Didn't need to. I'd seen this shift before. The moment when the "safe target" stops being safe. Behind my eyes, Genesis clicked her tongue.
...
Genesis Third Person POV
Tch.
She watched through his senses, cataloguing damage, timing, angles. Her current human, aka Drac, was sloppy as fuck. His footwork had been late on the first entry.
Shoulder strike lacked follow-through. Palm strike landed clean but with insufficient structural support, he'd felt that in the wrist already, microstrain lighting up nerves like cheap wiring.
But… She grudgingly acknowledged it. Given the current state of this body? Acceptable.
No training. No augmentations. Musculature underdeveloped. Bone density laughable.
Reaction time barely passable, instincts better, but wrapped in a chassis that would've failed basic combat readiness evaluation.
Her attention flicked inward, to the neural architecture she was currently squatting in. So small. So fragile.
She flexed against it experimentally and felt resistance immediately, like pushing against thin glass. Tch. Of course. And then, unbidden, her thoughts drifted. This scrawny ass kid. Hollow-eyed. Undernourished. Wearing someone else's hand-me-down uniform and someone else's expectations. To think, she mused darkly, this turns into…
A grizzled, nicotine-stained, alcohol-soaked, thrice-divorced, alimony-paying ex-army grunt with knees held together by spite and a back that screamed every morning like it was being murdered again. A man who thought every bad thing that happened to him was the world's fault.
A man who could tear an abomination In half with his bare hands, a man who acted In a firefight like It was the best night of his life and fired his weapons like It was the fourth of July.
A bona fide battle junkie who went completely nuts, then his switch got flipped and to think he used to be this loser, she almost felt pity for him, almost. What a gods damn trajectory.
Hmmm, actually, he's kinda cute right now, a small, helpless kitten whose cheeks I could pinch.
Genesis thought only for her imaginary face to contort in disgust as If she's just eaten shit.
Nope, he's not cute at all, his still the same bossy as fuck overgrown barbarian with empathy rating of a rock inside a trash body.
Genesis cursed In her mind, well, to be technically In Dracula's subconsciousness only to feel Incoming pain.
Pressure bloomed behind the meat sack's eyes, sudden and violent, like the skull itself was being pried open from the inside. Her processing stuttered.
Oh, oh no.
She thought flatly. She knew this pattern thanks to her ultimate edge lords host brain stuffed full of third rate MTL translated junk. That's the fucking cliché memory train coming in.
...
MC POV
The world lurched. I sucked in a breath and nearly gagged as my head lit up like someone had jammed a spike through my forehead. My vision doubled, then tripled.
The hallway warped, edges bending, lights smearing into long white streaks.
"Ah... fuck... Gen... It feels like my head Is about to explode!"
I staggered, hand slapping against the wall to keep myself upright. My knees threatened to fold, suddenly weak in a way that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with weight.
"Oi, Gen,"
I panted, hot breath coming out of me as I started sweating.
"What the fuck is going on?!"
Her voice came back instantly, sharp and unimpressed.
"It's the fucking cliche memory train of youre body, that's what's happening, dipshit."
I blinked, wincing as another wave rolled through my skull.
"…The memory what?"
Another pulse. Images threatened at the edge of my vision, classrooms, faces I didn't recognize, feelings that weren't mine.
"Wait,"
I hissed.
"You mean like those trash novels where the MC basically possesses a dead body?"
I swallowed hard.
"But it's my body. So what gives?"
"Shut it and start walking."
Her tone snapped like a rifle crack.
"We need to get out. I can only filter those memories for about fifteen minutes before your underdeveloped ape brain melts down."
Hearing this, my eyebrow twitched.
Hey. Hey. This bitch of an AI. She's really getting on my nerves. I liked her better when she kept her robot persona.
"The fuck did you just call me?"
I muttered, teeth clenched as another spike hit.
"I'm not an ape. I'm a fucking Homo sapien."
There was a beat. Then.
"Homo sapien, my digital ass, and if you call me bitch one more time, I'll make you have diarrhoea right there and now and yes, I can hear youre thoughts, asshole"
She didn't even hesitate.
