the textile factory, her older brother was snoring in the bedroom with the television blaring static, and the house smelled like mold and frying grease. Staying outside, even with the fine night mist dampening her braids, felt better than being cooped up indoors.
That crack in the air happened without warning.
The crack came out of nowhere, sharp and dry, tearing a vacuum right in the middle of the alley that sucked in the surrounding air for a second before vomiting a cloud of black smoke. The smell invaded Maria's nostrils before her eyes could make sense of the scene: scorched rubber, rot, and hot ash.
And then, the boy hit the ground face-first.
The juice box slipped from her fingers. The liquid leaked down the cardboard carton, splattering the toes of her white socks.
The boy was utterly battered. The gray jacket bore three wide gashes across the side, exposing raw flesh beneath, where blood pooled dark and glistening, staining the dirt and rotting leaves in the gutter. He lifted his head with great effort, spat something filthy onto the concrete, looked straight into her eyes, and let out that single word:
"Shit."
His head slapped sideways against the pavement. His body lost all tension at once, sprawled limp between two trash cans.
Shock caught in Maria's throat. Her chest puffed out, drawing in all the damp night air to unleash a scream that would wake the entire street, summon her brother, the neighbors, and anyone else alive in that forgotten neighborhood.
The scream jammed behind her teeth.
Air stopped flowing in. Her breath refused to leave.
The droplet of apple juice falling from the tip of the crushed carton hung suspended in mid-air, two inches from the ground, perfectly motionless. A brown moth circling the yellow streetlight froze mid-flight with its wings spread wide, glued to empty space. The distant rumble of trucks on the highway vanished. The wind cut out completely, leaving the hem of Maria's dress stiff mid-flutter.
Am I dead?
She tried to move her feet, but her shoes felt bolted to the sidewalk. Only her eyes could dart around in their sockets, rolling in desperate panic.
Footsteps crunched against gravel.
They were slow, rhythmic steps, without the slightest hurry. Someone was walking out of the deep gloom at the back of the alley, heading into the dim yellow glow of the streetlamp.
The guy who stepped into view looked nothing like the men who lived around here. He wore a loose white jacket with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, spotless canvas sneakers that didn't sink into the muddy ground, and light blue jeans. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and he chewed on the tip of a wooden toothpick, flicking it from one corner of his mouth to the other with his tongue.
The man stopped beside the unconscious boy, looked down, tilted his head, and clicked his tongue.
"Look at the mess this brat got himself into." The man's voice was mellow and drawling, carrying the lazy cadence of someone chatting about the score of a pickup soccer match. "Ten years old and already sticking his snout where it doesn't belong. Stubborn as an old mule."
"Hey, wake up, you little piece of shit!" He nudged the sole of the boy's sneaker with a light kick, just to check for a reaction. "Tsk... just as I thought." Not a twitch.
Maria tried to speak, but her throat remained locked tight. The man noticed her struggling and turned toward the girl's braids.
His eyes had a thin, luminous ring along their rims, reflecting a warm light that came from no streetlamp in that neighborhood. The air around him was warm, driving away the stench of garbage with a clean scent like a morning breeze fluttering laundry on a clothesline.
"Easy there, kiddo." He slipped his right hand out of his pocket and waved two fingers vaguely through the air toward her chin. "Go ahead and breathe. No need to scream, my ears are sensitive, and you really don't want to see me act on instinct just to stop something that gets on my nerves."
The pressure across Maria's chest shattered. Air rushed back in, burning her lungs and making her choke before managing a cough.
"Who... who are you?" Her voice came out thin, almost a wheeze. Her legs were shaking so violently she had to brace her hands against her knees to keep from collapsing into the puddle of juice. "What did you do to time? The drop isn't falling!"
The guy gave a short chuckle through his nose, tugging at the collar of his white jacket. A tiny, nearly imperceptible speck of white down drifted from the fabric, vanishing before it could touch the filthy ground.
"The droplet is just waiting for our chat to wrap up, that's all. That explanation ought to be enough for beings of limited intelligence like yourself." He took two steps closer to her, keeping a polite distance. "My name doesn't matter much to you right now, kid. What matters is that bag of broken bones over there on the ground."
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing back at the boy who continued bleeding into the mud.
"He fell from the sky!" Maria pointed a trembling finger, eyes wide. "He popped out of that stinking smoke! He's dying, mister! We need to call an ambulance, the police, someone..."
"An ambulance?" The man twisted his mouth in a sneer. "Little girl, if you let an ordinary doctor anywhere near this kid right now, he'll end up on an autopsy table before sunrise. His blood is soaked in ash from the other side. Not a single drug from your corner pharmacy is going to close those three trenches along his ribs."
"Is he going to die?"
