Life should have been easy for Atlas by now.

That was what he’d been promised, after all. A bigger house. A better future. Purpose, meaning, glory.

But those things were all just a pledge made ten years ago to someone young and ignorant enough to trust a stranger. Nineteen and naive, he'd still thought a life worth something was well within his reach.

Back before he learned the hard way that lies were free, and nothing worthwhile came easily.

“Order!” Atlas shouted, hitting the bell on the sticky diner countertop with enough force to sting his palm. A string of tiny, glowing numbers floated from his hand in the same neon orange he’d come to know all too well.

The text floated by not long after:

[RAPID HEAL – MINOR AFFLICTION]

[YOU HEALED 4 HEALTH POINTS]

“Two eggs over easy, bacon, and wheat toast,” he called into the stagnant midnight air, since no one seemed to have been paying attention the first time.

Atlas shouldn’t be here.

“You’re going to be famous, kid,” the proctors had all said with wide, hungry smiles. Their eyes, he realized now, had been as empty as their wallets.

“This is the first S-Class reading we’ve gotten in this province,” they’d told him. “You’re going to be huge.”

“I ordered rye,” the customer mumbled dejectedly, face lax and distant when he finally approached the counter. There was no one home behind his cloudy brown eyes; his cheeks were gaunt and his lips dry.

But before Atlas could ask, he’d already meandered away, plate in hand.

The kitchen always got it wrong, because no one here cared. Why would they? It was a cheap place at the end of the train’s furthest line, filled with drunks and travelers and wash-ups like Atlas.

Atlas blinked after the man, tired and listless, his gaze drifting to the foggy, neon-tinted drizzle outside.

Distantly, Atlas wondered if the rain did anything at all to the Portals. If the Hunters there now, bright and vibrant and alive, had umbrellas.

If they even noticed the storm at all.

***

If the recruiters after the Vast World Collapse were to be believed, Atlas was meant to count himself among humanity’s strongest weapons against the dimensional tears.

He was supposed to be Atlas Cane: the beating heart of Team Last Bastion. A somebody.

But those pledges had suffocated years ago, and these days Atlas was just some dime-a-dozen waiter with a studio apartment and the world’s worst nickname, courtesy of his former peers:

The Useless S-Class Hunter.

It wasn’t surprising so much as it was exhausting. Trite.

Most of Atlas’ life had been one comically tragic thing after the next. He was mostly used to it these days.

When the Vast World Collapse came, he’d welcomed the inevitability of death like an old friend. He'd waited for it patiently, sitting on the cold, wet metal stairs of his studio apartment with a cigarette burning low and his hat flipped back.

He’d been cynical and laughing in the end. It was just something else he was powerless in the face of, another thing in a long list of grievances he would never avenge.

But the part of him that hadn’t given up, the sliver of his mother that lived loud and vibrant in his blood, went to the examiners a week later and offered them his palm.

“What Class am I?”

He hadn’t been tactful, or polite, or any of those other nice things he was supposed to be. He’d known better, but he didn’t care. He’d thrust his hand out and demanded an answer like he was owed one.

The woman’s face lit up. He could still remember her smile.

“S-Class.”

The elite of the elite. A human nuclear weapon.

And still, here was Atlas—the master of tragic comedy, the S-Class without a usable Skill…or with a useless one, anyway.

Atlas kicked the door to his apartment closed with the back of his shoe and shook the water out of his hair. It was late, even for him. It was three-thirty and freezing, and the smell of hot grease and smoke stuck to his hair like a shadow.

Even now, the cruelest part was that Atlas had believed. He had been convinced, just for a heart-rending moment, that he could be more than…this.

Whatever this was, now, some in-between place spanning never truly living and never quite dying. Eking out an existence because he couldn’t work up the energy to do anything more meaningful or permanent.

Atlas knew he could put in the effort and skate by as a low-level Portal trawler. That was respectable work in its own way. Skills didn’t matter much there as long as you were healthy and smart. You battled monsters of every species, some more dangerous than others, and took home resources before they disappeared forever. It was important, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day stuff that managed the low-ranking beasts before they got destructive.

But the humiliation of registering for any Portal work was too much. So, he worked odd jobs instead. They were little things like the diner, his temp position as janitorial staff at the company office next door, and a delivery driver when the scooter rentals ran a special.

