The first night, he slept on a bench.
A metal one in a scrubby triangle of grass between two buildings in the low Thirties, the kind of space New York called a park the way you'd call a puddle a lake. He picked the bench farthest from the streetlight and put his arm under his head and closed his eyes.
He didn't sleep. He dozed. The shallow twitchy kind where every car horn and footstep pulled him back to the surface. Once, around two, a rat crossed the concrete near his feet and he jerked upright so fast he almost rolled off.
By the time the sky turned gray his back was a mess of knots and the bench slats had embossed themselves into his ribs.
He sat up. Rolled his neck. It made a sound like stepping on gravel.
A jogger went past. Two women with dogs, one after the other. An old man with a newspaper who looked at him, catalogued him, and kept walking. Homeless guy on bench.
His stomach was making sounds he didn't know a stomach could make.
He needed food. Money. Somewhere to sleep that had walls. Identification, a phone, clothes that didn't smell like sweat and alley. He kept stacking the list and none of it got done.
Pick one. Do the one.
Food.
He found a bodega four blocks north. Cat on the chip rack, coffee from a pot that hadn't been washed since the Clinton administration. He poured himself a cup from the self-serve, grabbed a wrapped egg sandwich from the warmer, and went to the register.
The guy behind the counter was on his phone. Mid-fifties, heavy through the shoulders.
"Hey," Troy said. "This is going to sound like a line, but I got mugged yesterday. Phone, wallet, everything. I haven't eaten since. Is there anything I can do to work this off? Sweep, stock, whatever."
The guy looked up. His eyes went over Troy. Clean clothes, good build, face that didn't match three days on the street.
"Where you headed."
"Astoria. Buddy's place."
"Bus is two seventy-five."
"I know. I have nothing."
The guy studied him for another second, then jerked his chin at the back. "Water cases by the door. Stack them in the cooler."
Troy stacked water for twenty minutes. Poland Spring, the big ones, thirty pounds each, into a walk-in cold enough to see his breath. His arms burned by case six but the body handled it. A three in strength wasn't impressive, but twenty-year-old three moved different than office-worker three.
When he came out the sandwich was on the counter with a napkin.
"Thanks."
The guy was already back on his phone.
Troy ate standing on the sidewalk. The egg was rubbery. The coffee tasted like someone who hated coffee had been forced to make it. He finished every bite and drank every drop and his body hummed with calories.
The reflection caught him outside a closed barbershop.
He was walking past and the person in the tinted glass stopped when he stopped and it took a full second to connect that face to his own body. He wasn't used to the wrong person looking back.
Lean face. Jaw cut sharper than his old one had been. Dark hair past his ears, thick, falling in a way that looked deliberate even when it wasn't. Cheekbones that caught light. A mouth that defaulted to half a smirk. The eyes were dark enough that the tint made them unreadable.
He turned his head. The reflection turned.
Good face. People would look twice. One side of the jaw sat a fraction lower than the other, or maybe it was the brow - a crookedness that made it stick instead of slide past.
A woman walked by behind him and her gaze caught on his reflection and then found him and she walked faster. He turned away from the glass. His LP bar didn't move. Apparently making a stranger nervous didn't count.
The subway cost money he didn't have. He jumped the turnstile when the platform thinned out, one hand on the bar, over in a second. The guy mopping ten feet away either missed it or let it go.
The train was crowded. He stood near the end of the car, holding the pole, and his new body absorbed the sway in his knees without him thinking about it. Balance from muscles his old body never had.
Three stops in, a woman sat down across from him.
Late twenties. Slacks and a blouse, bag in her lap, earbuds in. She was on her phone. Didn't look up for two full stops. Then the train lurched and she grabbed the rail and her eyes came up.
She looked at him.
Steady, this one. Her eyes went from his face to his arms to his chest and back and she didn't blink for a beat too long and then she did blink and looked at her phone.
His chest went warm for a second. Small, barely there. Gone before he could decide if he'd imagined it.
His LP bar pulsed.