"If it's up to his frail little body? Yeah. Real quick." The man let out a long sigh, plucking the toothpick from his mouth and flicking it to the ground. The wood didn't even hit the dirt, evaporating into a golden spark before landing. "The trouble is, this kid has work to do. He's hard-headed, born with his engine running crooked, but he can't turn into worm food just yet. It'd cause a massive headache for everyone upstairs trying to reshuffle the paperwork."
He looked right into Maria's eyes. There was a weight behind that gaze that didn't match his lazy way of speaking. A chill ran down the girl's spine, not from terror, but from a strange sense of smallness, like staring out over the open ocean in the dead of a storm.
"And you, kiddo, happened to be in the wrong place at the right time."
"I only came to buy juice..."
"Yeah. Tough break. Or pure luck, depending on how you look at it."
He snapped the fingers of his free hand.
The sound chimed like a glass bell ringing through the silent alley.
Right before Maria's eyes, hovering between her and the man in the light jacket, a translucent screen unfolded. The text wasn't written on paper, but traced in silver light across a hovering gray background.
[Forced Subsystem Initialization.]
[Identified individual: Maria.]
[Latent Aptitude detected: Rank F.]
[Emergency binding authorized by Higher Authority.]
Maria stepped back on pure instinct, but her back struck the brick wall of the convenience store.
"What... what kind of glowing paper is this?"
"It's not paper, it's a tool." The guy slipped his hands back into his pockets, rocking back on his heels with easy confidence. "You just got granted a special permit. A shortcut. Most folks in this world live and die without ever knowing this stuff exists, but your ticket got pulled in today's raffle."
The lettering on the screen shifted on its own, sliding upward in a quick scroll.
[New Quest Assigned (Non-Standard Origin).]
[Title: Protect the Light.]
[Primary Objective: Ensure the survival of the Light Bearer (Dante) during his recovery period.]
[Secondary Objective: Maintain discretion regarding the existence of the rift and interfaces.]
[Reward: Permanent Interface Activation, Lesser Support Class Unlock, Life Affinity.]
[Failure Penalty: Interface Revocation, Local Causal Repair.]
Maria read slowly. She read fairly well for her age, but those words carried a bizarre weight, almost too heavy for a nine-year-old mind to process.
"Dante?" She peeked underneath the floating screen toward the motionless body. "Is that his name?"
"That's the name he picked for his current husk." The man shrugged. "The kid's a handful. Thinks he's the cleverest guy in the room, but he's so frail he almost turned into a mid-afternoon snack for a bottom-feeder on his very first stroll. If you leave him out here in the cold mist, he'll bleed dry before four in the morning. And if he dies, you lose that little screen, and your life goes right back to the same old grind of corner markets, dust, and waiting for your mom to drag herself home from work."
Maria looked at the man. His words were blunt, but they held no deceit. There was a hard truth cutting through every sentence.
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Take him to your place." The man nodded toward the street. "Or stash him in any dry corner. Grab clean rags, warm water, and press down on those shredded ribs until they stop leaking. That screen you got will handle the rest. Once his health bar stops dropping, you get your reward."
"My brother is asleep at home."
"Your brother wouldn't wake up if lightning struck the roof, you know that." The man gave a quick wink. "Trust the process, kid. Figure it out. You've got more grit than that smug little brat sprawled on the ground."
He took two steps backward, retreating into the deeper gloom of the alley. The air around him began to thin, the bright white of his jacket blurring into the gray night haze until losing all outline.
"Hey! Wait!" Maria took a step forward. "You're leaving?"
"Got a shift somewhere else, kiddo. Looking after dead folks is a hell of a lot of work." He raised a hand in a lazy, mocking wave. "Oh, and some free advice: once the kid wakes up, don't go coddling him. His ego is bigger than his health bar. Give him an inch, and he'll try bossing you around."
The man took one more step back and was simply gone. There was no boom, no smoke, and no wind. Only the bare expanse of rough concrete wall.
The world snapped back into motion with the force of a slap.
The droplet of apple juice finished its fall, smacking the ground with a wet splat. The moth resumed buzzing around the yellow bulb. The distant rumble of highway trucks flooded the night once more, muffled and relentless.
The glowing screen remained hovering before Maria's eyes, translucent enough for her to see Dante's bloodied body right behind the silver script.
Blood kept oozing from the side of the boy's jacket, spreading a thin pool that crept toward the tip of her shoe.
Maria swallowed down the tears clawing at her throat, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her red dress, and walked over to the limp body. She crouched in the mud, grabbed the boy by his bony shoulders, and felt his dead weight. He was cold. His skin felt like ice, contrasting sharply with the feverish heat of the blood smearing over her small hands.
"Wake up, you idiot..." she grumbled under her breath, heaving his arm over her shoulder with every ounce of strength her small frame could muster. "You're way too heavy for someone who looks starved."
Dante didn't answer. Only a low, raspy groan slipped between dust-caked teeth as she began dragging him out of that reeking alley.