The dream was about his grandfather again.
Same as always.
The old man was sitting in his worn leather chair, the one that smelled like cigars and Old Spice, reading the newspaper like he did every morning of Vincent's childhood. Sunlight came through the window of the Bensonhurst apartment. Dust floated in the air. Everything was gold and warm.
"Vinny," his grandfather said without looking up. "You eat yet?"
And Vincent, who was seven in the dream, who was always seven in the dream, said, "No, Nonno."
"Go eat. Your grandmother left eggs."
"I'm not hungry."
His grandfather lowered the newspaper.
Dark eyes, the same dark eyes Vincent saw in the mirror every day, looked at him over wire-rimmed glasses.
"You're always hungry. You just don't know it yet."
Then the dream shifted, like dreams do, and they were somewhere else.
A street. Bensonhurst, but older. The way his grandfather described it, the 1950s, when the neighborhood was Italian, when the old men sat on folding chairs outside the social club, when the world made sense.
"You see that building?" His grandfather pointed.
A three-story tenement with a bakery on the ground floor.
"I bought that building in 1958. Fourteen thousand dollars. Took me ten years to save."
Vincent looked at the building, then at his grandfather. The old man was young now, forty maybe, in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
"I lost it in '63," his grandfather said. "Bad loan to a bad man. Name of Gennaro. You remember that name."
"I remember, Nonno."
"Good boy."
His grandfather put a hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm.
"You're gonna do things I couldn't, Vinny. You're gonna be someone. I just wish I could be there to see it."
The dream started to fade.
Vincent tried to hold on, tried to stay in that warm light with his grandfather, but the old man was already turning away, walking toward the bakery, walking into the past.
"Nonno..."
He woke up to his phone screaming.
Three AM.
The warehouse. His shift started in thirty minutes.
Vincent lay on his back in his studio apartment, staring at the water stain on the ceiling.
Three years.
Three years since the heart attack. Three years since he'd sat in a hospital room and watched the only person who ever gave a shit about him slip away.
And what have I done since then?
Nothing. That was the answer. Work, sleep, read webnovels, repeat. Eighteen months at the warehouse. Eighteen months of nothing.
He got up.
Showered.
Dressed.
Caught the subway to Red Hook.
Same as every night.
The warehouse was a tomb.
Forty thousand square feet of boxes and pallets and forklifts, lit by buzzing fluorescents, empty except for Vincent and the rats. His job was simple: walk the perimeter every hour, make sure no one broke in, and try not to go insane from boredom.
He'd been doing it for eighteen months.
At four AM, he sat in the guard shack with his phone and read webnovels. Mafia stories, mostly. The Godfather fanfics. Original stuff about guys who built empires from nothing.
Stupid, he thought. Reading about men who matter while I sit in a box watching other people's shit.
But he couldn't stop.
He'd read hundreds of them, thousands of chapters, watching fictional men rise from the gutter to the penthouse.
Must be nice. Having a system. Having a second chance. Having anything at all.
At five AM, he walked the floor.
The warehouse was cold. His breath misted. The rats scattered when his flashlight hit them.
At six AM, he sat back down and opened Reddit. Scrolled through posts about the new chapter of some LitRPG he was following. Arguments in the comments about whether the protagonist was overpowered.
Overpowered. Like that's a bad thing. Like anyone wouldn't kill to be powerful for once.
His phone buzzed.
A text from his mother, who he hadn't spoken to in six months: You coming for Christmas?
He stared at it for a minute.
Christmas. With her and her new husband and his kids. Pretending we're a family.
He didn't reply.
At seven AM, his shift ended. He clocked out and walked to the subway, the gray morning light doing nothing to warm the world.
Same as every morning.
That night, he went to the poker game.
He didn't know why. Boredom, maybe. Loneliness. The same stupid hope that something might happen, anything, to break the endless gray of his life.
The social club was on Eighteenth Avenue, a relic from another time. Old men played cards. Younger men talked business. The air smelled like garlic and cigarettes and failure.
Vincent sat at a table with men twice his age.
He played badly on purpose. Folded when he should have raised, called when he should have folded. Let them think he was a mark. Let them laugh at the kid.
Let them underestimate me. It's the only advantage I have.
Across the table, Gennaro sat like a toad in an expensive suit.
Fiftyish. Overweight. Pinkie ring worth more than Vincent's monthly rent. He owned three delis and ran loans out of the back of each one.
Small-time, but connected.
Small-time, but he'd fired Vincent's grandfather from a construction job in 1962 for being "too old," and the old man had never worked again.
Vincent had known this his whole life. His grandfather told the story every Thanksgiving, not with anger, but with sadness.
A man should work, he'd say. Without work, what are you?
Gennaro took that from him.
Vincent folded another hand. Took a sip of his water. Watched.
