Travis drifted in a place with no floor or sky. It was not darkness, not light either. It felt like being underwater without the pressure, like his thoughts were the only thing keeping him from scattering apart.
Then the memories started to move.
They came like files opening, one after another.
His name was still Travis Wilson, and he had no family. He grew up in a foster home and lost his new family at a train crash on his 19th birthday. Since then, he lived alone.
He saw himself at twenty-one, standing straight in an NYPD academy hallway, younger, leaner, still rough around the edges. He remembered the smell of disinfectant and coffee. The constant shouting. The way everyone else complained while he treated it like warm-up.
Six months later, a door closed behind him in a quiet office.
A man in a suit sat across from him, badge on the desk instead of clipped to his belt. Another man leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
"You ever think about doing something bigger than patrol?" the man at the desk asked.
Travis did not hesitate. "Yes, sir."
They liked that answer.
Next came tests. They included psychological, physical, and moral questions that were polite but tricky. He passed all of them. He could lie when needed, but had the skill to get out of tricky situations.
He got selected.
The other reason was that they needed someone new. Someone without ties to crews, gangs, or old cases. Someone who would not light up a background check.
Three and a half years undercover.
'Ha, too good for a rookie,' Travis thought while watching the memories.
Travis watched himself grow a different spine. He learned how to laugh like a criminal, drink like one, and talk like one. He learned which lies felt real and which ones got you killed. He remembered the first time he moved a dead body and felt sick afterward.
He remembered the moment that feeling went away.
He saw faces. Men who trusted him. Men who would have shot him without blinking if they knew the truth. He remembered the stash house. Seventy kilos wrapped tight, stacked neat, ready to poison half the city.
He remembered the choice.
He hid the cocaine because if it vanished, the distribution would stall long enough for the Special Unit to raid the cartel. But he slipped up in a hurry. Someone noticed him when he was moving the drug and a gun showed up on his forehead.
Then the room, chair, cuffs...
Travis floated as the memories reached the end and looped back into the blood-soaked hallway, the gun in his hand, the decision to shoot himself so the paperwork would make sense.
He exhaled slowly.
"So that is how it is," he mumbled to himself. His voice carried even though there was no air. "Same name. Different mess."
Travis stayed there for a moment, rewatching the memories over and over again just with his thoughts. He needs to remember every minute detail if he were to step into his new life.
He paused the memory with a thought. It was the front of a bookstore with the picture of Nathan Fillion, except this wasn't him. Below the picture was the name of Richard Castle and the name of his book, A Raging Storm.
"Yep! That's definitely Richard Castle," Travis said. "So, the girl I saw before passing out was definitely Kate Beckett. This is some freaking isekai shit! I'm in a reality where the Castle series is real. Fuck! God is real." He looked at his arms and legs. "A second chance, huh? This is gonna be fun."
Travis woke up like the world had been flipped and slammed back into place.
As soon as he opened his eyes, bright light made him flinch, and his head throbbed. He groaned and tried to turn his head, then stopped when pain rolled through his stomach.
"Easy," a woman said close by. "Do not move yet."
He opened his eyes again, this time more slowly. Everything was blurry at first, but then his vision came back. He realized he was in the hospital. He looked down and saw white sheets and an IV in his arm. He moved his right hand first and then his left hand. 'Humm... Fuckers cuffed me.' Then he looked down at his legs, and they were still there.
He let out a breath he did not know he was holding.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Still got all my parts."
The nurse smiled. "You should not be joking. You were brought in with a gunshot wound and severe blood loss. You are lucky to be alive."
"Story of my life," Travis said.
She checked the monitor and his pupils, then gave him a look that said the higher-ups had already talked to her and had told her to inform him about the situation. "I should inform the detectives."
"Yeah," Travis replied. "Can I get some water first?"
She walked to the side desk and poured some water from the bottle into a cup, put a straw in it, then held it to his lips. "Small sips."
