God Please Save Us

The screech tore through the air.

Everyone went silent.

Then came the sound of glass shattering in the hallway beyond the lecture hall — followed by footsteps. Not human ones. Heavy. Uneven. Wet.

A girl began to cry softly.

The professor stood frozen at the front of the room, one cybernetic eye sparking from internal interference. "Everyone, stay low. Stay silent."

Aeron didn't move. His heart pounded like a war drum in his chest, but his eyes scanned the exits. Both the main entrance and emergency access doors had sealed shut. Standard lockdown protocol.

Another crash. Closer this time.

And then… silence.

Everyone held their breath.

It arrived at the door.

The thing outside sniffed. Snorted. Its breath sounded like it came from lungs filled with mud and gravel. Aeron could see its shadow now, under the crack of the door — tall, hunched, twitching.

Suddenly — it stopped.

The door handle clicked.

Someone screamed.

A boy from the front row ran, rushing toward the back. The professor shouted, but it was too late.

The door exploded inward.

The creature was tall — seven feet. Its skin was stretched and stitched. Glowing blue cracks ran down its arms. Its face was covered with a jagged metal mask, breathing tubes hissing from the sides.

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The boy screamed again as the thing grabbed him — faster than anyone could react — and slammed him into the wall like a sack of meat. Blood splattered across the floor.

"MOVE!" Aeron shouted.

Panic detonated. Students stampeded to the far side of the room, flipping desks and falling over each other. The professor tried to activate a shield barrier, but the power grid failed.

Aeron didn't think — he ran forward.

Not away. Toward the creature.

"Hey!" he shouted, grabbing a broken chair leg. "Over here, freak!"

The beast turned, black eyes glowing.

Aeron swung.

The wooden leg shattered on impact — barely making it flinch. But it worked. It looked away from the huddled crowd and focused on him.

His heart screamed to run, but he forced himself to stand his ground. Just a few seconds more. Buy time.

The creature lunged.

Aeron ducked under the first swipe and rolled to the side — grabbing a fallen desk and hurling it as hard as he could. The desk slammed into the thing's chest, making it stumble.

Just enough time.

"OUT THE BACK!" Aeron shouted. "EMERGENCY VENT SHAFT!"

The other students finally got it. They scrambled for the ventilation access on the wall. It wasn't meant for full escape — but it was the safest exit.

Aeron turned back.

The creature was already recovering.

He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall — yanked the pin — and blasted it in the thing's face.

It roared, blinded. Then charged again.

Aeron jumped. The creature crashed into the wall behind him.

"Aeron, stop!" the professor shouted suddenly. She was rushing toward him. "You can't move too much — doing physical work in this air will make you inhale more Zone air. It'll cause your ability to mutate!"

He turned briefly, panting. "My ability is dormant," he said. "It won't affect me."

She looked at him with desperate eyes. "Just listen to me. I am not leaving any of my students here."

The beast roared and charged again.

Aeron was too slow this time — too distracted.

But she moved.

The professor shoved him back, stepping into the path of the creature.

"No—!"

The thing's jagged claws swung down.

It cleaved through her torso like wet paper.

Her top half slid from the bottom, crashing to the floor in a pool of blood and wires. Her cybernetic eye flickered dimly once… then went dark.

Aeron froze.

His mind couldn't register it. Couldn't process.

She was alive a second ago.

The world slowed as the beast turned toward him again.

He didn't think. Couldn't.

He ran.

He dove into the vent shaft with the others, dragging the panel closed behind him just as the creature slammed into it with a deafening clang. The entire wall shook.

The shaft was cramped, lit only by emergency strips along the walls. He crawled in silence behind the others — gasping, stunned, shaking.

A minute passed. Then two.

Someone sniffled. Another quietly sobbed.

"A-Aeron," one of the students whispered. "What do we do now?"

He didn't answer right away.

Finally, he swallowed and said, "We survive."

"How long until the Guilds arrive?"

"They'll wait for stabilization first," Aeron muttered. "First thirty minutes after a Zone blooms… it's chaos. The environment changes every few seconds. Could be a forest one minute… a floating island the next."

