It was still dark when Alex opened his eyes.
He had gone to bed early, the way they had planned, and slept for an hour or two before something pulled him awake. He did not know what. The room was silent. Above him, Jerry’s breathing was slow and even. A strip of moonlight lay across the floor from the window.
He stared at the underside of the top bunk and did not move.
For the first time since he woke up here ,he was thinking about her.
It was not that he had forgotten. He had simply not had room. There had been the cell, the doctor, the bus, the books. Every hour had been filled with something that needed his attention, and he had let those things push everything else aside. But now the room was quiet. There was nothing to read and no one to talk to. The only thing left was the space where she used to be.
’She’s out there somewhere,’ he thought. ’Or she isn’t. I don’t even know.’
He closed his eyes.
He had never had a family. Not really. His parents had left early, and after that there had been a string of relatives who did not want him and a series of rooms that were never his. By the time he was old enough to take care of himself, he had stopped expecting anyone to be waiting for him.
Then he met her.
It had been at a bus stop, of all places, in the rain. She had been standing under a broken shelter with a bag over her head, laughing at nothing.
He thought it was cute.
He had offered her half his umbrella, and she had taken it and never really given it back. That was how it started. Two people sharing a small dry space in a big wet world.
They had gone to college together, at first. It was a good plan. Then things got hard, and she dropped out first, and he followed her a week later without thinking twice. It was never a question. Where she went, he went.
After that came the work. They picked up jobs wherever they could, restaurants, warehouses, night cleaning, anything with a paycheck. They worked double shifts, one after another, coming home at odd hours and passing each other in the doorway of a tiny apartment that smelled like old paint. They were broke. They were always broke.
There were weeks when dinner was rice and a shared egg.
But they were madly in love.
That was the thing. It had not mattered how little they had. The apartment could leak and the heater could die and the fridge could stand empty, and still he had come home to her every night feeling like he was the luckiest man alive.
’And now I’m here,’ he thought.
The thought cracked something in his chest.
He felt it before he understood it. A tightness in his throat, then a heat behind his eyes. He tried to hold it back. He pressed his lips together and breathed through his nose, but it was already too late. The first tear slid down his temple and into his hair.
Then the rest came.
He sat up and put his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. He tried to keep it quiet, but a sound tore out of him anyway, low and raw, and he bit down on his fist to stop it.
’She doesn’t even know where I am. She doesn’t know if I’m alive.’
He did not know what was happening. That was the worst part. He had tried to keep it all under cover. He had told himself it was a transmigration, a second chance, some kind of trial he could get through with a clear head. He had followed the rules he knew from the stories. He had made a plan. But now the plan felt thin, and underneath it there was only a wide, black hole where his old life had been.
And there was no gift. No system. Just a collar and a stranger’s crimes and a book he mostly did not want to read.
He wiped his face with his sleeve, and it was no use.
Then he remembered the college.
He had dropped out when she did. He had promised himself, sitting in a bus station with a suitcase, that he would never go back to a classroom. He had sworn it. He had hated every hour of it, every dry lecture, every thick book. He had given all of it up for her, and he had not regretted it once.
And now here he was. Back in a classroom. Reading textbooks. Being handed assignments by a girl who was barely just about his age.
’The one thing I swore I’d never do,’ he thought. ’And I’m doing it. For the second time in my life I’m doing it because I have no choice.’
A short, ugly laugh came out of him.
He felt miserable. It was a deep, bottomless misery, and there was no one to share it with. He stood up abruptly, unable to sit still. His legs carried him across the room without a plan, and when he reached the wall, he stopped and stared at it.
’This has to be a dream.’
He said it aloud, in a whisper.
’It has to be. I’m going to wake up. This is a weird dream, and I’m going to wake up, and she’s going to be right there.’
He threw himself against the wall.
The impact rang through the room. He did it again, and again, and the collar rattled against the plaster with a sound like a chain. He was not thinking. He was only trying, with everything he had, to break through whatever this was.
"Alex?"
The voice came from above. The bunk creaked, and Jerry’s head appeared over the edge.
"Alex, what are you doing?"
Alex did not answer.
"Hey. Hey, stop." Jerry scrambled down the ladder and stood in front of him with his hands raised. His voice shook. "It’s ok. Calm down. Whatever it is, it’s ok."
Alex did not look at him. He stared at the wall with his forehead against it, breathing hard.
"Alex. Come on. Talk to me."
There was no response. The boy waited a long moment. He tried once more, quietly, saying his name, and got nothing. It was like talking to a stone. Finally he lowered his hands and stepped back.
"Ok," he whispered. "I’ll leave you alone."
He did not go far. He climbed slowly back up the ladder and sat on the edge of the bunk with his feet dangling, watching.
Alex was still. His head had stopped against the wall, and he was breathing in short, shallow bursts. The room was silent for a long time.
Slowly, a different thought began to form.
’Ok. Wait.’
He lifted his head.
’What am I actually losing?’
He turned it over. He was a criminal in this world. That was the price. A name he had not earned, a sentence he did not deserve, a collar that could kill him. But there was another side to it, one he had barely allowed himself to look at.
’I can have power here,’ he thought. ’Real power. I can dream. I can actually hope to become someone.’
In his old life he had been nobody. A man in a kitchen, in a warehouse, in a cheap apartment. Nothing he did would ever have mattered. He would have lived, worked, and died without leaving a mark.
But here there were suits. Talents. Weapons made from monsters. Ranks that a person could climb. A ladder, and at the top of it, something that reached the sky.
He began to laugh.
It started small, a breath through the nose. Then it grew, and he leaned against the wall with his shoulders shaking. It was not the laugh of a man who found something funny. It was high and ragged and wrong. His eyes were wide and wet, and his mouth was stretched into a grin.
"Alex," Jerry said from the bunk. His voice cracked. "Alex, stop."
Alex kept laughing.
"That’s enough, Alex!" Jerry shouted.
It was not enough. It was nowhere near enough. Alex laughed until he had no breath left, and then he laughed some more. He had weighed it. He had set the two things side by side, and the answer was strange and terrible and it made perfect sense.
’I’d rather be here,’ he thought. ’In a world where I can have power. Not in a world where I get to be with her.’
He almost choked on it.
’I sacrificed everything for love before. I dropped out. I gave it all up. Let’s see what happens when I sacrifice it all for power.’
He pushed himself away from the wall and threw his shoulder against it once more, and then again, as if the plaster were a door that had not yet opened.
He did not keep it up for long.
There was a sharp electronic whine from his neck. The little green light on the collar flared red.
Then a bolt of shock went through his body.
Alex’s back arched. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Every muscle in him locked at once.
He hit the boards with a heavy thud and did not move.
Jerry sat frozen on the bunk with his hand over his mouth. The collar’s light blinked back to green. The room was still.
After a while he climbed down, shaking, and knelt beside the body. He checked that Alex was breathing. Then, with an effort, he slid his arms under Alex’s shoulders and hauled him up. It took two tries. He dragged him the few steps to the lower bunk and rolled him onto the mattress, and pulled the thin blanket up to his chin.
He stood there for a moment, looking down at him.
Then he climbed back up the ladder, and picked up his book.