Calling all System Apocalypse readers!

Head of the Class, the first novel in the brand new System Apocalypse: Liberty series co-written with Jason J. Willis, is releasing soon.  

Get a head start by reading Chapter 1 today and follow Caleb as he navigates an unexpected apocalypse, protects the alien children he’s grown to care for, and faces untrustworthy allies, dangerous monsters, and xenophobic militants, all while struggling with his own shifting values.

Chapter 1

Caleb

I’d like to blame the explosion for interrupting my class’s lesson. But what really derailed things was Aul K’Unn Tek. It was always Aul. Even the porous walls shaking and crystal lights flickering would have been a relatively short delay, without his questions.

We were used to the ship being attacked; it had happened at least once a week since the Voloids had landed. The four-armed, gray hexapods had practically guaranteed that when they’d landed their spaceship in a prime dungeon location. The only real threat had been when a pair of giant black bears with goat heads had tried to eat the thrusters. Even then, a blast of blazing rocket fuel to the face had persuaded them to find a less spicy meal.

As an elementary school teacher, the Squaw Lake Bird Watchers Society had sounded like a great place to bring my class. So I had gone alone to scout it out as a potential field trip location, expecting to see some mallards and loons.

As a vegetarian, I had been nearly as horrified by the antlered heads on display in the main lodge as I was by the announcement that it was about to become a post-apocalyptic dungeon. I’d played enough RPGs and MMOs to know what a dungeon was, and I knew it was the last place I wanted to be standing during an apocalypse. Ignoring the rest of the messages, I’d run as fast as my couch-potato legs could carry me on a dirt road that still hid a few frozen spots, even in early April.

The white-tailed deer bounding into my field of vision by the time the countdown ended had made me smile. Distracted by its unusual size and fanged maw, I’d missed the spaceship behind the row of trees.

The Voloid Matriarch, E’Kklon Vekk, had appeared like Predator from the movies, yanking me from the path of the deer monster and into the safety of her ship, where I had been her guest, or prisoner, ever since.

“Teacher, teach,” she’d intoned with a high, resonant voice. Then she’d tossed me into a room with small children.

Other than attending intermittent hunts, that had been my job for the last two years while the rest of the world had gone to shit.

Even before the apocalypse, I’d prided myself on being able to handle disruptive students. Now, I had honest-to-God superpowers to up my game. None of that helped with Aul; he was my kryptonite. He was a genuinely curious child asking thought-provoking questions that entirely disrupted the lesson plan I’d laid out the night before.

“Caleb will not protect hive, is truth?” was the question Aul had asked me. His voice was deep and resonant. 

More chirps, clicks, and buzzes flew at me from the rest of the class than they had for any other topic, with the possible exception of when he’d asked if I was a slave. I had answered with an honest, if uncertain, “Maybe.”

“I will protect any sentients in danger,” I said, “but I’m bad at fighting.”

My Universal Translator Skill was amazing, but these beings were notoriously hard to translate. With patience though, I thought we managed. It helped that Aul did most of the talking, no matter how much I tried to get the rest of the class to join in. Alone, the others would answer. When Aul was present, they deferred to him. I could speculate as to why, but I was a teacher, not an alienologist. 

“Aul is confusion.” His mandibles quivered slightly.

“You know I’m a vegetarian, right?”

He tilted his head in a way that my Skill told me meant agreement, though it still didn’t feel right, even after all this time.

“Well, that’s because I value life, especially sentient life. And it’s damn near impossible to tell where to draw the line on what is and is not sentient. Because of that, I won’t attack or kill anyone not attacking me or someone else. But I’m not a pacifist. I will attack those who attack others. I’m just not any good at it. My Class is Teacher. My points and Skills are spent to help me with that. And frankly, I’m too thoughtful for life-or-death reactions. I freeze up when a warrior needs to act without thinking.

“That’s why I picked up Pavise here,” I said, then reached over to knock on the metal head of the robot that had become the most reliable fixture of my life. He wasn’t there. “Wherever he is. He’s big and square and I hide behind him whenever we get attacked out there.”

Pavise was the result of all of my Perks and a love of Star Wars and medieval history. The System had him listed as a shield-bot Protective Companion. I had upgraded his AI over time with about half of my Credits. He and my WWMRD necklace were my only prized possessions in this new world.

