Kayn Mercer had always thought mornings were supposed to be quiet, but this one started off with the sound of his coffee machine violently sputtering, grinding, and a multitude of other issues he hadn't been accustomed to hearing from the one piece of electronics he knew he could always rely on. He fiddled with it, unplugged and replugged it in, added more water, let it try to run through a cycle, tried a new coffee brand, but in the end, it flat out didn't work.
"Awesome," he muttered, staring at it with an expression that was far from the word he used. "They say give up fancy coffee, quit eating avocado toast, you'll be able to buy a house in no time… Well whoever they are, they failed to account for shitty appliances."
He grabbed his jacket, stepped outside, nearly bumped onto his neighbor, a young woman living next door, and walked the short distance toward the corner café. Kayn knew they weren't terribly excited to see him, but he tipped well and a fake smile beat a scowl anyday. Besides, he wasn't here for the social experience, he was here to get coffee and sabotage his attempt at owning a home.
The morning crowd moved around him like zombies, either staring at their phones or moving in autopilot as they placed their order and swayed from side to side, waiting to satiate their ravenous hunger for caffeine. Honestly, Kayn blended right in at this point. He was dead to the world, shambling here on instinct as he sought out the precious relief of a far too sugary treat. At home he would make a simple cup of joe, a splash of creamer, but otherwise a bitter affair. However, if he was going to spend $10 on a drink, it was either going to get him drunk, or be equal parts syrup and go-juice.
As he approached the café, the glass-panel display flickered. If he was paying more attention, he would have seen the change. Kayn, for all of his powers of perception, merely acknowledged that his neighbor was here as well.
"Your coffee maker on the fritz too?" he mumbled to her, no real hope that she would respond.
"How–How did you know?" She said, taken aback, thus causing him to become taken aback himself.
"What?" he stuttered.
"What?" she replied equally confused.
"It's just, that's why I'm here. I didn't really think–" his words trailed off as his body broke free from the monotonous motions he was used to.
"Oh… Yeah, it committed seppuku right before my eyes. It was pretty traumatic." She joked.
He blinked, many times, Kayn wasn't used to this kind of conversation. It took him far too long to respond rationally, and when he did, he let out a quick and ugly laugh.
"No kidding? Mine was more like a Korean drama, lots of camera angles, with the death scene playing out a dozen times before I could actually move on." He laughed again, pleased by his response.
"Did you see the display board, with all the coffees? One second it was showing the looping ad for iced lattes, and the next it was something else entirely." She was still in a receptive mood, but something about her tone changed.
"Like what? Did it delete the breakfast menu, or–"
"No," she said flatly, "It was something dark. A silhouette against fire. Figures running. Buildings collapsing as fire raged in the background." her face turned as dark as the description and Kayn found it hard to continue conversation.
"Oh–" was all he said, before she was ushered to the counter to place her order.
Then back to iced lattes like nothing had happened.
"Medium drip," he said. "Extra bitter. Like me."
The barista exhaled through her nose, clearly having heard this joke one too many times. It looked as though she contemplated hanging up her apron, launching herself over the counter, and pummeling him, but after another deep sigh, she confirmed his order and went to work.
While waiting for his drink, Kayn felt that subtle prickling sensation behind his eyes, almost as though he were developing a migraine. He blinked and rubbed his forehead. Maybe he was getting sick. Maybe it was just stress. Or maybe he shouldn't have eaten discount sushi last night. Regardless, he didn't dwell on it.
When his coffee came up, he grabbed it and muttered a thanks. Turning, he nearly collided with the same neighbor from a moment ago as she moved behind him. She apologized softly and moved on, clearly a little shaken from whatever it was she had seen. Brown hair, tired eyes, a face that told even someone as socially inept as him that even walking across the street to the café was nearly beyond her breaking point. Her shoulders were slumped, posture withdrawn, and she too sighed, though not at him.
He forgot about her immediately.
Outside, he made his usual trek down two blocks to reach the subway station. It was only after a minute or so that he noticed he was following her. Not intentionally, she just happened to be going the same direction as him. He silently hoped that she didn't think he was a creep. He liked the girl well enough, and if he were a different, more confident man, maybe he would have asked her out at some point.
He chalked it up to being a weird coincidence, but the city was big enough that patterns happened if you walked straight long enough.
As he crossed at the intersection, another screen, this time a bus stop ad panel flickered violently. The static ripple cut across it before the long-standing ad for spaying and neutering your pets had disappeared, replaced by something else. This time he saw it. For one heartbeat, it showed an aerial shot of a burning skyline, though not any skyline he had recognized. He supposed it could have been here, but his fear of heights had denied him the chance to take a plane to or from the city, so he was left assuming it was any generic big city landscape.
Then it snapped to an ad for toothpaste.
He squinted before muttering to himself, "Wild that the end of the world would fall in priority to my dental hygiene." He then breathed into his hands and inhaled, "Maybe not that wild I suppose. I should buy toothpaste."
A woman next to him became clearly shaken and picked up her pace, subtly putting space between them. Kayn pretended not to notice, because how was this any different than any other day?
The crowd moved and he followed as a vibration pulsed in the air. It was a low hum that set his hairs on edge. Head hairs, arm hairs, neck hairs, all of them were on edge. He paused and looked around. No one else seemed to react, at least no one but that girl.
He wanted to shake it off, but something was clearly happening to them. Once is a happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.
As he descended the steps toward the subway entrance, the escalator lights flickered and dimmed, then surged a little too bright. A couple people muttered about the city cutting maintenance again. Kayn was surprisingly silent about the matter. That could have been because he was on edge, or it could have been because he screamed like a little girl when the escalator jerked downward a couple feet before stabilizing.
Down below, the same woman was there again, stepping through the turnstiles just ahead of him. This time she didn't look distracted so much as deathly pale. One hand briefly pressed to her temple as she looked around to see if anyone was watching.
He didn't want to think into it, her business was exactly that, her own. However, with everything going on, he found himself jumping between fight or flight responses. Still, he tapped his card and moved forward.
The turnstile beeped and then the display screen above it glitched into a mess of lines, symbols, and shapes that made no sense, rotating curves, runes, patterns like circuitry merged with calligraphy. It lasted less than a second. Then the display returned to its normal green checkmark.
Only one other person reacted to what Kayn stared at.
"Okay, something is seriously wrong," he said aloud.
Someone behind him sighed loudly, one of those commuter sighs that says please stop talking, I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this.
He stepped forward and tried not to look at the display, or the woman, or anything else. Kayn wanted nothing to do with this, and yet the strange anomalies kept occurring. At this point, he was convinced he was cursed, but curses couldn't stop him from getting to work. This coffee wasn't going to pay for itself.
Kayn had no idea the world was already shifting around him, and his future would be changed forever.