Lucien's left sole had started peeling again.
He felt it with every step—a slight catch, a drag against the pavement where the rubber was separating from the leather. He'd taped it twice this week. The tape lasted about two shifts before the adhesive gave out.
One more night.
He walked the stretch from the bus stop to the station with his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders drawn in against the October chill. The sun had dipped below the industrial skyline twenty minutes ago, leaving the sky bruised purple and orange. Streetlights buzzed to life along the access road. In the distance, the containment field around Rift 23-D hummed its low constant note—a sound most people in the city had learned to ignore, like traffic or wind.
The Carver Street Monitoring Station sat squat and ugly at the end of the road. Concrete and reinforced steel, built in the eighties when function meant more than form. A faded sign near the entrance read PROPERTY OF LOS ANGELES RIFT MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY. Below it, someone had taped a laminated sheet: ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN AT FRONT DESK. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Lucien pushed through the side entrance, the one the night crew used. The hallway smelled like burnt coffee and industrial cleaner.
Anthony was already at the time clock, badge in hand. Big guy, mid-forties, with a gut that strained his uniform shirt and a voice that carried whether he wanted it to or not.
"Cross! You look like shit."
"Thanks, Anthony."
"I'm serious. You eating?"
"When I remember." Lucien pulled his badge from his lanyard and clocked in. The machine beeped. 11:47 PM. CROSS, LUCIEN. SHIFT START.
"That's not a joke, man. Look at you." Anthony gestured vaguely at Lucien's frame—the way his uniform hung loose at the shoulders, the way his collarbones pressed against the fabric. Brown skin stretched tight over not enough meat. "You're what, twenty-two? You look like my uncle after his chemo."
"Your uncle made it through, though."
"That's not the point."
Delia passed them on her way out, her shift ending. She was pulling her coat on, already halfway to gone. "Lucien. Anthony. Don't burn the place down."
"No promises," Anthony said.
She didn't laugh. Nobody laughed at Anthony jokes, but he kept making them anyway. That was the thing about the night crew—you either found ways to fill the silence or you drowned in it.
Lucien followed Anthony down the hall toward the control room. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, one of them flickering near the break room door. Someone had put in a maintenance request three weeks ago. It was still flickering.
"Big weekend plans?" Anthony asked.
"Yeah, actually." Lucien allowed himself a small smile. It felt unfamiliar on his face. "Taking my brother down to the beach. Just two days. might still be warm enough."
"That's right, you got the little brother. What's he, twelve?"
"Fourteen."
"Shit. They grow fast." Anthony shook his head. "Beach sounds nice. I'm doing overtime Saturday. Double shift. Wife's gonna kill me, but you see what gas costs now?"
Lucien nodded. He saw.
They reached the control room. Anthony took his usual seat, the one with the broken lumbar support. Lucien settled into his station—three monitors, a radio, a logbook nobody read.
Another night. The last one, for a few days at least.
He thought about Leo's face when he'd told him about the beach. The way the kid had tried to play it cool and failed completely. Fourteen years old and still couldn't hide excitement worth a damn.
One more night, Lucien thought. Then we get something good.
He pulled up the camera feeds and let the routine take him.
The first three hours passed the way they always did. Slow. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made your ears ring if you thought about it too hard.
Lucien cycled through the camera feeds. Perimeter. Loading dock. Containment corridor. The rift itself—a shimmering wound in the air, held stable behind three layers of reinforced barriers. Rift 23-D was a D-rank. Stable. Predictable. The kind of tear that got monitored rather than feared.
On camera six, two Awakened ran a patrol along the outer fence. Their movements were easy, unhurried. One of them said something to the other, and they both laughed. Lucien watched them for a moment, then moved on.
Anthony had put on a documentary. The break room TV was old, the speakers tinny, but the sound carried through the open door. Lucien didn't mind. It was background noise. Something to fill the silence that wasn't Marcus's—Anthony's—voice.
"—fundamentally altered the global order. Before Roswell, the existence of other worlds was theoretical. After 1947, it became infrastructure."
Lucien had seen this one before. The First Breach. They played it on the History Channel every few months, usually around the anniversary.
"The entity that emerged from the Roswell rift was killed within six hours, but the damage was done. The world knew. And twenty-three years later, when the Monoliths rose from the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean—humanity had no choice but to adapt."
On screen, old footage showed the Pacific Monolith breaking the surface. Black stone, impossibly tall, water cascading off it like the ocean was giving birth to something ancient.
