I woke up choking.
Not on air.
On weight.
Gravity pressed into me from every direction at once, pinning thought to flesh. My chest seized as my body tried to remember a function it had not needed in a very long time.
I dragged air in like it was something earned.
Pain followed immediately. Not sharp. Not focused. A deep, structural ache that told me this body was real and unhappy about it.
I lay still, afraid that moving would make it worse.
The ground beneath me was wrong. Too hard. Too uneven. Cold in a way the void had never been. The darkness here was different too. It had depth. Direction. Somewhere far above me, light existed, even if my eyes refused to cooperate yet.
I flexed my fingers.
They responded.
Slowly.
Bad sign.
Memory returned in fragments. Not images. Sensations. Pressure. A hand large enough to be a horizon. Questions without language. A pause where something should have finished and didn't.
Then nothing.
I swallowed and pushed myself onto an elbow.
Concrete.
Cracked, scorched, and uneven, but unmistakably concrete.
The realization grounded me more than the pain.
I was somewhere people had been.
Somewhere people were supposed to be.
The air smelled burned. Electrical. Like overheated metal and dust that hadn't settled yet. Distant noise filtered in - traffic slowing, voices carrying, the city adjusting without knowing why.
A city.
I laughed weakly.
"So this is what I get," I muttered. "A body and a sidewalk."
My voice sounded wrong to my own ears. Too solid. Too present.
I rolled onto my side and immediately regretted it. Pain flared down my spine and into my legs, sharp enough to steal my breath.
I stayed there, gasping, until it passed.
Whatever had sent me here had not been gentle.
Whatever had sent me here had not finished the job either.
I forced myself upright.
The world tilted, then stabilized.
Buildings loomed around me, some intact, others fractured, as if something heavy had come down fast and left without explanation. Windows stared back, dark and reflective.
No alarms.
No sirens.
Just the uneasy quiet of a city deciding whether this was worth stopping for.
"I'm alive," I said quietly.
The words didn't bring relief.
They brought questions.
Why this body.
Why here.
And why did it feel like the space around me resisted settling, like the world didn't quite know where to put me.
I took a step forward.
The ground held.
Another step.
Pain dulled, adjusting, as if my body was learning how to exist under local rules.
That thought made my stomach tighten.
I hadn't gone far when I noticed the stares.
Across the street, a man stood frozen halfway through lifting a phone to his ear.
"Did you see that?" someone whispered behind me.
A woman near a parked car shook her head slowly. "He just… showed up."
"No he didn't," another voice said. "People don't just appear."
They were talking about me like I wasn't there.
Like acknowledging me directly might make things worse.
I looked down at myself.
Dust. Torn fabric. Scorched edges.
No flames. No glow. No obvious injury.
And yet no one came closer.
"Sir?" someone called, tentative. "Are you hurt?"
I turned toward the voice.
That seemed to be the wrong move.
A few people stepped back immediately.
"I'm fine," I said. "I think."
That didn't help.
The man with the phone finally spoke, voice low, uncertain.
"Where did you come from?"
I opened my mouth.
Stopped.
The truth wouldn't survive the trip out of my head.
"I fell," I said instead.
It wasn't a lie.
It just skipped everything important.
Furrowed brows. Exchanged looks.
Someone laughed nervously. "From where?"
I didn't answer.
Someone else was already dialling.
Another person took a picture, then frowned at their screen like it hadn't captured what they expected.
The city did what it always did.
It reframed.
Construction accident. Structural failure. Something explainable if you didn't look too hard.
But not everyone stopped looking.
Several miles away, in a room designed to notice patterns other people missed, a report finished compiling.
Unidentified impact.
No aircraft.
No recorded descent.
No seismic precursor.
One individual present at point of impact.
Condition stable.
Nick Fury read the report once.
Then again.
He did not move.
He disliked events without approach vectors.
He disliked them more when they left witnesses.
"Pull everything," he said evenly. "Traffic cams. Private cameras. Cell uploads. Anything inside ten blocks."
Screens updated.
Different angles.
Same result.
A man standing where nothing had been moments before.
No flash.
No arrival.
Just presence.
"Facial recognition," Fury said.
"No match."
"International."
"Negative."
"Missing persons."
"Nothing current."
Fury rested his hands on the table.
"Classification?"
The analyst hesitated. "Unknown. Possibly enhanced."
"Mutant?" someone asked.
"Possibly," Fury said. "Or something else entirely."
He considered the screen a moment longer.
"Flag it Level 5," he said. "Potential anomaly. I want this tracked quietly."
"Response?"
"Plain clothes. No uniforms. No escalation. I want to know who he is before he knows we exist."
"And if he notices?"
Fury's eye narrowed slightly.
"Then we reassess."
Back on the street, I felt it.
Not a presence.
A shift.
Like attention moving with purpose.
I didn't know who was watching.
But I knew the city had stopped pretending I was nothing.
And whatever mistake had brought me here had just been upgraded.
....
Thanks for reading chapter 1.
Feel free to drop any power stones or anything, though I don't mind because the games gone and I'm doing this for enjoyment because I cant find anything good to read.
.....