Chapter 1: THE WRONG BODY
The headache hit first.
Not the dull throb of too much whiskey. Not the sharp spike of a migraine. This was wrong "like something had cracked open inside my skull and was trying to stitch itself back together with barbed wire.
I opened my eyes. Wrong ceiling. Wrong room. Wrong everything.
Panic flooded through me, cold and immediate. I tried to sit up. My hands looked wrong. Too pale. Too manicured. A watch I'd never owned wrapped around a wrist that didn't belong to me.
The bathroom. I needed a mirror.
My legs worked, but the proportions felt off. Too tall. Too thin. I stumbled across expensive hardwood floors toward a door that my feet seemed to know without my brain directing them.
The light switch was where my hand expected it. The marble bathroom materialized around me, all chrome and white stone that probably cost more than my old apartment.
I gripped the sink. Looked up.
Roman Roy stared back at me.
Not a lookalike. Not someone who resembled him. Him. The jawline. The nose. The eyes that looked perpetually amused even when nothing was funny. Every detail I'd watched through a screen for four seasons of television now wrapped around whatever consciousness I used to be.
My stomach heaved. I made it to the toilet before I vomited.
The memories came while I was still on my knees.
Two sets. Overlapping. Fighting for space.
Me "the old me "dying. Not dramatically. No car crash or terminal illness. I'd fallen asleep watching Succession for the third time and just... hadn't woken up. Heart defect the doctors never caught. Twenty-eight years of life ending with a Netflix autoplay screen asking if I was still watching.
And Roman "this Roman "whose body I was wearing like an ill-fitting suit. Childhood memories soaked in fear and humiliation. Logan's voice, always cutting. Kendall's dismissal. Shiv's calculation. Connor's... irrelevance.
The dog cage. The baseball. The constant, grinding awareness that nothing he did would ever be enough.
I dry-heaved again. Nothing left to bring up.
When the shaking stopped, I pulled myself upright. Washed my mouth. Looked at Roman's face in the mirror again.
"Okay," I said out loud. My voice. His voice. Our voice. "Okay. This is real. This is happening."
The phone "his phone "sat on the marble counter. Passcode unlocked with my face. His face. Whichever.
The date confirmed everything: Logan's eightieth birthday. Season one, episode one. Twelve hours before the stroke that would start everything.
My hands started shaking again. Different reason this time.
I knew what was coming. All of it. Four seasons of backstabbing and emotional destruction mapped out in my memory like a roadmap through hell. Kendall's car crash. Tom's sacrifice. Logan's death. The election. The GoJo sale. The bitter, empty ending where nobody won and everyone lost.
But that wasn't what made my pulse spike.
The powers.
I'd read enough fanfiction to recognize the trope. Transmigration usually came with perks. Systems. Skills. Something to balance the cosmic unfairness of being dropped into a fictional universe with knowledge of how the story played out.
I'd died reading one of those stories. A Succession SI "self-insert, the fanfic term for it "where the main character ended up in Connor's body with some kind of business analysis power.
Had I... ended up in my own version?
One way to test it.
I left the bathroom. Found clothes that Roman's muscle memory helped me navigate. Expensive casual that probably cost more than my old monthly rent. My fingers buttoned the shirt without conscious thought.
The apartment was ridiculous. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. Furniture that looked like it came from architectural magazines. The kind of space that screamed money so loudly you could probably hear it from Jersey.
I needed air. Needed to move. Needed to do something besides stand in a dead man's apartment wearing his face like a Halloween mask.
The elevator ride down felt surreal. The doorman nodded like he knew me. Because he did. Because I was Roman Roy, third child of Logan Roy, prince of a media empire built on poisoned ground.
"Morning, Mr. Roy."
"Morning." The word came out smooth. Roman's voice carried an edge even when being polite. Like he was always one sentence away from a cutting remark.
I stepped out onto the street. Morning sun hit Manhattan like a hammer. The city moved around me, eight million people who had no idea their world was fictional, that their lives were background noise in a TV show about terrible people doing terrible things to each other.
A coffee cart sat on the corner. I needed something normal "some small, ordinary thing to ground me before I had to face the Roy family and pretend to be their disappointing son.
"Coffee. Black. Large."
The barista's eyes flicked up. Recognized me. Something in her expression shifted. Not quite contempt. Not quite pity. Something in between.
My hand reached for the cup. Brushed her fingers as she handed it over.
The world lurched.
Not physically. Something else. Like a radio suddenly tuning to a frequency I hadn't known existed.
Her thoughts crashed into me.
Not words "not exactly. More like impressions. Feelings with semantic weight. Rich asshole. Probably doesn't tip. Probably going to make some gross comment. Why do I always get stuck with the morning shift?
I jerked back. The connection broke.
My heart hammered against my ribs. The coffee was hot in my hand. Real. Solid. But what I'd just felt "
Empathy Engine.
The name appeared in my mind like someone had written it there. Not a voice. More like... knowledge I'd always had but hadn't accessed until that moment. One of four supernatural abilities now woven into whatever I'd become.
I could read minds. Sort of. Surface thoughts. Immediate emotions. The loudest things people were thinking in any given moment.
Holy shit.
"Sir? Your change?"
The barista held out bills. I looked down. Roman's wallet was open in my other hand. I'd pulled out a hundred-dollar bill without thinking.
"Keep it." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "All of it."
Her thoughts shifted. Confusion. Suspicion. A flicker of gratitude chased by what's his angle?
I didn't wait to find out what else she was thinking. Turned and walked. Put distance between us before the power could flare again.
Three other abilities waited in the back of my mind. I could feel them now that I knew to look. Like muscles I'd never used, atrophied but present.
Trauma Lock. The ability to suppress memories and their emotional weight. Useful in a family where childhood damage was currency and Logan wielded it like a weapon.
Silver Tongue. Supernatural persuasion. Make people want to agree with you, trust you, believe you. Not mind control. More like... charisma turned up to eleven and given teeth.
Value Sight. The ability to perceive true worth. What things, people, and opportunities were actually valuable versus what they appeared to be. Perfect for corporate warfare where everything was perception and deception.
And underneath all of them, something more mundane but just as useful: perfect memory of the show. Every plot point. Every betrayal. Every alliance and breakdown. Four seasons of Roy family dysfunction mapped in my head like I'd lived it instead of watched it.
I could work with this.
Had to work with it, because in twelve hours, Logan would have a stroke and the succession game would begin in earnest. The siblings would circle like sharks. The board would panic. The company would fracture into factions.
And I would be there, wearing Roman's face, expected to play my part in the family's mutual destruction.
The coffee was good. Really good. Some expensive single-origin bullshit that Roman's body recognized and appreciated in ways my old life never could.
Small pleasures. I'd have to remember those. In a world about to become a corporate knife fight wrapped in family therapy, I'd take what comforts I could find.
My phone "his phone "buzzed. Text from Connor: Dad's party. You coming or are you going to flake like always?
I looked up at Manhattan. Sunlight and steel. Power and money and people who thought they were invincible right up until they weren't.
The family car would arrive in twenty minutes. Time to meet the Roys.
Time to become Roman Roy.
I finished the coffee. Crushed the cup. Dropped it in a trash can that probably cost more than the cart that sold it to me.
The doorman opened the car door when it arrived. I slid into leather seats that smelled like money and bad decisions.
"The estate, Mr. Roy?"
"Yeah." I looked out the window as the city started moving past. "Let's get this over with."
The driver pulled into traffic. My reflection stared back at me from the tinted glass. Roman's face. My mind. Four supernatural abilities. Knowledge of every disaster waiting to unfold.
This was going to be a hell of a day.
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