He never remembered learning how to solve puzzles. They simply made sense to him.
At seven years old, he sat cross-legged on the living-room rug, small fingers rotating cardboard pieces as his relatives talked in soft voices over tea. Their laughter dulled into background noise, his focus split between his thoughts and the task on the ground before him.
He pressed the final piece into place, the image of a mountain lake forming clearly to his satisfaction. Staring for a moment, a sense of completion rose within him.
A rustle came from behind him, his aunt leaning gently next to him. "You finished already?"
He nodded. "Is there another?"
The adults laughed as though he had told a joke. The boy only tilted his head in confusion, unsure of what was going on.
Across the room, his mother wiped flour from her cheek as she watched him, and his father smiled from behind her shoulder.
Those were the memories he would cling to. Those were the thoughts that echoed in his mind as he stood silent on this gray day.
***
He was twelve when it happened.
The car smelled faintly of mint–his mother's perfume lingering from an early gathering. His father hummed an old tune he liked.
The passing streetlights blurred into streaks. He thought, briefly, that they looked like shooting stars.
A pair of headlights veered across the divider, swaying unnaturally. Tires screeched. His mother gasped, and his father was deathly silent. He barely had enough time to look up.
The world snapped sideways. A scream scratched against his eardrums. Glass shattered into cold rain. The seatbelt dug into his chest like a flaming wire.
Red.
It was the last time he saw his parents. Dead before his eyes.
***
Years blurred into one another.
He grew, studied, woke early, read late. He learned fast, maybe even too fast. Teachers praised him, classmates tolerated him, advisors scrambled to keep him challenged.
His thoughts moved in strange leaps; he understood difficult concepts before understanding why they were supposed to be difficult.
At twenty-one, he presented a paper on entropy-pattern mapping that left a room of senior researchers whispering long after he walked out.
At twenty-three, he was invited to join a private research group working on predictive computation models. They called him a "prodigy," a "natural," a "rare mind."
He disliked all those words. He disliked attention in general. But he liked solving things. Putting pieces in the right places. It reminded him of sitting on that rug at seven years old.
By twenty-seven, he had achieved enough in his field to be labeled a once-in-a-generation talent.
He didn't feel any different inside. Nothing came with it, except perhaps a silent hope that his parents would be proud of who he was.
He hoped he would join them one day. That day would never come.
His first death was unremarkable.
A lecture, followed by a monotonous car ride. But the crash that followed changed everything.
He was dead. Or at least supposed to be.
Doctors watched as what remained of his skull was pieced together cell by cell.
Quarantine followed, along with constant surveillance in the name of his "wellbeing."
He was a prisoner labeled a patient.
From a young age, he was made to learn the fine line between manipulation and humanity. In his case, both overlapped in his goal for freedom.
The weakness in the system was a single woman. A young guard with a gentle conscience, unsuited for her assignment.
What he offered the guard was a silent listener, and in exchange a crack in the system's walls.
Against protocol, a supervised walk was approved.
The air was fresh and light, the sun warming his skin, the breeze grazing his face. For a moment, he allowed himself to relax.
Then he noticed the gate.
A flaw in the guard formation. The narrowest of openings.
He didn't even intend to run at first. He only stepped forward, blindly, in a dissociative episode. His thoughts blurred against reality, his body acting on his rapid mind.
A rookie saw the step and panicked. He yelled, raised his gun.
He froze, his hands half raised.
Three shots echoed out.
Falling towards the gray concrete, he found a strange serenity in the moment. A comfort in death's embrace.
Darkness claimed him.
***
He woke to quiet.
He was sitting upright on a familiar sofa… except it wasn't familiar. The apartment was sparse, modest, entirely unknown. His hands were larger, older—middle-aged.
A pen lay in his palm, though he didn't remember picking it up.
It slipped through his fingers and rolled beneath the table.
He bent down to retrieve it—and the floor shivered, the surface rippling like disturbed water.
He had just enough time to widen his eyes before gravity turned sideways.
Into a world he would soon recognize.