Shadow Slave

'A Gate… there is a Gate…'

Before Sunny even comprehended these words, he was trembling, cold fear rising from the depths of his heart to swallow him whole. This was not a conscious response, but an instinctual reaction — something that his body had learned to do in the past, the terror that all modern humans came to bear in their very bones.

The grating, echoing ringing meant only one thing — run! Run if you wish to live, if you don't want to die in a manner so harrowing that words could not describe it.

But Sunny wasn't a mundane human anymore.

Strangling the instinctual fear, he threw it aside and stared at the screen of the communicator with a dark expression on his face.

The notification was similar to the ones he had seen several times in the past. Previously, when he lived in the outskirts, he had learned of the devastation an opening Gate could bring firsthand. Wherever you lived, you were bound to hear that sound once every few years.

Granted, the infrastructure in the outskirts was way less developed than in the proper parts of the city, and there wasn't a lot of Awakened around. So the results were often more disastrous.

He was in a very respectable district right now.

But ironically, things were much worse.

Sunny wasn't very versed in the technology the government used to detect the appearing Gates in advance, but he knew that it failed this time. Usually, people would receive a notification at least ten minutes, half an hour, sometimes even days before the dreaded event.

This gave most of them time to evacuate out of the impact zone, and also allowed the government forces to arrive before the flood of Nightmare Creatures broke free of the opening Gate and cut through the ranks of the nearby Awakened who tried to stall it.

Two hundred seconds… that was nothing. Less than nothing. It was not nearly enough time for people to run, and not nearly enough for help to arrive. Such a small time window meant only one thing…

unless something happened, there was going to be a

was safe, though. He could just

to the exit with panicked

the Gate was going to appear,

'Too close…'

time. If their hazard protocols were well established, they were not even going to try. They would just gather the children

no matter how formidable they were. Even if there were several

'What to do…'

time, the notification interface was different from how Sunny had seen it in

the map. It was very similar to the insignia Master Jet wore on her

symbol was there because the communicator knew that Sunny

hundred and ninety-two seconds remaining until the Gate opened. Out in the classroom where one of his shadows was currently hiding, the children and the teacher were still staring at the notification with stunned expressions, not yet comprehending what it meant exactly. Or simply

a lot of attention to the chaos happening around him, Sunny pressed on the symbol,

ATTENTION ALL AWAKENED

REQUEST IMMEDIATE ACTION

ATTENTION ALL AWAKENED

REQUEST IMMEDIATE...

that, several lines

probability),

16 min,

'Thirteen minutes!'

twitched, a resentful grimace

be able to arrive to the Gate was in thirteen minutes after it had opened. Thirteen minutes… that might as well