My Vampire System -

He stared at the screen. Then, with a thumb that trembled only slightly, he pressed . The pain was not transformation. It was deconstruction.

When the last Lurker fell, Quinn stood in a charnel house. His HP was full for the first time in months. His lesions had vanished. And above his head, invisible to all but him, a new notification glowed:

But to get it, Quinn would have to hunt a predator far stronger than himself. He would have to expose what he was. And he would have to decide: was he still Quinn Talen, the orphan who just wanted to live? Or was he something else entirely—the first vampire in a System that had no rulebook for monsters? My Vampire System

First, he was dying. The bone-white lesions on his forearm had spread to his neck, a slow, calcifying rot the doctors called “Cellular Decay Syndrome.” It was a death sentence for anyone without the credits for gene-therapy. Quinn, an orphan scraping by on the fringe colony of Atlas-7, had no credits.

He let his drop. The Lurkers saw him. They charged. The first one’s claws raked his chest, drawing blood— his blood. The System pinged. He stared at the screen

Second, the System arrived.

So when a strange, crimson notification flickered across his vision as he coughed blood into his palm, he assumed it was a hallucination. It was deconstruction

Not for him, of course. The System—a galaxy-spanning, game-like interface that granted Skills, Classes, and Power Levels—had descended upon humanity ten years ago, turning every sixteen-year-old into an “Awakened.” It was humanity’s great equalizer. Everyone got a System.

Quinn Talen had two problems.