Chapter 1: The Hero's Fall
The rain came down in sheets, turning the narrow alley into a maze of shadows and reflected neon lights. Lin Feng pulled his jacket tighter as he hurried home, his mind still buzzing with code from another fourteen-hour shift at the office.
Optimization algorithm line 247 needs refactoring, he thought absently, dodging a puddle that had formed in the cracked pavement. The nested loop is causing unnecessary iterations. Could reduce processing time by at least thirty percent if I restructure the conditional statements.
Even walking home, his brain wouldn't shut off. That was the curse of being a programmer—you saw systems and patterns everywhere, always looking for ways to make things more efficient, cleaner, better.
Twenty-eight years old, and what did he have to show for it? A cramped studio apartment in the cheapest part of the city, student loans that would outlive him, and a job at a mid-tier tech company that paid just enough to keep him coming back. No girlfriend—his last relationship had ended two years ago when she'd decided that "potential" wasn't the same as "success." No real friends, unless you counted his coworkers, and those relationships ended when the office lights turned off.
But at least the work was interesting. AI optimization algorithms, neural network efficiency, pattern recognition systems—the kind of problems that made his brain light up even when his body begged for sleep. In the digital world, Lin Feng was competent, maybe even talented. In the real world, he was just another face in the crowd, invisible and unremarkable.
The scream cut through the sound of rain like a knife through silk.
Lin Feng's head snapped toward the source. Thirty meters ahead, in the mouth of a side alley between a closed convenience store and a shuttered restaurant, a woman struggled against two men. Even from this distance, he could see the situation clearly. One man had her designer purse—expensive, probably worth more than Lin Feng's monthly salary. The other had her arm twisted behind her back.
Keep walking. Not your problem. Call the police.
The rational part of his brain laid out the sensible course of action with cold logic. He was a programmer, not a fighter. His most strenuous physical activity was walking to the coffee machine and back. He weighed maybe sixty-five kilograms soaking wet, which he currently was. The two men were both larger, stronger, and clearly more experienced with violence.
Probability of successfully helping the woman: less than fifteen percent.
Probability of getting seriously injured: over seventy percent.
Probability of making the situation worse: forty-five percent.
Optimal solution: Call emergency services, be a good witness, let trained professionals handle it.
The woman screamed again, and this time Lin Feng heard the desperation in it, the raw terror of someone who knew no help was coming.
His feet moved before his mind finished the risk assessment.
"Hey!" Lin Feng's voice cracked as he shouted, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Let her go!"
The two men turned in unison, and Lin Feng got his first clear look at them. One was tall and muscular, easily a hundred and ninety centimeters, with a scar running down his left cheek like someone had tried to split his face open and failed. The other was shorter but broader, built like a concrete block with arms, his neck as thick as Lin Feng's thigh. Neither looked particularly concerned about the skinny programmer in the cheap, rain-soaked suit.
"Walk away," Scarface said flatly, his voice carrying the casual confidence of someone who'd had this conversation before and knew how it ended. "This doesn't concern you."
The woman's eyes met Lin Feng's across the distance. Tears streaked her makeup, turning her face into a watercolor painting of desperation. She was young, maybe mid-twenties, wearing an expensive dress that was now torn at the shoulder. She mouthed a single word: Help.
This is stupid. This is so incredibly stupid.
Lin Feng's hand shook as he pulled out his phone, rainwater already beading on the screen. "I said let her go. I'm calling the police right now."
His finger actually made it to the emergency call button. He even managed to press it before the shorter man moved.
One moment, Concrete Block was five meters away, still gripping the woman. The next, he'd closed the distance so fast Lin Feng's eyes could barely track the movement. Lin Feng's phone was skittering across the wet pavement, screen cracked and flickering, and a meaty fist was already driving into his stomach with the force of a sledgehammer.
The air exploded from Lin Feng's lungs. His diaphragm seized, refusing to draw breath. He crumpled like a puppet with cut strings, his knees hitting the ground hard enough to send jolts of pain up his legs. Through watering eyes and the haze of oxygen deprivation, he saw the woman break free of Scarface's grip and run.
But she didn't run toward the street, toward safety, toward the lights where other people might see and help.
She ran away from him, deeper into the alley, toward the other exit where darkness swallowed her whole.
Good, some part of Lin Feng's brain managed to think despite the agony radiating from his midsection. At least she got away. At least I helped.
"Stupid hero," Scarface muttered, and the contempt in his voice was worse than the fist had been. He pulled something from his jacket—a knife, the blade gleaming wetly under the distant streetlight.
Lin Feng's mind, even oxygen-deprived and flooding with adrenaline, couldn't help but catalog the details. Combat knife, approximately twenty centimeters, military grade from the look of it, possibly a Ka-Bar or similar model. The man held it in a reverse grip, experienced, not some amateur who'd watched too many movies. The angle of approach would be upward, a thrust toward the ribcage designed to slide between bones and into vital organs.
None of that information helped him move fast enough to dodge.
The knife punched through his jacket—the good one, the only one he owned that didn't have holes in it—then through the shirt beneath, then through skin and muscle with a sensation like being dipped in ice water before being set on fire. Lin Feng felt the steel enter his body, felt it scrape against a rib, felt the wrongness of having a foreign object inside him where no object should ever be.
