“Brooooo….save me.” I laughed while looking at my 13-year-old little brother running for his life while my 15-year-old sister was chasing her with a broom in her hand.“I just finished washing them. You ruined them all, the washed clothes. I am going to teach you a lesson for life.” Iris, my sister, screamed while swinging the broom to hit Walter, my brother.I was working on my assignment, but it seems that I needed to finish a rescue mission first.I put my pen down and looked at them helplessly. They were now running round and round around the worn sofa that we had in our one-room home.“Hey, Iris,” I called her teasingly, but she didn’t listen to me. She continued screaming at Walter, who was now trying to dodge all her attacks with every trick that he had learned all these years.I ran behind her and grabbed her by her waist from behind, lifting her high.“Let me go, Ethan. I will kill him.” Iris screamed while thrashing her body in my embrace.“Calm down, kiddo. Calm down. Don’t

My brain processed the danger mentioned in that message as the screen disappeared before I could read it again.Surviving the coming attack, but how????And what the f**k was that punishment?My mind repeated the punishment if I fail.{One of the siblings of your choice will lose a limb}My stomach twisted violently, and so did my heart.This was hard to believe, as it sounded like a game of survival, just like those survival games and dramas.Players think that they are being helped, but they are being controlled by the plot.The second gunshot snapped me out of my trance.{Survive the coming attack with your siblings and come unharmed}I forced myself to breathe slowly to calm my chaotic mind.I pressed my palm against the cold wall beside the window.“If I can see what’s coming.” I talked to myself while looking outside through the blurred glass of the window.“Then I can stop it too.” I was surprised by the certainty and calmness in my voice.Continuous gunshots suppressed the scr

Ethan’s P.O.V.“Your coffee, bro.” Iris put the coffee mug on the nightstand after telling me in a soft voice, and without looking at me, she walked out of the room.I sighed and slowly put down the new laptop that I bought yesterday on the bed beside me.I took the coffee mug from the table and walked out of the room.It was a modest three-bedroom apartment in a secure society.Far better and entirely different from the place we have called home since birth.No broken walls here and there; no shouting, cursing, and people yelling at each other; no smell of gunpowder and blood in the air.Clean, silent…..too silent that it felt weird and creepy last night with the sound of that ticking wall clock in the living room when the sound echoed.Everything that happened in the day: gunshots, their deaths, our revival, the system, and then me, killing that man without any hesitation.Everything was overwhelming, and I needed time to gather myself and process everything.The system was still a

Ethan’s P.O.V. (Continued)[MISSION ABOUT TO FAIL]Words froze me for a second. Their red color burned in my eyes.10 seconds….Once again chase against time….Damn it…“Catch me,” I grimaced; fingers already moving on the keyboard.I had tens of windows open right now.Finding the one who would give me away was like finding a needle in a haystack and ten…. No eight seconds were not enough.So my fingers moved precisely, stopping to dump data midway, I rerouted everything.He must have found a leak somewhere.Instead of finding that leak, I decided to turn it into my weapon.I still had a mission to finish.The system screen flickered again in front of my eyes with the same warning, dark red, silent, but alarm blaring in my head now.I split all the data into fragments; scattered hundreds of those fragments across multiple nodes – government portals, public servers, dead archives; all of them.I injected a feedback loop to slow the process. I needed to confuse him.[system warning: 2

Ethan’s P.O.V.“Are you sure that we…… we can afford this school, Ethan?” Walter asked me anxiously.I didn’t pay attention to them as I was also busy staring at the enormous gate of High Creek Academy, the school where the system provided admission for all of us.I still had to finish high school this year.I expected somewhere far away from the city and in a modest school.Not in the High Creek Academy….The most prestigious school in the state.“Let’s go,” I spoke to them softly.I tightened my grip on the strap and then slowly walked towards the guard room.The guard looked at us with a calm and questioning gaze.“Hi, we have been transferred to this school,” I said to him calmly while producing the transfer letter, with recommendation letters, and other credentials.The guard was in his mid-thirties and looked experienced.The good thing that I noticed about his approach to us, he didn’t seem judgmental, as he didn’t look at us from head to toe with that knowing judgmental gaze th