My name is Ryan Angelo, but most people call me Rudra. It's a name that feels less like an alias and more like the person I've become—a name I've grown into over a decade in this second life. My existence in New York City was, until very recently, a serene and beautiful sanctuary.
My parents were brilliant bio-engineering researchers who dedicated their lives to advancing medical science. Our lives were built on a solid foundation of comfortable prosperity and intellectual curiosity. Our home was filled with the quiet rustle of research papers, the hum of my father's lab equipment, and the comforting scent of my mother's experiments.
Thanks to the knowledge I retained from my past life, I was seen as a child prodigy, a little genius in the making. My parents chose to homeschool me, a decision they made after seeing my unusual aptitude for complex subjects.
After I excelled in all the basic school subjects far beyond what was expected of a child my age, the direction of my studies shifted. I began to focus primarily on medicine—a field I developed a deep interest in, idolizing my parents' work, which they lovingly nurtured. Our days were a peaceful, almost idyllic existence, a life so good that I never once sought to disrupt its tranquil course.
I wished with all my being that this life could have continued happily, wrapped in the comforting bubble of our family and our work.
Then, two weeks ago, that dream shattered into a million pieces. The moment is seared into my memory: the joyful dinner table laid out with food, the way my parents joyfully chatted about, before my father began to speak. They recounted their day in the lab and then came the news that their laboratory was being acquired by Oscorp, and their new boss would be none other than Norman Osborn.
The names alone were a cold splash of reality, a bucket of ice water over my carefully constructed world. I wasn't a hardcore Marvel fan in my past life, but I certainly wasn't living under a rock either. Everyone knows Spider-Man. Everyone knows Oscorp, and everyone knows Norman Osborn is the Green Goblin.
I rushed to the internet, my fingers trembling as I typed the names, and a quick, frantic search confirmed my worst fears: Captain America turned out to be a historical figure, and this was, without a doubt, the Marvel Universe. My cherished dream of a quiet, mundane life, free from the chaos and danger of superhuman conflicts, was thrown into a shredder and then incinerated for good measure.
In this world full of superheroes and villains, peace was a fleeting illusion, and I—a child with the memories of a different time—was forced to wake up to a brutal reality. My mind, a place that had been a calm and orderly library of knowledge, went into a state of overdrive. Realizing I was in the hotspot for world-ending events, I immediately began planning our escape.
My plan was to convince my parents to leave New York and move to India, a place I hoped would be far enough from the epicenters of superhuman conflict. It felt like the only logical course of action, an urgent necessity. Unfortunately, I was too late. The news that arrived was like a physical punch to the gut—my parents were gone. According to the police, they were killed by stray bullets in a gang war.
It took a few minutes for the words to truly sink in, for my mind to process the horrific meaning of what I had just been told. And then, a wave of absolute, chilling certainty washed over me. This was all bullshit. My parents were meticulously cautious people. My father had studied every gang-controlled zone in the city and even had me memorize a map of the danger areas, pointing out which blocks to avoid and which neighborhoods were unsafe. They would never, under any circumstances, have been caught in a random gang shootout. This wasn't an accident; it was a cold, calculated murder, meticulously staged to look like a tragic mistake. My ten-year-old brain, with its two lifetimes of experience, was certain of it.
The news hit me with a physical force, leaving me breathless and cold. At ten years old, I was an orphan again. The world had gone from idyllic to a brutal, unforgiving place in a matter of weeks. The grief was a crushing weight, but it was quickly overshadowed by a scorching, murderous rage.
As much as most of my being wanted to hunt down the killer, to seek immediate, violent vengeance, another, more rational part of me knew I was utterly powerless. Despite the raw, beastly desire for revenge my mature mind knew that a ten-year-old normal boy in a world of super-beings and shadowy corporations was a liability, not a threat.
I still had my grandparents as family, but at that moment, I felt like I was completely on my own. My paternal grandparents lived in India. My grandfather was American, but he had married my Indian grandmother, and they had long since settled in the peaceful coastal town of Rameshwaram. They were a world away, a beacon of safety in a storm.
On the other hand, my maternal grandparents were estranged people whom I had never met or talked to. My mother had run away from home years ago, and I didn't even know if they were still alive, let alone where they lived. The only connection I had to them was a delicate gold necklace my mother had passed down to me, calling it a family heirloom.
In my first life, I was born in 1999 and grew up in the harsh slums of Mumbai. I was an orphan then, too, raised in a rundown colony of outcasts. I learned to be resourceful, self-studying the stock market with books I salvaged from trash heaps and saving every penny I could.
By seventeen, I was financially stable enough to not only improve my own life but to transform our entire community by building a small library and a clean water facility. My first life ended abruptly on a train that derailed while I was on my way to pick up a new car, a tangible symbol of my hard-won success. The next thing I knew, I was a baby again, with all the memories and intellect of my past self.
My past taught me a brutal truth: rushing into a fight you can't win is suicide, and suicide was always the easy way out. Knowing my attempts to find the killer now would be futile and dangerous, I opted for the smarter, more patient path. I decided to grow my power, build my connections, and gather clues discreetly from the shadows.
As the time for my departure drew near I sat in my room as I steadied my aim and planned my next steps.