“Where are you, buddy?” I sent a questioning pulse through my neural link.

“You left me in the hold again. And you’ve been ignoring your notifications. How am I supposed to protect you when you forcibly separate us?”

“The door closes automatically,” I replied. “It’s not my fault. If you’re that worried about it, go first and make sure the path is safe.”

“Alert me before departing and I will.”

Aul’s left mandible was twitching and I realized I’d been incredibly rude, ignoring his questions. “Sorry, Aul. What were you asking?”

“The ship is currently under attack. I should be with you.”

“They’ll take care of it, they always do. Now hush.” I quieted the alerts with a mental nudge.

“Hive hunt. Monsters attack hive. Caleb won’t attack to protect hive? Only carry supplies and heal injured?”

“Yes.”

“Caleb coward?”

“Not really,” I answered. And I knew they knew I was telling the truth. One of my passive Class Skills, Ring of Truth, made it so that anyone I’d never intentionally deceived knew I wasn’t lying. The Skill didn’t force me to tell them everything I knew, a fact that I had made sure to tell them as soon as I knew about it. Trust was essential if you wanted to be a teacher. And I’d never wanted any other job.

“How Caleb not coward?” He tapped low on the center of his chest plate, right underneath the bright red slash he alone shared with the Matriarch. I got a vague impression that this gesture was somehow meaningful.

It might be time to put one of my three remaining Skill points into Universal Translator.

“If the hive was out exploring or gathering, I would fight to protect them, if badly. But the hive goes to where the monsters are to kill the monsters. Even if the monsters attack them first, that’s not self-defense.”

“Monsters attack pack. Monsters attack humans. Monsters attack everyone. Hive no hunt, monsters get stronger and stronger. Monsters kill everyone.”

“Yes.” This one word was weaker, almost trembling.

“Why not self-defense?”

My notifications were flashing, fast. I ignored them.

“I want to say that it’s not self-defense because you can’t know they will attack. And that’s partly true.” Being required to be completely honest was hard, but overall, it was amazing. It was good for the students, and it helped me to understand my own motivations. “But it does seem like almost all the monsters are hostile. Maybe all of them. And I want to say it’s because it’s not the monsters’ fault. They didn’t choose to be monsters. That might also be true. But killing other people because you’re being forced to doesn’t mean they don’t have a right to defend themselves.”

“Why not self-defense?” he said again. His upper hands were crossed now, in challenge.

“Levels,” I finally told him. “Levels and loot.”

He uncrossed his arms.

“The Voloids did not come to Earth to help us. To stop the monsters. They came to Earth for levels and loot. The Voloids aren’t protecting; they’re attacking.”

“Voloids kill monsters.”

“They do,” I agreed.

“Voloids good.”

“Voloids are people,” I replied. “They are good and bad.”

He crossed both sets of his arms. “Matriarch’s Voloids good.”

“Maybe,” I answered. “The Matriarch saved me that first day. But she also kept me here. Sure, she pays me. She gives me Credits, orange Fanta, and veggie lovers pizza. She even gives me every book I ask for. But she never took me back to my people. She never asked if I wanted to stay. She even pretended not to understand when I asked if I was a prisoner.”

It had taken me nearly a year to realize that there hadn’t been a difficulty in translation.

I kept quiet about the Skill I had picked up at level 31.

 

Class Trip (Level 3)

Group teleportation Skill

Transports a Teacher, students, and officially recognized chaperones to a location that the Teacher has previously occupied or thoroughly researched.

Max distance 100 miles + 25 miles per Skill Point.

Cost: 125 Mana + 25 for each student or chaperone beyond the first.

 

I had planned to use this Skill to take myself to the nearest Settlement. Temporarily or permanently, I had not decided.

It had failed spectacularly, just two days prior. The System had informed me that it was not a self-only Skill. In retrospect, that should have been obvious. Because of that, I was as much of a prisoner as ever. I wasn’t about to abduct a child to make my escape.

“Emergency override,” the shield-bot’s voice in my head grew very loud indeed. “The hull has been breached and enemies are entering the ship.”

I tried to stay calm.

“Matriarch no help owed.”

“True.”

“Matriarch good.”

“Saving me was good.”

“Matriarch good,” he insisted. The System let me know that the way his mandible quivered meant he was not as certain as he sounded.

