The smaller imp, the level one, was already inside. It skittered along the tilted floor, its blunt nose sniffing the air in quick, excited bursts as it eyed the cowering passengers with a kind of glee. Everyone was backing away, pressing against the torn walls.

  The larger imp, the level two, was at the opening. Its armpits were hooked over the torn metal edge of the fuselage, its long arms braced against the cabin floor as it scrambled and struggled to haul the rest of its body inside. It was exposed, but its limbs were too long and wiry to approach safely. Every straining flex of its muscle looked capable of tearing through the thin aluminum walls.

  If the big one got inside, they were finished. The smaller one was a threat, but with the exit blocked, they'd be trapped facing two creatures in a space this tight. There would be nowhere to move. It would rip through them one by one until nothing moved. For the moment, it hung awkwardly, half wedged, half climbing, caught in a geometry that kept everyone breathing.

  Once it managed to force its way in, though?

  ”We’re cooked,” he muttered, his thoughts escaping him unconsciously. It would be a slaughter in a tin can.

  The smaller imp’s jaw stretched in a wet smile. It revealed teeth you wouldn't want anywhere near you. Thick saliva dripped from its lower jaw in long strings, splattering on the tilted floor.

  It took a deliberate step forward, one clawed foot scraping on the metal.

  Every person crammed against the walls took a step back. The movement was a synchronized flinch, a wave of shrinking bodies.

  Everyone froze.

  David watched it, then looked at the larger one, struggling, then at the frozen passengers, survival math ticking in his head like a timer running out. He moved, slowly, slower than he’d ever moved before. Everyone else was frozen, performing a live tutorial on how to die badly. If I’ve got a level, I can grind, right? Get stronger. So why start with these things? Where are the frogs? The world felt rigged, but he had already decided to move before anyone else did—part instinct, part disbelief that panic had a queue.

  David felt his muscles settle into a calm readiness, a wave of clean energy hitting his system like ten shots of adrenaline straight to the heart. Every thought sharpened. Level zero is the bottom. Level one is just as low. This might be the only chance I get to actually kill something. His pulse hammered with focused potential, each beat feeding alertness into his limbs. A heightened awareness settled on him, thick and electric, and with it came the cold certainty that if the creature wanted a meal, it had picked the wrong group.

  David wasn't an idiot. He didn't want to fight that thing. They had guns. When the marshals shot, it was going to be distracted. Injured, dying. That would let him get past its defenses and stab it in the head. Level up. See if the stats work like in the games. All he had to do was not get stabbed. Not get eaten. This was an act to increase his odds. He wanted to piggyback off the guns.

  As everyone else stood frozen, tense, David shifted to the right, sliding into what passed for the creature’s blind spot while it hungrily stalked the clustered group of passengers. He gripped a bent metal pipe in one hand and another, much sharper pole with a jagged tip in the other. A group of men and women advanced from the far side of the carriage, their movements steady and focused. Two of them reached under their jackets as they closed in, and badges caught the dim light.

  David felt his focus tighten into a single, clear point; his hands were steady on the metal rods as the other passengers converged and the two possibly armed men stepped forward with badges flashing. They’re going to shoot it. Good. The group backed the potential Marshals, closing ranks, breath sharp and small in the stale cabin. If they’re marshals, they’ll shoot first. David shifted his feet, pivoting for the angle he wanted, shoulders loose and ready. Fine. Let them. I’ll move in the second it drops. The air tasted metallic; his pulse was a steady drumbeat as the two marshals’ hands hovered at their sides. Straight through the head. The neck. I need the right angle when the shot lands.

  David lowered himself, using the broken seats as cover. He positioned himself for a lunge, his body coiled and out of the creature's direct line of sight. The imp's attention was fixed on the marshals, its snarling gaze locked on their weapons.

  David saw the creature stare at the marshals with a wild, stupid sort of hunger, its sharp grin revealing the confidence of something too ignorant to understand danger. It looked at them as if they were a meal that had wandered into reach.

  He was about a meter away, shielded by the shredded upholstery. His pulse picked up. Is the medication wearing off? he wondered. Maybe it was thinning out of his system. Or maybe he had developed a new tolerance for chaos. That thought lasted half a second before he realized it was false. He did not want to die. But he felt charged anyway.

