I am but a humble messenger of the great stories that come into this word and for reward, the humble me ask only for your comment and stones. GIVEEE THEMMM TO MEEEEE.
The artificial cherry jello tasted exactly like the color red, a synthetic sweetness that clung to the roof of her mouth. Maya swallowed it slowly, letting the cold gelatin slide down her bruised throat. She scooped up another small bite with the flimsy plastic spoon, but before she brought it to her lips, she paused.
Resting beside the plastic bowl was the polished steel dome that had covered her plate. It was slightly warped, curving the reflection of the hospital room like a funhouse mirror, but it was clear enough.
Maya set the spoon down. She leaned closer, her breath fogging the edge of the metal.
Back when she had demanded a mirror from her mother, she had been too frantic, too consumed by the sheer terror of waking up in the wrong body, to really look. Now, in the quiet isolation of the room, with the Draught of the Hearth holding her worst symptoms at bay, she took a steady inventory of the face that was supposed to be hers.
She looked terrible, there was no sugarcoating it. The skin was drawn tight over her facial bones, devoid of any healthy flush, making her look like a Victorian mourning portrait. Dark, bruised shadows pooled beneath her eyes.
But beneath the exhaustion and the ravages of Stage IV heart failure, the underlying architecture of the face was undeniably striking. She had a strong, aristocratic jawline and a straight, elegant nose. If Emma Watson had been sketched by someone who favored sharper, more imposing angles—a face built less for the red carpet and more for a marble bust—it would look something like this. It was a handsome face. Fierce, even, or at least it had the potential to be once it didn't look so hollowed out.
Her hair was a mess. It was a deep, dark red, the color of rusted copper or dried blood, falling past her shoulders in lank, unwashed strands. It stuck to the back of her neck, matted from days of sweating into a hospital pillow.
Maya reached up, her trembling fingers tracing the line of her own jaw. The skin felt cool and unfamiliar.
Who are you? she thought. And who the hell was I?
The question acted like a physical key turning in a rusted lock. The barrier between the two lives—the soul of the man from London and the physical brain of the girl from New York—suddenly gave way. It wasn't a gentle bleed; it was a violent collision of two distinct lifetimes trying to occupy the same space.
Maya squeezed her eyes shut, gripping the edges of the rolling table as the room spun.
First came the rain.
Not the gentle, cinematic drizzle of a romance movie, but the freezing, relentless downpour of a miserable London November. Arthur was standing on the pavement, the collar of his wool coat turned up against the wind, his umbrella struggling against a sudden gust. He could smell the petrichor mixed heavily with the oily stench of diesel fumes from the idling traffic.
He was thinking about his flat. Specifically, he was thinking about a damp patch on the ceiling near the bathroom vent that he kept meaning to call the landlord about. He was holding a lukewarm cup of terrible, burnt filter coffee from the shop on the corner. He was thirty-two. He was aggressively average.
The pedestrian light turned green. He stepped off the curb.
He didn't see the lorry. He only heard it. The terrifying, high-pitched screech of heavy tires locking up on slick asphalt. It was a sound so loud it seemed to vibrate in his teeth. He turned his head. Through the sheet of rain, he saw the massive grille of the delivery truck, hydroplaning, out of control, eating up the distance between them in a fraction of a second.
There was no time for a profound final thought. No life flashing before his eyes. Just a spike of pure, animalistic terror, the violent jerk of his muscles trying to jump back, and then—
Impact.
It didn't feel like pain, not at first. It felt like being hit by a train made of solid kinetic energy. The air was violently expelled from his lungs. His ribs shattered, the wool of his coat tearing. He felt himself being thrown, the world spinning in a blur of grey sky and wet black road, and then the sickening crack of his skull meeting the curb.
The lights didn't fade. They were simply switched off.
Maya gasped, her eyes flying open. Her chest heaved, the heart monitor beside her bed spiking in alarm for a few seconds before the Draught's magic forced it back to a steady rhythm. She was gripping the plastic table so hard her knuckles were white. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but it was Maya's heart, not Arthur's shattered chest.
She wiped a cold sweat from her forehead with a shaky hand. That was it, then. That was the end of Arthur. Reduced to a statistic on a damp London street because a driver took a corner too fast in the rain. A life snuffed out in the middle of a mundane Tuesday, leaving behind nothing but an unread email draft and a leaky ceiling.
But as the echo of the screeching tires faded from her mind, a new current of memories rushed in to fill the vacuum. These weren't projected from the soul; they were embedded in the neurons, etched into the very brain tissue she now inhabited.
They were Maya's.
She saw a bright, sunny afternoon in a suburban backyard. She was younger, maybe twelve. She was running, chasing a golden retriever across the grass. The sun felt warm on her shoulders. She was laughing. But then, the laughter turned into a cough. A terrifying, wet sound. The world titled as her legs simply gave out. She remembered lying on the grass, staring up at the blue sky, unable to draw air past a sudden, invisible weight crushing her chest.
She remembered her mother screaming, dropping a tray of lemonade.
