The sky above the flooded city slowly turned black as the day finally started to darken.
Gene and his small team had spent the last several hours jumping across the rooftops, using the brass compass to guide them, but they ultimately decided to camp out inside a sturdy-looking building just a few blocks away from the tall skyscraper.
"Man, it really seemed so close from our starting building," Aiden complained, dropping his back against the wall and sliding down to the floor in an exhausted heap.
"Why is it actually so far away?"
They were all gathered inside a small, enclosed room near the centre of the building.
Gene had carefully chosen this specific spot because it didn't have any windows facing the outside and only had one door for an entrance, making it much easier to defend if things went wrong.
"I can't breathe properly in here," Maria said, her chest heaving as her breathing became shallow and irregular.
The air inside the windowless room was definitely stale and thick with dust from years of neglect.
"You are just going to have to deal with it for tonight," Gene replied, walking around the perimeter of the room and checking the walls one more time for any hidden vents or weak spots.
"It is a lot safer than us trying to navigate the jumps out there in the dark."
"But all the monsters we saw today were only swimming in the water, right?" Kiara asked, pulling her knees up to her chest as she sat on the carpet.
"Why should we even worry about staying inside if we are this high up?"
Before the teenage girl could even finish her sentence, Gene spun around and quickly clamped his hand tight over her mouth.
He held his other finger up to his lips, giving everyone in the room an intense look that clearly meant they needed to shut up immediately.
Crkkkk.
Crkkk.
A terrible clicking sound echoed from the hallway right outside their door. It sounded like someone dragging bones across the floor tiles.
No one inside the small room dared to make even a single sound.
Aiden held his breath so long his face started turning red, and Maria covered her own mouth with both hands to muffle her frantic breathing.
A sniffing sound came through the small gap under the door. Something was standing right on the other side of the wood, smelling the air and dragging its limbs across the carpet.
The silence in the room stretched on for what felt like hours until the clicking sounds slowly started moving away down the hall and finally faded out of earshot.
Gene waited another full minute just to be safe.
He walked softly over to the door and pressed his ear tightly against the thick wood, listening hard for any lingering movement.
After finding nothing but silence, he turned back to the terrified group and gave them a slow thumbs-up.
Aiden, Maria, and Kiara all let out quiet gasps of air as they finally got their breathing back under control.
Maria's breathing sounded even worse than before, slightly uneven in her chest from the panic of the moment.
"What in the world was that thing?" Aiden asked in a very slow whisper, keeping his eyes locked on the closed door.
"They are called Creakers," Gene whispered back, sitting down on the floor near the entrance to keep watch.
"They are basically mummy-like beings that crawl out of the water and walk on the buildings at night to hunt. Without any real weapons to defend ourselves, we are just easy prey for them out there in the open."
Hearing that awful description made everyone's face turn completely pale in the dim light.
They all clearly wanted to ask Gene exactly how he knew so much detailed information about the monsters and the layout of this game, but the tension in the room stopped them from pushing their luck.
"Gene," Maria slowly started, her voice shaking just a little bit as she looked at him sitting by the door.
"Why did you really kill those people on the roof today?"
Gene kept an indifferent expression on his face as he looked back at her.
He understood why they were all so horrified by what he did.
To them, it must have seemed like a brutal, unprovoked murder of three guys who might have just been trying to help.
But to Gene, it was simply eliminating a known threat beforehand to protect his own life and secure the perimeter.
He was not about to tell them the truth about his past life or the fact that those guys were actually prisoners who did horrifying things.
"They are not actually dead," Gene replied calmly, deciding to give them the system's technical truth instead of the messy reality.
"What do you mean they aren't dead?" Aiden asked, leaning forward with a confused look on his face.
"We literally watched the monsters rip that fat guy to pieces in the water."
"I mean exactly what I said," Gene explained quietly.
"When a player fails a stage or gets killed here, their physical body just respawns safely back on Earth. The system kicks them out of Genesis and opens up a new trial gate back home to recruit someone else to take their place. Those three guys are probably sitting in their living rooms right now, wondering what went wrong."
The group stared at him in disbelief, trying to process the idea that death in this world was just a violent reset button.
It made the whole situation seem a little less horrific, but it did not erase the memory of the brutal violence they had witnessed.
"Now take some rest while you can," Gene ordered softly, shifting his position against the wall to get slightly more comfortable.
"We have a long day ahead of us if we want to beat the other groups to the weapon. I will explain more of the rules tomorrow when the sun comes up."
Aiden, Maria, and Kiara didn't argue.
They curled up in their respective corners of the dusty room, completely exhausted by the physical exertion of the jumps and the mental toll of the day's events.
It didn't take long for the sound of their soft snoring to fill the small space.
Gene sat alone near the door, staring into the darkness and thinking about the difficult path ahead.
He knew the skyscraper was going to be crawling with Dane's people, and securing a decent weapon was only going to be the very first step in a very long war.
His eyes slowly closed as he tried to rest his mind, knowing he needed all his focus for the morning.
Ding!
A blue notification suddenly popped up in the darkness right in front of his face, making him jump slightly.
➢ [God Of Fate is watching you]
'Huh?' Gene thought, staring at the glowing blue text in total confusion.