“The attackers are human,” Pavise told me, and the lesson became a lot less rhetorical. 

“This ship is blocking the only real way to the best dungeon in the area,” I said. “Look here.”

I activated the first active Skill I had gained from the System—Show and Tell. Images from my trip to what was now the dungeon appeared in the air before the children. Some pictures were of the little town between the two lakes. Others were of the late winter austerity that would bloom into lush, dense greenery later in the year. There were log cabin style buildings, a large campfire, and a boathouse.

The image I expanded though was of the single-lane floating bridge. It crossed the deep marsh from the tiny, overgrown dirt road on one side to the equally overgrown dirt driveway that wound through the hardwoods and pines to the camp on the other. Their train-car-shaped spaceship was settled directly atop the rickety boards that were just wide enough to accommodate a single car tire on each side. The bridge had splintered around the ship and submerged when it couldn’t take the weight. 

“This is the one path to the dungeon that wasn’t nearly impassable even before the world went crazy. Blocking that path was clearly the Matriarch’s plan. She wanted the dungeon for her people, and she took it. It didn’t matter to her that someone had owned this place before the System came. It didn’t stop her that taking the dungeon would cost the humans in the area progress and wealth that they would need to survive this new reality. But the Voloid hunters also keep the dungeon monsters from growing and escaping. That helps keep the human settlement safe. The Voloids are good and bad.”

“Show me what’s happening,” I instructed my defender. I held up my hand to get Aul to stop. He didn’t.

“Humans good and bad,” he said. Even his tone said he was angry. That was a trait he had learned from me.

“Yes,” I said. “Wait.”

He didn’t. “Caleb good and bad.” He glared at me.

Then the connection finished, and I was seeing through the central camera that passed for the robot’s eye. The five attackers were already engaged with the majority of the Voloid warriors in the loading bay. The Matriarch was nowhere to be seen.

One of the attackers was an androgynous, short-haired Native American I labeled in my head as Slytherin, due to their snarl, spellcasting, and green robes. My second passive, Relatable, told me that their special interests included fantasy fiction, roleplaying games, and architecture. They tossed out glowing purple dust while they chanted.

Those Voloids hit by the spell dropped their spears and blasters. They stood in apathy while a swarm of blade-legged, steel spiders shredded them like parmesan cheese.

I gagged but couldn’t look away.

The one controlling the spiders was a young white woman. She was dressed in bulky, black leather armor with various tech components. Her chin-length blond hair was shaved on one side, where she had a much better neurological implant than mine. I knew that because it was the custom Dylo-Tek device I’d have bought if I had been able to scrounge together enough Credits.

Her special interests included anarchy, cybertech, and kitten videos. Because of her swarm, and the spikes and blades along her armor, in my mind I labeled her as Edgelord.

The third, clearly the leader, was a rugged black man with skin even darker than mine. He had a shaved head, broad shoulders, and muscles a pro wrestler would’ve killed for. Plates and cybernetics that would look at home in a high-tech, dystopian hellscape covered him here and there.

He’d have been irresistible before the apocalypse. Now, he was terrifying.

His right leg had been replaced by a skinless prosthetic with flashing red lights. He drove a spike that extended down from the prosthetic into the chest of one of the dying Voloids, and it pulsed. His damaged cybernetic armor repaired itself as it did so.

His special interests included human independence, war, and high finance. I dubbed him Insurgent.

The last two, or one with a duplication power, looked like soldiers in full dress uniforms. Both had machine guns with under barrel launchers. They were too far away for my power to evaluate their interests. I dubbed them the Twins.

I could speak through my droid. I could have warned the humans about the extreme danger the Matriarch’s absence posed. I’d learned about her disappearing act the day she’d saved my life and made me her prisoner.

The humans’ faces were filled with rage. Their eyes were haunted by events I couldn’t fathom. They were clearly not good people. They were also clearly the product of whatever had happened to them in this new world.

They might have been there to rescue me.

They might have been there to kill us all.

They might hurt the children.

My hesitation cost two of the humans their lives and it may have saved us all.

The Matriarch appeared from out of stealth, stabbing one of the Twins through the head with her two-handed spear and shooting the other with both of her blasters at point blank range. They dropped dead where they stood. Blood sizzled when the blasters hit the bodies. I was glad that my droid couldn’t pass on any smells.

