A mechanical bell chime drilled through my skull.
I jolted awake, my heart already hammering, and for several seconds I had no idea where I was.
The ceiling above me was a smooth, spotless white. The sheets were softer than anything I had ever slept on.
My limbs felt heavy and stiff, as if I'd been lying here for a hundred years.
I sat up slowly, rubbing my temples to chase off the fog.
The room was enormous, far bigger than any bedroom I'd known, and almost eerily tidy.
Everything in it was sleek and modern, all clean lines and muted tones, with an undercurrent of quiet luxury.
The scent of lavender hung in the air, drifting from some hidden freshener.
This isn't my room.
The memories hit all at once. The rain. The unfinished building.
The man in the hoodie, and the heat of the bullet tearing through my chest.
I clamped a hand over my sternum, but there was nothing there.
No wound, no blood, only the steady thump of a heart that should have stopped.
'Shouldn't I be dead?' I couldn't help but question whatever was going on.
I kicked off the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed, scanning the room for any clue.
I pinched my cheek, hard, hoping to wake up. It hurt. I was very much awake.
A full-length mirror leaned against the far wall, and I walked toward it with a growing sense of dread.
The person in the glass looked back at me, and he wasn't me.
My black hair was gone. In its place, a rich, vivid red fell across my forehead, threaded with black streaks that framed my face.
My eyes, once blue, had turned the deep red of freshly spilled blood. The jaw was sharper, the cheekbones higher, and the whole face wore a stranger's calm.
I was still staring when my phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I crossed the room and picked it up. The screen was already lit with a message from someone named Natasha.
[Don't forget, today's the entrance exam for the academy, so don't be late, Nate.]
I read it twice. Who is Natasha? And what academy?
It was then that I noticed the watch on my wrist. A sleek band of black and silver, strangely familiar, though I couldn't say why.
I tapped the face, and a holographic interface bloomed into the air above it, blue lines crisp against the morning light.
________________________________________
Name: Nathaniel Hunt
Race: Human
Age: 16
Abilities: Integration, Angel's Wings
Synchronisation rate: 9%
________________________________________
I read the name again.
Nathaniel Hunt.
The pieces clicked into place so hard it almost hurt. Synchronisation rate. Angel's Wings. Integration.
A watch that doubled as a status screen. I knew all of it, because I had read it a hundred times, and I had closed the final chapter only yesterday.
I had transmigrated into my favorite novel, Echoes of War, and I had landed in the body of its final and greatest villain, Nathan Hunt.
*********
An hour later, I was standing at the window of my new apartment, letting out a long, tired breath, as the weight of the situation finally settled on my shoulders.
An hour. That was all it had taken for the world to flip completely over, and I'd spent every minute of it pulling at threads.
The apartment was a gift, of sorts, from my "family" in this world, a word that still felt like a borrowed coat.
A bank account I didn't remember opening. A uniform hanging in the closet that had my measurements stitched into the collar.
Everything exactly where the novel said it would be.
Beyond the glass, the city of Eden sprawled to the horizon.
It was the capital of Nublar Island, and it looked like something out of the future I had always read about.
Towering skyscrapers of glass and steel clawed at the clouds, their windows catching the early light.
Neon signs pulsed along the streets below, bright even in daylight, and transit lines wound between the towers like glowing veins.
It was beautiful. It was also a lie, or at least half of one. I knew what lay beneath that skyline: a world at war, and a war with no end in sight.
My thoughts drifted to the place I would be walking into in a matter of hours.
Nublar Academy, the finest military institution in all of Terra, where the brightest and most gifted young minds trained to become tomorrow's leaders and heroes.
And somewhere inside its walls, the protagonist of this world would be waiting.
The academy's star student, the boy I'd cheered for through eight hundred chapters.
The boy who, in the story, was fated to be Nathan Hunt's arch-nemesis.
A laugh escaped me, dry and a little cracked. It was just too absurd.
A normal reader, one among thousands, dying alone in a half-built shell of a building, and waking up as the man who would one day set the world on fire.
Of all the characters in all the books I'd ever loved…
It was thrilling. It was terrifying. Mostly it was both at once.
The city outside faded to a blur as I stared at the faint, tired reflection in the glass.
I was Nathaniel Hunt, the villain of this world.
And I had a feeling my story had only just begun.