Consciousness returned to Li Chen not with a bang, but like a slow tide rolling in. There was no panic, only a thick, heavy confusion. He was lying down. The surface under him was soft. A blanket was pulled up to his chest.
The first thing that registered was the smell.
It wasn't the smell of old coffee and despair from the office. This was… clean. It was the faint, sharp scent of lemon-scented cleaning spray and the soft smell of fresh laundry.
Then, he noticed the sounds.
The oppressive, heavy silence of the empty office was gone. He could hear the steady, comforting hum of a refrigerator coming from a small kitchenette. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of a tree outside an open window. And there was traffic, the sound of cars several stories below, but it wasn't the angry, constant blare of his city. It was a steady, distant purr, like the city itself was just breathing.
Finally, he became aware of his own body.
The pain was gone. The sharp, throbbing agony behind his eyes had vanished. The crushing weight of fatigue that had been his constant companion for years had simply lifted. The tight, painful band around his chest had disappeared. He took a deep, experimental breath. It was easy. It was full. He felt… good. Rested. He felt better than he had in a decade. He felt alive.
He opened his eyes.
He was lying in a single bed, in a small, sunlit room. It was a studio apartment—one room that held everything. A bed, a small table with one chair, a compact kitchenette. It was modest, but it was clean and comfortable. The morning sun streamed through the window, painting a bright rectangle on the wooden floor. It was a far cry from his own messy, neglected apartment, which had been little more than a place to crash between shifts.
He sat up. The movement was effortless. There was no cracking in his joints, no protest from his aching muscles. He moved with an unfamiliar, easy grace. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. They were his hands, yet they were different. The small, tough callus on his middle finger from years of constant typing was gone. The perpetual, slight tremor in his fingers from too much caffeine and exhaustion was absent. His skin looked healthier.
He swung his legs out of bed, his bare feet touching the cool floor. As he did, a transparent, blue-tinted screen simply appeared in the center of his vision. It was sleek and silent, like something from a high-tech movie. The words on it were in a clean, simple font.
[System Initialization Complete]
[Welcome, User. Perfect Superman Template v1.0 is now active.]
[Host Designation: Clark Kent]
[Current Assimilation: 0.001%]
[Primary Power Source: Solar Radiation (Yellow Star)]
[Status: Optimal]
Li Chen—no, the screen called him Clark—stared, utterly bewildered.
"What the hell is this?" he whispered to the empty room. "A dream? Did I finally crack and get stuck in some VR simulation?"
He waved a hand in front of his face, trying to swipe the screen away. It didn't move. It stayed perfectly centered in his view, no matter where he looked. A cold trickle of fear ran down his spine. This felt too real.
He stood up and walked to the window, the strange screen still hovering in his vision. The view was of a clean, bustling street that looked like something out of a movie about New York. But it wasn't his city. The cars were different models, the street signs were in a style he didn't recognize. His eyes scanned the scene below and landed on a newsstand. A newspaper was displayed prominently, its headline clear and bold:
"STARK INDUSTRIES ANNOUNCES FUTURE OF ENERGY EXPO."
The pieces clicked into place with a terrifying, soul-deep certainty.
The system. The new name. Clark Kent. And now… Stark Industries.
He stumbled back from the window as if he'd been burned, collapsing into the single chair at the small table. His knowledge of Marvel movies, a hobby he'd used to escape his miserable life, now unspooled in his mind like a cursed script. Aliens. Gods. Supervillains. Cities falling from the sky.
"No," he whispered, the word barely audible. A cold dread filled him. "Anywhere but here. This world is a death world. It's a timeline of chaos and collateral damage."
He was just an office worker. He wasn't a hero. He couldn't survive in a place like this.
His eyes drifted back to the persistent, blue system interface. His gaze locked onto the words "Superman Template." A flicker of desperate, wild hope ignited within him, fighting back the fear. Superman. If this was real… if he had even a fraction of that kind of power…
He looked around the clean, quiet, sun-drenched apartment. A safe place of his own. A completely new identity. No overtime. No demanding, soul-crushing boss. No more dying for a paycheck.
A grim, determined calm settled over him, washing away the last of the fear. He had been given a second chance. A chance to finally, finally live the quiet, peaceful life that had been stolen from him before.
And if this terrifying new world, with all its monsters and madness, thought it could drag him back into the grind, it would learn a hard lesson. He hadn't been given this peaceful life just to have it taken away. A man protecting his quiet life could be far more dangerous than a man seeking glory.