At thirty-eight, Adrian had learned that there were very few problems in life that couldn't be made at least marginally better by going home.
His boss wasn't one of them.
Neither was the quarterly report still sitting unfinished on his desk.
But both of those were problems for tomorrow.
Adrian stepped through the glass doors of the office building and loosened his tie.
Eight hours.
Nine, technically.
Nine hours of spreadsheets, meetings, emails, and one particularly memorable twenty-minute discussion about why a number in one spreadsheet didn't match the same number in another spreadsheet.
He had contributed very little to that discussion.
This had apparently been the correct decision.
The evening air was cool enough to feel good against his face.
Adrian checked the time on his phone.
18:17.
He considered stopping for groceries.
Then he considered the frozen pizza in his freezer.
The frozen pizza won.
Something chimed behind him.
Adrian stepped aside without looking.
A moment later, a courier shot past on a narrow delivery board hovering half a meter above the pavement. Blue-white symbols flickered beneath it as it banked around the corner.
“Yeah, sure,” Adrian muttered. “Sidewalks are optional.”
The courier didn't hear him.
Or didn't care.
Probably the latter.
Adrian shoved his phone into his pocket and started toward the station.
The streets were busy with people heading home.
A woman in a charcoal business suit came toward him, speaking rapidly into an earpiece.
Human, mostly.
A pair of short, triangular ears covered in reddish-brown fur rose through her dark hair, turning independently toward the traffic as she walked. A tail of the same color emerged through a tailored opening in the back of her trousers, swaying behind her with every step.
Fox, Adrian guessed.
Maybe.
He'd learned years ago that guessing someone's ancestry from their ears was a good way to be confidently wrong.
She stepped around a slow-moving couple without interrupting her conversation, one ear flattening briefly in irritation.
Behind her came someone considerably harder to mistake for human.
He stood well over two meters tall, with a heavy torso and thick arms stretching the sleeves of his work jacket. Short black fur covered his forearms and climbed toward his neck. His head was broadly bovine, though not quite that of any animal Adrian had ever seen, and two blunt horns curved backward above his temples.
He was carrying three grocery bags in one hand.
In the other, he held the tiny hand of a little girl who looked much more human than he did, except for the floppy black ears poking through her hair.
She was telling him something with great enthusiasm.
The enormous man nodded solemnly.
Adrian passed them without a second glance.
Nobody else looked either.
Why would they?
He stopped at a crossing.
The pedestrian light was red.
Beside it, a glowing advertisement rotated lazily above a metal projector.
PORTALFARE WEEKEND SPECIAL
A tropical coastline appeared in the air.
Then a city Adrian didn't recognize beneath a green sky.
Then:
Two worlds. One ticket.
Adrian looked away.
He couldn't afford a holiday on this world.
He certainly couldn't afford one on another.
The light changed.
He crossed with everyone else.
A little boy ahead of him held his mother's hand. With the other, he was trying to keep a tiny blue flame hovering above his palm.
It went out.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Again.
A spark appeared.
His mother glanced down.
“Not here.”
“But Mom—”
“Home.”
The boy sighed with the profound suffering only children could summon and closed his hand.
Adrian smiled despite himself.
He remembered being that age.
Back then, he'd spent weeks wondering what his own assessment would find.
Everyone went through the first aptitude screening eventually. Human or otherwise. It had been that way for decades.
The official explanation was safety.
Find out what a child could do before the child discovered it by setting fire to a classroom, putting a fist through a wall, or accidentally doing something considerably worse.
Adrian suspected that was only half the reason.
The first screening was simple. Enough to identify an affinity, estimate capacity, and flag anything unusual.
Those who showed promise came back later.
More tests.
More measurements.
Output. Control. Recovery. Physical capability.
Eventually, a profile.
And, for the gifted ones, attention.
Schools wanted them.
Guilds wanted them.
Corporations wanted them.
The military especially wanted them.
Everyone knew the recruitment officers loved a teenager with an impressive assessment.
They called it career guidance.
Adrian's father had called it shopping.
By the time mandatory service assessment came around years later, there was rarely much mystery left. Anyone with serious magical or physical potential had been in the system for years.
High-capacity casters.
Healers.
Combat affinities.
Species with exceptional physical traits.
People suited for portal security, expeditionary units, or whatever new crisis required armed professionals to step through a hole in reality and make sure something unpleasant didn't come back through it.
Adrian had never needed to worry about any of that.
His first assessment had taken less than an hour.
His second had mostly confirmed the first.
No measurable affinity.
Negligible capacity.
Unremarkable physical profile.
No unusual traits.
No recommended specialization.
Years later, his military assessment had reached much the same conclusion in considerably more official language.
