CHAPTER 1 — The Accident That Should Have Killed Me
Rain tasted like rust that night.
The paramedics said I should've died on impact—spinal fracture, skull laceration, blunt-force trauma.
They were wrong.
My body was intact.
My mind… wasn't.
I woke on the wet pavement with sirens screaming somewhere behind me. A crowd circled, blurry faces bending over me like warped reflections on shattered glass.
And then it happened.
Everyone around me split into three different versions of themselves.
A woman crying
—became a woman laughing
—became a woman covered in blood.
A policeman shouting orders
—became a man kneeling over a corpse
—became a man holding a gun to his own head.
Their images flashed like a broken projector in my skull.
Overlapping timelines.
Conflicting futures.
Every possible sin they could commit.
Every terrible choice they might make.
I thought it was hallucination.
I wish it had been.
A paramedic leaned over me, his hands trembling.
"Stay with me, kid! Don't close your eyes!"
But I didn't look at him.
I looked at the Echo behind him—a version of him casually pushing me into the side of a truck, deliberate, cold, calculated.
"Don't… touch me," I whispered.
He froze. "What?"
I didn't bother explaining. I struggled to lift my head. The world doubled, then tripled, timelines overlapping like a storm of mirrors.
I could hear my heartbeat—too loud, too fast.
Overclocking… my brain is overclocking itself.
The accident damaged something.
Or awakened something.
I stumbled to my feet as the rain intensified, drumming like static on my skull. People called out to stop me, but their Echoes—too many, too loud—made them indistinguishable.
When everyone is a threat in some future, trust becomes a luxury.
I pushed through the crowd and walked away from the accident site, barefoot, bleeding, trembling.
Not from pain—
from the overwhelming data pouring into my mind.
Every person I passed split into countless variants.
A beggar stealing from me.
A beggar saving my life.
A beggar stabbing a stranger.
A beggar collapsing dead in the street.
Their possible selves crawled over reality like ghosts.
I pressed my palms against my temples.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up—
As if obeying, the visions dimmed but didn't disappear.
They never would.
When I reached the edge of the street, something impossible happened.
A faint, translucent figure watched me from across the road—a humanoid shape, but distorted, elongated, like a glitch in reality.
Not a person.
Not an Echo.
Something else.
It tilted its head, inspecting me.
Then it spoke.
"Hybrid detected."
The voice echoed directly inside my skull, vibrating through bone, bypassing hearing entirely.
I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
"Progenitor signal confirmed. Anomaly unstable."
It stepped onto the road without touching the ground. Cars passed through its body like mist.
"You are not meant to exist."
The thing raised a hand.
My vision blurred violently—echoing versions of myself flickered into existence:
—me dying on this street
—me killing this entity
—me running
—me smiling with blood on my hands
—me staring into a mirror with eyes that weren't mine
Too many futures.
My mind snapped.
Instinct took over.
I grabbed a broken metal rod from the wreckage behind me and hurled it at the creature.
It passed straight through.
But the entity twitched—just slightly—as if surprised.
That hesitation saved me.
I ran.
Not away.
Into the alley, where the streetlights failed and the world narrowed into darkness.
The voices, the Echoes, the entity… everything blurred behind me.
Only one thought remained clear:
Someone engineered this accident.
Someone wanted me dead.
And someone failed.
As the rain washed the blood from my face, I made a silent vow.
I wasn't going to die.
I wasn't going to hide.
If the world had monsters like that creature…
Then I would become something far worse.
A shadow moved on the rooftop above—someone watching me.
Someone human.
Through the storm, a whisper reached my ears, carried unnaturally clearly:
"Target is awake. Begin containment."
I exhaled slowly.
Let them try.
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