The Matriarch shrieked and clicked in rage, activating some sort of taunt Skill that pulled all of their attention to her. She must have activated some other last-ditch ability also because the gray of all of the Voloids paled. Even the ones in the classroom with me withered, for lack of a better word. The Matriarch and her spear doubled in size. Her blasters, too small for her new hands, clattered to the floor.

I thought about ordering my droid to shield her. She was the only thing that stood between me and potential rescuers. Or potential murderers. By the time I had processed the fact that they didn’t look like saviors and did look like killers and it was better to err on the side of caution, it was already too late.

As powerful as she looked, as enhanced as she was, even the Matriarch’s armor was cracking when faced with Edgelord’s swarm and Insurgent’s heavy blaster. Her spear was doing severe damage, but it was clearly not enough. And they were too close to us now for a shield wall to matter.

“You’re right,” I said to my students. “I am good and bad. I try to be good. Sometimes it can feel impossible to tell the difference.” My voice sounded to my ears every bit as haunted as the faces of the attackers.

Aul must have noticed the change. Clever as he was, how could he not? “Aul…” He paused for a long moment. “Will try to be good when Aul is Matriarch.” Aul shuddered and the paling worsened. “If Aul lives to be Matriarch.”

That blew my mind two ways. Well shoot, I corrected my inner monologue, she.

“Good,” I told her, pride and terror bringing tears to my eyes in equal measure.

“Caleb Show and Tell fight,” Aul said.

She was right, I could show them exactly what I was seeing and hearing. It didn’t even cost much Mana. But so could the Matriarch, and she’d cut them off.

“No,” I said.

“Caleb show,” Aul insisted, crossing her arms.

“You don’t want to see this.” 

She uncrossed her arms.

I had never invested a better point than in my Ring of Truth Skill. Then and there, I dropped the three points I had been hoarding into it.

And that’s when I remembered Class Trip. It had failed before, when I’d tried to use it to escape. But I wasn’t alone now. And any ethical questions about taking the children with me were long since irrelevant. Best yet, even the basic version could get us all out of there. Only distance increased with a higher Skill Level.

I activated the Skill.

 

Skill attempt failed. Parental permission required.

 

Permission slips! Innocent children were going to be murdered because their slaughtered parents couldn’t give me permission slips!

“Fucking System,” I said out loud, though I had not intended to do so.

“The ship’s systems have sealed and hidden the doors. Given the Matriarch’s level, it is likely that these beings have Advanced Classes, but even they should not be able to bypass the hologram.”

Hope for the safety of the children surged in me as hope for the survival of the Matriarch died screaming right along with her. Unable to help and equally unable to look away, I watched as Insurgent claimed E’Kklon Vekk’s spear. A device on Edgelord’s wrist beeped.

“I am sorry. It seems that I calculated correctly that the attackers would be unable to penetrate the holographic defenses. I failed to consider that the tech-Classed cyborg could have a passive that would allow her to detect our communication channel and follow it back to its source. Again. I am sorry.”

Sorry. He was sorry. This was all my fault. No. You have to hold yourself together for the children. This isn’t over yet.

Unable to spot the door to my classroom, Edgelord was using another device to melt through the wall as if by means of a lightsaber.

For the first time, I activated one of my level 30 Skills.

 

Administrative Authority (Level 1)

Classroom only.

+10 Charisma. + 5 per Skill Point.

Cost: 25 Mana per minute.

 

“Try not to make any sudden movements. Keep all of your hands where they can see them.”

I wanted so desperately to lie and say, “They’re not going to hurt you” or “I’ll protect you.” But my students weren’t stupid, I wasn’t a good liar, and my habit was to tell them the truth.

“I think they’ll kill you if you give them any excuse,” was the best I could manage, since my passive power didn’t require me to include that I thought they’d probably kill all of us regardless, especially them.

I watched through the eyes of Pavise as the humans readied their assorted weapons.

“Prepare to defend,” I commanded my droid.

“It is not my job to defend the children,” he insisted.

“No, it isn’t. It’s one of mine. Which is why you’d better be ready or be prepared to violate your contract.”

“For your safety, I must insist—” 

But whatever he was going to say came too late. As the area of the wall came down with a thud, the attackers opened fire blindly into our room and I dove between the attackers and the children.