Anonymous. Untraceable.

Alone.

Atlas peeled off his hoodie and apron, dumping them into the laundry basket he kept beside his shoes. His keys went on the hook by the door, heavy and dripping with cold rain.

Everything here was beside the door, really. It had to be when his place was one room. Two windows, a bed, and a kitchenette that smelled like old dishes—that was what twenty-nine years had gotten him, and most of it would fit in a plastic tub.

He collapsed into his mattress, half asleep and spiraling.

Don’t do it, Atlas.

“Open status window.”

ATLAS CANE

[S-Class]

Special Skill(s): Phoenix (S), Rapid Heal (D)

HP: 3,500/3,500

MP: 1,000/1,000

EXP: 20/1,000

Atlas crushed his fist and closed the window, pressing his face into his pillow.

His Skill was named, but it didn't do anything other than mock him. He shouldn’t have looked.

Yet he did. Every night. Always waiting for that [S-Class] banner to dissolve into something that made sense.

It wouldn’t hurt so bad if it made sense.

***

“Atlas.”

Atlas buried his head beneath his pillow. It hadn’t even been six hours since he’d gotten home. He could feel it in the creaking of his bones.

“Go away, Zig.”

“Would if I could, man.” Zig ripped the covers from his head. The morning light was blinding, and Atlas pressed his palms into the hollows of his eyes. “But I’ve been getting calls all morning looking for you, and I think they’re about three nanoseconds from busting down your door.”

“This isn’t why I gave you a spare key.”

Zig kicked his mattress and started rifling through the pile of receipts and crumpled tips on his little kitchen table. “Charming. Get up. I’m being serious. Where the hell is your phone?”

Atlas ignored his question. “Who is even looking for me?”

“You know who, Atlas.”

Portal Group, then. They were a conglomerate that’d been tasked with managing Hunters in the government’s place.

Hunters were a headache, and not one that queasy officials were eager to be linked to. They were inelegant and tactless and poorly behaved. They did what they wanted, consequences be damned.

So, the government sanctioned the establishment of Portal Group and tasked them with getting their hands dirty instead. Portal Group liked to track Atlas down every now and then and make sure he was still a bad investment.

“I don’t know what they think is going to happen,” Atlas grumbled, throwing his arm over his forehead. “I assume they already called my work?”

“Peris says they already sent a group filler in your stead. They’re not playing around this time.”

Atlas cracked the tension from his back and shoulders, running a hand through his hair. “This is why you never should have answered them in the first place, Zig. Now they’ll bother you any time I don’t pick up my phone.”

“Then pick up your phone!”

“It is, regrettably, in the river.”

“You are so damn ridiculous,” Zig groaned. But he said the same thing every time, anyway, and he’d already left a plastic container of something that seemed edible enough on the table. He never really meant it. “Heat that up, put pants on, and go to headquarters. I’ll tell him you’ll be there in an hour. Don’t make me look stupid this time.”

Him.

Izar.

Zig’s older brother, Izar, was a B-Class, and a royal pain in the ass. He ran acquisitions over at Portal Group, and was tasked with managing Atlas’ periodic “retesting.”

“Fine,” Atlas muttered, but Zig had already slammed the front door shut, sending one of Atlas’ many hats off the wall and to the floor.

He opened his status window.

[S-Class], it said.

“Liar,” he grunted and ran his fingers through the status window’s neon light. It scattered loosely into the air, fizzling out in a shower of crystals and static.

Atlas would go to headquarters. He would get retested, and the Acquisitions interns and secretaries and Hunters and all of their guests would whisper terrible things through the glass. Their eyes were as vacant as anyone else’s, these days. He knew what they would be thinking.

“The Useless S-Class Hunter.”

“I’d rather have no Skill than get my hopes up.”

“Loser.”

“Loser.”

“Loser.”

Atlas shoved on his last clean tracksuit and a black hat. It was tight and bland, but unremarkable enough that no one would ask who he was until it was too late, when he was already slipping unnoticed into the Acquisitions Office for the same pointless charade.

He shoveled the breakfast Zig had left into his mouth, rinsed his dish, locked his door, and made a note to buy a new phone on the way home.

One he wouldn’t throw into the river next time.