The first sensation was the throbbing. A relentless pounding in his skull that felt like someone was using his brain as an anvil. The second was the unfamiliar weight of the air itself, heavy and stale with the smell of mold and something chemical he couldn't identify. The third was the shouting.
"—wake up, you useless piece of shit! Do you think I'm going to clean up your mess again? Get your pathetic ass out of bed right now!"
The voice was high-pitched, feminine, and absolutely furious. It cut through the haze of his consciousness like a rusty knife, each word making his headache worse. He tried to process what was happening, but his thoughts felt sluggish, disconnected, like trying to think through thick syrup.
Where am I?
His eyes cracked open, and immediately he knew something was terribly wrong. The ceiling above him wasn't his ceiling. It wasn't the familiar off-white paint of his dorm room with the water stain that looked vaguely like a giraffe. This ceiling was different—cracked plaster with exposed pipes running along the corners, rust stains bleeding down like dried blood. The lighting was harsh and artificial, casting everything in an unforgiving fluorescent glow that made his eyes water.
"Are you even listening to me, Daniel? Daniel! I'm talking to you, you worthless—"
Daniel? Who the hell is Daniel?
He tried to sit up, and that's when the real panic set in. His body felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. His arms, when he lifted them to rub his eyes, were thin and pale, lacking the muscle definition he'd worked years to build. His hands—God, his hands—they looked like they belonged to a teenager, all knobby knuckles and soft skin. Where were the calluses from years of weightlifting? Where was the scar on his left palm from that stupid accident with the kitchen knife in high school?
The girl—she couldn't be more than seventeen or eighteen—was still screaming at him. She had dark hair that needed washing and clothes that had seen better days. Her face was twisted with the kind of casual cruelty that came from too much practice, and she was holding what looked like a baseball bat like she knew how to use it.
Sister, some distant part of his mind supplied, though he had no idea where that knowledge came from. She's supposed to be my sister.
But that was impossible. He didn't have a sister. He was an only child, had always been an only child. His parents had made that very clear when they'd explained why they couldn't afford to send him to a better college.
He ignored her continued tirade and focused on his surroundings. The room was small and shabby, with peeling wallpaper and furniture that looked like it had been salvaged from a thrift store's reject pile. Everything had that particular kind of worn-down quality that spoke of poverty—not the temporary poverty of a college student, but the grinding, generational kind that left permanent stains on everything it touched.
This isn't right. This isn't my life.
The panic was starting to build now, a cold pressure in his chest that made it hard to breathe. He swung his legs over the side of what he supposed was his bed—a mattress on a metal frame that creaked ominously—and tried to stand. His legs felt weak, shaky, like he'd been bedridden for weeks.
What happened to me? Was I in an accident? Did I hit my head?
That would explain the headache, at least. Maybe he was in a hospital, and this was all some kind of elaborate hallucination brought on by brain trauma. That made sense. That was rational. The alternative—that he'd somehow woken up in a completely different body, in a completely different life—was insane.
He caught sight of himself in a cracked mirror mounted on the opposite wall and froze.
The face looking back at him was not his face.
It was younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with hollow cheeks and dark circles under the eyes that spoke of malnutrition and too many sleepless nights. The skin was pale, almost sickly, and there was a general air of neglect that made him want to shower just looking at it. But it wasn't his face. His face was broader, with a jaw he'd inherited from his father and a nose that had been broken once in a wrestling match sophomore year.
This face was a stranger's face.
No no no no no...
He staggered closer to the mirror, his weak legs barely supporting him. Maybe it was the lighting. Maybe it was the angle. Maybe his vision was still messed up from whatever had happened to him. But as he got closer, the face in the mirror got clearer, not more familiar.
"What's your problem now?" the girl—his supposed sister—demanded, her voice dripping with disdain. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
I think I have, he thought wildly. I think I'm the ghost.
He raised his hand to touch his face, watching in growing horror as the stranger in the mirror did the same thing. The skin was real, warm, undeniably there. But it wasn't his skin. These weren't his fingers. This wasn't his body.
Think, think, THINK! he commanded himself, trying to apply the breathing techniques he'd learned to manage exam stress. There has to be a rational explanation for this. People don't just wake up in different bodies. That doesn't happen. It can't happen.
Maybe it was a prank. His roommate Sahil was known for elaborate practical jokes, though this would be way beyond anything he'd ever attempted before. The logistics alone would be impossible—how would you fake an entire apartment, an entire life, an entire different body?
Maybe he'd been kidnapped. Maybe this girl was an actress hired by whoever had taken him. But that didn't explain the body thing. That didn't explain why his reflection was wrong.
Maybe it was some kind of advanced virtual reality. Maybe he was still lying in his dorm bed, hooked up to some experimental VR system that Sahil had somehow gotten his hands on. That would explain the hyperreal quality of everything, the way his new body felt completely authentic but completely wrong at the same time.
Yeah, that has to be it. VR. It's the only explanation that makes sense.