[POV: Sienna Hart]
Sienna Hart's phone buzzed with the special ringtone she reserved for emergencies. Caller ID: Private Number. She swiped accept. A hotel duty manager's voice hit her like cold water.
"Ms. Hart, report to lobby security. Head down. Right now."
"What happened?" she asked, tying the robe's sash. Her bare feet padded across marble as she hurried out of the suite.
"Rear lot shooting. Driver took Mr. Royce to Harborview. Two guards down. Say you were at the gallery."
"I… I was at the gallery," she recited, stepping into the empty elevator. Rain streaks crawled down the glass; sirens echoed faintly through the well. Her reflection looked pale and guilty under the ceiling lights.
The elevator opened onto the lobby—a wash of gold light, polished marble, and worried guests whispering by the bar. A uniformed concierge guided her behind the front desk, past a velvet rope, and into the security room.
Monitors tiled the wall. One screen looped the rear alley feed in shaky slow motion.
Silas filled the frame.
He slid from the staircase, gun in hand. He fired. Guards swarmed him. She watched the baton swing, watched muzzle flashes, watched all three men bleed and fall. Her pulse roared in her ears.
The room smelled like burnt coffee and nervous sweat.
"Is that—" she started.
The duty manager's gaze flicked to her instead of the monitor; he caught her flinch.
"No names," the manager snapped. "Story is you were off-site. We caught a rogue courier. That's it."
The footage continued, the left edge still smeared from whatever Silas had rubbed on the lens.
Halfway through the replay the image juddered—the frame froze on tangled bodies, smeared into static, then went black as if the wireless link had shorted. When the feed returned, two corpses lay sprawled, blood blooming in rainwater, and Silas was gone.
The air felt charged, prickling the hair on her arms.
"Cheap Wi-Fi and a greasy dome," the manager muttered, tapping the haze. "We step away from the monitors for thirty seconds and somebody drags him out? Drag those useless bodies out before guests see them.
"Senior Royce will level this place if his son flatlines and we've got dead guards on display. Reset the positions. We scrub the footage before anyone else sees this."
Sienna pressed her palm to the table to stop her fingers from shaking. "He should not have been there," she whispered. It felt like confession and excuse at once.
"Then he should've stayed gone," the manager said. "You never saw him. Go back upstairs, finish your champagne, and wait for instructions."
The way his gaze cut from the screen to her and back told Sienna why she was really here. He's not just checking the tape. He's checking if the woman in Evan's bed knows the man with the gun.
The feed that had frozen and smeared seconds ago now showed only rain-slick concrete—and two bodies cooling in it.
[POV: Silas Quinn]
Silas came back to himself inside a dark so complete it pressed against his eyelids. There was no up or down, no sense of distance. Even gravity felt like a rumor.
He hung in the void while his own blood floated around him as perfect red beads, drifting lazy orbits.
This was the world's worst conference room: zero décor, terrible lighting, and instrumental hold music that wouldn't stop.
If he could have twitched a finger, he would have given the ambiance a one-star review on whatever eldritch travel app handled "kidnapped by interdimensional HR."
A glowing progress bar crackled to life above him and spelled out text one character at a time.
[Body transmission complete. Contract pending consent.]
[Severe trauma detected. Restoration requires contract acceptance.]
A timer winked into his peripheral vision. 00:10:00, counting down in merciless red. Each beep was the exact tone of an elevator chime—polite, relentless, impossible to bargain with.
Corporate onboarding from hell, he thought, now with lethal consequences.
He tried to move. Nothing listened. Limbs, lungs, even eyelids—mutiny across the board.
Pain crouched somewhere far away, muffled like an argument behind frosted glass, and that worried him more than the bullets.
Pain meant alive. Numb meant dying.
His brain felt hijacked.
A line stamped over the timer.
[Enforcer consciousness online. Maintaining minimum survival.]
Oh, now you notice I'm awake? Glad the kidnapping committee finally checked the box. Sarcasm beat back the panic for half a breath.
[Beep… innate Growth talent detected. Survival Window extended by 02:00:00.]
