The rain in city was a persistent, shivering drizzle that didn't so much fall as it did haunt the air. It was a Tuesday—the most aggressively mediocre day of the week.
Mac sat in his 2014 sedan, the engine idling with a rhythmic rattle that suggested a looming repair bill he couldn't afford. He stared through the windshield at the grey smear of the city. He had four minutes before his shift started at the Municipal Transit Authority. Four minutes of peace.
He reached for his pack of cigarettes. Empty. He crumpled the soft pack with a sigh that felt like it came from his soul.
"Of course," he muttered.
He settled for his phone. It was an old model with a spiderweb crack across the corner. He scrolled through a social media feed—a blur people screaming into their cameras about trivialities, Girls dancing for money, and a video of a cat falling off a counter. He didn't laugh. He just watched until the loop restarted.
Mac was twenty-six, and if his life were a book, he was currently on page 300 of a very boring chapter where nothing happened. He wasn't the guy who got the girls. He wasn't the guy who won the lottery. He was the guy who would put on his earbuds and silently ride back home without bothering anyone.
He'd spent his whole life learning how to be the background noise in other people's lives. It was easier that way. If no one noticed you, no one expected anything from you. No one let you down, and you didn't have to worry about letting them down either.
He killed the engine, grabbed his bag, and stepped into the rain.
The office of the Transit Authority smelled of industrial carpet cleaner and the slow, agonizing death of ambition. Mac navigated the cubicle maze with a ghost's grace. He didn't say hello to Sarah at the front desk. He didn't nod to Dave by the coffee machine. He just slipped into his chair, a small corner unit wedged between a filing cabinet and a window that looked out onto an alleyway.
"Reyes!"
Mac flinched. Only slightly.
Miller, his supervisor, was a man whose entire personality was based on the fact that he once played high school football and never moved on. He dropped a heavy, plastic crate of files onto Mac's desk. Dust puffed into the air.
"These maintenance logs from 2012 need to be cross-referenced with the digital ledger. By EOD," Miller barked. He didn't wait for an answer. He never did. To Miller, Mac was just a biological extension of the scanner.
"Right," Mac whispered to the empty air.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his earbuds. They were the cheap, wired kind. He plugged them in and scrolled to the same old playlist he always listen to. The steady, muffled thump of a drum machine filled his head.
Scan. File. Repeat.
The morning passed in a blur of yellowed paper and staples. Mac lost himself in the rhythm. It was a comfortable sort of numbness. He liked the paper logs. They were tangible. They had a history. They didn't require him to be anything other than a pair of hands.
At 11:14 AM, the music stopped.
It didn't fade out. It didn't pause. It was as if the data itself had been deleted. Mac frowned, pulling his phone out. The screen was a chaotic mess of flickering green lines and static.
"Great. Just great," he grumbled. He tapped the phone against his palm.
Then, the air changed.
It wasn't a sound at first. It was a feeling in his teeth. A high-frequency vibration that made his gums ache. The windows in the alleyway rattled in their frames. Not a shaking—a frantic, rhythmic buzzing.
Across the office, people started looking up. The low hum of the copier grew into a screeching whine.
"Is that an earthquake?" someone shouted.
Mac stood up. His legs felt heavy, like they were made of lead. He looked at his hands; the fine hairs on his arms were standing straight up. The static on his phone screen suddenly organized itself into a single, pulsing violet eye before the device turned hot enough to burn his palm.
"Ow! Fuck!" He dropped the phone. It hit the carpet and began to hiss, smoke curling from the charging port.
Then the lights went out.
The darkness wasn't empty. It was filled with a bruised, purple radiance that seemed to bleed through the very ceiling. The sound finally arrived—a deep, tectonic groan that felt like the earth was being crushed under pressure. It was the sound of something too big for the world trying to force its way in.
Panic, sharp and cold, lanced through Mac's chest.
"Everyone out! Fire escape!" Miller was screaming now, his voice cracking.
The office turned into a stampede. Mac was shoved aside by someone he haven't noticed. He stumbled against the filing cabinet, his shoulder throbbing. He felt a sudden, frantic urge to run. Not to the stairs—just away.
Go. Move. Don't stay here.
His brain went offline. He didn't think about the anything else or couldn't. He just saw people running toward the roof access door and his feet followed.
The roof. High ground. You can see what's happening from the roof.
It was a stupid thought. A movie thought. But he couldn't think clearly, he was just following the crowed.
Mac wasn't himself anymore. He was just an animal in a herd.
He sprinted up the stairs, his lungs burning. He burst through the heavy metal door and onto the gravel-topped roof. The rain was heavier now, but it wasn't water. It felt thick and oily. It tasted like copper.
He skidded to a halt at the edge of the roof, his fingers clutching the cold brick of the parapet.
"Oh god," he breathed.
The sky had been torn open.
A rift, miles long and glowing with the color of a fresh bruise, spanned the horizon. Through the tear, Mac saw land. Not stars, not space—land. He saw inverted oceans and mountain ranges made of white bone, hanging over the city like a guillotine.
A massive shadow began to descend. It was a Spire.
It looked like a shard of obsidian the size of the Space Needle, glowing with internal heat. It didn't fall; it drifted, guided by an invisible hand. It struck a residential tower four blocks away.
There was no explosion. No fire.
The building simply vanished. In its place, the obsidian shard expanded, roots of black stone tearing through the street, flipping buses like toys, and anchoring itself into the bedrock. The screams from below reached the roof, a thin, wavering wall of human misery.
"I shouldn't be here," Mac whispered.
The realization hit him like a punch to the stomach. He looked around. There were six other people on the roof, all staring up with the same hollow, useless expression. They were vulnerable. They were standing on a pedestal, waiting to be crushed.
I'm an idiot. I'm a dead, stupid idiot.
He turned to run back to the door, but the air suddenly grew cold—impossibly cold.
A second rift opened, smaller, directly above the Transit building. A swarm of things began to pour out. They looked like shards of glass, but they moved with the intent of hornets.
Mac dove behind a massive HVAC unit. He curled into a ball, pressing his face into the wet gravel. He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands over his ears. He tried to count his breaths, tried to gather himself up and tried to calm down which he'd spent twenty-six years perfecting.
But the world was too loud now. The Overwrite was beginning, and the book of the old world was being closed.
MacAlister Reyes, the man who was experts at being nothing, lay in the dirt and prayed that for once, the universe would agree with him. That it would look right past him and leave him in the margins.
The HVAC unit groaned as something landed on top of it. Something heavy. Something that smelled like old blood and cold iron.
Mac held his breath until his chest hurt. He didn't move. He didn't scream.
He just waited for the end of the Tuesday.