The officer looked at his trapped partner, then back at me. "I can't leave them. We called for backup. The Special Action Force is coming."
"Look around you!" I gestured to the skyline, where helicopters were being swatted out of the sky by winged horrors. "Backup isn't coming. Not in time to save you."
As if to punctuate my point, a massive explosion rocked the ground from the direction of Cubao. A plume of black smoke rose into the air, mushrooming outward. The shockwave rattled the windows of the abandoned cars around us.
The officer paled. He looked at his partner, who was groaning in the wreckage of the door, alive but pinned.
"Help me get him out," the officer pleaded, his demeanor shifting from authority to desperation. "Please. You're… you're strong. I saw what you did. Just help me pry the door."
I looked at the bus. The screams had stopped. That was bad. It meant the other two creatures were done eating. I looked at the officer, then at the smoking horizon where Mark was. Every second I wasted here was a second Mark might be dying.
Go, the instinct whispered. Survival of the fittest. Leave the weak.
Shut up, I thought viciously.
"Grab his shoulders," I ordered, dropping the signpost and stepping up to the crushed door.
The officer nodded frantically, reaching into the car to grab his partner's vest. I jammed my fingers into the gap between the door frame and the car body. The metal was sharp, cutting into my skin, but I didn't care. I channeled that feeling—the heat, the buzzing energy—into my arms.
"On three," I grunted. "One. Two. Three!"
I pulled. A normal human couldn't have budged it. The hydraulic jaws of life were needed for this kind of wreckage. But as I strained, the veins in my arms bulging, the metal groaned. It shrieked in protest, then gave way. I ripped the door back on its hinges, the metal tearing with a screech that set my teeth on edge.
The officer dragged his partner out onto the asphalt. The injured man's leg was a mess of blood and torn fabric, but he was conscious.
"Thank you," the officer breathed, looking at me with a mixture of gratitude and terrified awe. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just run," I said, picking up my bent signpost. "Head toward Marikina. Away from the rift."
"What about you?" he asked. "Where are you going?"
I turned back toward the north, toward the heart of the disaster. The sky was getting darker, the rift pulsating like a rhythmic heartbeat that I could feel in the soles of my feet.
"I have to go to Cubao," I said.
"You're insane," the officer said, hoisting his partner up. "That's ground zero."
"I know."
I didn't wait for another response. I turned and started running again, my pace faster than before. The second orb had given me something new—endurance. My lungs felt larger, my legs lighter. I moved past the bus where the other two creatures were feasting. I stayed low, using the line of stopped vehicles as cover. They didn't see me. Or maybe they were just too gorged to care.
As I left the immediate vicinity of the university, the landscape changed. The residential areas of Loyola Heights were in panic. Families were packing cars that wouldn't move, looting convenience stores for water, or simply huddled in their driveways, staring at the sky.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out while running. The screen was cracked, but it still worked. No signal. The networks were down, likely overloaded or destroyed.
"Damn it, Mark," I hissed. "You better be hiding."
I reached the intersection that led toward the LRT-2 line. The overhead train tracks stretched out above me, a concrete snake leading directly into the chaos. The train that I had gotten off just thirty minutes ago was stopped on the tracks between stations, smoke pouring from one of its carriages.
I stopped for a brief second to catch my breath and assess the route. The road below was a choke point. Too many people, too many potential targets for the monsters. If I wanted to move fast, I needed a clear path.
I looked up at the concrete pillars supporting the train tracks. They were massive, vertical slabs of cement.
Can I?
The idea was crazy. But the energy inside me felt restless, eager to be tested.
I approached one of the maintenance ladders attached to the side of the pillar. It was locked behind a metal cage, about ten feet off the ground.
I didn't need the ladder. I crouched and leaped.
I soared upward, my hand catching the metal rung of the ladder above the cage. I pulled myself up with ease that felt frightening. I scrambled up the ladder, reaching the maintenance walkway beside the tracks.
The view from up here was apocalyptic.
The entire span of Aurora Boulevard was a parking lot of abandoned vehicles. Fires burned in random spots—a gas station, a commercial building, a cluster of cars. And amidst the smoke, I could see them. Not just dogs. There were other things now. Large, hulking shapes smashing through storefronts. winged creatures diving into the crowds.
But what chilled me the most wasn't the monsters.
It was the people.
On a rooftop of a nearby condominium, I saw a man standing on the ledge. He wasn't running. He was glowing. A faint, blue light emanated from his hands. He was throwing bolts of… something… at a flock of winged beasts circling him.
I'm not the only one, I realized. Others are awakening too.
The man on the roof missed a shot, and one of the winged creatures dived. It snatched him off the ledge, carrying him screaming into the smoke-filled sky.
I looked away, grimacing. Having power didn't mean you were invincible. It just meant you were a slightly harder meal to digest.
I turned my eyes back to the tracks leading to Cubao. It was a straight shot. No cars, no crowds. Just open concrete and rails.
I started running along the maintenance path, the wind whipping against my face. The hum of the rift grew louder with every step, a vibration that rattled my teeth. My shadow stretched long and thin in the dying sunlight, distorted by the flickering glow from above.
I was Kil Salvatierra. I was a student. I was a nobody.
But as I ran toward the end of the world, feeling the stolen strength of monsters surging through my blood, I knew that version of me was already dead. The Riftwalker had been born in the quadrangle, and he was hungry.
I checked my grip on the bent signpost.
Hang on, Mark. I'm coming.
The tracks ahead were broken in places, twisted by the seismic force of the rift's opening. I navigated the gaps, leaping over fissures that dropped thirty feet down to the street.
Just as I passed the Anonas station, a sound stopped me cold. It wasn't a roar. It was a voice.
"Help! Please, up here!"
I skidded to a halt. The voice was coming from inside the stalled train car on the tracks. The doors were pried partially open, jammed. Hands were waving through the gap.
"We're trapped! The doors won't open!"
I hesitated. Cubao was still kilometers away. Every stop was a risk. But the plea was desperate, human.
I cursed under my breath and ran toward the train car. Inside, pressed against the glass, were dozens of faces. Men, women, students in uniforms. The air conditioning was off, and in the tropical heat, that metal tube was becoming an oven.
I grabbed the edges of the jammed doors.
"Stand back!" I yelled.
I engaged the Vestige—the strength of the dog-beast. My muscles burned. The metal doors resisted, the mechanism bent and locked. I gritted my teeth, pulling until I felt something pop in my shoulder.
Come on!
With a shriek of tearing metal, the doors slid apart.
Fresh air rushed into the car. People tumbled out onto the narrow walkway, gasping, crying.
"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" a middle-aged woman grabbed my arm, sobbing.
"Follow the tracks back to Katipunan," I instructed loudly, pulling my arm away gently. "Do not go down to the street unless you have to. Go to the station platform and wait for the military."
"Where are you going?" a man asked, wiping soot from his face. "That way is suicide."
I looked down the tracks toward the towering, swirling vortex over Cubao.
"I have an appointment," I said dryly.
I turned and resumed my run, leaving the bewildered survivors behind. The sun finally dipped below the horizon, plunging the city into a twilight illuminated only by fires and the unearthly glow of the rift.
Night had fallen. And the hunt was just beginning.