LP: 2 / 100
Two. One from a woman walking past a diner window yesterday. One from a woman on a train. Sustained desire directed at Host. Apparently sustained desire could be three seconds of a stranger's brain filing him under attractive.
The woman got off at the next stop without looking at him again. The number stayed at two.
He rode the train to the end of the line and back. He had nowhere to be and the seats were softer than a bench.
He spent the early afternoon mapping blocks. Which ones had help wanted signs in windows. Which restaurants were busy enough to need a dishwasher. Where the day labor corners were, the spots where guys waited at six AM for construction pickups.
He stopped at a laundromat on Ninth to ask about making change and the woman behind the counter looked at him for a beat longer than the question warranted. "Change for what, you don't have laundry." He didn't. He left.
By two he'd found the flophouse.
It wasn't called that. The sign said ROOMS - WEEKLY, with a phone number in stick-on letters, two of them peeling. Narrow brick walk-up on a block that smelled like Chinese food and bus exhaust. Four stories. Rusting fire escape. A man on the front step smoking at nothing.
The lobby was a hallway with a desk at the end. Fluorescent light, linoleum, a smell that was cleaning products losing to something older. The woman behind the desk was in her sixties, reading glasses on a chain, crossword puzzle spread in front of her.
"I need a room."
She looked up. Looked him over.
"Seventy a week. First week up front."
"I don't have it right now."
"Then I don't have a room right now."
He leaned on the counter. Arms crossed on the surface, settling in like he had all day and this was the most interesting conversation in it.
"I know how this sounds," he said. "Guy off the street, no money, wants a room. You've heard it before."
"Two hundred times."
"I'm starting work this week. I need three days. I'll have the full seventy plus twenty for the trouble by Friday."
"You said you don't have money."
"I said I don't have it now."
Her pen tapped the crossword. She studied him over the top of her glasses. Took her time with it.
She opened a drawer. Pulled out a key on a ring with a plastic tag. Room 4C.
"Friday," she said. "Ninety. Not here by checkout, I rent it again and your stuff goes in the hall."
"Fair."
The room was the size of a parking space. Single mattress on a metal frame, a window that looked at brick, a sink in the corner with rust stains down the porcelain. No closet. A hook on the back of the door. The fluorescent in the hallway buzzed through the thin walls and somewhere down the corridor a TV was playing a telenovela.
He sat on the bed. The springs sank under him. The mattress was thin enough to feel every coil.
It was the best thing that had happened to him since waking up in an alley.
He lay back. The ceiling had a water stain shaped like Florida. Or a boot. He stared at it for a while without thinking about anything and then got up and went back out because the room was too small for pacing and pacing was the only thing his body wanted to do.
The coffee shop was three blocks east. Mismatched mugs, a chalkboard menu, plants everywhere. He went in because the door was open and the air conditioning was on and sitting somewhere that wasn't a bench or a flophouse room felt like a thing he needed.
He didn't order. He sat in the corner and the girl behind the counter brought him a water without asking.
When she put the glass down her fingers stayed on it a beat too long. She had a small tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a word or a date, too small to read at arm's length.
"Anything else?"
"I'm good. Thanks."
She went back to the counter. He watched her tuck her hair behind her ear with her left hand when the next customer came up. His LP bar didn't move.
He drank his water and left without buying anything. He was getting good at that.
The mugging happened at dusk.
He was walking east on a residential block, brownstones and parked cars, not much foot traffic. The light had gone to that flat gray that New York got right before the streetlamps clicked on. He had his hands in his pockets thinking about which labor corner to try in the morning.
The sound came from half a block ahead. A yelp, cut short, and then a voice too low to catch words but pitched to threaten.
Troy stopped.
Two guys. One had a woman pressed against a parked car, pulling at her bag. She was holding on with both hands and her shoes were sliding on the pavement. The second guy was on the sidewalk, watching the street.
The lookout saw Troy. Shook his head once. Keep walking.
The smart move was to keep walking. No phone, no weapon, stats that started at three. New York rules. Mind your business.
The woman's bag strap snapped.
She stumbled. The guy with the bag turned and jogged toward Troy's end of the block. The lookout was already moving.