A powerful blue wall of energy blocked and deflected the attacks, slightly inconveniencing but not particularly harming the high-level humans. What was left of the barrier flickered and sputtered, barely a trace of its power remaining.

I re-activated Administrative Authority and shouted, “Stop.” Channeling my inner Chaucer from A Knight’s Tale, I said, “Listen to me.” 

I was no Paul Bettany, but I prayed that the barrier, their surprise at seeing a human, and my Skill would buy me their attention at least long enough to give me a chance.

“You are not in any danger here. You’ve already won.” When I saw the effects of shock and my power fading from their faces, I tried one last appeal. “You are about to murder innocent children.”

Edgelord frowned. The Slytherin wannabe looked as if they had consumed spoiled milk.

Insurgent flinched as if he had been struck. “Wait,” he commanded the others.

Edgelord’s hand was still pointed toward me, and the spiders advanced again.

“I said wait, God damn it,” Insurgent shouted. The force of whatever Skill he had activated staggered me.

The spiders stopped.

Insurgent turned that power, that presence, that deadly killing intent toward me as he met my gaze fully. “Why should I listen to you, traitor? And why should I, scratch that, why do I believe a single fucking word you say?”

“It’s a passive Skill,” I told him. “I’m a Teacher. As long as I have never tried to deceive someone, they instinctively know that I’m not lying. It doesn’t stop you from doing anything or make you do anything. It just means you know that you can trust me.”

“Why would I trust a traitor? You’re helping these aliens, these invaders.”

“The Matriarch you killed in the other room. She saved my life during the fall. I’ve been here ever since. I would have died out there. They treated me well, but they would not take me to a human-run Safe Zone.”

“You’re telling me you were a prisoner? A slave?”

“It’s complicated,” I answered.

“It’s Stock Market Syndrome. No. Stock something. I remember reading about that,” Slytherin said. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.” 

“Stockholm?” Edgelord asked.

“That’s the one. You start liking or falling in love with your captors.”

“You’re saying it’s not his fault?” Insurgent said.

They nodded reluctantly.

“Then he’s not part of the quest,” Edgelord said. “We just need to finish clearing out the aliens and we can take the ship.”

“Quinn, you don’t understand. The quest lists him,” the leader said. “Unless there’s another of these things left alive, the count is off. Why would the quest list you as a member of the crew?” He glared at me, his suspicion obviously returning.

“I’m their teacher.” Because I knew he’d ask, I added, “When the Matriarch saved my life, she threw me in the room with them, and she must have seen my Class because she told me to teach. And so I did.”

“Did you ever, even once, help them against humans or humanity in any way? And apparently, I’ll know if you’re lying to me, so don’t bother.”

“No,” I said. I had considered it. I had been about to. But he didn’t know that. And my Skill did not consider that deception.

He shut his eyes and sighed, then said to the others, “Then we failed the quest. We’ll finish up here and head back to base with the loot from the aliens.”

“But the ship,” Edgelord, no, Quinn, whined.

“Is his to claim, according to the System. He’s already been here for two years, and he’s got a legitimate claim. We’re not thieves.”

“Speak for yourself,” she snapped back. She turned to Slytherin. If she was hoping for support, she didn’t get it.

Slytherin looked utterly exhausted. Hell, as a powerful caster, they probably had endurance stats much closer to mine than their companions’.

Insurgent glared at Edgelord until she lowered her eyes, probably because a Skill had forced her to. She didn’t seem the type. “As long as we are grouped together, we are not thieves. Is that clear?”

“Yes, boss,” she finally said, but there was fury in her eyes. If I didn’t miss my guess, he’d pay for that, one way or the other.

He seemed to think so too. “You two can split my share of the loot, except for this spear. I’m keeping the spear.”

“Fine. Let’s kill these fuckers and get out of here.” She seemed mollified, if only just.

“Not kill,” I said, “murder.”

The leader flinched again. “Why do you say that?” He let out a sigh that was louder and longer than the others. “And why is it true?”

“It doesn’t have to be true,” Edgelord replied. “He just has to believe it’s true.”

“Good point,” the leader said. “Why do you think it’s true? We’re at war, after all.”

“You might be right that you’re at war and everything you’ve done is justified.”