He'd been watching for six months. Learning. Waiting.
He had a plan, twelve steps, written in a notebook he kept under his mattress. Step twelve: Gennaro has an accident. The kind that looks like an accident. The kind no one investigates.
It's a fantasy, he told himself. You're not actually going to do it.
You're not that person.
Right?
The game continued. Vincent lost, won a little, lost more. Eleven-thirty. Midnight. The smoke got thicker. The talk got louder.
At twelve-thirty, Gennaro stood up.
"I'm out. Early meeting."
Vincent's heart did something weird. A skip. A flutter.
Not tonight. You're not doing it tonight.
He watched Gennaro walk out. Watched the door close behind him.
You're not doing it.
He folded his last hand. Stood up. Said goodnight to the men who barely noticed him.
Outside, the street was empty.
Cold.
December in New York, the kind of cold that gets in your bones and stays there.
Vincent turned left, toward the subway.
He didn't go to the subway.
He circled the block. Took his time. Told himself he was just walking, just clearing his head. His feet carried him toward the alley behind the social club.
The dark alley.
The one with the broken streetlight.
I'm just looking.
The alley was black as ink. Vincent stopped at the mouth of it, hands in his pockets, breath fogging. He could hear his own heartbeat. Could feel it in his throat.
What are you doing?
He didn't know.
Go home.
He didn't move.
What are you waiting for?
He didn't know that either.
And then light.
Not from anywhere. Not from the street, not from a car, not from the sky.
Light from everywhere, white and blinding and so bright he could feel it in his teeth.
Vincent threw up an arm, but there was nothing to block. The light was inside him, behind him, all around him.
What the...
He heard, felt, a sound like the world ending.
And then nothing.
He woke up facedown on cobblestones.
For a long moment, he didn't move. Couldn't move.
Am I dead? Is this dead?
His body felt wrong. Lighter, younger, like someone had peeled off a layer of skin he didn't know he had.
He pushed himself up slowly.
His hands were shaking.
Why are my hands shaking? I don't shake.
He looked at them.
Pale.
Unscarred.
Younger.
What the fuck.
He looked around.
An alley. Narrow, brick, laundry lines overhead. The smell hit him next, horseshit and garbage and coal smoke and something rotting. So strong his eyes watered.
What the fuck.
He was wearing different clothes. A wool suit, cheap, worn at the elbows. Shoes that laced up. No phone in his pocket. No wallet.
Beside him, a leather suitcase. Old. Scuffed.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck...
He scrambled backward, away from the suitcase, until his back hit a wall.
His breath came fast. His heart hammered. The cold cobblestones were real under his hands. The smell was real. The sounds, horses, voices, a distant whistle, were real.
This isn't a dream. This isn't a dream.
A Health Bar appeared in his vision.
He screamed.
Not loud, more of a strangled gasp, but he felt it leave his throat.
A floating bar of light, green, hovering in the corner of his eye.
He blinked.
It stayed.
He rubbed his eyes.
It stayed.
Okay.
He forced himself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. His grandfather's voice in his head: Panic is the enemy. Panic makes you stupid. Breathe.
He breathed.
The bar stayed. Green. Full.
A system. I have a system. Like the webnovels. Like the games I read about idiots who get hit by trucks and wake up in fantasy worlds.
Did I get hit by a truck?
He didn't remember a truck. He remembered light. Endless white light.
Doesn't matter. Focus.
He looked at the suitcase.
Reached out.
Opened it.
Money.
Stuffed inside, old bills, silver coins, gold coins. So much money his brain couldn't process it at first. He picked up a coin.
Silver dollar. 1904.
Funds: $98,470 / $1,530 (Clean) / $96,940 (Dirty)
The numbers appeared, then faded.
Vincent sat in the alley, holding the coin, and for the first time since his grandfather died, he cried.
Just a little. Just a few seconds. Then he wiped his face with his sleeve and stood up.
Alive. I'm alive. I'm somewhere. I have...
He looked at the suitcase. At the money. At his own hands, younger and smoother than they'd been hours ago.
A system. A real fucking system. Like the novels. Like the games I stayed up all night reading because I had nothing better to do with my life.
He almost laughed. Almost. It came out as a wet snort.
Money. I have money. A lot of money. In 1905, a lot of money means...
His grandfather's face floated up from memory. Not the dying man in the hospital bed, but the young man from the dream. Forty years old. Standing outside that bakery.
I bought that building in 1958. Fourteen thousand dollars. Took me ten years to save.
Vincent looked at the silver dollar in his palm.
Ten years. He worked ten years for what's in this suitcase ten times over.
And I just got it for free.
Why?
He thought of the dream. The warmth. His grandfather's hand on his shoulder.
You're gonna do things I couldn't, Vinny.
Is that what this is, Nonno? Did you...
