Chapter 1 : New Life
October 2015 — Unknown
The truck came out of nowhere.
One second I was crossing the street, coffee in hand, headphones blasting some podcast about productivity I'd never actually follow. The next—impact. Not even pain, really. Just this massive force slamming into my ribcage, lifting me off my feet. The coffee cup spinning away in slow motion. Steam curling against the gray sky.
Then nothing.
No white light. No tunnel. No dead relatives waiting to greet me. Just... cold. Empty. Like floating in the space between television channels, if those still existed. I couldn't feel my body because I didn't have one anymore. How long I stayed there—seconds, years, centuries—I couldn't tell you. Time meant nothing in that void.
So this is death, I thought. Huh. Anticlimactic.
Then the void contracted. Squeezed. And I was falling through something thick and viscous, memories that weren't mine pressing against my consciousness like water rushing into a sinking ship—
National City — Winn Schott's Apartment
I woke up screaming.
My hands—hands, I had hands again—clawed at unfamiliar sheets. My lungs burned. Every nerve ending fired at once, a full-body static shock that made me jackknife upright and slam my skull against something wooden.
"Ow. Shit."
A loft bed. I'd hit a loft bed. The pain was sharp and immediate and wonderful because it meant I wasn't dead anymore. I could feel. I could breathe. I could—
Where the hell was I?
The apartment was tiny. Studio layout, maybe four hundred square feet crammed with stuff that made my eyes water: action figures still in their packaging, comic book posters covering every inch of wall space, a desk buried under computer parts and tangled cables. Morning light filtered through blinds that hadn't been cleaned in months.
I knew this place.
The realization hit like a second truck. I knew this apartment. Not from living here—from seeing it on a screen. From watching a TV show that shouldn't exist as a physical location.
My bare feet hit cold hardwood. I stumbled toward the bathroom, bouncing off furniture I didn't recognize but somehow remembered. The mirror above the sink showed me a face that wasn't mine.
Dark hair. Brown eyes. Features a little softer than what I was used to. Younger, too—late twenties instead of my thirty-four. The reflection blinked when I blinked. Raised its hand when I raised mine.
"Winn Schott," I whispered. The voice that came out wasn't my voice. Higher. Slightly nasally. "I'm Winn Schott."
The memories crashed through me in waves. Two childhoods overlapping—mine in suburban Ohio, his in National City. My college years studying accounting, his earning a computer science degree from MIT. My boring desk job, his position as IT specialist at CatCo Worldwide Media. My death by truck.
His life. Somehow, impossibly, now mine.
The name surfaced with a bitter edge: Toyman. Winslow Schott Sr. A brilliant inventor who'd snapped after corporate betrayal, built lethal toy-based weapons, killed people. Winn's father. The man whose shadow had haunted this body for years.
Great. I transmigrated into a guy with daddy issues.
But there was more. Other memories, sharper now. A woman with blonde hair and glasses who smiled too bright. A secret she hadn't shared yet. A plane that would fall from the sky in three months, and the hero who would catch it.
Kara Danvers. Supergirl.
I laughed. The sound echoed off bathroom tiles, slightly hysterical. I'd woken up in the Arrowverse. Except—
The TV on the nightstand had been showing morning news when I passed it. I scrambled back, hitting the power button. A stern-faced anchor filled the screen.
"—continued cleanup in Gotham following last night's incident at Ace Chemicals. Sources confirm the Batman was seen at the scene, though GCPD has declined to comment—"
Batman. There was no Batman in the Supergirl show. This wasn't the Arrowverse I knew. This was something else. Something merged.
I flipped channels. Superman saving a burning building in Metropolis. A weather report from Central City. A puff piece about Wayne Enterprises' new charitable initiative. All of it layered on top of the world I'd expected, creating something bigger. More dangerous.
More exciting.
The coffee mug on my nightstand started to slide. I reached for it automatically—
It stopped mid-air.
Not because I caught it. Because something invisible had caught it. I could feel the connection, thin as spider silk, running from my fingertips to the ceramic surface. A force. A direction. The mug wanted to fall, but I'd... redirected that want. Changed the vector.
Vector manipulation. The term surfaced from somewhere deep in the new memories, scientific and strange. Control over direction and magnitude. Force, velocity, momentum—anything that moved through space could be influenced. Bent. Redirected.
The mug dropped when my concentration broke. Coffee splashed across the floor.
Then the tingling started. My right hand sparked, actual electricity dancing between my fingertips. Blue-white arcs that hurt like sticking fingers in a socket, except the pain was flowing, channeling somewhere, building—
I slammed my palm against the wall and the electricity discharged into the apartment's wiring. Lights flickered throughout the building. Someone downstairs shouted about their television.
