'Huh... I'm dreaming.'
That was the last thing Alex thought at 2:17, with the green line crawling into his thumb. He was asleep again before he could argue with himself about it.
He woke up at 8:04 with his face stuck to his arm, still in the desk chair. He was starving, like he'd skipped a week of meals.
The next thing he noticed was the noise.
The window was shut, and he could hear the street like he was standing on it. A bus hissed at the stop. Somebody dragged a suitcase with one bad wheel down the sidewalk, clack-clack-clack. Two streets away, a shop shutter rattled up.
Under all that were the water pipes in his wall. He'd always known they hummed. He'd never known they knocked and gurgled too.
And he could hear upstairs.
"You said you blocked her."
"I did block her."
"Then why is she still sending you..."
Alex stared at the ceiling. There was a concrete floor between him and them, and he was getting every single word.
Their TV was on too. A man was giving a speech in a slow, flat voice.
"A wall is not a cost. A wall is the reason there is anything left to tax."
People on the TV clapped. Alex knew that voice. General Kane, still talking about the wall levy.
Upstairs went quiet. After that, the couple made up. Loudly.
In the next minute Alex learned more about his neighbors than he had in two years of living under them. He even learned the man's name was Brett.
"I really didn't need to hear that, Brett!" he told the ceiling.
He stood up fast, like always, and waited for the head rush: three seconds of black, and his hand grabbing for the desk.
It never came. His body just went where he sent it. No wobble at all. He stood there with his arms out a little for balance, waiting for the dizziness to catch up with him.
Apart from Sam, he hadn't really talked to anyone in weeks. Customers and headset voices didn't count.
'Okay... maybe this is what going crazy feels like.'
So he did what he always did when a game started acting weird. He ran tests.
"Okay," he said out loud. "Debug mode."
Test one. He put his glasses on.
The room went blurry.
He took them off, and everything snapped sharp. From across the room he could read the titles on the old textbooks in the open closet. He could see a single hair lying on the desk, and the split end on it.
"Glasses make it worse?" he said. "How do glasses make it worse?"
Test two. He covered his left ear with his hand. The street got quieter on that side, the way it should. He took the hand away, and the bus came roaring back.
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'It's not in my head. I'm really hearing it!'
He grabbed his phone. Sam had texted.
--Sam--
You alive? Shop opens at ten.
Bring your charger, mine died.
Also there's leftover cake. I ate half. You're welcome.
That part was normal. Sam asked if he was alive most mornings.
Alex started to type back with his thumb, and stopped.
His right thumb. Last night it had stung, right in the split by the nail. Or had he dreamed that part?
He turned his hand over.
The split was closed. The skin was smooth, like he'd never bitten it.
His eyes went straight to the spot beside the keyboard where he'd left the piece of black metal.
Gone.
He checked under the keyboard. He checked the floor, and the closet, and the pockets of yesterday's jeans. He moved the chair, got down on his knees, and shone his phone flashlight under the desk.
Dust. A bottle cap. One sock. No metal.
He sat back on his heels. That metal had been in the box with the photos and the watch for thirteen years. Of everything his parents left him, it was the one thing that seemed to matter. Now it was inside him, or it was nowhere.
He grabbed the edge of the desk to pull himself up, the way he did every morning.
The edge cracked.
It was cheap pressed board with a plastic strip along the front, and it had held his elbows up for two years. Now there was a crack in it right under his fingers, with little white crumbs of board in the gap. He hadn't even gripped it hard.
He let go and held his hand up. Same thin fingers. Same bitten nails.
He pressed one fingertip on the crack, gently, and felt the board give.
'Forget the tests... something is really wrong with me.'
He got to the bathroom faster than he ever had.
***
The plan was cold water. Wake up properly and figure out the rest after.
He turned on the faucet. The pipes were so loud he almost turned it off again. He splashed his face twice with his eyes shut.
When he straightened up, the mirror showed the usual guy. Flat hair on the side he'd slept on, yesterday's T-shirt, water dripping off his chin.
He turned his head to the left to reach for the towel. For a second, from the corner of his eye, the face in the mirror looked like a different face. He turned back and looked straight at it.
It was still a different face.
Same nose. Same scar under his chin from falling off a bike in the Residence yard when he was nine.
But his jaw was sharper. His skin was clear, and paler too. The gray shadows under his eyes, the ones he'd had since school, were gone. His eyes were brighter. Even his shoulders sat further back, like somebody had finally fixed his posture.
'Huh. I look like the "after" picture in a vitamin ad.'
He lifted his upper lip with two fingers.
His canine tooth was longer than it used to be, and it came to a point now. He touched the tip with his thumb and jerked it back. Sharp. The tooth on the other side matched.
'Vitamins don't do that.'
He let go of his lip, and it caught on the point on the way down. A tiny sting. He tasted blood, only a drop, warm and salty.
He was suddenly so hungry it scared him. For a second, all he wanted was more of that taste. He gripped the sink with both hands until it passed.
He stared at the two points in the mirror.
In Qasra, people got paid to kill things with teeth like that. That was what the Hunters were for.
And the booster notice was still sitting on his phone. A booster meant a clinic, and a nurse with a little flashlight telling him to open his mouth.
The shop opened at ten. Sam would take one look at him.
'I can't let Sam see this!'
He looked down at his hands. He wanted to see one thing that hadn't changed.
That was when his reflection fell behind.
Alex's head was down, but at the edge of his sight, the guy in the mirror still had his head up. He was half a second behind.
And he was smiling. Alex wasn't.
It was a thin little smile, like he'd been waiting for Alex to notice.
Alex snapped his head up. Now the mirror showed only Alex, mouth hanging open, no smile at all.
"What the hell?" he whispered.
'That's my face. I never told it to smile.'
In the mirror, a green light slid across both of his eyes, left to right, and was gone.
'The pharmacy sign. It's just the pharmacy sign.'
But the pharmacy light couldn't reach the bathroom. It never had. On nights he couldn't sleep, he came in here and sat on the edge of the tub in the dark.
The words came next.
They weren't on the mirror. They hung in the air, an arm's length in front of his face, in the plain green capitals from his game.
LEVEL 1
He moved his head. The words stayed put. He shut his eyes, and he could still see them.
A second line appeared underneath, like a menu waiting for him to press a button.
BEGIN