Zan Xinyi doesn’t think the “zombie apocalypse” that the news has been talking about for a week is that big of a deal-- after all, if the world was truly ending, would her boss have called her at 5:30am and told her she had to clock in?

  Two days after the government declared there was a new virus going around with a ridiculously high physical mutation rate, and it was better to stay indoors, her laptop completely breaks down. Wouldn’t charge, wouldn’t show any screen except black with some scary rainbow bleed. Three days after that, her boss calls her and tells her that her coworker who usually closed the Friday shift wasn’t picking up the phone.

  Get over there, now.

  Her phone has a glitch effect too. If she was going to be replacing both a phone and a laptop, extra hours on the clock would be like a fistful of sand in a gravel pit.

  Not worth it.

  If only a world without rent existed. Or at least a world where a retail salary lets you live in a penthouse. That’s the thought that brought her to a store where the front door, which should always be closed, was left open. A smear of some sort over the glass. She can’t make out much of anything because of the thick layer of smog that hangs over the entire city, dim to the point where morning is barely better than the night.

  Fuck, if she doesn’t clean that up she’ll be blamed for that too. It looks disgusting.

  The bell rings as she closes the door behind her, the sound mostly obscured by how loud the music playing through the store’s speakers is.

  She settles into her station at the desk after carefully scanning the aisles.

  No customers. Great.

  She pulls her busted laptop out of her bag and plugs it into the store’s charger, hoping that maybe it was just her own charger back in her crappy studio that was at fault for her laptop not turning back on. That would be a way cheaper fix.

  When nothing changes, she optimistically closes it and leaves it plugged in.

  You never know.

  There’s a potential customer walking along the sidewalk, stumbling a bit. God, she hates drunk customers the most. She silently begs them to keep walking, but no such luck in this world. Customers really do have a homing beacon inside their head, and this guy is no exception-- his head swivels around and even from a distance and through smudged glass, he locks in on her and begins walking much faster.

  Zan Xinyi begins mentally preparing her spiel on which of the store’s newest electronics are on sale, and by on sale she means that a 50% off sticker has helpfully reduced their price by exactly nothing.

  Maybe the newest mutation index scanner, helpfully integrated into the latest Apple watch? Guaranteed to tell you that it would be better for your health to move out of the city and live somewhere with better, less polluted air and no jobs.

  The customer growls a bit as he walks in the door, and she notes with resignation that it looks like he actually already has the newest upgraded watch. It’s flashing deep red.

  “Sir,” she starts, having also dealt with this every day this week. “The watch flashing red isn’t because it’s broken. It--”

  He lunges at her.

  Zan Xinyi jerks backwards.

  “It’s just because the air in the city is that bad!” She insists. “There’s nothing wrong with the product! This store has a zero refund policy when it comes to worn items.”

  The man makes a strange wheezing noise. With only a desk separating them, she can more clearly see the most classic signs of someone who hasn’t been running air filters inside their own home-- black veins run from his mouth and nose down the column of his throat.

  One of the black veins in his neck has already developed into a horizontal oval pattern, what scientists have been calling a “rapid onset symbol-like rash” and the news is calling the evil eye.

  Due to the pupil that emerges from it and gazes at her.

  “You,” the man says slowly. His voice is slow and thick. She gets a lot of people for whom she’s the only person they’ve spoken to all day. Less people recently, as less and less people come to the store. “You look...delicious.”

  If he’s seriously going to sexually harass her on top of everything else, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.

  “Though we can’t refund it, of course I’m willing to sell you another,” Zan Xinyi says, deciding that meeting the eyes on his face is more important than making eye contact with the new one on his throat. “As it happens, our new batch is on sale! It’s--”

  The man’s jaw unhinges past the point where the skin of his cheeks has to rip and bare the flash of bloodstained teeth.

  Zan Xinyi grabs for the only thing within arms reach, her busted laptop, and slams it in his face. Then, when he doesn’t go down immediately, she slams it again and again until she hears a crack.

  The man drops to the floor, red and black blood beginning to spill everywhere, his mouth moving less and less until it stills.

  She can’t hear if he says anything, her heart beating too loud in her ears.

  His watch, still miraculously functional, begins to blare out a siren.

  “RED ALERT. ALL PEOPLE, INCLUDING STUDENTS AND WORKERS, UNLESS THEY ARE A VITAL SERVICE OR GOVERNMENTALLY CONTRACTED, MUST ENTER INTO A LOCKDOWN IN A FILTRATED AREA. MARTIAL LAW WILL BE ENACTED. CURFEWS WILL BE ENFORCED. RED ALERT.”

  Out of habit, Zan Xinyi checks her phone to see if her boss has some thoughts on the new announcement.

  Her phone dies immediately as she touches it, leaving nothing but a blank screen stained with some of the black blood that had splattered on her hands. Zan Xinyi just stares down at for another second as it becomes nothing more than a tiny mirror, and self consciously brushes her black curtain of hair out of her face.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Dead eyes, dark circles, and the last traces of when she put on eyeliner three days ago and didn’t clean it back off. Nothing else can be seen due to the respirator she wears over her mouth and nose.

  And, flickering in the corner of her eyes, she can see something else. Something that isn’t reflected on her screen. A pure hallucination.

  >The host has unlocked the Gacha Game Design System. Let’s strive to be number 1 in the industry!

