The door of an interrogation room opened and a middle-aged man in a brown suit walked inside, touched his tie and sat under the lights of fluorescent lamps. He then placed down his smartphone, a pen, paper and smiled politely,

"Michael Sandoval. I am Detective Hernandez."

"Yes?" A young darkly tanned man in an oversized T-shirt squinted at him. "Maybe you'll say what it's all 'bout? It's freaking time."

The detective felt troubled. Today the police station had a special guest. Generally speaking, they had a lot of such guests recently, sometimes several times per day to the point they didn't seem that special anymore... But this one was. The presence of the police captain behind the wall-sized mirror proved it.

"Am I arrested or something?" the man pressed as he lay his big hands on the table. "Because I know my rights. You cannot interrogate me without my folks present."

"No, you are not under arrest. We don't press any charges against you, Mr. Sandoval," the detective's face remained calm and collected in front of such an interesting statement. "Just a couple of questions while your parents are on their way to the station."

"And as far as the law goes..."

Hernandez tapped the smartphone's screen and demonstrated it instead of a long-witted explanation.

"...no way it's December."

"Yeah. You were seventeen. But since the last month, you're a full-fledged adult, barring guns and vodka."

The young man didn't appreciate the joke, so the detective crossed hands on his stomach and leaned back while the fact was sinking in.

During dozens of... cases when he was asking questions, Hernandez pinpointed an unusual detail. Disappearies never doubted that the time had passed since September, 5. Some would barely react, some would first ask him 'how long was I missing', some, like Michael right now, would take a pause to swear against the certain system.

"...It wasn't a fucking nightmare."

"No, Michael," Hernandez let the obscenity pass his ears like breeze.

"They had clothes," the young man murmured. When he had appeared naked and didn't know where to go, someone tossed him jeans and a T-shirt from a cupboard he didn't remember to be there.

"A gesture form the university. They would have been gobbled up without that much. The reopening of that lecture hall met lots of resistance."

"No one was taking pictures..."

"They knew you might sue them later," not that it had prevented the students from doing so secretly, but Hernandez was only inserting assuring lines. The fruits of long practice. Seeing the client in condition, he continued in a soft voice, "Let's talk about that day."

The detective tapped his smartphone again. Sullenly Michael watched his own disappearance on youtube.

"Man, this many likes..?"

"Exactly. What was your class again?"

"Enhancer..."

The young man blinked, opened his mouth, then closed, then opened again. Dull resentment filled his eyes and Hernandez smiled:

"Look, Michael, the government doesn't go around abducting you people. First, it would be a task worthy of Sisyphus himself. In our country, over three million went missing on September 5. Three million! Now you are all returning and we cops are running around 24/7 just to take your statements."

"Secondly, you still have your constitutional rights. Did you commit any crimes? As far as I'm concerned, no crime was committed on the US soil."

Here Hernandez went against his cop instincts, but he had his carte blanche before the kid started to give second thoughts and hide things, before his parents came in... shortly, the clock was ticking.

"Three million?"

"That's right."

"The punk was right."

The detective saw him clenching teeth and knew he must just agree with whatever he said.

"About?"

"There was that arrogant ass in the chat."

"There is always one."

"Yeah. 'kay. You wanna know? I'll tell ya. Hell, why not? I didn't commit any crime, US soil or not, you see?"

Michael stroke his chin, leaned forward and began to run his mouth boldly, Hernandez had only to play along.

"When I was abducted – and that was an abduction, 'kay? Anyway, I got a message, right here on my eyes. The system loves to send them. Welcome to Apocalypsis Training Grounds, I. Can. Picture it."

"Before you can say 'goddamit', I was on a giant dump. Teleportation, man."

"Enhancer, my ass. I had a hut and my job was to fix stuff. I grew in my old man workshop, a familiar job, I thought. I'll clear it in no time and go home, right? Bullshit!"

"Magic helped. It's... magic, man. I can... could touch a rusty engine and feel what's wrong with it, you understand?"