Then came the blur of sterile white rooms, much like the one she was in now. The smell of latex gloves. The cold jelly of ultrasound wands pressed against her chest. The grave, hushed tones of doctors talking to her mother in the hallway.
Congenital heart defect. Severe mitral valve prolapse. Deteriorating left ventricle.
The memories weren't chronological; they were emotional snapshots. She remembered the slow, humiliating process of shrinking. Having to quit the track team. The pitying looks from classmates when she needed to use the elevator instead of the stairs. The way her mother—Eleanor—stopped sleeping, stopped going out, stopped doing anything that wasn't researching treatments or working extra shifts to pay for the specialists.
The original Maya hadn't died in a sudden, violent crash. She had eroded.
The last memory was from just three days ago. It was hazy, clouded by exhaustion and lack of oxygen. Maya had been sitting in the recliner in the corner of this very room. She had tried to stand up to reach the television remote.
A sharp, tearing agony had ripped through her chest, entirely different from her usual dull aches. It felt like a guitar string snapping violently inside her heart. The floor rushed up to meet her. She remembered Eleanor's frantic hands, the shouting of nurses, the cold jolt of the defibrillator pads, and then... a profound, heavy surrender.
The original Maya had been so tired. She had fought for five years, watching her body betray her, watching her mother wither under the stress. In that final moment on the linoleum floor, she hadn't fought the darkness. She had welcomed it. She had let go.
And in that fraction of a second, when the vessel was empty but the machines were still forcing blood through the veins, Arthur's displaced soul had been dragged across the multiverse and slammed into the driver's seat.
Maya sat back against the pillows, her chest rising and falling in the quiet room. Tears, entirely unbidden, spilled over her lower lashes and tracked down her pale cheeks.
She wasn't crying for Arthur. Arthur was dead. She was crying for the girl whose reflection she had just looked at. She was crying for Eleanor, who was currently at home, sleeping in an empty apartment, clinging to the desperate hope that her daughter had miraculously turned a corner.
"I'm sorry," Maya whispered to the empty room, wiping her face with the rough hospital sleeve. "I'm so sorry."
It was a staggering weight. She had hijacked a tragedy. But as she sat there, the lingering warmth of the alchemical draught still radiating in her chest, the guilt began to harden into something else.
Arthur had been robbed of his life by a careless accident. Maya had been robbed of hers by a cruel biological lottery. Neither of them had gotten a fair shake.
The System had called her a vessel. Sir Percy had called her prey. But sitting in the quiet hum of the cardiac ward, feeling the borrowed blood pumping through her veins, a cold, rational determination settled over her.
She looked back at her reflection in the steel dome. The dark red hair, the sharp, hollowed-out features.
"You were tired," she whispered to the ghost of the girl who used to own this face. "I know you were. But I'm not. I've got a second chance, and I'm not going to waste it lying in a hospital bed."
She wasn't going to let Eleanor bury her child. She wasn't going to let the universe snuff her out a second time, whether it was through heart failure or whatever cosmic horrors the Avengers timeline was about to throw at New York.
Maya pulled the plastic tray closer and picked up the flimsy spoon. The beef broth was entirely cold now, and the jello was unappetizing, but she forced herself to eat every last bite. Food was fuel. Fuel was Vigor. And Vigor meant survival.
The plastic spoon made a hollow, pathetic scrape against the bottom of the bowl. Maya stared at the smear of red gelatin left on the white plastic, her stomach giving a small, confused rumble. It was the first time in nearly a week her body had asked for more food rather than rejecting what it had.
She pushed the rolling table away. It clattered slightly against the metal bed frame.
Before the sound could fade, the air in the room shifted. It wasn't the sudden drop in temperature that preceded the Mindscape, but a subtle thickening of the atmosphere, like the heavy, charged air right before a thunderstorm breaks.
The Avalon Protocol didn't wait to be summoned. It materialized directly in her line of sight, but the golden knotwork wasn't pulsing with its usual mechanical rhythm. It was glowing with a steady, brilliant warmth, the color of a midsummer sunrise.
A new notification bled into the air, the font larger, more authoritative than the daily task reminders.
[Anomaly Resolved.] [Psychological integration complete. Disparate memory fragments have coalesced. The host no longer rejects the vessel.]
Maya blinked, reading the text twice. The System had been waiting. It had known Arthur was holding the girl's memories at arm's length, treating them like a movie he was forced to watch rather than a life he had inherited. By accepting her past—by accepting Eleanor, and the pain, and the guilt—she had finally stopped fighting herself.
Another line of text scrolled rapidly upward.
[Host Identity Updated: Maya Gallagher.]
[Soul-Body Synchronization: 100%]
[The Avalon Protocol recognizes the Host as a singular entity. Distributing integration reward.]
A sound echoed in the quiet hospital room, though it didn't come from the physical world. It was a deep, resonant chime, like a massive cathedral bell being struck once, heavy and final.
Maya gasped as the sound vibrated through her bones.
[Reward: +1 to all Primary Stats.]