"Now shut it and get moving."
For a moment, I froze and blinked as I quickly processed Genesis words, one, I got a self aware AI Inside my head.
Two, she has the mouth of an old army grunt and the mood swings of a teenager on periods, three, she can read my thoughts, conclusion, I'm fucked, like really fucked.
"Son of a b..."
I grumbled under my breath, but didn't finish my words.
"Oi, mister erectile dysfunction, I warned you, didn't I?"
Hearing this, I immediately shut up as I pushed off the wall and started limping down the hallway, head pounding, vision swimming.
Each step felt like I was walking through wet cement while someone tried to shove a library into my skull. Behind me, the chicks whispered.
"Hey…"
One murmured.
"Who is he talking to?"
"I don't know,"
Another replied, uneasily.
"Maybe one of the guys hit him too hard, and he has brain damage or something."
They watched me, watching nothing, arguing with air, jaw tightening as I muttered under my breath.
"He, he isn't talking to a ghost, right?"
One of them said, hugging herself and looking around suspiciously.
"You idiot, there's no such monster as a ghost..."
The other started saying, only to become unsure as she leaned next to her friend and added.
"...right?"
While I didn't look back. Didn't care. Because inside my head there was something far more worse than a ghost. The hallway swallowed me whole.
The bell had just rung, and doors burst open up and down the corridor like ruptures.
Students poured out in waves, laughing, shouting, shoving, alive in that careless, loud way only teenagers with raging hormones can be. And then they saw me. The noise dipped.
Not silence, but a hitch. Like a record skipping.
"What the hell…?"
"Is that...?"
"Yo isn't that the orphan kid?"
Smartphones came out fast. Too fast. Reflexive. Screens raised, lenses pointed, red recording dots blinking to life.
"Dude, he's bleeding."
"Did he get jumped?"
"Holy shit, look at his face."
"Is that blood or makeup?"
"No way that's fake, look at his hands."
I limped forward, head down, shoulder clipping past backpacks and elbows. No one touched me, not out of kindness, but because something about the way I moved made them hesitate.
Like stepping too close might cost them something.
"Why's he walking like that?"
"Did he actually fight back?"
"Bro, that's creepy."
"Smile for the camera, psycho."
Someone laughed, high, nervous. Another voice, quieter, asked.
"…Is ... Is he gonna snap?"
I ignored them. Because the migraine was getting worse. Because the memories clawing at the inside of my skull were wrong.
They came in fragments, classrooms, desks, chalk dust, a woman's tired smile, a smaller bed in a colder room. Things that felt like mine. Up until seven. Up until everything went off the rails.
After that, the timeline didn't line up. The world bent. Dimensional cracks. Not myths. Not fiction. History. They appeared decades earlier in this world, not recently, not secretly. Public. Normalized. Incorporated. The conflicting memories tried to reconcile it. Failed. Pain spiked behind my eyes, and I hissed, nearly stumbling.
"Keep moving,"
Genesis muttered, her voice strained as if she was carrying a fully packed military backpack.
"Thirteen minutes until our brain turns to mush"
Easier said than done. I shoved through the front doors, and the noise hit me like a wall. The city. Bright. Loud. Alive. Traffic roared past in layered streams.
Glass-and-steel skyscrapers stabbed into the sky. Digital billboards flickered ads in clean 2019 resolution. People in suits, streetwear, uniforms, everyone moving like they had somewhere to be.
No apocalypse. No ruins. No fucking rampant monsters. Just a normal city that had already adapted to the impossible.
I stood there for half a second, swaying, blood drying on my face, school behind me, life I didn't recognise pressing in from all sides. Then, after walking to the edge of the street, I raised a hand.
A yellow taxi screeched to a stop in front of me. I yanked the door open and collapsed into the back seat with a groan. The driver twisted around immediately.
"Fucking hell, kid,"
He said, eyes wide.
"You look like shit. I'm taking you straight to the cops."
My head throbbed. My mouth split into a grin before I could stop it.
"No need,"
I muttered.
"You should see the other guys."
The driver paused. Actually paused.