"Okay." I was breathing hard. "Okay. So I have powers now. Cool. That's... that's cool."
My phone buzzed. I picked it up with shaking hands.
Kara Danvers: Still on for lunch tomorrow? I'm bringing Thai! :)
The timestamp said 8:47 AM. October 15th, 2015.
Three months until the plane incident. Three months until Kara became Supergirl and everything changed. Three months to figure out what the hell I could do and how to use it.
I texted back: Wouldn't miss it.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed—my bed now—and stared at my hands. Winn Schott's hands. The son of a supervillain, best friend to a Kryptonian, and apparently host to a dead man's soul who'd somehow picked up powers in the transition.
I should have been terrified. Confused. Desperate to find a way home.
Instead, I smiled.
I'd died. Nothing left back in my old life worth mourning. No family, no real friends, just a job I hated and an apartment slightly smaller than this one. That existence had ended beneath truck wheels on a gray afternoon.
This was something new. A world of heroes and villains. A chance to matter.
"Three months," I said to the empty apartment. "Better start training."
CatCo Worldwide Media — Two Hours Later
Cat Grant was terrifying in person.
I'd known that intellectually from the show. But experiencing her actual presence—the perfectly tailored dress, the razor-sharp gaze, the way she spoke like every word cost money—was something else entirely.
"Winton!" She didn't even look at me as she swept past my desk. "My desktop is making that noise again. The one that sounds like a dying cat. Fix it before I'm forced to put it out of its misery with a letter opener."
"Yes, Ms. Grant."
I made my voice meeker than it wanted to be. The original Winn had been timid around her, always ducking his head and agreeing to everything. I needed to maintain that illusion. Couldn't change too fast. People would notice.
But as I followed her into the glass-walled office, I let myself really look. Cat Grant had built a media empire through sheer force of will. She was sharp, ruthless, and underneath all that designer armor, genuinely good at her job. The cruelty was performance. The intelligence was real.
Underestimating her would be a mistake.
The computer was an easy fix. Dust in the fan, just like always. I cleaned it while she typed furiously on her phone, ignoring my existence.
"Done, Ms. Grant."
"Mm." Still not looking. "Kira is bringing you lunch later. Don't let her convince you to eat at that roach-infested Thai place again."
Kira. She never got Kara's name right.
"Of course, Ms. Grant."
I slipped back to my desk. The IT bullpen was a cluster of screens and energy drinks, manned by people Cat Grant had probably never bothered to learn the names of. I fit here. The original Winn had built a comfortable anonymity in this corner of CatCo.
That anonymity was useful. Nobody looked twice at the IT guy.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of troubleshooting tickets and email server maintenance. But part of my attention stayed focused inward, testing the boundaries of what I could feel. The hum of electrical currents in the walls. The subtle weight of objects on my desk, waiting to be moved. Potential energy coiled in everything, vectors just begging to be bent.
At noon, a voice made me look up.
"I come bearing pad see ew and promises of not discussing Cat's latest wardrobe criticism for at least twenty minutes."
Kara Danvers stood at my desk with takeout bags and a smile bright enough to light the office. She wore a cardigan over a floral blouse, glasses slightly crooked, hair pulled back. Completely, adorably normal.
Except I knew what she really was. The House of El crest hidden beneath that cardigan. The power to catch planes and stop bullets. Everything she kept locked away, afraid to let out.
"You're a lifesaver." I cleared space on my desk. "Cat's been on a rampage all morning. Something about advertisers pulling out of the print edition."
"Ugh, I know. She threw a stapler at James."
"Did she hit him?"
"He ducked."
We unpacked the food together. The original Winn's memories provided context—they'd been doing this for months, these little lunch breaks. Best friends who watched movies together on weekends and complained about their boss over noodles. She trusted him completely.
Which meant she'd eventually trust me, too.
When she reveals herself, I thought. When she saves that plane. I need to be ready.
"Hey." Kara's voice pulled me back. "You okay? You seem distracted."
"Fine. Just tired. Didn't sleep well."
"Bad dreams?"
I died and woke up in your TV show with superpowers and knowledge of your future.
"Something like that."
She reached across the desk and squeezed my hand. Her grip was gentle—she was always careful, even when she didn't know I knew why.
"You can talk to me, you know. If something's bothering you."
The sincerity in her eyes hurt. She meant it. Kara Danvers, future Supergirl, genuinely cared about some IT guy she ate lunch with.
"I know." I squeezed back. "Just adjusting to some stuff. I'll be fine."
I have to be fine. You're going to need me.
We ate. We laughed about office gossip. We pretended the world was normal.
And behind my eyes, I was already planning. Training schedules. Power tests. Everything I'd need to become worthy of standing beside a hero.
Three months.
The clock was ticking.
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