The steam billowed out, carrying the smell of cheap ketchup and heated plastic.
He spoke: “This Friday at five p.m., right?” “Yes.” “I’ve got it down.” “Thank you for your cooperation.” The call disconnected.
Silence returned to the kitchen.
Only the internal fan of the microwave kept humming away.
Lynn set his phone on the counter and didn’t eat right away.
Leaning against the cabinet, he closed his eyes.
Memories from the original body surfaced once more.
A college campus.
Sunshine.
A basketball court.
Daniel Reed threw him an ice-cold Coke, a brilliant smile on his face.
“Lynn, guys like you just overthink things too much.
Life’s about taking a gamble at least once.” Later, a coffee shop.
Daniel sat across from him, pulling out a business plan.
The cover was beautifully designed.
The figures looked fantastic.
The prospects were utterly enticing.
“This isn’t a gamble; it’s an opportunity.” “I’ve already found investors—I’m just short a little bridge funding.” “Bro, I wouldn’t screw you over.” “Once this round of financing wraps up, we’ll both turn things around.” In those memories, the original Lynn had hesitated.
In the end, though, he signed.
Because Daniel was a friend.
Because they had known each other for years.
Because the original owner of this body had always felt that no matter how bad the world got, an acquaintance wouldn’t push you into a pit with his own hands and still remember to pat the dirt flat over you.
As it turned out, the world had a wild imagination.
Lynn opened his eyes.
There wasn’t much anger in his gaze.
The peak heat of anger had already passed.
What remained was coldness.
The pasta inside the microwave was still steaming.
He pulled it out and stirred it with a plastic fork.
The bright red sauce clung to the noodles, but it didn’t smell appetizing at all.
He took a bite.
It tasted ordinary.
Salty.
Sour.
Cheap.
At least it could fill his stomach.
His phone lit up again.
This time, it wasn’t a phone call.
It was a text message.
Still an unknown number.
The message was short.
“Heard the collection agency got in touch with you?
Don’t stress, bro.
Isn’t your salary pretty good?
A Vought employee can’t possibly be unable to pay back this little bit of money, right?” Followed by a smiley face emoji.
Lynn stared at the text message for a few seconds.
Daniel.
He wasn’t off the grid.
At least not to Lynn.
He was only off the grid to creditors, to responsibility, and to his own conscience.
Lynn picked up his phone and didn’t reply.
Very quickly, a second text message came through.
“Don’t blame me.
You signed voluntarily back then too.
Adults have to take responsibility for their own choices, right?” A third message: “By the way, don’t think about suing me.
You don’t have evidence, and you can’t afford the burn rate.” A fourth message: “Free for a drink sometime?
We can talk about a solution.” Lynn looked at the screen and slowly set down his fork.
A car horn blared from outside the window.
Downstairs, someone was having an argument.
In the adjacent room, a TV seemed to be playing; he could faintly hear a variety show host’s laughter.
It was lively.
And very distant.
His world fell quiet in that moment.
Lynn picked up his phone and began scrolling through past chat logs between his original self and Daniel.
Message by message.
Page by page.
Audio transcriptions.
Transfer screenshots.
Photos of contracts.
Coffee shop locations.
Business plan PDFs.
Along with all the promises Daniel had sent over.
Many of these things were useless on their own.
Put together, however, they stitched into a clear line.
Deception.
Inducement.
Shifting of responsibility.
Malicious ghosting.
Ongoing threats.
Lynn categorized and saved all of this material.
His movements were slow and steady, like archiving files.
Perhaps this was an instinct left behind by the original body’s line of work.
No matter how chaotic something was, the moment it was sorted into categories, its structure would be exposed.
And structure meant weaknesses.
He opened his computer.
The screen lit up.
The desktop was very clean.
Aside from work folders, a bills folder, a web browser, and a few frequently used applications, there was nothing extra.
Lynn typed in Daniel Reed’s name.
Search results popped up.
Social media accounts.
Old news about startup projects.
A LinkedIn profile.
An interview from two years ago.
In the photo, Daniel wore a blue suit, standing in a co-working space with a confident smile.
The headline read: “Young Entrepreneur Daniel Reed: We Are Changing the Future of Urban Consumer Finance.” Lynn looked at the headline and raised an eyebrow slightly.
Changing the future of urban consumer finance?
Indeed.
At least he had changed Lynn’s.
He kept digging.
Public information was sparse.
Daniel’s company had already been dissolved.
Its registered address was a virtual office.
The project website was no longer maintained.
Yet his social media accounts were updated occasionally—mostly posts featuring bars, parties, high-end restaurants, and blurry group photos.
He didn’t look like someone who was bankrupt and off the grid.
He looked more like a fraudster who had swapped shells to keep hustling in the scene.
Lynn clicked on the most recent photo.
The background was a bar.
The lighting was dim, with neon patterns on the wall.