The shift was instantaneous and violent. It didn't burn like the alchemical draught she had swallowed earlier. Instead, it felt like an invisible, heavy blanket was suddenly thrown over her, pressing down on every inch of her skin, forcing her flesh and her soul to align perfectly.
She arched her back against the mattress, her hands gripping the thin bedsheets as a wave of intense pressure rolled through her veins.
Vigor: 4 -> 5. The constant, low-level ache in her chest—the feeling that her heart was a bruised, overworked engine running on sludge—suddenly eased. It didn't disappear, but the engine felt lighter. The terrifying, rattling catch at the bottom of her breath smoothed out. She inhaled, pulling oxygen deep into her lungs, and for the first time, it didn't feel like a chore.
Might: 2 -> 3. The leaden, dead weight of her own limbs evaporated. The extreme muscle atrophy that had turned her arms into fragile twigs didn't magically reverse itself—she still looked terribly thin—but the muscle fibers beneath the pale skin tightened.
Agility: 4 -> 5. The sluggishness in her nervous system, the delay between her brain sending a command and her fingers executing it, vanished. Her senses sharpened. She could hear the faint, high-pitched hum of the fluorescent lights in the hallway.
Aether: 12 -> 13. A cold, electric shock snapped behind her eyes. The lingering brain fog that came with severe illness lifted completely. Her mind felt terrifyingly clear, Arthur's sharp analytical skills perfectly meshing with Maya's emotional intuition.
The golden text faded, retreating back into her peripheral vision.
Maya lay still for a long moment, breathing in the sterile, lavender-scented air. She slowly uncurled her fingers from the bedsheets. She lifted her right hand and held it out in front of her face.
It wasn't trembling.
For the last forty-eight hours, she hadn't been able to lift her hand without a noticeable, pathetic shake. Now, it was perfectly still. She closed her hand into a fist, feeling the resistance of her own knuckles. There was a fraction more strength there. A fraction more life.
She threw off the hospital blanket.
Carefully, she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. The floor was cold linoleum, but she barely registered the chill. She gripped the heavy metal rail of the bed with one hand, bracing herself for the inevitable wave of dizziness that always accompanied sitting up too fast.
She stood.
The heart monitor beside her bed gave a rapid, surprised flutter as her heart rate increased to accommodate the exertion, but it didn't spike into the danger zone. No alarms triggered. No nurses came rushing in.
Maya stood by the side of the bed, her bare feet planted firmly on the floor. Her knees felt weak, like rubber bands stretched a little too far, but they held. She let go of the bedrail.
She was standing under her own power.
A quiet, disbelieving laugh bubbled up in her throat. She took a step, dragging the IV pole with her. The wheels squeaked softly. Then she took another.
She walked past the recliner where her mother had slept, past the rolling table, and stopped in front of the large window at the far end of the room. The blinds were half-drawn, and she used her now-steady hand to pull them up.
New York City sprawled out before her, bathed in the sharp, clear light of mid-morning. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue. Traffic crawled along the avenues below, a distant river of yellow cabs and black town cars. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass, looking at the skyline.
It was 2011. The Avengers hadn't formed yet. The Chitauri hadn't torn open the sky above Manhattan. Tony Stark was likely flying around in a gold-titanium suit, acting like an abrasive celebrity, and Steve Rogers was still buried under the ice.
Maya Gallagher. She tasted the name, the reality of it.
If she was going to survive what was coming—if she was going to reach that distant baseline of a Super Soldier and unlock the true power of the Avalon Protocol—she couldn't stay in this room. The System required action. It required discipline, combat, and renown. You couldn't be a knight errant while tethered to a wall by an oxygen tube.
But she also couldn't just walk out. Arthur's pragmatism flared up, analyzing the board.
If a girl dying of Stage IV heart failure suddenly walked out of Metro-General Hospital fully cured, it wouldn't just be a medical miracle. In a world where SHIELD was actively monitoring anomalies, where HYDRA was embedded in every level of infrastructure, a miraculous, unexplained recovery was a giant, flashing neon target. She didn't have the Aether to ward off a mind-reader, and she certainly didn't have the Vigor to fight off a strike team.
She had to heal gradually. She had to let the doctors think it was their medication, their care, perhaps a spontaneous stabilization of the valve. She would act the part of the recovering patient, slowly pushing the boundaries of what they expected her to do, while secretly grinding her stats in the Mindscape Pavilion every single night.
"Okay, Percy," she whispered to the glass, her breath creating a tiny patch of fog. "You want a squire? You've got one."
She turned away from the window, pulling the IV pole with her, and walked back to the bed. She climbed in, pulling the blankets up to her chest, and settled against the pillows. She felt exhausted from the walk—her Vigor was still only a 5, after all—but it was a good, clean exhaustion. It was the exhaustion of a body that had actually done something, rather than a body that was eating itself alive.
She had hours until her mother returned, hours until the doctors did their afternoon rounds.
She closed her eyes, focusing her breathing, listening to the steady, unpanicked rhythm of the monitor.
Let's see what else you've got in that Armory, she thought, reaching out with her mind to pull the golden interface back into the dark.