"The chat, yes, that thing. Appeared on the second day. You know that I picked those lectures by mistake, right? Those brainiacs were making up useless theories every day. When they didn't, they were talking about some conspiracy theories. Moon, Kennedy, 9/11, that sort of thing."

"There was our hot teach and another chick, Jean I think? She had a funny nickname. Wait, wait, they were talking about the third one. We just never crossed in the chat."

"System's missions were becoming harder and harder without an end. I had to use most of my points on food."

"Scar, yes, Scar! Sorry, man, dunno is she that little girl in the video."

"Closer to the end of it, I stopped working, only bought the cheapest food, never bothered reading chat. Not depressed, I wanted to go full nuclear, ya know? Destroy something, just to get out of there. And then – puff! – I am out."

"Kidding? No, I cannot feel mana. It's like the thing is not even here. I cannot open my status page, how would you know? Oh, got it, there are three millions of us."

"...like it was all dream, man. Now I only want a burger and french fries. With a ton of ketchup. Best day of my life, seriously."

When Michael's parents arrived, he had already rambled the gist of his story. The rest were technicalities, and also tears. A cocky teenager transformed into a docile ship, but that wasn't the first time Hernandez saw such a magic trick so he wasn't surprised. He handled the rest to the hapless registration office and hurried over to the meeting room.

"Not the brightest star in your net, detective."

"I am pretty sure he has qualities the university's football team wanted him for," Hernandez responded neutrally.

"He's level 3. They will piss themselves from happiness when he clears physical tests."

"Language."

"Sorry, sir."

Сaptain Reed lifted his hand and stroked his bald head habitually, a funny gesture if one imagines it abstractly. No one in the room smiled. The captain was the kindest police officer alive, but the hand in question was intended by nature to squash watermelons. And skulls.

"What do you think, Gonzales?" He asked with a smile. His voice was deep enough to awake an anarchist to embark on a holy campaign against crime. Legend said he held incredible record state-wide but left the detective work when Internal Affairs suspected him in playing against rules and forcing confessions. The investigation was in vain, of course, since captain Reed always played by rules. He simply was incredible enough to play bad cop and good cop simultaneously.

Or so the legend said.

"Sir, the Sandoval kid is depressingly typical," the overly professionally dressed woman was only older the 'kid' by several years, yet she was the young star of their quickly growing task force. Three months ago she had been but a trainee whiskered away by a mysterious force. Upon her return, Gonzales resolutely refused any help beyond enforced by rules.

"Vague memories. Not sure about anything. No obvious mental problems, although the expert will place a dot there. He didn't adapt and was kicked off the train."

"Give the kid some slack," their old statistic waved his hand. "He didn't say a word, but obviously the brainiacs in his chat had combat-oriented classes. The guy like him... imagine the stress."

"He might be stronger than ten nerds in real life, but one nerd would make a hundred of him cry online," added a middle-aged four-eyed man who looked exactly like half-cop and half-nerd. "The system doesn't know a thing about human psychology. He was bound to fail."

"Unless that was the whole point."

The people in the room grumped. Not everyone agreed with Gonzales's theories. What they agreed upon was that the people with high attributes, skills, and most importantly levels were a potential threat to society, especially when – not if – the system would spread to the real world, fullscale. Not because disappearies were different human beings, but because many of them had an analog of a hidden handgun. For now, a handgun.

When the disappearies started to pop out of the woodwork, the (un)natural immune reaction of various power groups had been to suppress the inconvenient truth. The system, magic. Apocalypsis. It was impossible to control the actual carriers of this information, but the traditional media horns, internet bots, and social media filters were muddying the waters just fine.

People simply didn't like the depressive topic of a supernatural world-class threat. The traditional enemy beyond the ocean, 'R', therefore became the social scapegoat.

One of the inconvenient truths that weren't discussed much in society was the failure of the absolute majority of disappearies in their training. Independent researches simply didn't have enough raw data. 

Greyston Police System Analysis Task Force didn't have such a problem.

"Almost nothing about the deputy chief's daughter," captain Reed put his verdict, sighed and leaned back. The chair dangerously creaked. "I suppose little news is better than no news at all."