Chapter 1: The Parable of Dust and Thirst
The first thing to return was the pain. It wasn't the sharp, shattering agony he remembered, but its ghost—a dull, throbbing echo that radiated from the base of his skull. The second was the heat, a suffocating presence that pressed down from a sky the color of a fresh bruise, stealing the breath from his lungs. He coughed, a dry, hacking sound, and tasted grit.
"No," Jax whispered, his voice a raw rasp. His own words felt foreign. He pushed himself onto his elbows, the ground beneath him a mix of fine, rust-colored sand and sharp-edged refuse. He was in an alley, wedged between two towering, windowless walls of pitted, ochre-colored metal. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to summon the last real memory. The quiet hum of the refrigerator in his Phoenix apartment. The date on his phone—September 23rd. The sickening crunch of the back door frame giving way. A panicked shout. A flash of light that wasn't muzzle-flash, but the glint of a cheap pistol.
His hand flew to the back of his head, fingers frantically searching for the wound, for the sticky wetness of blood, for the ragged edge of splintered bone. He found nothing but short, sweat-dampened hair on an unbroken scalp.
"That's not right," he muttered, his voice shaking. "It's not possible." He pushed himself to his feet, a wave of vertigo making him plant a hand against the warm metal wall to steady himself. He was alive. He was uninjured. The two facts waged war against the absolute certainty of his own death.
A low, guttural roar echoed from beyond the alley's mouth, followed by a piercing, electronic shriek. It was the sound of a zoo and a factory floor combined. Curiosity, or perhaps a desperate need to disprove the impossible, pulled him forward. He moved slowly, cautiously, every nerve ending alight. He peered around the alley's edge, and his world, his entire conception of reality, dissolved into meaningless noise.
He was in a city, but it was a blasphemy of a city. Buildings carved from sand-colored rock and corroded metal rose to impossible heights, their shapes more organic than engineered. The sky was dominated by two suns: one, a small, brilliant white dwarf that seared the eyes, and the other, a colossal, dim red giant that painted everything in a morbid, bloody light.
The street teemed with creatures torn from a madman's sketchbook. A tall, insectoid being with four spindly arms directed a hovering cargo platform with clicking gestures. A creature that looked like a walking boulder, all gray, cracked hide, lumbered past, ignoring the small, furry bipeds that scattered before it. Vehicles—none with wheels—hummed through the air, weaving through the crowd with an unnerving lack of concern for safety.
Jax stumbled back, his mind reeling, unable to process the flood of impossible data.
"What the hell is this?" The question was a choked whisper. "Where am I?"
He looked down at himself, at the strange, coarse tunic and trousers he wore, at the unfamiliar boots on his feet. This wasn't a dream. In dreams, you were still you. This felt like he was a foreign program running on alien hardware. The pilot in him screamed for orientation, for a single point of reference, a north star, but there was none.
"Wake up," he commanded himself, his voice cracking. He slapped his own cheek, the sting sharp and real. "Come on, Ryker, wake up! This isn't real!"
But the twin suns did not vanish. The alien chatter did not cease. The heat did not abate. This was real. And the truth landed on him with the force of a physical blow: he was not on Earth. He was not in his own time. He was somewhere else entirely, a place that should not, could not, exist. He collapsed back against the alley wall, sliding to the ground as his legs gave out, his breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
He was going to die here. The thought was strangely calm, a single, smooth stone in the raging river of his panic. He'd just die again, in the filth of this impossible place, and maybe this time it would stick. He curled into a ball, pressing his forehead against his knees, trying to shrink away from the universe. His breath hitched, a half-sob, half-gasp. "Just a dream," he pleaded to no one. "Just a nightmare. Wake up."
It was then that the blue light appeared.
It wasn't a flash or a beam; it simply was. A perfect, serene rectangle of cobalt blue hovered in the center of his vision, utterly unaffected by the grime and shadow of the alley. It was clean, geometric, and impossibly out of place. Crisp white text scrolled across it.
//BOOTING… CALIBRATING…
"What now?" Jax groaned, convinced his oxygen-starved brain was finally producing full-blown hallucinations. He swatted a hand in front of his face, but his fingers passed through the light, which remained fixed in his sight. It was inside his head. A HUD.
WELCOME, RECLAIMANT 778.
UNIVERSE DESIGNATION: 616-TRN-SWG.
TEMPORAL ANCHOR: 34 BBY.
SURVIVAL PACKAGE DEPLOYED. GOOD LUCK.
The words were nonsense. Reclaimant? BBY? It was like reading a computer's error log. But one phrase snagged in his mind: Survival Package Deployed. His eyes fell to the worn satchel at his side, a bag he'd barely registered before. With trembling fingers, he pulled it onto his lap. Its weight was suddenly real, a tangible anchor.
He fumbled with the clasp and looked inside. The first thing he pulled out was a metal canteen. It felt cool, heavy. Expecting nothing, he unscrewed the cap and tipped it toward his lips. A stream of perfectly cool, clean water met his tongue. It wasn't a hallucination. It was real. He drank greedily, the simple act of swallowing feeling like a prayer being answered. "Water," he breathed, the word full of reverence.
Next, a sealed pouch. Inside were three dense, gray bars. He unwrapped one and took a bite. The taste was a complete null—not sweet, not salty, just a bland, chalky texture. Yet, as it went down, a feeling of warmth spread through his core, quieting the frantic, empty fluttering in his stomach. It was food. It was life.