He cut the thought off. It was stupid. His grandfather was dead. Dead people didn't send you back in time with magic suitcases.
But something did.
Something killed me. Something put me here. Something gave me this.
He didn't know what. He didn't know why.
But he knew one thing.
I'm not wasting it.
He closed the suitcase. Walked toward the street.
The moment he emerged, the nineteenth century hit him like a fist.
People everywhere, men in caps, women in long skirts, children with dirty faces. Horses and wagons. Pushcarts. A woman dumping a chamber pot from a third-floor window. The smell, God, the smell.
He stood on the sidewalk, suitcase in hand, and people flowed around him like water around a stone.
No one looked at him twice. Just another guy in a cheap suit.
A newsboy. Get a newspaper. Confirm the date.
He spotted the kid, maybe ten, filthy, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Vincent approached.
"Paper, mister?"
"How much?"
"One cent."
Vincent opened the suitcase just enough. Pulled out the smallest coin he could find, a penny, 1903. Handed it over.
The boy gave him a newspaper. The New York Herald.
Vincent unfolded it with hands that still shook slightly.
December 4th, 1905.
He read it three times.
1905. Not 2024. Not a fantasy world. The past. My past. His past.
He thought of his grandfather, born in 1920, who would have been a kid in this world. A kid in Brooklyn, in the tenements, before Bensonhurst, before the social club, before everything.
I'm in his world. I'm in his time.
The thought made him dizzy.
Quest Added: Claim a Foothold
Objective: Purchase your first property within 7 days.
Reward: 500 XP, unlock [Territory Branch: Basic Property Management]
Bonus Objective: Negotiate a price below market value.
Bonus Reward: Additional 250 XP, unlock [Logistics Branch: Basic Negotiation]
Vincent stared at the words.
A quest.
Like the webnovels. Like the games.
This is real. This is really happening.
He looked at the newsboy. The kid was watching him, curious, wary.
"Hey, kid. What's this neighborhood?"
"Brooklyn waterfront. Navy Yard's that way." He pointed.
"Any lodging houses?"
"Sand's, two blocks." Another point.
Vincent nodded. Reached into his pocket, empty, and concentrated.
System. I need a dollar.
A weight appeared.
He pulled it out. Silver dollar, 1904.
He handed it to the kid.
The boy's eyes went wide.
"Mister, this is... this is too much..."
"It's for information. And for remembering my face."
Vincent crouched down, so he was at eye level with the kid.
"What's your name?"
"Tommy."
"Tommy. I'm Vincent. I'm gonna be at Sand's. If I need someone who knows these streets, someone I can trust, I'm gonna look for you. That okay?"
Tommy looked at the dollar, then at Vincent, then at the dollar again.
"Yeah. Yeah, okay, mister."
Vincent stood.
"See you around, Tommy."
He walked toward Sand's Lodging House, suitcase in hand.
Behind him, Tommy the newsboy stood frozen, holding a silver dollar, watching the strangest man he'd ever met disappear into the crowd.
Vincent's hands were still shaking.
His heart was still racing.
He felt like he might throw up, or laugh, or both.
*1905. December 4th, 1905. I'm in nineteen-fucking-oh-five.*
I have a system that shows me numbers in the air.
I have a suitcase full of money that appeared next to me when I woke up dead.
I have...
He stopped walking for a second. A man behind him cursed and stepped around.
I have a second chance.
How many people get that? How many people die tired and lonely and worthless and then just... get another shot?
He thought of his mother's text. You coming for Christmas?
He thought of the warehouse. The rats. The long gray nights.
He thought of Gennaro, still alive back in 2024, probably sleeping in his expensive bed right now, never knowing how close he came.
None of that matters anymore.
None of it.
This is my life now. This stinking, loud, crazy city in 1905. This is where I am.
So don't fuck it up.
He started walking again.
Don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't...
He almost laughed again.
Great. My first thought in the past is the same stupid mantra I used to get through shifts at the warehouse.
Some things never change.
He found Sand's. Paid for a room. Climbed the stairs to a closet with a bed.
Sat down on the thin mattress and put his head in his hands.
For a long time, he just sat there, breathing.
Then he looked out the window.
At the ships in the harbor.
At the smoke rising from factories.
At the city stretching in every direction, filthy and loud and alive.
My grandfather's out there somewhere. A baby. Or not even born yet.
But his people are out there. Italians in Brooklyn, building lives from nothing. The same way he always talked about.
Vincent thought of the old man's stories. The struggles. The small victories. The dream of owning something, building something, leaving something behind.
I can do that.
I can do it for him.
He picked up the newspaper and started reading.
Funds: $98,469.75 / $1,530 (Clean) / $96,939.75 (Dirty)
Health: Green
Quest: Claim a Foothold (6 days remaining)