Boss Fight at Midnight

The moon was high, a pale coin above the crumbling city skyline, when Alex’s HUD began flashing crimson.

BOSS ENCOUNTER INCOMING – 00:03:17

He had less than four minutes before it arrived. Four minutes until everything he’d trained for was tested against a nightmare coded to kill.

The city streets were empty now, littered with glass, twisted rebar, and overturned vehicles. Only the hum of dying neon signs and the whisper of cold wind kept him company. The others—his squad—had been taken out hours ago. Not killed, not exactly… but trapped, frozen mid-action inside the simulation like statues. Their avatars hung in the air, mouths open in unheard screams, while Alex alone kept moving.

He didn’t know why the game had spared him. Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe the boss wanted him to feel the weight of being the last one standing.

Alex ducked into a shadowed alley, flipping through his inventory. Energy rifle: 67% charge. Plasma grenades: 2. Health injectors: only 1. Armor integrity: 42%. He grimaced. Not great odds.

BOSS ENCOUNTER INCOMING – 00:01:55

The timer pulsed red in the corner of his vision.

Through the cracked visor of his helmet, he glanced at the sky. The clouds churned unnaturally, as if some massive shape beneath them was pushing against the atmosphere. That was how they always arrived—their presence bending reality before they even appeared.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Show me your face.”

The first sound was a low, resonant thud, like a distant war drum. Then another. The ground began to shake. Streetlights flickered, each pulse synced to the invisible footsteps approaching.

A shadow swept over him, swallowing the alley in darkness. Alex looked up.

It was enormous—easily ten stories tall—its silhouette a tangle of shifting metal and living muscle. The creature had no fixed shape, its armor plating sliding like liquid steel over a skeletal frame. Its face—if it could be called that—was a split mask of glowing red lines, a jagged grin beneath a visor of endless black.

BOSS FIGHT INITIATED

The name appeared across his HUD in bold, glitching letters: ARCHIVIST_OMEGA.

Alex dove from the alley as a claw the size of a truck tore into the wall behind him, pulverizing concrete like sand. He hit the street running, rifle raised, and squeezed the trigger. Bolts of blue plasma lanced upward, striking the Archivist’s armor. Sparks flew. It didn’t even flinch.

A whip-like appendage lashed out, catching a parked car and hurling it like a toy. Alex rolled beneath it, heart hammering.

“Not like the last time,” he told himself. “You know the pattern now.”

He sprinted toward a collapsed overpass, ducking under jagged girders as the boss’s footsteps thundered closer. The Archivist followed with deliberate slowness, herding him exactly where it wanted him.

The overpass ruins hid something useful—a half-buried power core from a downed drone carrier. Last time, he’d seen it too late. This time, he was ready.

Sliding into cover, Alex primed one of his plasma grenades and hurled it at the core. The explosion ripped through the street, sending shards of glowing debris in every direction. The Archivist staggered for the first time, a guttural mechanical roar vibrating the air.

“That got your attention,” Alex muttered.

The thing’s mask split wider, revealing rows of rotating teeth like grinding saws. Then it leapt—ten stories of death arcing toward him.

Alex bolted, ducking into an abandoned subway entrance just as the boss landed, the impact cratering the street above. Dust and shattered tile rained down.

The tunnels were dark, his visor auto-adjusting to low-light mode. Water dripped somewhere far off. He moved fast, hearing the grinding of metal on stone behind him. The Archivist was too big to follow directly, but it didn’t need to. Long, segmented arms wormed through the cracks in the ceiling, smashing blindly.

One massive hand caught him by the leg. Pain screamed through his haptic suit. He jammed the health injector into his arm and fired point-blank at the claws until they released him.

Gasping, he reached the maintenance hub deep under the station. This was his last shot. Above the control console, a sign flickered: EMERGENCY POWER GRID.

He remembered the map. If he overloaded the grid here, he could fry anything standing above the main junction. Of course, that meant luring the Archivist to that exact spot without being shredded first.

Back on the streets, he climbed from the subway into the open night. The boss was waiting. Its shape seemed even larger now, red lines crawling over its surface like veins of molten lava.

Alex raised his rifle, shouting: “Come on, you glitch-faced nightmare!”

It came for him, and he ran—not away, but toward the junction. The city blurred. Every instinct screamed at him to dodge, to flee, but he kept running until the streets opened into the plaza above the grid.

He skidded to a stop, turned, and saw the Archivist rear back for a killing blow.

Alex slammed the overload button on his wrist console.

For a moment, the world went white. The sound was like every thunderclap ever heard, layered into one. The Archivist convulsed, arcs of electric fire ripping through its frame. The red lines across its body sputtered and died.

When the light faded, only a heap of steaming metal remained.

BOSS DEFEATED – REWARD PROCESSING

Alex collapsed to his knees, breathing hard. Somewhere in the stillness, the frozen avatars of his squad flickered back to life.

“Nice work, hero,” one of them said.

He managed a tired smile. Midnight had passed. The fight was over—until the next one.