His fingers brushed against something hard. A knife. The handle fit his palm perfectly, a professional, ergonomic grip. He found a small stud and pressed it. A low hum vibrated through his hand as the blade shimmered, becoming a blur of deadly energy. He released the button, the humming ceased. It was a tool, yes, but it was also the first thing he'd held in this world that felt remotely like power.
At the bottom of the bag lay a gray, rectangular slate, its casing battered and scarred. A datapad. He found a button on the side and the screen flickered to life, displaying a simple interface with a handful of icons. Hope, fragile and new, fluttered in his chest. He pressed an icon that looked like a soundwave, but nothing happened. He then pressed one that looked like a stylized letter 'A'. The screen changed, showing a view from a small lens on the datapad's corner. He aimed it, his hand shaking, at a piece of discarded food wrapping on the ground, covered in the same alien script he'd seen on the street signs.
On the datapad's screen, the swirling characters flickered, morphed, and resolved into stark, familiar English.
FRESH-ROASTED GORAK MEAT.
Jax stared, his breath caught in his throat. He swung the datapad to point at a faded poster on the far wall. The alien text shimmered and settled. PORT ANTERIS SPEEDER RACE. SEE THE VORLAG COMET.
"It translates," he whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. "It actually translates." He was no longer blind. He was no longer deaf in a world of noise. He had a key. A key to unlock this nightmare. For the first time since opening his eyes, the crushing, absolute panic began to recede, replaced by a single, electrifying thought: he could survive this.
Laughter echoed in the alley—a raw, unhinged sound that was half relief and half madness. Jax pushed himself to his feet, the datapad clutched in his hand like a holy text. The world was still a nightmare, but it was a nightmare he could now read. The crushing weight of the unknown had been replaced by the familiar, solvable problem of a hostile environment. He was a pilot, a survivor. This was just the universe's SERE training, and he was not going to fail.
"Okay," he said aloud, his voice gaining a sliver of its old command. "Okay, Ryker. Orient. Decide. Act."
His gaze lifted, focusing on the faint blue icon still hovering in his vision. The datapad was a tool, but the System... that was something else entirely. He focused on it, the way he would focus on a targeting reticle. The simple menu appeared again. SYSTEM. INVENTORY. SHOP.
He had seen his inventory. Now, he needed to know the rest. He thought the command, sharp and clear: Shop.
The interface blossomed into a vast, dizzying catalog. Categories scrolled past his mind's eye: WEAPONRY, ARMOR, TECHNOLOGY, MEDICAL. He saw schematics for blaster rifles that made an M4 look like a flintlock, designs for personal energy shields, and components for starship engines that warped the very fabric of space. It was the armory of a futuristic god, a library of miracles. But it was all just noise. He was looking for something specific, a half-remembered prayer from a comic book page.
He found it under a different category entirely. ARTIFACTS. Then, a sub-menu: EMOTIONAL SPECTRUM.
His heart hammered against his ribs. There it was. A simple, elegant ring of polished green stone, glowing with an internal light. The text next to it was a sacred verse.
Green Lantern Power Ring. Powered by Will.
It was real. The one true power. Not just a weapon, but the power to create. The power to impose order on this chaotic universe. The power to build, to protect, to never be a victim again. It was a promise of divinity, waiting to be claimed. He could see it already: the emerald light chasing away the shadows, the hard-light constructs shaping his will into reality.
Then, his eyes fell upon the price.
Cost: 10,000,000 Points.
The number was so vast it was comical. A moment later, his gaze drifted to the top of the screen, to his own balance. A single, stark digit.
POINTS: 0
The elation shattered, the hope from the datapad turning to ash in his mouth. It was a joke. A sick, cosmic joke. To show a starving man a feast and then tell him the price is all the stars in the sky. He was a ghost with empty pockets in the emporium of the gods. The System wasn't a gift; it was a curse, a new and exquisite form of torture designed to show him exactly what he could never have.
"No," he whispered, sliding back down the wall, the datapad clattering to the ground. "It's a joke."
He sat there, the two suns casting long, distorted shadows down the alley. The despair returned, colder and deeper this time, for it was a despair born not of ignorance, but of understanding. But as he wallowed, another feeling rose through the cold—the hot, sharp memory of his own pathetic end. He hadn't died a hero's death in the cockpit of a fighter jet. He'd been executed over a television and a laptop. A meaningless death, born of weakness. His weakness.
The number wasn't a barrier. It was a mountain. And he had two choices: die at its base, or start climbing.
A fire ignited in his soul, burning away the despair. It was the fire of pure, unadulterated will. He would not be that weak man again. He would have that ring. He didn't just want it; he would have it.
He stood up, his movements no longer shaky but filled with a rigid purpose. He picked up the datapad, its screen a map to his first step. He walked to the edge of the alley and scanned the bustling street, his eyes ignoring the strange creatures and hovering vehicles. He was looking for one thing. The datapad's translator found it in seconds, highlighting a flickering sign on a massive, grimy cargo hangar.
LABORERS WANTED. STRONG BACKS NEEDED. INQUIRE WITHIN.
It was beneath him. It was humiliating. It was perfect.
With his jaw set, Jax stepped out of the shadow and into the searing, alien light, his destination locked. The climb was ten million points high, and it started right now, with a single, humbling step.