The whine was a sound Matthew Strickland knew intimately. It was the sound of a billion euros worth of bleeding-edge physics pushed past the breaking point. It was the sound of discovery, and potentially, disaster.
"Pressure differential in Chamber Four is dropping! Core temp spiking, Matthew, we have to abort!" The voice of Dr. Lin was sharp with panic, distorted through the comms system.
Matthew, strapped into the primary control station, ignored her. He stared at the console, his fingers flying across the holographic interface, attempting to reroute the primary flux capacitor. He hadn't slept in 72 hours, but the adrenaline fueled his focused brilliance.
"Negative, Lin. We are eight seconds from achieving the theoretical maximum spin rate. Containment is at 87% capacity. We hold."
"87% is failing, Matthew! The structural integrity warnings are flashing red! Evacuate now, sir, that's an order!"
Matthew merely smiled, a cold, predatory curve of the lips. The experiment—the chance to prove his theories on trans-dimensional particle entanglement—was more important than any human life, including his own. He was a pure scientist, and morality was noise.
"All non-essential personnel are to proceed with Protocol Gamma," he commanded, his voice utterly steady. That was the evacuation protocol. "I am essential."
He could hear the distant, scrambling footsteps of his team as they abandoned the bunker. He was alone. The particle accelerator—his life's work—was screaming now, a metallic shriek that vibrated through the floor and into his bones. He slammed his hand down on the manual override.
The last thing Matthew Strickland saw was a flash of white-hot, blinding energy blooming in the centre of the chamber, followed by a pressure wave that collapsed the world into a single, agonizing instant of heat and noise.
The pain was not the sharp, final agony of trauma. It was a dense, throbbing ache behind his eyes, a systemic misery that permeated bone and muscle. Matthew woke with a violent, involuntary jerk, gasping for air.
His disorientation was total. The air smelled foul—not of electricity and ozone, but of damp earth and decay. He was lying on a thin straw pallet in the dim, cold light of a small, rectangular room. The ceiling above him was made of rough, dark wood, not reinforced concrete.
Where am I? The thought was primal, stripped of all scientific context.
Before he could move, a terrifying flood of sensation hit him. It was memory, but it wasn't his. It was a rapid-fire sequence of childhood loneliness, the sting of being constantly overlooked, the sharp pangs of chronic hunger, and the raw, unpolished resentments of a frightened teenage boy.
The pain was excruciating, like having his consciousness forcefully scrubbed. The raw, messy life of Daemon, sixteen years old, an orphan who knew nothing of his parents, was violently spliced into the pristine, ordered database of Matthew Strickland. Just as abruptly as it started, the torrent of memories ceased, leaving him breathless, slick with sweat, and utterly bewildered.
Matthew, the scientist, took control. He was no longer Matt; he was the primary consciousness inhabiting this fragile, adolescent vessel. He ran a diagnostic. He had transmigration—proven—and host memory integration—proven. His old body was dust. This one was Daemon.
He sat up. The new body was thin, malnourished, and startlingly weak. But the eyes that surveyed the room—the grimy window, the thin, moldy walls, the other deserted pallets—were Matthew's. Calculating, cold, and utterly detached from the misery of the place. This was an orphanage, Daemon's permanent dwelling, in a place called the Kingdom of Berlin.
A distant clatter drew him to the doorway. As he navigated the unfamiliar stairs, his mind racing through Daemon's memories of the world—kings, vassals, feudal boundaries—he realized the critical absence. There were no cars, no wires, no radio signals, no firearms. The technology was almost medieval, yet the metalwork he saw on the banister was flawless, intricate.
Then he saw it.
In the common room below, a girl he recognized from Daemon's fragmented recollections—Elara—struggled with an enormous cauldron of boiling gruel. Her body was clearly failing. And then, a pressure shift. A faint, silver-blue light, like static electricity, briefly wreathed her forearms, and the heavy iron pot seemed to simply obey her command, settling down onto the hearth with impossible ease.
Matthew stopped, his hand resting on the splintered wood of the banister.
His initial scientific analysis of the world—technologically devolved, politically feudal—was shattered. Magic. It wasn't fantasy; it was a physical force, an applied science they had somehow tapped into. An energy source that defied the laws of physics as he knew them.
A smile, slow and completely devoid of warmth, stretched across Daemon's face. This was not a setback. This was the ultimate research opportunity. A world where the fundamental rules of reality were negotiable.
Daemon descended the final steps and moved into the common room, slipping into the familiar, resentful slouched posture that kept the bigger orphans at bay. He knew the drill. Keep quiet. Stay unseen. Survive.
He watched the caretaker, Barnaby, a thick, brutal man whose authority rested on his bulk and his threats, not on magic. He watched Elara, a quantifiable source of this new power. He observed Gareth, the bully, whose pure, untainted aggression spoke of a high potential for Elemental Magic—likely fire or earth.
Daemon collected his gruel, the thin, bitter taste an insult to his palate. He retreated to the darkest corner, letting the noise of the room wash over him.
Action must be delayed. The intelligence of this world is concentrated not in universities or labs, but in the systems that regulate and utilize this force.
His IQ of 201 wasn't a license to act recklessly; it was a command for strategic caution. He needed data. He needed to understand the energy pathways, the political structure of the Kingdom of Berlin, and the means by which this power was cultivated and controlled. To rush into action would be to die cheaply in a body he was still acclimatizing to.
He made the definitive mental note, the first true command of Matthew Strickland in his new existence: Keep your head down. Observe. Study the variables. Do not move until the equation for absolute control is flawless.
His time as Daemon, the forgotten orphan, was over. His time as the ultimate observer, the detached, brilliant scientist preparing for conquest, had begun.