Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

Ren’s report to the Coalition would have been entirely accurate, if not for what happened in the final few seconds before her team cleared the building.

It was Sato who lagged behind at the doorway, still shaken from his earlier stumble, checking one last time over his shoulder to confirm the sleeping boy hadn’t stirred — a moment’s hesitation that cost him more than he expected. As he backed through the threshold, his trailing hand brushed the door frame, fingers grazing wood that sat just inside the edge of whatever passive field extended a few feet beyond Ethan’s bed.

The response was instant and entirely unlike the weapon dissolution from moments earlier.

[PASSIVE SKILL TRIGGERED: VOID PULSE]

[THREAT DETECTED: PHYSICAL CONTACT WITHIN INNER THRESHOLD]

[RESPONSE PROTOCOL: NON-LETHAL SUPPRESSION]

A soft, silent wave of pressure rippled outward from Ethan’s sleeping form, invisible and utterly without sound, and both Sato and the operative directly behind him — a quiet, older infiltrator named Hana who’d been covering the retreat — simply crumpled where they stood, unconscious before either of them registered so much as a flicker of warning.

Ren, already several steps down the hallway, turned back just in time to see both of her operatives collapse silently to the floor. She rushed back, checked their pulses with shaking hands — steady, both of them breathing normally, simply and completely unconscious, as though they’d been struck by nothing more violent than a very sudden, very deep sleep.

She tried to lift Sato and found her own arms trembling with an exhaustion that hadn’t been there moments earlier, some faint residual pressure from the pulse still lingering in the air around the doorway, sapping her strength every second she remained too close. Kaito, attempting to help, fared no better, and within the space of a tense, whispered argument, the two of them made the only decision the situation allowed.

"We can’t carry them out," Ren whispered, glancing anxiously back toward the bed, where Ethan remained fast asleep, entirely undisturbed by the chaos his own passive defenses had just caused six feet away. "Not without risking triggering something worse. They’re not hurt. Just unconscious. We retreat, and we come back for them once we understand what actually happened here."

It was, by any measure, a cold calculation — one that weighed heavily on both of them as they slipped back through the tunnel network, leaving two of their own behind on the floor of a sleeping boy’s bedroom, hoping desperately that "non-lethal" meant exactly what the lack of visible injury suggested.

Ethan woke up just past noon, the way he usually did, stretching with the particular satisfaction of a man who’d gotten a genuinely excellent night’s sleep. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and reached for his phone out of habit before his gaze drifted, almost accidentally, toward the floor beside his bed.

Two people lay there. Unconscious. Dressed head to toe in dark, close-fitting tactical gear he didn’t recognize, faces partially obscured by cloth masks that had slipped slightly during their collapse.

Ethan stared at them for a long, blank moment.

"...huh," he said finally.

He leaned over the edge of the bed, poked one of them — Sato, though Ethan had no way of knowing that — with a cautious finger, and confirmed, with mild relief, that the man was breathing steadily, just deeply, thoroughly unconscious.

[GOOD AFTERNOON]

[NOTE: TWO UNAUTHORIZED INTRUDERS WERE NEUTRALIZED VIA PASSIVE DEFENSE PROTOCOLS DURING THE NIGHT]

[NOTE: THREAT WAS RESOLVED WITHOUT REQUIRING USER TO WAKE]

[NOTE: THIS OCCURRED WHILE USER WAS ASLEEP]

"Yeah, I’m gathering that," Ethan said, sitting back and surveying the scene with the same mild, unbothered curiosity he’d once given a mountain of discarded loot. "Were there more of them? It says ’two’ but this feels like it should’ve been a whole squad thing."

[CONFIRMED: FOUR TOTAL INTRUDERS DETECTED]

[TWO SUCCESSFULLY WITHDREW]

[TWO REMAIN — CURRENT LOCATION: USER’S BEDROOM FLOOR]

"Great," Ethan said, standing up and stepping carefully around the two unconscious infiltrators on his way to the bathroom, treating them with roughly the same level of concern he’d give a dropped laundry basket. "So half of an assassination squad just left their coworkers behind. That’s kind of rude, honestly, even for assassins."

He went about his morning routine with the two unconscious operatives still sprawled on his bedroom floor, brushing his teeth, splashing water on his face, genuinely more preoccupied with what he wanted for lunch than with the fact that someone had apparently attempted to kill him in his sleep and failed so thoroughly he’d remained unaware of the entire incident until waking up eighteen hours later.

When he finally returned to the bedroom, freshly awake and considerably more alert, he found Sato beginning to stir — eyelids fluttering, a soft, groggy groan escaping as consciousness slowly returned.

"Oh, hey, you’re waking up," Ethan said, crouching beside him with genuine, unbothered curiosity. "Who sent you guys, out of curiosity? Not that I’m mad, just wondering."

Sato’s eyes snapped fully open, focused immediately on the boy crouched inches from his face, and something between panic and raw professional embarrassment crossed his expression as the full weight of the situation caught up with him. He scrambled backward, banging his shoulder against the desk, too disoriented to formulate any kind of coherent response.

"I—" he managed. "You’re— we were—"

"Relax," Ethan said, standing back up with a shrug. "You didn’t hurt me. Didn’t even wake me up, apparently, which is honestly kind of impressive, considering I’m not exactly a light sleeper."

Sato stared at him, clearly struggling to process being addressed so casually by the target of a failed infiltration mission, while Hana, beside him, began stirring as well, groaning softly as consciousness returned.

Ethan considered the two of them for a long moment, weighing his options with the same unhurried practicality he applied to most inconveniences, and eventually settled on the solution that required the least effort from him personally.

He walked to the small closet near his door, retrieved the broom Suresh had left there weeks ago for general apartment upkeep, and returned to where the two disoriented operatives were still struggling to fully regain their bearings.

"Alright," he said, "up you get. Come on."

He nudged them both, with surprising gentleness given the circumstances, toward the doorway using the broom’s bristled end, sweeping them along the floor like he might sweep out a pile of dust that had overstayed its welcome. Sato and Hana, too disoriented and too aware of exactly how outmatched they were to offer any resistance, allowed themselves to be herded, half-crawling, half-stumbling, out into the hallway.

"Look," Ethan said, propping the broom against the doorframe once the job was done, "I don’t really know what your deal is, and honestly I don’t think I want to. Just — don’t come back, yeah? Or if you do, maybe knock first. Weird way to introduce yourselves."

He shut the door on their stunned, silent faces without waiting for a response, and turned back toward his room, already considering breakfast, entirely unbothered by the fact that he’d just personally swept two elite foreign assassins out of his apartment with a household broom, the same way he might handle a spider that had wandered somewhere inconvenient.

Out in the hallway, Sato and Hana remained sitting against the wall for a long, silent moment, staring at the closed door of Room 404 with matching expressions of profound, career-altering bewilderment, before finally, wordlessly, deciding it was time to go home.

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