"What if we leave the building?" another kid said, raising his voice.

"There's no way we can survive the first thirty minutes of a Zone. Even after that, it's tough — we're just a bunch of college kids with no real experience. But after those first thirty minutes, the Zone stabilizes. A theme sets in, and the dangers become predictable."

Riko, one of Aeron's friends, spoke up. "You are underestimating yourself and us, Aeron. You literally survived fighting a monster without any help."

Aeron remained quiet.

"We all went through Genetic Ability Assessment. We all know our abilities. And who cares if we don't have licenses to use them? It's a dire situation, and we'll do everything to survive."

Other kids, still unsure, remained silent — as if they just wanted to wait.

"Why are you all being such pussies? In a few months we'd be in Guild programs. Wouldn't it be cool to brag, telling them you survived a C-Class Zone without any proper training?" Riko continued.

But the kids weren't listening to him. They were looking at Aeron. The courageous charge back then, facing the monster, had made him a leader in their eyes.

Kids waited for Aeron to tell them what to do — how they could survive this mess. But before Aeron could do that—

Riko smirked and seized the silence.

"We've got Aeron with us," he said, voice confident, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Physically gifted. Top of the class academically. He knows more about Zones than half the professors."

He turned to the others. "He just fought a monster. Without using his ability. And lived."

Gasps and chatters spread through the vent like a wave.

The lifeless college kids were suddenly feeling normal again.

"Think what he could do with his ability. They call him broken for a reason," Riko grinned. "He's a one-in-a-million talent."

Aeron opened his mouth to say something — to tell them the truth.

But he stopped.

Their faces… they'd lit up. After all the blood, the screams, the horror — there was finally a flicker of hope. And it was pointed at him.

He wanted to correct Riko. To tell them he hadn't defeated that thing. That the professor had sacrificed herself — and that he didn't even know if his ability would ever awaken.

But he didn't.

Not yet.

Instead, he swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.

Maybe… maybe if he kept them hopeful, they'd stay alive. Maybe that was worth the lie.

'It's just a C-Rank Zone,' he told himself. This was what he always wanted to do — explore a Zone. But the question was, is it worth it to risk the lives of all these kids?

With Riko's speech and all the others hyping him up, there was no way Aeron was backing down now.

The group began crawling again, moving single-file through the cramped metallic shaft. Every sound felt amplified in the silence — knees scraping, soft breaths, the occasional quiet sob. They reached a vertical shaft finally showing an exit.

The file stopped. Aeron, shifting and squeezing through the crowd, made his way forward to the front of the file.

"Alright, we head down one by one. No one makes a noise. After that, we look for stairs. We have to get to the ground floor."

Riko, doubting Aeron's plan, butted in. "Why ground floor? Wouldn't getting to higher floors be better? It'll make it harder for the monster to reach us."

Aeron quickly answered, as if to dismiss Riko's doubt before it even grew. "Ground floor has the toughest walls to sustain this building. So if we close the doors, it'll be hard for monsters to reach. On top of that, it'll make it easier for Guilds to find us."

Everyone agreed quietly. Moving down, Aeron came first, followed by Riko. One by one, students came down, trying to make as little noise as possible.

When everyone came down, Aeron began moving forward, navigating through the hallway.

"We'll avoid open areas," Aeron whispered, taking lead. "No loud noises. No powers unless I say. The Zone gas is thick — if you overexert yourself, your ability could mutate or spiral out of control."

One girl raised her hand instinctively, then blushed. "W-What if it already has? Mutated, I mean."

Aeron hesitated. "Then... try not to use it unless it's life or death. Mutations can be unstable — and unpredictable."

As they kept moving peacefully, the group had gotten a bit calmer — even gossiping with each other, some even cracking jokes.

But that didn't last too long. The sound of multiple feet echoed from the other side of the hallway. Everyone went quiet.

Aeron looked back. With this many students, there were bound to be many casualties if multiple monsters arrived.

So he just closed his eyes and prayed to the gods. "Please, God. You have always given me the short stick. Let me get lucky just this one time. Please, please say these footsteps are from Guild members."

But deep down, Aeron knew it couldn't be them. There was still time before their arrival.