"The Towers changed everything. Suddenly, the rifts weren't just threats to be contained. They were doors. And some people—Awakened—could walk through them and come back stronger."
Lucien's phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen. Leo.
you still coming home before we leave tomorrow?
Lucien typed back: Yeah. Be there by 8. Pack light.
Three dots. Then: define light
One bag. Not the big one.
thats basically nothing
It's two days, Leo.
fine. but im bringing the speaker
Lucien smiled. Bring the speaker.
He set the phone down and leaned back in his chair. On the monitors, nothing moved. The rift pulsed gently behind its barriers, the same rhythm it had held for years. The Awakened finished their patrol and disappeared into the field station on the east side.
In the break room, the documentary droned on. Something about integration rates. The percentage of the population that Awakened naturally versus those who triggered later. The economic impact of rift resources on global markets.
Lucien didn't need a documentary to understand the economics. He saw it every day. The Awakened on camera six probably made more in a week than he made in three months. They had Sources in their chests, crystalline organs that let them touch mana, shape it, use it. Lucien had a time card and a bus pass.
That was fine. He wasn't bitter about it. Some people were born with it, some people triggered by eighteen, and most people—like him—just didn't. That was the math. You couldn't be angry at math.
His phone buzzed again.
hey lu
Yeah?
thanks for this
Lucien looked at the message for a long moment. Then he typed: Don't thank me yet. I'm picking the music in the car.
NO
Too late. Already made the playlist.
i hate you
Pack light.
He put the phone away. Checked the monitors. Nothing.
Four more hours.
Dawn came slow. Gray light bleeding through the windows, turning the control room's fluorescent glow sickly.
Lucien logged his final round. Cameras clear. Inventory unchanged. Another night where nothing happened, documented in triplicate.
The rift pulsed on monitor three. Same rhythm. Same shimmer. It had looked exactly like that when Lucien started this job two years ago. It would look exactly like that long after he was gone.
He was reaching for his jacket when the containment doors opened.
Three hunters walked out.
Lucien paused, watching through the monitor. Then he crossed to the window—the reinforced one that overlooked the containment yard.
They moved differently than normal people. That was the first thing you noticed about Awakened, even the low-ranked ones. Something in the way they carried weight. These three were D-rank, maybe C-rank at highest. Grunt work. Probably a routine clear—kill whatever spawned inside, collect materials, clock out.
The platform they walked on was rated for heavy machinery. Reinforced steel, bolted deep into concrete. Lucien watched it shudder with each step.
The hunter in front was a woman, dark hair pulled back, dried blood on her forearm that she hadn't bothered to wipe off. She was laughing at something one of the others said. Relaxed. Easy. Like she hadn't just walked out of a tear in reality where things wanted to eat her.
Twenty percent. That was the global number. One in five people, give or take. Born with a Source already forming, or triggered at eighteen when the body finished growing and the soul—or whatever it was—decided to crystallize.
Lucien had waited for eighteen like everyone else. Watched the calendar. Felt nothing.
Nineteen came. Then twenty. Each month after eighteen, the odds dropped. By twenty-one, the statistics were brutal. By twenty-two, they were essentially zero.
He wasn't bitter. Bitterness required the belief that things should have been different. Lucien had never been the type to expect much from the universe.
But watching the hunters cross the yard—watching the ground tremble under feet that looked human but weren't, not really, not anymore—he felt the weight of the gap. The woman with blood on her arm probably made more on this single job than Lucien made in a month. She could take a hit that would kill him three times over. She had a future measured in power and possibility.
Lucien had a bus pass and a weekend trip to the beach.
He grabbed his jacket. Clocked out. The machine beeped.
7:58 AM. CROSS, LUCIEN. SHIFT END.
The walk home was twenty minutes. The sun was fully up now, the city waking around him. Cars on the freeway. Coffee shops opening. People in suits heading to offices. Lucien moved against the current, a night creature returning to his hole.
The apartment was quiet when he got in. Leo's door was closed. Lucien stood outside it for a moment, listening. Slow breathing. Still asleep.
He didn't open it. Didn't need to.
In just a day, he'd wake Leo up. They'd pack the car—Leo's bag too big despite instructions, the speaker definitely included. They'd drive to the coast. Lucien would play his playlist and Leo would complain and the ocean would be cold but they'd go in anyway.
That was the plan.
Lucien went to his room. Set his alarm. Lay down on a mattress that was too soft in the wrong places.
He was asleep in minutes.
Outside, the sun climbed higher. The city hummed. The rift pulsed in its containment field, steady as a heartbeat.