Save Scumming - Surviving the System Apocalypse - Prologue

Just an idea I had. Lemme know what you think! (World has emotion-based magic system, it's a portal-world system apocalyse set on Earth in the not-so-distant future. MC has minor time-looping powers and will use them to get dates and also revenge.)

Prologue

I died nine months from today, on the seventh of June at approximately eleven-thirty in the morning. Crushed under a collapsing building beside a howling A-class portal to some unknown hell.

I never made it. Just bled out beneath the rubble, full of regret and agony I couldn’t even scream through.

Then I was here, in the lobby of my apartment building. 

A wave of vertigo hit me. I’d gone from on my back, bleeding out, exhausted, throat parched from screaming and eyes burning from crying to... fine. Perfectly fine and upright in the middle of what looked like a conversation.

The woman standing before me was old. Seventy-something, and showing every year with the unreadable mess of wrinkles on her face. She had old out-chrome. A set of augmented vision visors over each eye, fixed to her face but not in her. Some people were averse to modern cyberware and she was one of those.

Of course, I recognized her. Misses Tone, my landlady. “And I told Richards that... that... sweetheart, are you well?” she asked.

I slumped to one side, catching myself against a grimey, thrice-repainted wall. The air here didn’t stink of death and fire and piss. It smelled like mould and musky carpet and sweat, with a heavy layer of air freshener over it all. It smelled like home. 

“I, uh,” I said, trying to find my voice. 

My stomach rolled, but I kept my lunch in. What had I even eaten last? Ration bars three steps from the front line? But no, that was...

Misses Tone came up before me and pressed a clammy palm to my forehead. “You’re not feverish,” she said after a moment. “But you’re as pale as a ghost, love. I don’t know what you were planning today, but maybe you ought to go give yourself a sit.”

I nodded, only then realizing that I was holding onto a pair of reusable grocery bags with Hyper!Mart’s logo on the side. “Yeah, good idea,” I muttered. “Sorry, for cutting you short. Uh. Yeah.”

“I’ll see about bringing you some soup, later,” she replied. 

I smiled at her, then turned and started towards the stairs.

I wouldn’t say that I was ordinarily a very analytical woman. The truth was that I was a chronic underachiever. I had the grades to do well, but never the drive. I liked some things, but rarely enough to give myself a boot in the rear to try and achieve anything. 

Still, I’d like to think that I wasn’t entirely stupid.

I knew some things. For example, a minute ago, I’d been dying. In fact, I’d been dying for several long, agonizing hours.

I was an E-rank delver for Luna Corp. A smaller portal-delving company based right here in Fortress ENE. I’d gotten the job nine months ago, since they weren’t too picky about applicants and the pay was better than retail work, even if the risk was higher.

Then the A-rank breach happened, and I was conscripted along with the rest of the corp to defend the city. 

I couldn’t be in this apartment building. It had burned down early in the breach. I’d cried about it already, and the loss of Mister Couchtop and all my stuff. But there was a city to defend and several sleepless nights made me almost forget about it all.

Then the bombs, and I’d been crushed, and I was dying. 

So, how could I be here? The weather outside seemed sunny and nice. The air didn’t stink of gunpowder, monster guts, and fire. Misses Tone wasn’t panicking.

I was in good health. More or less. I looked down at myself and was hit by more vertigo. Yes, this was me. 

I reached up, tracing fingers along the side of my face where a surgical scar should have been. No mil-spec eye augs. But I did have my old Tenorline Eyesight Pro sevens in. 

Cheap cyberware that I’d ditched a month into my new job. 

I took a deep breath and rode the elevator up. At the same time, I half-turned. “Misses Tone?” I asked. “What’s the date?”

The landlady glanced up at me, her mouth drawing into a thin line as she thought. “September seventh, dearie,” she said. “It’s Saturday.”

As I said, I wasn’t entirely stupid. This situation was impossible. So, what could, in the absence of a logical answer, explain this?

A hallucination? Maybe I was still bleeding out and this was the last grasp of my mind? But that didn’t feel real. 

Someone with mind magic? There were people capable of crafting illusions. Even very convincing ones. I’d seen some working at Luna Corp, and during that final big battle.

But illusions were usually small and static. This was... a whole building, an elevator, Misses Tone. My bags with a stain on the bottom where I’d spilled soda one time a year ago, the missing floor eight button in the elevator, the smell of this place. 

No, not an illusion. Or if it was one, it was so well-crafted that no matter what happened, I was screwed because I was dealing with at least a B-ranker.

What remained? 

Memory manipulation? Maybe someone had fed me that dark future? September seventh... I’d been fighting on the front on the seventh of June. I counted months backwards on my fingers. Nine months. 

Nine months of random, specific memories. My memory wasn’t perfect by any means, but I could recall a lot of meals and changes over that time. New gear, new friends, new work. It was a lot. 

A simulation? But why me? I wasn’t anyone interesting. 

A psychological break? I wouldn’t say that I was the sanest person around, but I didn’t feel that bad. A little anxious for a job interview coming up on... Monday? Christ. I’d passed that one, no? 

So, what did that leave?

I arrived before my apartment door before thinking of a satisfying answer. I fumbled at the digital lock, fingers moving through the combination with ease, then I stumbled into the house.

Mister Couchtop immediately greeted me with a “nyow,” and ran up to try and make me stumble by rubbing against my legs. 

“H-hey, Mister Couchtop,” I said, voice instantly pitching into babytalk. I scooped him up, tossing the bags aside even as I closed the door behind me. This was home. He was alive.

I rubbed my face against his shoft grey fur even as he tried to squirm free.

This wasn’t a simulation, I could feel it. 

I could feel it. Literally. A churning, twisting thing in my gut, in my core. “Ah,” I said as realization hit me. 

My apartment wasn’t as small as it might have been. I was on the outer edge of Fortress ENE. Outside of the walls, even. The building was older, with apartments that were still of a livable size. That meant that I had a small kitchenette with a living room squeezed in, a bedroom with barely enough room to stand in, a small office as a second room, and a washroom with a standing shower and toilet and little else.

It was home, still.

I locked the door shut behind me, then carried Mister Couchtop to the office. I had a ratty old chair I’d scrounged up from a bin that I slumped into, then I placed the cat on my lap.

He immediately bolted, but not without giving me a final reproachful “nyow,” in reply. Then he looked at his automatic feeder and back to me and added a warning “mouw.”

“Soon,” I said. It was automatic, and would feed him plenty enough to get fat on, the lazy cat. 

Taking a deep breath, I sucked in some air, then held it. I felt my lungs swell, then the thing inside of me swirled.

Magic.

I was, in the last time June ninth rolled around, confirmed to be an E-ranker. That meant that I had magical potential. Just enough that I could absorb mana from next to or within a low-ranking portal and not get sick from it. 

Given time and training and energy and a secret ingredient that I wasn’t cleared to know about, I’d maybe break into D-rank, where things changed. 

D-rankers represented something like one percent of the population. They weren’t rare. They were uncommon, however. D-rankers had magic. Usually falling into some broad category. They had nicer skin, better health overall, and were usually at the peak of what a normal human could do. 

Magic. Magic that i’d never had before. Unlocked through some means that I didn’t know about because I was just a ‘supply specialist’ for a tiny corp. My job had been to carry things in and out of the portal and help the D-rankers get ready. Sometimes I’d do guard duty. Staring at a portal with a gun that might be able to scare off weaker monsters. 

But now? Now I felt something in me. 

Holy shit. 

Had... had I just unlocked time magic? 

Wasn’t that the motherlode? 

And all it cost was seeing the destruction of the city and being flung back to when I was an unemployed nobody.

***