The alarm blared like a banshee.
Alex Chen groaned and slammed his hand on the nightstand, blindly swiping until the blaring noise finally stopped. His fingers fumbled against the cracked screen of his phone—an ancient model held together by tape and prayer.
6:42 a.m.
He was already late.
"Shit."
He rolled out of bed, the chill of the morning air biting into his skin. His dingy apartment didn't have central heating, and the cracked window he'd meant to seal last winter still hissed cold drafts into the room.
Still dressed in yesterday's hoodie and jeans, Alex splashed water on his face and stared at his reflection. Pale skin, messy black hair, and the bags under his eyes could've carried groceries.
You look like you coded through a war zone.
Which wasn't far from the truth.
After four hours of debugging someone else's spaghetti code for a VR pet simulator, he'd finally crashed around 2 a.m. Freelance gigs paid garbage, but they were all he had since getting shafted at his last job for "team culture mismatch."
Translation: he told his boss their blockchain-based toothbrush idea was stupid.
Grabbing his backpack and half a protein bar, he was out the door in minutes. His job at SynTech, one of the biggest tech firms in Neo-San Francisco, wasn't glamorous. He wasn't a lead dev, or even a senior. Just another code monkey shoveling lines into a black box and praying it compiled.
But at least it paid the rent. Barely.
By the time he reached the company lobby, he was already sweating despite the cold.
"You're late," muttered Jenna from HR as she passed by, not even bothering to look up from her tablet.
"Good morning to you too," Alex muttered, pressing his palm against the security scanner.
The door beeped red.
Access Denied.
He frowned. "What the hell…"
He tried again.
Access Granted.
The door hissed open like nothing had happened.
Weird.
Alex slid into his cubicle, dropped his bag, and powered on his workstation. The usual boot sequence ran—except this time, the screen didn't load into the company OS.
Instead, the monitor flickered.
Lines of code scrolled in green text over a black background, fast—too fast.
"Is this a prank?"
He tapped keys. Nothing responded.
Then, a chime.
[SYSTEM DETECTED]
User ID: Alex Chen
Status: Incomplete
Initialize system? (Y/N)
He froze.
Not because it was some rogue script or debug console—but because the words weren't on the monitor.
They were hovering in his vision.
"...what?"
He rubbed his eyes, blinked.
Still there.
He stood. Looked around. No one else seemed to notice. His screen was back to normal. But the prompt… it followed his gaze.
Initialize system? (Y/N)
"Okay, maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe I didn't sleep. Maybe the mold in my bathroom is sentient."
Still, his hand twitched.
He whispered under his breath. "Y."
The text vanished.
A pulse shot through his skull—sharp, like a migraine fired through a laser. He staggered against the desk, gasping. For a moment, the world tilted sideways.
Then it stabilized.
And a new message blinked into view.
[SYSTEM BOOT COMPLETE]
Welcome, Alex Chen.
Primary Attributes unlocked.
Daily System Check: 0/1
Quest Available: Survive Today. Reward: +1 Upgrade Point.
Upgrade point?
He scrolled down—mentally, somehow—and saw a tab marked Status.
[Alex Chen]
Level: 1
Mental Capacity: 12
Reaction Time: 9
Memory Index: 10
Physical Strength: 8
Focus Duration: 6
Available Upgrade Points: 1
He clicked—no, willed—the point into Focus Duration.
A heat bloomed behind his eyes. His thoughts sharpened. The fatigue, the weight of another shitty morning—it lifted just a little.
"What the hell is this?" he whispered.
The rest of the morning blurred into background noise. People talked, screens flashed, Slack notifications dinged. Alex barely heard any of it.
He couldn't stop staring at the system.
It wasn't an app. It wasn't augmented reality. It was embedded into his perception, like a HUD only he could see.
By noon, he was staring at a bug in a colleague's code—a logic loop causing a memory overflow—and without meaning to, his brain just… solved it.
Lines of possibilities flashed through his mind. Like his thoughts were being rendered in high-definition.
He fixed it in five minutes.
His manager, Raj, peeked over the cubicle wall. "Hey, that patch you pushed? That was... fast. You feeling okay?"
Alex forced a grin. "Caffeine miracle."
Raj raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Well, keep it up. We've got eyes on this sprint."
Alex nodded. But inside, he was shaking.
Because for the first time in years… he felt powerful.
He took a walk during lunch, ducking into the back alley behind SynTech. The cold air helped. He paced, watching the system flicker new data in his vision.
A message appeared.
New Passive Detected: Micro-Focus (Lv. 1)
Concentration holds for 2x longer without mental fatigue.
He laughed—half giddy, half terrified.
He was upgrading. Leveling up. Like some sci-fi RPG… except it was real.
The system responded to use. Rewarded progress. Encouraged learning, growth, survival.
A game embedded into real life.
But one thing gnawed at him.
Why him?
That night, back in his apartment, he booted up his old dev environment and started digging.
If this was code, there had to be a source.
He wrote a diagnostic tool to track neurological signals—EEG spikes, perception shifts, eye movements. Nothing came back unusual.
Until he noticed a new file.
root.system_Override64.exe
Hidden in a partition of his brain-computer interface simulator—code he hadn't touched in weeks.
He opened it.
A single line of text appeared:
"You were chosen, Alex Chen. Welcome to the next evolution."
And then it self-deleted.
The next morning, the system updated.
Quest Complete: Survive Day 1
+1 Upgrade Point
New Quest: Explore Origin. Reward: System Skill – DeepScan.
Alex sat up in bed, heart pounding.
He'd entered something far bigger than he could understand.
And if someone chose him… that meant someone was watching.
The upgrade path had started.
And there was no going back.