Chapter 1: THE LEASH
Pain ripped me back into existence.
Not the dull ache of waking from a nightmare. This was fire—liquid fire crawling through every nerve, every muscle, every cell screaming in unified agony. My eyes snapped open. A ceiling I didn't recognize. Water stains spreading like cancer across yellowed plaster.
I tried to scream. A stranger's voice came out.
My hands clawed at the mattress beneath me—bare, stained, reeking of old sweat. These weren't my hands. Too young. Different calluses. A scar across the left knuckles I'd never earned.
"What the fuck—"
I rolled off the mattress and hit concrete. The impact sent fresh waves of pain radiating from my right forearm. I clutched it to my chest and staggered upright, scanning the room through tears I couldn't control.
Basement apartment. No windows. Peeling wallpaper the color of nicotine. A hot plate. A mini-fridge humming like a dying animal. One door, steel, three deadbolts.
The last thing I remembered was the IED. The flash. Marcus screaming my name. Then nothing.
Then this.
I found the bathroom—if you could call a toilet and a cracked mirror in a closet a bathroom. The face staring back at me was wrong. Younger. Harder. Dark hair instead of brown. Gray-green eyes instead of blue. A jaw that had been broken at least once and healed crooked.
Not my face. Not my body.
"I'm dead."
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it felt like a fact. I died in that explosion. This was something else. Somewhere else.
The pain in my forearm flared white-hot. I looked down and watched my skin move.
Lines of fire traced themselves across my inner forearm, burning through flesh like a branding iron held by an invisible hand. I bit through my lip trying not to scream. Blood filled my mouth. The lines connected, curved, formed a pattern—an intricate coiled chain, links wrapping around themselves in an impossible knot.
Then the voice came.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED.]
It wasn't sound. It was thought—cold, alien thought that wasn't mine, shoved directly into my skull.
[HOST BOUND.]
I dropped to my knees. The bathroom tiles were cracked and cold.
[FIRST MARKER ISSUED.]
Information flooded my brain like someone had opened a fire hydrant. A face—fifties, heavy, Slavic features, gold tooth visible when he smiled. A name: Yuri Petrov. An occupation: loan shark. A location: warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Everything I needed to find him.
Everything I needed to kill him.
[KILL WINDOW: 168 HOURS.]
Seven days. I had seven days.
[FAILURE CONSEQUENCE: SENSORY REVOCATION. FIRST OFFENSE: TASTE. DURATION: SEVEN DAYS.]
I barely made it to the toilet before I vomited. Nothing but bile and terror. My stomach heaved until there was nothing left, and then it kept going.
"This isn't real. This can't be real."
But the brand on my arm was real. Still smoking. Still burning.
I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The same way the Army taught me to handle panic. The same way I'd survived two tours and seventeen firefights.
"Think, Matthew. Think."
I pushed myself upright and went searching.
The apartment was a tomb. No phone. No computer. A stack of unopened mail addressed to "Matthew Radcliff"—apparently the name of whoever's body I was wearing. Military discharge papers in the nightstand: dishonorable, something about an "incident" in Syria. Empty pill bottles in the trash—opioids, muscle relaxers, the cocktail of a man trying to disappear.
A shoebox under the bed held the only useful thing in the entire place: a Glock 19. Loaded. Fifteen rounds in the magazine. I checked the chamber, the slide, the firing pin. Muscle memory. This body knew how to handle a weapon.
That was something.
Forty-seven dollars in a coffee can. Some clothes in a garbage bag that smelled like a Goodwill reject pile. A military ID with a photo of the face I now wore.
I sat on the edge of the mattress and tried to make sense of any of it.
Transmigration. I'd read the stories—late nights in the barracks, anything to pass the time between patrols. Guys waking up in fantasy worlds with cheat powers, becoming heroes or villains in universes they recognized from anime or video games. I'd thought it was bullshit. Escapist garbage for people who couldn't handle reality.
Apparently reality had a sense of humor.
[CURRENT STATUS: TIER 1 - INITIATE]
The voice again. I flinched, but the pain was fading now. Just the brand throbbing dully, like a fresh tattoo.
[BLOOD COINS: 0]
[DEBT MARKERS: 0]
[ACTIVE FUNCTIONS: THE MARKER (CORE)]
[LOCKED: GHOST MODE, ADRENALINE SHOT, ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS]
"What the hell is Ghost Mode?"
No answer. The System—because that's what this was, some kind of System—apparently only spoke when it wanted to.
I looked at the Glock in my hands. Fifteen rounds. One target. Four guards, probably more. A warehouse I'd never seen in a city I'd never lived in.
Seven days to figure out how to kill a man I'd never met.
My hands were shaking when I loaded the magazine. The hands shook in Syria too, before the first patrol. Before the first contact. They stopped shaking once the bullets started flying.
"You've killed before," I reminded myself. The words tasted like ash. "This is just... more direct."
But it wasn't the same. In combat, it was them or me. Kill or be killed. This was different. This was walking up to a stranger and putting a bullet in his brain because a voice in my head told me to.
Murder.
The brand pulsed on my arm. A reminder. A warning.
[KILL WINDOW: 167 HOURS, 42 MINUTES.]
I stood up. Checked the Glock one more time. Tucked it into my waistband, cold metal against the small of my back.
"First things first. Figure out where the fuck I am. Then figure out how to stay alive."
The three deadbolts on the door were overkill for a basement apartment. Someone—the original Matt Radcliff—had been afraid of something. Or someone.
I stepped out into a concrete hallway lit by a single flickering bulb. Stairs leading up. The smell of garbage and piss.
Welcome to New York.
The street hit me like a physical force. Noise. Motion. People everywhere, moving with that particular New York aggression, heads down, shoulders forward. Car horns. A jackhammer somewhere. The smell of exhaust and hot dogs and something rotting in a nearby alley.
September morning. Clear sky. The kind of day that should feel like a gift.
I felt nothing but the weight of the gun against my spine and the countdown ticking in my skull.
"One hundred sixty-seven hours. Give or take."
I needed information. I needed to understand what kind of world I'd landed in. And I needed to find Yuri Petrov's warehouse before time ran out.
The brand on my arm itched under my sleeve. A constant reminder that I wasn't free. That I might never be free again.
A System that demanded blood. A body that wasn't mine. A city full of strangers.
I started walking. The Glock shifted against my back with every step.
"Figure it out, Matthew. You always figure it out."
The lie tasted bitter. But lies were all I had left.
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