When the ground finally stopped shaking, I gently lifted Mei to help us stand up. We stayed standing still for a moment, just to check that everything was still holding. I quickly wiped the blood that had run down my forehead, even though it was still trickling a bit.
We each took out our phones. Mei, her face suddenly closed and impenetrable, immediately dialed her father's number. Yet, despite her usual cold expression, I couldn't ignore the slight trembling of her fingers on the touchscreen.
On my side, I tried to reach Jonathan. While scrolling through my phone menus to make the call, my finger stopped dead. The Doomsday: All Dead icon, usually prominently visible, had completely disappeared from my home screen. I frowned, intrigued, but the priority was elsewhere.
The connection was bad, the line crackled and cut intermittently, but the call eventually went through.
"Dude, you okay? What the fuck was that?" I asked him.
"Yeah, and you? Where are you?" Jonathan's tense voice rang out on the other end.
"I cracked my skull, but I'm fine. I'm still in the prof's office with Mei."
"Again? You have a serious obsession with that office, man. Listen, I've been trying to reach Jessica for five minutes, but it won't go through."
"Don't worry, she's probably just out of network coverage because of the quake. You still at the cafeteria?"
"Yeah, the ceiling cracked a bit, but it's holding."
"Okay, don't move. As soon as it's stable, I'll come down to meet you."
A silence settled on the line. An abnormal, heavy and cold silence, where we could only hear the faint groans of the university's structure.
"Jonathan? You still there?"
I looked up at Mei. She had lowered her phone, clutching it to her chest, her face pale and eyes wide open, staring into space. She must have witnessed the same thing on her end.
"What's happening?" I asked, feeling a lump of anxiety form in my stomach.
It was only then that Jonathan spoke again, his voice altered. "Kylian... The news... They say this quake, of variable magnitude, was recorded everywhere at the same time. On all continents."
"What? But that's geologically impossible! No fault line crosses all continents!"
Before he could add anything, a high-pitched beep sounded in my earpiece, followed by absolute silence. The line was dead.
"Fucking hell, his battery must have died at the worst moment," I growled, putting away my own phone, sharp frustration overwhelming me.
"Kylian..." Mei murmured.
She handed me her phone, the screen still lit on an autoplay video. Apocalyptic images scrolled: buildings collapsing under seismic shocks, waves as tall as mountains submerging coastal cities, black waters covering everything in their path. Then, geological models showed the continents, as if drawn by an invisible force, approaching each other at a dizzying speed.
It wasn't just a quake. For some incomprehensible reason, all tectonic plates were converging to a single point. And before our eyes, in just a few minutes, the world maps were redrawing themselves. Pangaea, the prehistoric supercontinent, had just reformed.
"But... what the fuck is this bullshit...?" I breathed, unable to tear my eyes from the screen.
I swallowed hard. Pangaea: A single immense continental mass. An absurd thought crossed my mind.
'No, impossible..'
"I know I'm gonna sound like a huge geek, but... for a split second I thought that... that it was actually..."
I didn't finish my sentence. On the screen, geologists with grave faces explained, incredulous, that the plates had welded together with unprecedented precision and speed, perhaps even making future quakes impossible.
A slight relief washed over me.
"At least the shaking is over." I reassured Mei.
That relief lasted exactly two seconds.
A shockwave suddenly swept the area. The remaining windows vibrated at an ominous frequency.
"Kylian, look at the sky!" Mei pointed at the window.
I spun around. The blue sky of this late afternoon was now marked by a neat, motionless tear, an ink-black fissure that seemed to lacerate the celestial vault.
"What do you think it is?" Mei asked, her voice trembling.
"I... I have absolutely no idea. But it's creepy. It looks more and more like the Doomsday scenario..."
"Doomsday? I thought you were atheist?"
"Not that Doomsday... never mind. It's probably an optical or atmospheric phenomenon caused by the quake shock."
Mei tried to refresh the news on her phone, but the screen suddenly went black. The shockwave had obviously fried all electronic circuits.
Then, something emerged from the fissure. A point of blinding luminosity, whose shape was hard to distinguish due to the intensity. The light vibrated slightly, as if a presence was stabilizing there.
{Hum. Greetings to you, mortals of the human race.}
The entity seemed to clear its throat, in a strangely familiar way. Then, a clear, androgynous voice, perfectly audible, resonated in the air.
{Congratulations to you. Your world, Earth 777, has officially joined the Universal System.}
I swallowed hard, unable to believe what my ears were hearing. The very idea that I might be dreaming brushed my mind, faced with such brutal reality. Mei, the most rational being I know, was mouth agape, eyes fixed on the sky.
The voice continued, in a detached tone, seeming very bored.
{You will now receive the Ether. I am the manager of Quadrant 150. You can call me Angel Nanael. If you have questions for the rest, feel free to ask... Pleased to meet you, guys...}
A silence followed this surreal announcement. Then, angel Nanael unfurled a large pair of immaculate white wings, perfectly visible despite the distance.
{I announce the beginning of the first Act.}
{May the Pantheons have mercy on you, poor mortals. You're fucked.}
A final vibration, like a crystal note, resonated in the air, and a message seemed to inscribe itself directly into our field of vision.
[Ding! Connection to the Universal System successful!]
[Act 1 begins in a few minutes. Check your status or ask the angel for advice!]
The celestial light dimmed abruptly. Not because the angel had disappeared into the fissure, but because thousands of incandescent points, fireballs of all sizes, had begun falling from the sky in a devastating rain.
"Fuck... meteors..." I murmured, horrified.
A final message floated before my eyes, chilling.
[Act 1: Doomsday]
[Part 1: Survive! (48h)
Failure: Death]
I stood mouth agape, brain emptied of all coherent thought, breath cut short.
"It's... It's that game... Doomsday: All Dead...," I finally stammered, a deadly cold seizing me. "We're completely fucked."