Digits surged to 02:10:00. The extra time tasted like a pity bonus, until a new line blinked red.
[Inquiry fee: 50% remaining time per question.]
The void spoke with a voice like a legal department built out of marble.
[Enforcer candidate. Void Citadel has opened for you. Inquiry count: 5.]
Motor control crept back in micro-increments; his tongue felt like wet sandpaper, but his jaw would obey.
"Five questions," he said. Humor kept the panic from stripping bolts off his ribs. "Generous for a hostage negotiation."
He burned the first. "What's this place?"
[Intake Rotunda. All new Enforcers and Contractors receive contracts here before deployment.]
Intake Rotunda. Prestige name, DMV customer service. Digits cleaved to 01:05:00; apparently curiosity cost sixty-five minutes.
[Enforcer = Void Citadel agent (missions + enforcement of rules + oversight). Contractor = mission operator only.]
So he was the salaried hitman, not the gig worker. Fewer choices, better toys.
"Second question," he said. "What's the price of this contract?"
[Rule: Equivalent Exchange. Value given equals value received. Void Citadel trades survival for mission completion.]
Equivalent exchange. No freebies. If he lived, he owed. If he failed, he died. The clock halved again—00:32:30—and kept counting. Curiosity ran on a meter.
He pictured some off-world accountant stamping DENIED over his file and invoicing him for the ink. Live under their rules or stay dead on the pavement—that's the menu, his brain muttered.
"Third question—" He stopped. Words mattered. "Is there any refund policy on dying because you sent me somewhere stupid?"
[Inquiry invalid. Please ask a compliant question.]
Great. Legal caught the sarcasm; at least it didn't charge me for the snark. He pivoted. "Fine. Third question: How many rules can I break before you yank the leash?"
[Disclosure of the Void Citadel to native entities triggers forced execution. Additional directives delivered on mission deployment.]
The warning flashed across his vision and hung there like a sword. He wasn't about to give a TED Talk on multiverses anyway.
Digits halved yet again—00:16:15—leaving about a quarter hour.
"Fourth question," he said. "Do you issue a manual or am I supposed to intuit how not to die?"
[Manuals available after successful mission and return to the Void hub.]
Manuals after you survive the job. Because that makes sense. He used the final question on the only thing that mattered. "Where am I going?""
[Mission World Thaloria (Stoneveil City). Target: Regent Varis Calder.]
Time slashed itself in half again. 00:04:03. Heat leeched from his fingertips. "Great. So if I say no, I bleed out. If I say yes, I work for a citadel with a better HR department than my day job."
Silence filled the void. He pictured the alley—the guards who never considered him dangerous then died for it, the blood on wet concrete, Sienna's lie, Evan still breathing somewhere.
Stay stubborn and die, or sign and live long enough to finish Royce. The choice wasn't a choice.
"Deal," he breathed. "Tell me where to sign."
An ancient-looking parchment formed in front of him, suspended by threads of light. It smelled like old paper and rain. Corporate ritual in fantasy drag.
[Apply biological signature to finalize contract.]
[Motor control temporarily restored for signature.]
Feeling seeped back into his fingers. He flexed once, grateful the Void Citadel was at least lending him a hand for the paperWork.
He bit his thumb. Blood welled fast and hot.
The "pen" was his thumb; the contract was a page covered in sigils he couldn't read. HR best practice: sign in blood, hope the fine print favors you. Absurd, but the alternative is bleeding out on an invisible floor.
He pressed it to the glowing strip across the parchment. The page drank it down greedily. It burst into flame, a shard dove into his chest, and another shard dissolved into the darkness like smoke through vents.
For a heartbeat he swore he tasted copper smoke and wet asphalt, as if the contract insisted on branding his senses as well as his skin.
Pain roared back in a green wave. Bullets tore out of his flesh like corks fired from a shaken bottle.
One clanged off the invisible floor from his calf; a second spun past his chest trailing strands of blood from his shoulder; shrapnel ripped free from his side and vanished into the dark.
Emerald light flooded his vision, outlining every bone in his hand.