  A new sentence joins the stream of nonsense that had first appeared when she cracked the laptop over the customer’s face.

  >First main task generated: Name your game.

  Reward: Five (5) spins of the gacha wheel. Newbie friendly! Everything you need to follow your dreams!

  Next to the task is a 30 minute countdown. It’s flashing red.

  If her phone is dead, then she can only rely on one of the security cameras in the shop being functional and recording her being attacked by a customer to act as proof that she should still be paid even if she leaves work early.

  Wait..should she also imply she’s been injured, so maybe lay the groundwork for self defense and perhaps a lawsuit?

  Zan Xinyi immediately clutches her head.

  “I’ve been concussed...” She says. “I’m seeing weird things! I should go to the hospital!”

  >Main tasks must be completed on time, host!

  “I’m seeing a red countdown,” Zan Xinyi says, melodramatically covering one of her eyes with the less bloodstained hand as the other clutches her laptop and phone close to her. “Do you think that means I’m going to die?”

  >...

  ...

  “Does that mean I’m going to die in thirty minutes?” Zan Xinyi asks, all histrionics frozen in her throat as her gaze turns icy.

  >Main tasks must be completed on time, host!

  “I don’t like how interactive this hallucination is,” Zan Xinyi mutters, but her attention then catches on some people outside the shop.

  A police car with its sirens on careens the wrong way down the street, unable to shake off a woman clinging to the windshield, who is using her third and fourth arms to pound on the glass. An eye on the back of her neck swivels towards the computer store.

  She’s wasted far too much time. She needs to get home.

  The corpse twitches on the floor as she steps over it and heads out.

  What had been a completely isolated 25 minute walk in the predawn light has turned, not even an hour later, into the morning of an unmitigated, crowded, disaster.

  It’s hard to tell who has lost their minds from mutation from those who have simply lost their minds from fear, and when she punches her code into her apartment’s doors, there’s already black blood smudged over the keypad, and a fist shaped dent in the brick wall beside it.

  Zan Xinyi hesitates. Doesn’t that mean someone dangerous has already gone inside...?

  A loud wail echoes down the street behind her, and she hastily presses down on the final number and dashes inside. There’s no way it will be worse than out here.

  She waits for the elevator out of habit, and it’s only once the doors close behind her that her instincts kick in, telling her that her apartment was only on the fourth floor, that she should’ve definitely taken the stairs.

  God, it’s like this her whole life, isn’t it?

  Her ex had broken up with her in this elevator. Zan Xinyi stares up at the mirrored ceiling, and only sees that in a year, nothing’s changed except for having to cover both halves of the rent.

  Or at least, that’s the only thing she should have seen.

  The apartment building is old, and every shadowy corner has a spider or two. You can’t live in the inner city and be afraid of your bug-eating neighbors, especially when they’re barely the size of a quarter.

  And animals don’t have the same susceptibility to mutation that people do. They’re more resistant.

  Everyone knows that.

  The spider in the corner of the elevator is larger than her head, all black with striped fur on its eight legs. And all nine eyes are fixed on her.

  Her own respirator muffles her scream as the spider spits silver web at her and she ducks away, only for the web to hit the elevator doors behind her.

  The elevator dings that it’s hit her floor, doors screeching as they fail to pull open more than a centimeter.

  >Less than 2 minutes remain to name your gacha game!

  Her ex had been really into magical girls.

  Figurine collections, posters, light up wands that made noises when you shook them. She was super cheesy about it, too, always saying that they were what inspired her to apply for so many scholarships to get into the college of her dreams.

  That they were what inspired her to apply for a better job in a different city.

  Zan Xinyi swings her laptop wildly up at the spider, hating the way she can see her own bitter reflection right behind it.

  In response, the spider jumps onto her head and spits more web at her feet.

  Her scream is louder than the groaning of the elevator doors this time.

  Dropping the laptop, Zan Xinyi grabs at the spider with her bare hands, feeling the prickle of its furred legs in her hands as its mandibles score across her forehead. She yanks the legs away, but her vision goes red as the blood from her forehead wound spills downwards.

  >60 seconds

  Her back slams up against the doors. She refuses to die in this elevator.

  Her ex hadn’t even let her kill any spiders, always telling her to shoo them into a cup and let them outside.

  Magical girls kill monsters all the time.

  Such a stupid argument.

  But you’re not a magical girl, Xinyi. You’re too...

  Too what.

  >30 seconds

  Zan Xinyi smashes the spider against the elevator side, using her own head to mash it down. Her ears ring from the impact on her own skull as she does it again and again until there’s nothing left but gross green and black goo strewn on the wall and completely through her hair, where the smallest glint of some shiny rock that had probably been inside the spider now seems like a hair accessory.

  Zan Xinyi looks at her new reflection in the glass.

  “Sunny Days Sparkle Power,” she says.

  >10 seconds

  “That’s the name. Sunny Days Sparkle Power.”

  >Accepted. Would you like to modify the name in any way?

  What. Does her hallucination not like the name she chose?

  Behind her, mechanical power finally wins over mutated webbing, and the doors slide smoothly open. When she confidently steps through them, unable to see well due to the blood drying over her eyes, she notices something wet seeping into her shoes.

  Looking down, she’s accidentally stepped into another pool of blood.

  “Sunny Days Sparkle Power: Endless Hell,” Zan Xinyi says.

  All the lights in the hall falter and die.