Fit for basic service.
Suitable for administrative and logistical roles.
No priority recruitment.
Perfectly, spectacularly ordinary.
At twelve, that had bothered him.
At eighteen, he'd found it mildly insulting.
At thirty-eight, Adrian mostly appreciated that nobody had ever expected him to fight anything that had come through a portal.
The boy ahead of him managed another blue spark.
Adrian smiled.
Good luck, kid.
His phone buzzed.
He pulled it out as he walked.
JONAS
Adrian opened the message.
Friday. Eight. Keller's. And don't tell me you're tired this time.
A second message appeared before Adrian could answer.
We're thirty-eight, not dead.
Adrian snorted.
He and Jonas had known each other since they were fourteen, which meant Jonas had been annoying him for considerably longer than most marriages lasted.
They'd once managed to see each other several times a week.
Then came jobs.
Relationships.
Jonas had gotten married.
Adrian had very nearly done the same.
Somewhere along the way, several times a week had become once a month if they were lucky.
Adrian typed:
I was there last time.
The reply came almost immediately.
You stayed 47 minutes.
I had work.
You drank one beer and complained about your back.
Adrian stared at the message.
Fuck you.
Three dots appeared.
Friday. 8.
Adrian smiled and put the phone away without answering.
He'd go.
Probably.
He'd been saying that too often lately.
Work had developed an unpleasant habit of consuming the parts of his life that were supposed to happen after work.
There was a half-finished series waiting for him at home. Six episodes, according to the streaming app.
He'd been on episode three for nearly two weeks.
Worse was the game.
Adrian had bought it the day it released, installed it immediately, spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to play, and then created a spellblade because apparently thirty-eight years of having no magical talent in real life hadn't diminished the appeal.
Total playtime: four hours and seventeen minutes.
Jonas already had sixty.
The bastard had children.
Adrian still wasn't sure how that worked.
Maybe tonight he'd play for an hour.
Pizza.
Shower.
Game.
That sounded considerably better than answering emails until half past seven.
Tomorrow, he promised himself, he was leaving on time.
He'd made the same promise yesterday.
The station entrance was already visible ahead when the phone buzzed again.
Adrian sighed and checked it.
This time it was his sister.
MARA
Mom wants to know if you're coming Sunday.
Adrian kept walking.
Why doesn't Mom ask me?
Because you ignore her.
I don't ignore her.
The response arrived instantly.
She called you yesterday.
Adrian frowned.
He checked his missed calls.
There it was.
17:42.
He had, in fact, ignored his mother.
I was working.
Yesterday was Sunday.
Adrian stopped typing.
That complicated his defense.
Another message appeared.
Lunch. 1pm. Mom. Sunday. Be there.
Then:
She's making the potatoes you like.
Adrian considered this.
That was unfair.
His mother had many talents.
Guilt was one of them.
Technically, magic was another.
Her aptitude had never amounted to much—some minor thermal affinity that would have earned her precisely zero attention from a military recruiter—but she had spent the last thirty years insisting it made her a better cook.
His father maintained that this was nonsense.
His father had considerably more authority on magical matters.
Thirty-one years in the military, most of them attached to portal security and expeditionary units, had left him with a respectable service record, a damaged knee, and enough stories to make every family gathering last twenty minutes longer than necessary.
He'd been a C-rank when he retired.
Nothing extraordinary.
Just good at what he did.
Mara had inherited more of that side of the family. Her own aptitude tests had found a respectable restorative affinity when she was young.
Adrian had inherited their mother's nose.
Genetics had a sense of humor.
I'll be there, he typed.
A heart appeared beneath the message.
Then another line.
See? I know how to communicate with you.
Adrian shook his head.
Food.
Apparently everyone knew his weaknesses.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and headed down the station steps.
* * *
Twenty-three minutes later, Adrian emerged three districts closer to home.
The difference was immediate.
Fewer office buildings.
Fewer people.
Smaller shops squeezed beneath apartment blocks that had probably looked old before Adrian was born.
He preferred it here.
Not because it was particularly beautiful.
It wasn't.
But it was his.
The bakery on the corner was already closing. The little portal-import shop beside it was still open, its front window crowded with brightly colored packages bearing scripts Adrian couldn't read.
Someone had chalked a warning onto a board outside.
EMBER PEPPERS – DO NOT EAT RAW
Underneath, in different handwriting:
SERIOUSLY.
Adrian briefly considered going inside.
Then remembered the pizza.
Commitment mattered.
He turned onto Linden Street.
His phone said he was twelve minutes from home.
Ten if he cut through the old service road behind the shopping complex.
Adrian took the service road.
He usually did when he worked late.
It shaved two minutes off the walk, and at this hour there was rarely anyone back here.