[Contract established. Commencing Restoration.]
Heat stitched along his calf as muscle rewove itself. The shoulder hole burned clean, then cooled; the smell of sealed skin filled the air.
An army of phantom ants crawled under his skin as fibers knit; the itch rode the heat until it ebbed.
His ribs snapped back with a wet pop that made him bite down on a scream.
"Note to self," he panted. "Never die again."
The System ignored him.
[Restoration complete. Forcibly activating Enforcer's talent...]
Energy slammed through his veins. Every nerve lit up as if lightning had taken up residence beneath his skin. His heartbeat synced to the instrumental music for three dizzy sweeps before settling into its own rhythm.
Sweat—or whatever passed for it here—evaporated off his forearms.
[Successfully activated Innate Growth talent: Devourer.]
An arch-shaped sigil burned onto his left forearm—two short pillars topped by a curve. It hurt worse than the bullet extractions, but the pain faded fast, leaving the skin cool and hypersensitive.
[Brand registered. Retina interface unlocked. Semi-datafication enabled.]
[Semi-datafication Notice: Visual Metrics are auxiliary only. Destroyed vitals still result in permanent death.]
[Enforcer Trial Warning: Failure to complete the primary directive in the first mission strips Enforcer status and demotes you to a standard Contractor. Death remains permanent.]
Lose Enforcer and I'm just a Contractor. No innate talent, no extra authority, no kill list. You still get paid, but the clout vanishes.
From what he had seen, the Citadel wasn't a charity. It was ruthless in its own way.
Every edge is rented. Stack wins or get demoted into nothing.
Panels flickered into being—thin sheets of translucent text orbiting him like patient interns waiting for instructions.
One listed stats. Another panel displayed Storage: Riverstone C9 (confiscated), Red Crane satchel (confiscated), hush-money bill (retained). Honest to a fault.
He prodded the glowing icons the sigil projected. The HUD dutifully labeled them: Personal Information, Missions, Storage Space, Skills, Equipment.
Every icon after the first two grayed out with the same smug caption—Tier too low, function locked. Apparently Enforcers earned menus the hard way.
He tried to strong-arm the mission tab. A fresh notice landed with bureaucratic timing.
[Mission dossier will unlock upon arrival in the assigned world.]
Helpful. Fail, and he lost his shiny talent; succeed, maybe he lived long enough to see what "Storage Space" did.
He flexed his healed fingers. Tendons slid smooth beneath the skin. Bullet scars were gone, replaced by faint silver filigree that caught the emerald light. Lungs pulled air without rattling.
His chest felt hollow, but his nerves buzzed like they'd been plugged into a wall socket.
Old reflexes snapped into place: map, plan, crack a joke so panic doesn't get a vote.
"Okay," he said. "We signed. We hurt. We're alive. Now what?"
The panels reoriented, stacking into a single pane before exploding outward with a low chime.
[You will be deployed on your mission shortly. Prove you're worthy of your new identity.]
"What 'new identity'?" Silas muttered. "Contractors just get gigs; Enforcers get a brand, gigs and a kill list."
The void floor shimmered, swapping ink-black for a faint grid of light. Gravity remembered him. He pushed to his feet and stared at the glowing arch sigil on his arm.
[Warning: You're going to mission worlds that are similar to Earth, yet different. Your actions will have consequences...]
Ozone prickled along his lashes as warning sheets flickered past faster than he could read them. It felt like one more HR packet stapled to a guillotine. He let the details blur and filed only the dread; he could roast the stats later.
For now the void felt impatient; he could feel it nudging him toward whatever came next.
[Transmission initializing upon acknowledgment.]
Corporate onboarding had never come with real threats before. He steadied his breathing, let panic roll past like a wave, and nodded into the light.
Pressure built like a thunderhead—and something invisible smacked the back of his skull.
What the fu—
Darkness rushed in before he could finish swearing.
Whatever the Void Citadel had planned, he was already signed in. All that remained was to make the most of the world on the other side—and maybe send a nasty post-mortem review if he lived long enough.