Daniel sat in a booth, holding up a cocktail glass while the people around him laughed happily.
In the corner of the photo, half a sign was exposed.
Just a few letters.
Lynn zoomed in on the image.
Blurry.
But he could barely make out the location.
A nightlife district somewhere in Brooklyn.
He didn’t dig any deeper.
At least not right now.
He simply saved the photo and placed it into a newly created folder.
The folder name was mundane.
“Debt Information.” Then, he created a subfolder inside it.
“Daniel.” Inside that, he created a new document.
Title: “Pending.” The cursor blinked.
Lynn sat before the desk, fingers hovering above the keyboard.
A moment later, he typed out the first line.
“Daniel Reed is currently reachable; suspected of intentionally evading debt liability.” Second line: “Maintains a relatively high spending level.” Third line: “Possible grey money sources or new round of fraudulent activities.” Fourth line: “Risk: Counterparty knows original host is weak-willed and continues to exert pressure.” He stopped writing at this point.
The cold glow of the screen reflected off his face.
Lynn suddenly recalled the accident files he had seen at Vought today.
Vought used pretty words to cover up disasters.
Daniel used friendship and dreams to package deception.
In essence, they were remarkably similar.
One was just on a scale large enough to hang giant billboards, while the other was small enough that it only ruined one person’s life.
The logic, however, remained identical.
First, create an illusion.
Next, shift the cost.
Finally, tell the victim: This was your choice.
Lynn leaned back into his chair and raised his hand to rub the space between his brows.
The phone vibrated again.
Still Daniel.
“If you can’t figure something out by Friday, you can come find me.
Don’t make things too ugly, bro.” Bro.
Looking at those words, Lynn suddenly let out a soft laugh.
The sound was very faint, devoid of warmth.
He picked up the phone and finally replied with a line.
“Sure, let me know when you’re free to talk.” After sending the message, the other side quickly sent back a smiley face.
As if confirming that Lynn could still be easily manipulated.
Lynn placed the phone on the desk and didn’t look at it again.
He continued eating his box of pasta, which had already turned somewhat cold.
The noodles had clumped into a mess, and the texture was terrible.
Yet he ate with absolute focus.
An ordinary person couldn’t go without eating.
They couldn’t go without sleep.
They couldn’t let anger make them neglect their own bodies.
In this world, Homelander could afford not to care about such things.
A-Train could squeeze every last drop out of his body relying on Compound V.
Queen Maeve could drink booze like water and still step in front of the cameras.
But he couldn’t.
He was just an ordinary person.
An ordinary person buried in debt, working in the archives department at Vought, who had just transmigrated into a dangerous world.
If an ordinary person wanted to survive, they had to be even more patient than the monsters.
Finished with the pasta, Lynn tossed the plastic container into the trash, washed the fork, and sat back in front of the computer.
He began organizing the work information he had obtained at Vought today.
Nothing confidential—just departmental procedures, personnel habits, task allocation patterns, and system access points for archiving.
In the document, he wrote down: “Archive Department clearance is low, but horizontal information coverage is broad.” “Supervisor Martha values procedure and liability avoidance; fears accountability from superiors.” “Kevin habitually offloads tasks privately; potential point for future counter-leverage.” “Time lag exists in the department’s shared archiving inbox.” “Inconsistencies in documentation phrasing exist between PR, Legal, and Hero Management.” These details appeared trivial on the surface.
Yet Lynn knew that in the future, they would prove useful.
The things capable of truly shifting the big picture were rarely groundbreaking secrets.
They were a heap of details that everyone else overlooked.
He wrote until eleven-thirty.
Outside the window, the rain began to fall again.
Fine and dense.
Raindrops tapped against the glass, the sound faint like someone turning paper pages in the distance.
Lynn stood up and walked over to the window.
He couldn’t see Vought Headquarters from here.
He could only see the windows of the apartment building across the street, streetlights, wet car roofs, and the illuminated sign of the convenience store downstairs.
Yet he knew that over in Manhattan, Homelander’s posters were still glowing.
Starlight was perhaps already staying at the hotel arranged by Vought, holding back her nerves and anticipation, waiting to officially enter The Seven tomorrow.
Hughie might be planning an ordinary person’s tomorrow with his girlfriend.
Butcher was probably still waiting in some dark corner for an opportunity.
Nobody had realized yet that fate had already stepped on the accelerator.
Lynn pulled the curtains shut.
Returning to the computer, he encrypted and backed up the “Daniel” folder.
Having done all this, he turned off the lights.
Darkness descended.
The phone screen suddenly lit up once more.
Daniel had sent one final message.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” Lynn stared at the sentence.
After a long time, he murmured softly: “I’ll help you too.” The screen went dark.
Quiet returned to the room.
The rain continued outside.
Pitter-patter.
Pitter-patter.
Pitter-patter.
Like a countdown.