He drank and leaned back, staring at the ceiling again. 'Well, time for the drama to begin.'
Two men arrived first, followed by three more. They showed their badges and looked serious. Internal Affairs energy all over them.
They uncuffed him from the bed just long enough to move him to a private room. Then, they cuffed him again as if he might try to escape.
One of them sat across from him with a folder thick enough to stop a bullet.
"Detective Wilson," the man said.
"Not yet," Travis replied calmly. "Still Officer, last I checked."
The man did not smile. "That depends on how this goes."
They asked him many questions. They wanted to know where he had been taken, who took him, and how he escaped. They questioned why every suspect in the building was dead and how he escaped with just a bullet wound.
Travis answered all of it.
He shared details about his undercover work, the stash house, and the seventy kilos of drugs. He spoke about the mistake he made, the abduction, and the interrogation room. He told them how the cartel members were fighting over the drugs, which resulted in the shootout. He got shot during the shootout and lost consciousness; then, when he woke up, everyone was dead and that's when he crawled out of that hellhole.
Then, he gave them names, locations, routes, and backup contacts. He told them where the drugs were hidden and how long the cartel would need to move them if they caught on.
Internal Affairs kept coming and going multiple times a day.
By the end, one of them rubbed his face and sighed. "Sorry, you have to go through all this mess after over three years undercover."
Travis nodded. "I have lived worse."
The Special Unit moved fast.
Raids hit warehouses, docks, and safe houses within forty-eight hours. Arrests stacked up. Guns and cash filled evidence rooms. The seventy kilos were recovered exactly where Travis said they would be.
The story held.
Plus, they also got into the main warehouse and recovered enough drugs, guns, and money for them to close and seal the case.
A month passed.
Travis healed fast. Too fast, according to the doctors. He did rehab and was finally discharged.
After putting on some casual clothes, he sat in a chair with a clipboard on his lap, signing his name on forms that all said more or less the same things, like consent, discharge and follow-ups.
A nurse took the clipboard from him and smiled. "You are officially free to go, Officer Wilson. Try not to get shot again."
"I will pencil that into my schedule," Travis said.
She laughed and walked off.
He was halfway through standing up when a familiar man in a gray suit stepped into the room. Travis knew him from internal affairs.
"Officer Wilson," the man said. "Got a minute?"
Travis eased back into the chair. "I am guessing I do not have a choice."
"Not really."
"Shoot."
The man reached into a folder and pulled out a single envelope with an official seal. He held it out.
"This came through this morning. I was told to make sure you received it in person."
Travis took it, turning it over once. The seal was unbroken. "This is either very good news or very annoying news."
"Open it."
Travis slid a finger under the seal, unfolded the letter, and read it.
His eyebrows lifted.
"Well, I will be damned," he said quietly.
The man crossed his arms. "Congratulations, Detective."
Travis looked up. "So it is real."
"It is real. Effective immediately. Detective Travis Wilson. Assigned to the Twelfth Precinct. You report in one week."
Travis let out a short laugh. "Do I get a bonus or a raise?"
"We've transferred a certain amount to your account for your hard work... Officially, of course," the man said, and this time there was something close to respect in his voice. "Three and a half years undercover. You held the line and gave us everything we needed. And you survived. Thank you for your service."
"Survived is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence," Travis said.
The man allowed himself a thin smile. "Get some rest. You start a new chapter next week."
He turned and left without another word.
Travis folded the letter carefully and slid it into his jacket.
Then he left...
An hour later, he was home.
He did not turn on the lights or check his apartment. He kicked off his shoes, dropped his jacket on the couch, and sat on the edge of the bed.
The apartment was quiet... in a good way.
That was new.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling, the letter still folded in his hand. Detective. Twelfth Precinct. A second life dropped right into his lap with all the mess included.
"I really need to stop dying," he chuckled.
He placed the letter on the bedside desk and closed his eyes...
He fell asleep within seconds.
For the first time in a long time, Travis Wilson slept in peace.