Troy didn't decide. Same dumb instinct that sent him down a dark hallway with a baseball bat in his last life, and he knew how that ended, and his legs moved anyway.
The snatcher was running at him. Troy stepped into his path and drove his shoulder into the guy's chest at full speed and they both hit the concrete.
Pain. Elbow on asphalt. Hip grinding. The weight of another person on top of him for a half-second before the guy rolled off. Things scattered from the impact. Coins, a phone in a cracked case, a set of keys. The snatcher scrambled up, looked at the spilled bag, looked at the lookout who was already around the corner.
He ran.
Troy lay on the sidewalk. His elbow was bleeding. His hip was going to bruise down to the bone. The body that was supposed to be his upgrade had just met pavement at speed and pavement won.
He got up. Picked up the woman's things. Wallet, keys, lipstick, phone, a pack of tissues, loose change. Put them back in the bag with its broken strap and carried it to her.
She was standing against the car, holding her wrist. Forties, nice coat, shaking hard enough that the buttons clicked against each other.
"Are you okay."
"I- yes. Thank you. Oh my god."
"Your strap's broken. Might want to get a new bag."
She took it. Looked at him. "Let me give you something, please-"
"You don't have to."
"Please." Already pulling out her wallet. She pressed a twenty into his hand and he needed it too badly to argue.
"Thank you," he said.
She started to say more. He was already turning. Cash on the ground, near where the snatcher had gone down. A wad of bills held with a rubber band. Must have come out of the guy's pocket on impact.
Troy looked at it. Looked at the woman walking fast toward the avenue, phone to her ear.
He picked it up. Thumbed through it. Eighty-three dollars.
Not hers. The mugger's.
He put it in his pocket and kept walking.
That night he sat on the flophouse roof and opened the system.
Tar and gravel. A rusting vent pipe. The backs of taller buildings on every side, blocking out everything except a strip of sky that glowed amber from the city underneath it. No stars. A plane crossed high up, lights blinking, and below him two people argued through an open window in a language he couldn't place.
He focused on the interface. It bloomed, blue and clean against the dirty night.
LUST SYSTEM v1.0
STATS STR: 3 SPD: 3 DUR: 2 STA: 4 CHA: 5
LEVEL: 1 LP: 2 / 100 UNALLOCATED POINTS: 0
He tried "stat allocation."
STAT ALLOCATION Each level grants 10 stat points. Allocate to any stat. No cap displayed.
Current: 0 points available.
Ten points per level. Hit level two and he could take his strength from a three to an eight. Or spread it around. Five stats, ten points.
He looked at his charisma sitting at five. His highest by a margin. He'd used it twice today and it had fed him breakfast and gotten him a room on credit. In a world where his fists were a three and the closest Avenger could bench a building, maybe the mouth was the thing that kept him alive.
He tried "Partner Bonuses."
PARTNER BONUSES No partners registered. Bonuses unlock with first registered sexual partner.
Tried "Affection Tracker."
AFFECTION TRACKER No tracked relationships. Tracking begins upon significant interaction with potential partner.
Empty. All of it empty. A car with a full tank and no keys, everything gated behind the one thing he hadn't done yet.
He closed the interface and looked at the city.
Two LP. After a day and a half in Manhattan, in a face that made women look twice, he'd earned two points from two strangers who'd found him attractive for a combined total of maybe six seconds.
The math was simple. Call it one point a day on average, being generous. Some days nobody looks. A hundred to level up. A hundred days for ten stat points.
Over three months. Three months of walking around being passively good-looking before he could add a single point to anything. Three months in a world where aliens had punched a hole through midtown and a teenager in Queens stopped buses with his hands and there were people out there who could crack his mind open or rip the metal from his blood without getting off the couch.
He had a hundred and three dollars in his pocket, a room he'd lied his way into, and a system that wouldn't turn on until he slept with someone.
The vent pipe was cold against his back. The arguing downstairs had stopped. A cab honked somewhere on the avenue, long and angry.
Troy pulled his knees up. Rested his arms on them. Looked at the glow.
"Guess I need a girlfriend."