  His body kept urging him to move, buzzing with heat and focus. The question itself seemed to trigger a surge of voltage through his veins, a strange current that made every hair stand on end. The cabin sharpened. The world turned precise. His muscles warmed, his heartbeat thudded fast and mechanical. For once, his thoughts formed in straight lines. Every motion of the imp’s body appeared obvious, as if the sequence of events had been rehearsed for him alone.

  He spared a quick, fleeting glance at the larger one.

  The entrance could have fit two people side by side, yet the larger, stronger imp filled it alone. Long, spindly, and crooked, it stood well over seven feet tall. Its stretched limbs caught at the shoulders and elbows, making entry easy but escape clumsy.

  Then the imp’s arm twitched. He saw it before it moved. Some new instinct in him hummed with the certainty that he knew exactly what to do. It was almost funny, in a dark way—somehow clarity only arrived when surrounded by things that wanted to eat him.

  He could see a faint haze around the others, like the waves from extreme heat in the air, and red mist clung to his skin. A part of him felt the adrenaline and excitement he felt was irrational, rising in protest as a brief wave of calm washed over his mind, but it was quickly smothered by a scream and cracks of thunder.

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  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  A series of explosions hit in rapid bursts, turning the plane’s interior into a vibrating cage of metal and pressure. The noise tore through David’s ears until everything blurred into a single violent hum. The imp cried out for the first time, its voice slicing through the sound as debris clattered across the floor.

  David gasped, breathing in some of the mist that hung in the air.

  The world locked into a crystal lattice. Sound hollowed out, leaving a ringing vacuum. The ache in his hand dissolved into a cool, branching current that fused with his skeleton. Raw voltage, dumb and available, saturated his bloodstream. The metal pole in his left hand and the sharper piece in his right ceased being objects. They became intentions he was holding. The feeling was a clean, surgical bolt of yes.

  His awareness bled outward. He felt the press of every person against the fuselage walls, the shift of the imp's weight on the floor, the frayed end of a cable three rows back. It was like living on the skin of a giant frog, feeling its every breath. He was calmly, utterly certain of the space he occupied.

  Okay. So this is a thing now. I am officially on several very interesting drugs I did not take.

  His nerves reported a single, clear state: OMNIPRESENT. He took a slow internal survey. I feel... connected. To everything. Like he’d just heard the universe's wifi password.

  There was no explanation for the serene certainty currently humming in his chest. Is this a standard human upgrade? If people walk around feeling this plugged in, no wonder society is just a series of increasingly complex distractions. You could never just stand in line at the bank.

  Or have I just been operating at a fifty-percent battery my whole life and someone finally found the charger? The clarity was absolute and mildly ridiculous. He felt like he’d stopped being a person and had become a suddenly active antenna.

  [Battle Sense Lvl 1? Battle Sense Lvl 2]

  Apparently not—and the absurd rush of it almost made him laugh. The world adjusted, recognizing something new had taken root.

  The moment the shots lulled, he sensed it before the sound even faded. He could even sense the Marshal's hesitation, somehow, as if he knew they wouldn’t shoot in the next moment, perhaps growing wary of hitting the woman foolishly moving on the floor. His mouth twitched upward as he dropped lower, measuring reach, angle, and speed through reflex sharpened beyond thought. He dashed before the creature could pull itself back through the hatch.

  It turned mid-motion, a jolt of anger cutting through its warped features as one arm tore loose. A clawed hand swung forward, each claw nearly the size of his palm. He stopped just short, the movement landing with impossible precision—it was as if he knew the strike would come before it did.

  There was only him and the imp. Everything else fell away.

  ”Hey! Wait—no!”

  The Marshalls yelled for him to ”Stay back!,” but David was already moving.

  He lunged, both weapons driving for its head. The imp raised an arm to block—bone met metal, the dull weapon blocked—the sharp pole jammed deep into the creature’s lower jaw with a wet crack. Blood gushed hot over David’s hands. But the impact shuddered to a halt against the thick bone of its skull. The weapon stuck fast, wrenched tight in the imp’s clenched jaw.