Just cracked pavement running between the rear of the shopping complex and an old retaining wall. Delivery entrances. Dumpsters. Utility boxes.
During the day, vans came and went constantly.
In the evening, the place emptied quickly.
Adrian had walked it hundreds of times.
He loosened his tie a little more.
His shoulders hurt.
Tomorrow he was going to leave work on time.
He made this promise to himself at least twice a week.
A white delivery van stood farther down the road.
Adrian barely noticed it.
His phone buzzed.
Jonas.
I'm counting that as a yes.
Adrian smiled and started typing.
Then why did you ask?
“Adrian?”
He looked up.
A woman stood a few meters ahead of him.
Dark hair. Grey coat. Early thirties, perhaps.
Adrian slowed.
He didn't recognize her.
“Yeah?”
She stepped closer.
“Thought so.”
Her hand came up.
Adrian flinched.
Two fingers brushed the side of his neck.
Cold tore through his shoulder.
His phone slipped from his hand and struck the pavement.
“What the fuck?”
His right arm went numb.
The woman reached for him again.
Adrian recoiled.
It wasn't skill.
It wasn't training.
He simply panicked.
He stumbled away from her, nearly lost his footing, caught himself against the wall and ran.
Two steps.
Maybe three.
Then something closed around his waist.
Adrian stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
His feet left the ground.
“What—”
He rose another thirty centimeters.
Adrian stared down.
There was nothing beneath him.
Then the air shifted.
A shape became visible around his body.
Faint blue-white lines traced enormous fingers around his waist and chest, translucent enough that Adrian could see his own coat through them.
A hand.
A fucking hand.
Adrian twisted instinctively.
The construct didn't move.
He kicked once.
His shoe met empty air.
Behind him, the man beside the van lowered the phone he'd apparently been looking at.
One hand remained raised.
Two fingers curled slightly.
The enormous translucent fingers around Adrian tightened in response.
Not painfully.
Just enough.
Adrian stopped moving.
His heart hammered.
The woman looked toward the man.
“Partial.”
“I noticed.”
That was it.
No surprise.
No argument.
The woman glanced at her wrist.
“Still clear?”
“Two minutes, fourteen.”
Adrian looked between them.
Two minutes, fourteen?
The woman looked toward the end of the service road.
The man didn't.
“Next delivery?”
“Seven minutes.”
Adrian felt something inside him go cold that had nothing to do with magic.
They knew.
Not just him.
This place.
The traffic.
The deliveries.
His route.
The woman looked back at Adrian.
“Enough.”
The hand moved.
Adrian jerked backward through the air.
“HELP!”
His voice bounced between brick and concrete.
Nobody answered.
The end of the service road was less than twenty meters away.
Cars passed beyond it.
People existed out there.
Normal life continued just beyond the corner.
“HELP!”
The man made a small motion with his wrist.
The hand rotated Adrian in the air.
Now he was facing them.
The woman was already walking toward him.
Adrian's stomach dropped.
“No.”
She kept coming.
“No, stay the fuck away from me.”
She stopped directly in front of him.
Adrian hung perhaps thirty centimeters above the pavement.
Close enough to see her clearly now.
She wasn't breathing hard.
Neither of them was.
Why would they be?
Adrian had managed three steps.
That was all.
The man glanced down at the device in his hand.
“Confirming.”
A pale light passed across Adrian's face.
“Adrian Voss. Human. Male. Thirty-eight.”
Adrian stared at him.
Of course they knew his name.
The woman had called him by it.
But hearing the rest somehow made it worse.
“Profile?”
The man looked at the display.
“Matches.”
A pause.
“Baseline.”
The woman nodded.
“Good.”
Baseline.
Adrian swallowed.
“What do you want?”
Neither answered.
“Who are you?”
Nothing.
“You know who I am. What the fuck do you want from me?”
The woman stepped closer.
Adrian tried to lean away.
The hand simply held him where he was.
There was nowhere to go.
His breathing was too fast now.
“Look, I don't have money.”
Nothing.
“If this is about my work, I don't—”
The woman raised her hand.
Adrian stopped.
“Don't.”
Her palm settled against his cheek.
He went rigid.
Nothing happened.
Not immediately.
Her skin was warm.
That somehow made it worse.
Adrian stared down at her.
She studied his face with detached interest.
Not hatred.
Not anger.
Not even satisfaction.
She looked at him the way someone might check a serial number.
“Please.”
The word escaped before Adrian could stop it.
For the first time, something changed in her expression.
Only slightly.
She leaned closer.
“Don't worry.”
Her thumb pressed gently against his temple.
“You're exactly what we need.”
The magic surged.
The world went dark.