Bathroom of a random gas station in the middle of nowhere.
The smell hit Charles before he even opened his eyes.
Rotting food. Mold. Stagnant water. And beneath it all, a sickly sweet scent that made his stomach churn. His consciousness surfaced slowly, dragged upward through a pounding headache that felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through his skull.
A groan escaped his lips.
The floor beneath him was cold and wet. Charles pushed himself up onto his elbows and immediately regretted it as pain flared behind his eyes. He glanced down at the puddle soaking his clothes. Water. Hopefully. The smell suggested otherwise.
"Fuck..." His voice sounded weak. The last thing he remembered was being alone in his room, doing... exercise... Then everything had gone black. Now he was lying on the floor of a filthy gas station bathroom. A completely normal sequence of events... right?
"Was I kidnapped?" The words came out as little more than a whisper. Holding a hand against his throbbing head, Charles slowly climbed to his feet. The bathroom looked abandoned. Cracked tiles covered the walls. Graffiti layered every available surface. One of the sinks had been ripped completely out of the wall.
Then he saw the mirror. For a moment, his exhausted brain couldn't process what he was seeing. Purple eyes stared back at him. Not hazel. Not brown. Not even some weird contact-lens color. Purple. The kind of impossible shade that belonged in anime, not reality. Charles stared. One second. Five seconds. Thirty. His brain latched onto the impossible eye color so completely that it took nearly two full minutes for him to realize the far bigger problem. The face wasn't his.
Silence filled the room. Slowly, mechanically, he reached up and touched his cheek. The reflection copied him. His stomach dropped. "No." His breathing quickened. "No, no, no..." Both hands grabbed the edges of the sink hard enough to turn his knuckles white. The realization slammed into him all at once. Body swap. Transmigration. Reincarnation. Isekai. Whatever the hell people wanted to call it. As an avid consumer of fanfiction and web novels, he recognized every trope immediately. Which somehow made the situation even worse.
"Please tell me I'm having a psychotic break." The mirror offered no reassurance. After several seconds of silent panic, Charles forced himself to move. He needed information. He pushed open the bathroom door and stepped outside. The gas station looked like it had survived the apocalypse and then gotten robbed for good measure. Dust covered everything. Shelves had been overturned. Broken glass crunched beneath his shoes. Whatever useful supplies had once existed were long gone. The only things left were scraps of trash and a handful of weathered magazines scattered across the floor. No people. No sounds. No movement. The silence was unsettling. Charles swallowed. Then he spotted a newspaper rack. Perfect. A date. A location. Anything. He hurried over and grabbed the nearest paper. His eyes immediately locked onto the front-page headline.
EMERGENCY MEASURES ENACTED AS DEAD RETURN TO LIFE Officials Investigate Cause of Global Phenomenon
Charles blinked. "...What?" He grabbed a second newspaper. Then a third. Each one somehow looked worse than the last.
THE DEAD RISE AS GLOBAL EMERGENCY DECLARED Authorities Urge Public to Shelter in Place.
GOVERNMENTS MOBILIZE AS REANIMATION OUTBREAK GROWS Military Deployed Following Reports of Violent Incidents.
Then another.
UNEXPLAINED REANIMATION CASES SPREAD NATIONWIDE Scientists and Officials Race to Find Answers
Charles stood frozen in the middle of the ruined gas station.
His mind carefully reviewed the available evidence. Unknown body. Purple anime eyes. Abandoned gas station. Zombie apocalypse. The universe had apparently looked at every terrible fanfiction premise ever written and decided to speedrun all of them at once.
"...Fuck."
A distant scream echoed somewhere outside. Charles slowly lowered the newspaper.
"...Fuck, im in a zombie world... and seems i have no system too"
Just as he said that a new screen appears!