He nodded, and I thought that he appreciated the acknowledgment of his position. Maybe I could build on that.

“Even if this is a war though, killing these children would be murder. They haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.

“They’re still invaders.”

“No, they aren’t.”

He sighed again, which I realized was how he reacted to my passive Skill. “Why not?”

“Because invaders invade. It’s a verb. These children were brought here, through no decision or choice of their own.”

Insurgent stood there for a long moment, and I watched in his eyes as his sanity flicked back and forth as he considered and finally started to break, probably forever. He was clearly making the wrong decision. His hand moved toward his weapon as his hatred slowly broke what was left of his decency.

And I had no power, no Skill, no spell or ability, no more arguments that could stop the atrocity that was about to happen. I could put my body in the way, but I’d die for nothing. In his mind, I was certain, that would be my fault—not his. He’d even finish his quest.

Whenever I had a student who was going through something so horrible that they acted out in ways I couldn’t understand, or when I had students I couldn’t seem to reach, I always asked myself the question that the acronym on my necklace stood for. 

What would Mr. Rogers do? 

It had become such an ingrained habit that it happened now, without me even trying.

The man had inspired me to be a teacher. To be a better man. And his lessons had never let me down. That one question had always been enough to shift my viewpoint when I needed it the most.

This time though, for the first time, it failed me. It failed me because I was already doing what I believed Mr. Rogers would have done.

And evil was still evil.

And I, being the kind of man I was, shaped by the man he had been, was simply not strong enough to do a single damn thing about it.

I cried then. For the last of my innocence. For the children. For the world, and for the loss of this man’s sanity and humanity.

I cried, and Insurgent noticed. He noticed my sympathy. My pity. He saw that some of it was meant for him. And he asked me a single word. “Why?”

“Do you remember Mr. Rogers?” I thought about activating my Show and Tell Skill to make an image of the man, but some instinct held me back. Maybe because the Skill belonged in this world, and Mr. Rogers belonged in the one we had lost.

He stood there quietly, hurting, grieving for that world, if his eyes could be believed. In the end, he didn’t speak, only nodded.

“That’s why,” I answered softly.

A bit of the hardness came back to his face, and the haunted expression came with it.

“His world is gone,” Quinn, the Edgelord, said.

“Gone forever,” Slytherin added, but they said it mournfully, not wickedly.

“We can never go back,” Insurgent finished.

“You’re right,” I told him.

He nodded, and there was a dangerous shift in his stance. His grip tightened on the Matriarch’s spear.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t go forward,” I said, and even I didn’t know for sure that I truly believed it until he sighed.

Something dark took his expression, something that rode upon a pale horse. And that darkness fought with the inner child Mr. Rogers had touched so long ago. This battle had nothing to do with me anymore, and everything to do with the remnants of his lost innocence.

The man who opened his eyes and met mine was still a monster, or someone capable of true monstrosity. But I would have said, and not lost my Skill by doing it, that he was not a man who would murder innocent children. His next words seemed to agree, but the bleeding edge of his tone sent chills of fear through my soul for the future of humanity.

“You have a spaceship,” he said. “Get these aliens off my planet.”

All I could do, all I dared to do, was nod.

He turned and walked away. Eventually, hesitantly, the other two followed him.

 

Quest alert: You have been given a mandatory quest. Remove the children in your care from planet Earth and its surrounding area. 

Reward: 5,000 experience points and 50,000 Credits. 

Additional reward: You will not be hunted down and exterminated by Commander Lee Greyson. 

Time to failure: 1 week.

 

“Mr. Rogers good,” Aul said. “Caleb good.” 

Relief for the children and fear for myself went to war inside me, but it was no real contest. My life as I had known it had ended two years prior. I had long since mourned it. Now, more than ever, it was clear to me that a Dungeon World was not a place for a man like me.

Is there any place in this universe for a man like me? I thought with a shudder.

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I might not have a place, but I had a job to do. It wasn’t the job I had signed up for and it wasn’t a job I was qualified for. But it didn’t matter if I was the right person for the job. I was the only person for the job.

My one priority now had to be the children. I would see them to safety, or I would die trying. It’s what Mr. Rogers would have done.

Head of the Class comes to our Shop on September 15th and Amazon, Kindle Unlimited and Audible on October 8th.