  The entire plan hinged on David ending it in one strike to steal the kill—shoot the creature, stab the brain, press its off-switch. Bullet holes gushed from the creature’s chest, and it should have been dying—but it wasn’t dead, not yet. David still might steal the kill, but for now it was still standing, and he was far too close; close enough to judge its dental hygiene.

  David planted a boot on its chest and kicked, muscles screaming. The imp didn’t budge. Instead, the creature lunged.

  David braced, the metal poles feeling useless in his hands. He let go of the weapon piercing it and sidestepped the lunge, hurling himself into the passenger seats as the creature passed Then he scrambled and swung the heavy metal with all his weight into its knee. Something cracked. The imp staggered, its momentum carrying it past him.

  Now, David stood with his back to the entrance, and the imp was stumbling between him and the other passengers, its lunge having carried it past him into the middle of the aisle.

  This was his only chance. As it stumbled, David, with his free right hand, guided by a strange new sense of omniscience, grabbed the slick handle of his sharp weapon from where it was lodged, and with a raw shout, he ripped it from the creature’s flesh.

  The imp whirled, off-balance, but its backhand was already coming—its free arm swung around in a blur of claws. David threw himself backward, feeling the wind of the talons skim his throat. He used the momentum, attempting to back up and create space, but the imp was already moving. Its bony elbow pistoned back, aiming to impact his chest to cause serious damage.

  David didn’t try to block. He dropped low under the swing and drove his shoulder into its chest, pushing with everything left. The imp shouldn't have budged—but it was already off-balance—it toppled backward. Its clawed hand snatched at his arm, tearing cloth and skin, but the grip failed. The shove, the imp’s own weight, the treacherous footing—it all conspired. David’s lunge carried him forward with the falling creature, almost on top of it. The fallen imp kicked at him with two overgrown, inhuman legs; an attack that was more a launching push than a strike, and completely knocked the wind out of him. As the imp hit the ground proper, David was already airborne, launched from the collision.

  He flew backward through the aisle, toward the exit at speed like a human cannonball, the world a dizzying rush of metal, plastic, poorly designed seats, and blurring wind; blood in his mouth, weapons cold in his fists, headed straight for a larger one still scrambling to get in.

  David realized his math had failed him halfway through his new, free flight. Terrible plan. Ten out of ten for commitment though.

  He braced and impacted the larger creature, and both David and the level 2, larger, stronger, and likely more vicious imp went tumbling out of the broken fuselage to the world outside.

  David heard an array of further gunshots from the plane’s interior, 2, 3, 4, 5—10.

  [You have Defeated…]

  David mentally told the system to ‘Fuck off and stop blinding me,’ then frantically attempted to flail away from a swiping claw in mid-air, as shouts and more gunshots came from the cabin hatch above. He flailed even further mid-air, not moving, but spinning in place to alter his position from vertical to horizontal, those flashes of foresight—system glitch or instinct—telling him where the imp’s claws would swipe. The larger creature flailed toward him, all limbs and fury, weightless but still vicious. He rammed the pipe forward through the drag of air. It struck the imp’s arm, twisting it off balance, the impact ringing through the hollow metal.

  That probably counts as a scratch, he thought, twisting free. They spun apart, the world breaking into snapshots—claw, wing, jagged metal, open ground rushing up.

  The imp crashed into the ground first, tearing through a loose clump before tumbling. David followed a heartbeat later, his momentum slowed by the attack but still turning everything into a blur. He hit the grass hard, rolled poorly through dirt and broken plastic, and stopped on his side, alive and mildly offended by gravity, dirt in his mouth and dignity slightly misplaced.

  David lay still for a second, winded but alive. I’ve survived by the power of bad planning again.

  David spat out dirt and tested his limbs, making sure he was fit enough to move freely, wincing as the imp twitched across from him, rising. He stared for a beat, pipe still in hand, then said flatly, “So that went well.”

  He pushed himself up on one elbow, bruised but functional. The imp shook itself, more insulted than hurt. They stared at each other across the short stretch of grass, both breathing hard, both trying to figure out who looked dumber for ending up there.

  The imp rose, hissing through chipped teeth. David sighed. “Right. Round two, then.” He paused. “Or can we both take a minute to regret our life choices?”

  The imp hissed, claws flexing. David sighed again. “Right. No negotiation skills. Figures.”