Chapter 1: The Glitch
Rain hit the window steadily. That made Jackie Chin feel very aware that he was still alive.
Not that it mattered much.
His studio apartment in East London smelled bad of rotten meals. The medical monitor beside his bed beeped steadily. He was thirty years old and paralyzed from the neck down for the last eight years due to what the doctor called Muscular dystrophy.
The eye-tracking sensor mounted on his monitor was his only connection to the world. Jackie blinked twice and the cursor on the screen jerked left. Another blink and it moved down.
This was his life now.
Point, Click, and Repeat.
He was hunting for something he couldn't afford.
The computer screen glowed blue in the dark room. The header on the site showed "DeepGrid" in jagged red text. This wasn't the kind of website you find through Google.
MotoGP Ultimate, priced at Seventy pounds. Might as well have been seven hundred.
Jackie's disability allowance was barely enough for rent and the care assistant who came twice a week to change his position so he wouldn't get bedsores. Playing games was just a memory now. That was something he did years ago, back when he could use his hands.
His eyes scanned the forum posts. Someone with the username CRASH_OVERRIDE had posted twenty minutes ago.
NEW UPLOAD: MotoGP_Ultimate_v1.0_HACKED_LEGEND_MOD.exe
No surveys. No bitcoin. No annoying ads.
Jackie's heart rate went up. The monitor started beeping faster.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He blinked through the download process. The file was huge. The loading bar moved very slowly across his screen
47%.
63%.
81%.
He had spent eight years watching motorcycle racing from this bed. He memorized rider names like prayers. Márquez. Rossi. Bagnaia. Men who threw themselves into corners at speeds that would kill normal people.
Jackie couldn't even scratch his own nose.
The progress bar hit 95%.
The tightness in his chest spread.
The monitor's beeping changed pitch. It was more faster this time.
98%.
He started feeling dizzy. The sides of the screen blurred red, then turned to something else. Suddenly, red lines of code began flowing down the monitor.
[SYSTEM ERROR. HARDWARE INCOMPATIBLE. MIGRATING HOST...]
The last thing Jackie Chin saw was the progress bar hitting 99%.
Then nothing.
Heat.
That was the first he noticed. Jackie gasped and his lungs worked.
He could breathe.
"His eyes snapped open. The ceiling above him was broken and had water stains on it. This wasn't his apartment. This wasn't London. This wasn't anywhere he recognized.
A ceiling fan rotated slowly overhead, making squeaking noise with each turn. Outside, he heard the sound of engines. It didn't sound like cars. It was the sound of small motorcycles driving through narrow streets.
Jackie tried to sit up.
And he did.
His body did exactly what he wanted. Just like that. No struggle. He just thought "move," and his muscles moved instantly.
He looked down at his hands.
They were small. Child-sized. They definitely weren't his.
"What..."
When he spoke, he sounded just like a child.
He moved his fingers. All ten of them. They moved separately, just the way they should. He made a fist. Opened it. Then made another fist.
He pulled the blanket off his legs. He swung them over the edge of the small bed. His feet touched tile floor, which felt sun-warmed and dusty.
Jackie stood up.
He instantly lost his balance and crashed into a shaky desk. Papers flew all over. He landed hard, and his elbow hurt a lot.
Pain.
He had forgotten what that felt like too.
Jackie started laughing. He turned over, staring up at the squeaking ceiling fan, and just laughed until tears ran down his face.
"I'm moving," he gasped between laughs. "I can actually move my body."
That's when his vision glitched.
It happened all at once. A screen appeared in his vision, transparent but visible, covered in lines of pixelated text.
The text was red and black, flickering like a dying monitor.
[INSTALLATION COMPLETE]
[BIOMETRIC SCAN: CONFIRMED]
[WELCOME, RAY CRUZ]
Jackie, or Ray stopped laughing.
[HACK DETECTED: UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATION]
[UNLOCKING BONUS SYSTEM...]
[MOTOGP LEGEND SYSTEM: ACTIVE]
The screen flashed, then turned itself to a small icon in the corner of his view. It looked like a tiny red motorcycle.
Ray got up to sit. He looked around the room properly. They were posters on the wall of motorcycle racers frozen mid-lean, with names he recognized. Doohan. Crivillé. An old calendar from two years ago still showing March. Clothes piled in one corner.
This room belonged to a kid. A kid who loved motorcycles but maybe didn't have much else.
A kid named Ray Cruz.
Ray stood up again, slower this time. He used the wall for support and took a step. Then he took another. His legs were wobbly, but they held him up. By the fourth step, muscle memory was kicking in. By the eighth step, he reached the window.
The view outside left him speechless.
The streets were narrow. The buildings were dusty with terracotta roofs. Clothes hung drying between the balconies. And everywhere, there was the sound of motorcycles. Small scooters drove down the tight streets. He could smell food cooking, maybe bread or meat.
This was Spain. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.
The system icon in his vision pulsed once, like it was confirming something.
[Ray Cruz. Seven years old. Jerez de la Frontera, Spain.]
Jackie Chin was dead. That life was over.
This one had just begun.
Ray moved his hands one more time, watching his fingers open and close. He had the memories of a thirty-year-old inside a seven-year-old's body. Eight years of paralysis ending in a single moment. A hacked game file that somehow migrated his consciousness into another world, another life.
It was insane.
It was impossible.
And it was real.
The system icon pulsed again. Ray focused on it. The screen expanded, covering his view with options and menus.
[TUTORIAL AVAILABLE]
[PROFILE]
[MISSIONS]
[SKILLS]
Ray reached out to touch the screen and his finger passed right through it. He tried focusing on [PROFILE] instead, just thinking about selecting it.
The menu changed.
[NAME: RAY CRUZ]
[AGE: 7]
[CURRENT SKILL: NONE]
[RIDING EXPERIENCE: 0 HOURS]
[PHYSICAL STATUS: HEALTHY BUT UNDERDEVELOPED]
[SPECIAL CONDITION: REINCARNATED SOUL DETECTED]
That last line was there for a second before the text scrambled and reformed.
[LEGEND SYSTEM CALIBRATING FOR UNIQUE USER...]
[CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE.]
[OBJECTIVE: BECOME A MOTOGP LEGEND.]
Ray let out a long breath.
A second chance in a body that worked.
He looked down at his hands again. They were shaking, but not from fear.
But from excitement.
"Okay," Ray said quietly. "Let's see what you've got."
The system responded immediately.
[ MISSION LOADING...]