The cabin was a nose’s worst nightmare.
Luca pressed his palm tighter against his face, breathing through his mouth in short, desperate gulps.
The taste was almost worse than the smell… thick, organic, clinging to his tongue.
Mask, he thought bitterly.
Should have grabbed a mask.
Or a gas mask.
Or maybe just a clothespin and some hope.
The stench defied description.
Imagine an apartment building’s sewer line rupturing, then baking under summer sun for weeks.
Now add unwashed bodies, animal bedding, and whatever mysterious organic matter had been decomposing in the corners since this place was built.
Multiply by ten and enclosed in a space with zero ventilation.
Chemical warfare, Luca decided.
This is literally chemical warfare.
My nose is a war crime victim.
But the system’s acclimation clock was ticking… nine and a half minutes remaining and throwing up wouldn’t help anything.
He forced himself to look around, to gather data, to function like the marginally competent transmigrator he was supposed to be.
The space was maybe ten square meters.
Smaller than his childhood bedroom.
The floor was covered in straw and what looked like cotton waste, matted and dark with unknown substances.
That’s where the smell lives, Luca realized, eyeing the floor with profound disgust.
That’s the source… ground zero.
He took a half-step back, then stopped.
Nowhere to go.
The cabin was a box.
A stinking, airless, coffin-adjacent box filled with… Wait.
His newly-arrived memories surfaced, provided by the system like a welcome packet from hell.
Identity: Merchant.
Destination: America.
Ticket class: Third.
Reality: Crew discrimination.
Assigned to lower-level employee quarters.
Sharing with eight other men.
Eight.
Other.
Men.
Luca looked around the tiny space again, doing the math.
Ten square meters.
Nine occupants.
No windows or ventilation.
The smell suddenly made perfect, horrible sense.
This is how diseases start, he thought.
According to his pre-transmigration research, all those movies watched, articles read, Wikipedia holes fallen into, the Titanic’s third-class passengers and lower crew lived in conditions that made the term “steerage” sound deceptively pleasant.
Eight men in a space smaller than most modern kitchens.
Straw bedding changed…
eventually.
Sanitation that was generous to call primitive.
And here he was… in the middle of it.
The cabin was empty now, his cabin-mates presumably working, because rest was apparently not a privilege extended to the lower classes.
Luca found himself grateful for small mercies.
Meeting eight strangers while trying not to gag would have been…
challenging.
Focus, he told himself.
Acclimation period, then mission.
Then— Movement in his peripheral vision.
The system, presenting information.
[Name: Luca Quinn] [Race: Terrestrial Male] [Attributes:] [Strength: 4 (5)] [Agility: 5 (5)] [Physique: 5 (5)] [Spirit: 8 (5)] [Skills: None] The attribute panel was refreshingly straightforward.
No fluff or attempts at personality, just hard numbers.
Luca appreciated that.
His system was apparently the serious type, not one of those coquettish knockoffs that spent more time bantering than functioning.
Strength: 4 out of 5.
Slightly below average, but the body was only eighteen.
Room to grow.
His predecessor had clearly made some effort at staying fit, not gym-rat levels, but enough that Luca wasn’t starting from complete zero.
Spirit: 8 out of 5.
That was the interesting one.
Well above human average.
Luca figured that was the soul-merger bonus, two minds stuffed into one skull, for better or worse.
Probably explained why he wasn’t currently catatonic from the day’s events.
But the skill column…
None.
A big fat zero.
“I’ve been alive for forty years,” Luca muttered to the stinking cabin.
“Forty years of existence, and apparently I’ve accumulated zero marketable abilities.
That’s almost impressive.” The smell was becoming manageable now.
Funny how the human nose worked, give it a few minutes with any atrocity, and it started making peace with the enemy.
Survival instinct, probably.
Can’t have soldiers passing out from the smell of their own trenches.
He leaned against the cold metal wall and thought.
Titanic.
He knew the movie backward and forward.
Seen it as a teenager, crying along with everyone else when Jack sank into the Atlantic.
Seen it as an adult, older and more cynical, starting to notice things that bothered him.
Like how the narrative framed the whole thing.
Rich girl Rose, trapped in an engagement to rich guy Cal, meets poor artist Jack, falls in love, cheats on her fiancé, and the movie presents this as romantic.
Cal, who, whatever his flaws, had done nothing wrong at this point, gets painted as the villain.
The obstacle, the greedy, cowardly monster standing in the way of true love.
But that was irrelevant now.
What mattered was timing.
Where in the story had he landed?
Pre-sailing?
Mid-voyage?
How much time before— [Acclimation period complete.] [Primary mission released.] Luca straightened, pushing off the wall.
Here it came.
Escape mission?
Rescue mission?
Save X number of passengers?
Steal the Heart of the Ocean?
Something manageable, hopefully~ [World line deviation detected.] [The iceberg designated SW626 has melted en route due to global climate anomalies.] [Primary mission: Detonate the RMS Titanic on the fourth night of its voyage to restore the original world line.] [Mission reward: 1 free attribute point, Basic Explosives Specialization.] [Mission failure: Automatic transfer to Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters.] [Solo engagement with Godzilla.
No support or extraction.] Luca’s brain stopped.
Then restarted.
Then stopped again.
Blow up the ship.
BLOW UP THE SHIP.
“System.” His voice came out strangled, caught somewhere between laughter and screaming.
“System, I need you to check this.” “Blow up the ship?
That’s the mission?
That makes me the villain.” Silence.
“I mean—” He gestured vaguely at the walls, at the ship around him, at the thousands of unsuspecting people going about their lives above.
“These are people.
Historical figures, sure, but still people.
You want me to~” [The world line must be preserved.] [Without the Titanic sinking in the correct location at the correct time, ripple effects will propagate through history.] [Millions of lives will be altered or erased.] [The ship must sink.] Luca opened his mouth.
Closed it, opened it again.
Luca laughed, it wasn’t a happy sound.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the filthy floor, not caring anymore about the smell or the straw or the unknown substances.
Blow up the Titanic.
Four days.
He had four days to figure out how to sink the ship.
This is fine, Luca told himself, staring at the ceiling.
Everything is fine.
I’m fine.
The ship’s engine hummed beneath him, carrying 2,200 people toward a fate that no longer existed.
His job was to put it back.