**Prologue: The Fractured Horizon**

The town of Cedar Bend slept under a quilt of November frost, its streets empty save for the flicker of dying neon signs. In a cramped studio apartment above Mrs. Kowalski's Bail Bonds, Eddie Ramirez hunched over a gutted laptop, his breath fogging the cracked screen. The room smelled of desperation—burnt circuit boards, stale ramen, and the sharp tang of soldering flux.

Eddie's phone buzzed. A photo lit up the gloom: two teenagers grinning in front of a school computer lab, their arms slung over a tower of CRT monitors. 15-year-old Eddie, all crooked grin and grease-stained hoodie. 15-year-old Maya Patel, her hair dyed cherry-red for debate club, holding a stolen motherboard like Excalibur.

**Maya (Now):** *U alive?*

He ignored it. The laptop's owner—a nursing student who'd paid in loose change—needed it by morning. Eddie's fingers danced across the keyboard, bypassing encryption with muscle memory. A skill honed over countless nights fixing other people's mistakes.

The screen flickered.

Not the usual flicker of a dying backlight. This was deeper, *wrong*—like reality itself had hiccuped. Text scrawled across the display in liquid mercury:

**ACCESS GRANTED**

**USER: EDDIE RAMIREZ**

**CREDITS: 0**

**ASCENSION TIER: LOCKED**

Eddie recoiled. The laptop's fans screamed to life, spewing error codes in languages he didn't recognize. Glyphs swirled—part hexadecimal, part something older.

**"Welcome, Eddie."**

The voice wasn't in the room. It wasn't in his head. It was *between*, a vibration in the marrow of his bones.

**"You have been selected. Will you ascend?"**

Outside, Cedar Bend's church bell tolled midnight. The laptop screen cracked down the middle, bleeding light that cast no shadows.

**YES**

**NO**

Eddie's finger hovered. Rent was due in nine days. Maya's texts grew more frantic by the hour. The nursing student's laptop hissed, its plastic casing warping under invisible heat.

He pressed **YES**.

The world dissolved into static.

---

When reality snapped back, the laptop was whole. Better than whole—pristine aluminum, keys glowing with bioluminescent glyphs. A hologram bloomed above it:

**QUANTUM ASCENDANT SYSTEM**

**Primary User:** Eddie Ramirez (Tier 0 Initiate)

**First Quest:** Upgrade RAM to 16GB

**Reward:** Quantum Memory Module

**Penalty for Failure:** Cognitive Reset

Eddie's hands shook. Across town, Maya jolted awake, her dreams flooded with visions of golden circuitry and a voice whispering *Soon*.

**Q's Log - Prologue:**

*Subject E-137 shows 18% higher defiance metrics than multiversal average. Compensating with emotional leverage (Subject M-137). Prime Timeline convergence probability: 6.3%. Proceeding with Protocol Kismet.*