Daniel woke to the smell of protein powder and existential dread.
Both scents were his own fault. The shake sat on his desk in a foggy plastic cup—oats, banana, two scoops of double-chocolate whey, the one Zack swore "tasted like leg day feels." It was 03:02 a.m.; the neon wall-clock's second hand stuttered, refusing to commit. Daniel's phone screen glared brighter: TIMER 00:00, the alarm he'd set after the rooftop. He stabbed the stop button and tried not to notice how his thumb—original, chubby, trembling—left a crescent of sweat on the glass.
Thirty-six minutes, Jay had logged. Thirty-six minutes of being two people welded inside one breath. Then snap, and he'd collapsed back into the shape he'd worn since birth. That had been four hours ago. He'd walked home, fallen into bed, and dreamed of paper cranes folding themselves into paper airplanes, then into paper people who folded him.
He gulped the shake to drown the taste of dream ink. It was chalky, sweet, disappointing—comfort food for a body that no longer existed. Or still existed, but on layaway. Daniel wiped his mouth, set the cup down, and faced the mirror nailed to the closet.
Same round face, same double curve under the chin that Mom called "our family signature." Eyes puffy, hair a black dandelion. No gorgeous jawline, no cheekbones sharp enough to slice bullying. Just Daniel 1.0, the starter model. He exhaled relief and grief in one vanilla burp.
But the relief curdled when he remembered the timer. If the merge repeated on a thirty-six-minute loop, he needed data—hard, obsessive, spreadsheet-worthy data. He dragged the desk chair to the mirror, planted his phone on the dresser like a lab technician, and opened the camera in selfie mode. Timestamp visible, grid overlay on, flash off—he didn't want to wake his mom through the thin wall.
"Test one," he whispered. His voice cracked; puberty's ghost still squatting in his chords. He hit record. "Wednesday, October ninth, 03:07 a.m. Body status: original. No phantom limbs. Vision single-channel, warm tone. Mood: terrified but caffeinated." He lifted both arms, rotated wrists, flexed nothing in particular. "If I suddenly go super-model, start the stopwatch. If I snap back, stop it. Simple."
Simple except his pulse was already sprinting. He set a second phone—an old cracked one Mom used for recipes—on the desk as backup recorder. Redundant redundancy. That was the trick: treat your own body like a hostile witness.
Daniel sat cross-legged on the rug, spine straight the way Vasco taught during meditation club. He counted breaths—four in, hold, four out—until the room's edges softened. Minutes dripped. The wall-clock hit 03:19. No change. Maybe the rooftop had been a one-off cosmic hiccup. Maybe he'd dreamed the whole thing, Jay's hoodie and origami crane included. He glanced at the hoodie hanging on the chair sleeve; sandalwood still clung to the cuff. Real, then.
03:21.
A tug, gentle as someone pulling a single thread from a sweater. Daniel's left hand flickered—chubby fingers elongated, knuckles sharpening, then snapped back. He yelped. The camera captured the glitch in grainy 30 fps: a two-second cameo of the hot-body hand, veins glowing violet under LED light. Daniel's heart slammed. He scrambled for the stopwatch icon, thumb hovering.
Another tug—deeper, behind the sternum. This time the overlap held. Heat flooded him like stepping into a sauna wearing a snowsuit. Vision doubled: warm original overlaying cool HD. He saw both bedrooms at once—one slightly fisheyed, one razor-sharp. Two noses, two mouths, two sets of teeth that felt too big for shared gums. He tasted metal, then vanilla again.
"Timer—start!" he barked, voice stereo. The phone obeyed. 00:00 rolled to 00:01. Daniel forced himself to stay in frame, arms visible. He watched mirrored flesh ripple, two skins negotiating borders. His original tummy softened while abs etched themselves above; the contrast looked like a glitchy Instagram filter. Nausea surged. He swallowed hard, counting—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—like measuring distance between lightning and thunder.
By fifteen seconds the merge stabilized. He was one body again, but not either body—an average no one would photograph or bully. Height maybe 178 cm, build athletic-but-approachable, face… he leaned closer. Jawline defined but not knife-sharp, cheekbones present but not sculpturesque. A Daniel 1.5 patch update. His T-shirt—originally loose—now clung weirdly across shoulders that hadn't existed minutes ago.
"Mid-form," he narrated, voice mid-tone. "Feels like wearing wet jeans two sizes too ethical." He laughed once, a bark that echoed double, then died. The stopwatch read 00:47.
He needed benchmarks. He tried push-ups: ten reps easy, muscles firing in unfamiliar sequence. Jumping jacks: no phantom lag. Squats: knees cracked in stereo, but stable. He recorded heart-rate—two fingers to neck, counted fifteen seconds × 4 = 104 bpm. Acceptable. He spoke the alphabet backward to test cognition—Z Y X… no stutters until L, where both tongues hesitated.
03:26. The wall-clock second hand froze, then ticked backward one frame before continuing. Daniel's vision stuttered the same way. He felt the rubber-band sensation return—snap incoming. He braced palms against the dresser, eyes on the mirror. "Document the exit," he reminded himself, voice wobbling.
Snap.
It wasn't pain, more like a vacuum cleaner removing his skeleton from the inside. Hot-body average collapsed inward, original body reinflated like a balloon untouched by time. The transition took two seconds, maybe three. The stopwatch read 02:11. Two minutes eleven seconds—nowhere near the rooftop's thirty-six. Daniel stabbed stop, saved the video, labeled it "Merge_02_11."
His knees gave. He sat hard, rug burns through pajama pants. Sweat soaked the T-shirt neck. The room smelled like iron and chocolate. He breathed until the spins settled, then replayed the footage. Frame by frame he watched himself become a stranger, then half-stranger, then himself again. Evidence. Data. Proof he wasn't losing his mind—just misplacing bodies.
A soft knock. "Sweetie? You okay?" Mom, voice muffled by hallway and night-shift exhaustion. Daniel killed the lights, dove into bed still recording.
"Yeah! Dropped weights," he lied, wincing at the stereophonic echo that wasn't there. His voice was singular again, shaky but singular.
Silence, then retreating footsteps. Daniel exhaled. He set a new alarm: 04:00 a.m. If pattern held, another merge could hit. He plugged both phones into chargers, laid them on his chest like talismans, and opened a note app titled "Merge Log."
Entry 1
Duration: 2:11
Form: Hybrid 1.5
Triggers: None obvious, 03:21 a.m.
After-effects: Mild nausea, sweat, no pain.
Next test: caffeine, stress, mirror exposure.
Control variable: stay awake.
He reread the words until they blurred. The crane Jay gave him peeked from the hoodie pocket on the chair. Daniel reached, set the paper bird on his pillow. It stared with ink-dot eyes, equal parts fragile and fearless.
"Fold me," he mumbled, lids heavy. "Fold us."
The clock hit 03:34. Daniel surrendered to one body's exhaustion, unaware that across the city five phones would soon buzz with the same anonymous text:
Subject active. Timer unstable. Protect phase initiated.