His legs gave out completely, and he hit the ground hard, his cheek pressing against the cold, wet pavement. The rain was washing away his blood almost as fast as it poured out, creating little red rivers that flowed toward the storm drain.
"Should've minded your business," Concrete Block said, his voice distant and unconcerned. He knelt beside Lin Feng and started rifling through his pockets with practiced efficiency. "Ain't even got nothing good. Look at this wallet—thirty bucks and a bunch of expired coupons. What kind of grown man carries coupons?"
"Check the jacket," Scarface said. "Decent quality. Might get something for it."
They took his wallet. They took his watch—a cheap digital thing his mother had given him for his college graduation. They took his belt. They even took his shoes, leaving him in his socks on the filthy alley ground.
Lin Feng couldn't even protest. His lungs were working again, but each breath was agony, and when he tried to speak, only a wet gurgling sound came out. Blood, he realized distantly. His lung was filling with blood.
The two men stood up, counted their meager earnings, and walked away as casually as if they'd just finished a convenience store transaction. Their footsteps faded, replaced by the endless drumming of rain.
Is this really it? Is this how I die?
Lin Feng had imagined his death before—everyone did, didn't they? Sometimes he'd pictured dying old, surrounded by family he didn't have. Sometimes in some heroic scenario, saving lives, making a difference. Once, during a particularly dark period after his breakup, he'd even imagined just not waking up one morning, peaceful and painless.
He'd never imagined dying alone in a dirty alley, robbed and bleeding, too weak to even call for help.
The cold was creeping in from his fingers and toes now, marching steadily toward his core. His thoughts were becoming sluggish, fragmented, like a computer running out of RAM and starting to freeze.
But he could still hear footsteps. Lighter than the men's had been. Hurried, but trying to be quiet.
Through his fading vision, Lin Feng saw a familiar silhouette. The woman. She'd come back.
Hope flickered in his chest, a tiny spark in the encroaching darkness. She'd come back. She'd help him. Call an ambulance. Apply pressure to the wound. Something. Anything.
She knelt beside him, her expensive dress dragging through his blood, and Lin Feng tried to smile. Tried to tell her it was okay, that he was glad she was safe, that helping her had been the right choice even if this was how it ended.
Her hand reached into his jacket.
Not to check his wound. Not to feel for a pulse. To check his inside pocket.
"Sorry," she whispered, her voice carrying no emotion at all, practiced and cold. Her fingers found his emergency credit card, the one he kept hidden for exactly this kind of situation. "But I need this more than you do. You understand, right? You're dying anyway."
She even took his jacket—the good one, the only one without holes—pulling it off his body with businesslike efficiency despite his blood soaking into the fabric. The cold bit into his skin immediately, and Lin Feng felt his body start to shiver violently, though he couldn't tell if it was from the temperature or shock.
The woman stood up, folded his jacket over her arm like she'd just bought it at a store, and walked away without looking back. Her heels clicked against the wet pavement, the sound growing fainter until it disappeared entirely, leaving only the rain.
Lin Feng watched her go, watched her merge with the shadows and the storm until she was just another dark shape in a dark world. The last thing he saw clearly was his own blood mixing with the dirty water of the alley, forming patterns like spilled ink, like code on a screen, spreading and dissipating into the darkness.
So this is it. This is how I die.
Not in some grand adventure. Not surrounded by loved ones. Not peacefully in his sleep or heroically saving someone who mattered.
Alone in an alley, betrayed by the person he'd tried to save, robbed of everything including his dignity, too naive to walk away from someone else's problem.
What a waste.
What had it all been for? Twenty-eight years of existence, and what mark had he left on the world? Some code that would be obsolete in five years? An apartment full of cheap furniture that nobody would care about? A family he barely spoke to anymore because he was always too busy, too tired, too focused on a career that was going nowhere?
The cold crept deeper, numbing the pain but also numbing everything else. His thoughts grew more fragmented. Disconnected observations floated through his dying mind.
The rain tastes like copper. That's my blood, isn't it?
I never finished that optimization algorithm.
Mom's birthday is next week. I was supposed to call.
I should have walked away.
I should have been smarter.
If I could do it again... if I had a second chance...
The thought crystallized in his fading consciousness with sudden, burning clarity.
If he had a second chance, he'd be smarter. He'd be stronger. He'd never trust so easily, never help strangers who'd stab you in the back—sometimes literally. He'd protect himself and the people who actually mattered, the ones who'd proven themselves worthy of trust, and let the rest of the world solve its own problems.
He'd use every advantage he had. His knowledge, his skills, his intelligence. He'd optimize his life the way he optimized code, cutting out inefficiency and weakness, focusing on what actually produced results.
He wouldn't waste his potential dying in an alley for nothing.
The rain kept falling, washing away his blood, his warmth, his life.
Lin Feng's eyes closed.
And somewhere in the darkness between heartbeats, between the last firing of neurons and the final shutdown of consciousness, something vast and ancient took notice of a soul full of regret, genius, and unfulfilled potential.
A soul that burned with the desperate desire for one more chance.
Second chances are rare, a voice that might have been his imagination whispered, resonating through the void between life and death. But sometimes, a soul's potential is too valuable to waste. Use it wisely.
The world went black.
And then, impossibly, it came back.
[Status: Initializing...]
[Soul transfer complete]
[Welcome to your second chance]
[Timeline reset: -10 years]
[Retaining all memories and knowledge]
[Good luck, Lin Feng]