BORROWED BODY
The first stimulus was sound.
It wasn't urban noise, nor alarms, nor emergency systems. It was a clumsy mix of human voices, creaking wood, and a smell Kael didn't recognize immediately. Dust. Old fabric. Dried sweat. An ancient reflex churned his stomach. Raw, unfiltered smells. It had been decades since his mind had processed them without intermediaries.
He opened his eyes.
The light was warm; not neon, not bright. Too warm. There were no floating interfaces, no data layers, no automatic visual corrections. He blinked once. Twice. Three times, trying to adjust.
The world didn't recalibrate.
"…what…?"
The voice that came out of his throat wasn't his.
It was younger. Lighter. Without the wear of decades. Kael jolted upright and the body responded clumsily. The balance was different. The center of gravity was higher. The muscles… intact and slightly lacking, but without memory.
'This is not my body.'
There was no panic.
It was an evaluation.
He looked at his hands. Clean skin. No implants. No surgical micro-scars… No wrinkles. He raised a hand to his head, expecting to ease the pain and feel the familiar vibration of the physical chip.
But… nothing.
Yet the process was still there.
He didn't perceive it as hardware. It was a diffuse, constant pressure deep in his mind. Alive and unstable. When he focused, a silent vibration ran through his thoughts, like a beep that didn't exist in sound.
"Hey, are you okay?"
The voice pulled him out of analysis. A middle-aged man was watching him from the edge of the stage. He had a folder under his arm and an impatient expression.
Stage.
Kael slowly turned his head.
Curtains. Spotlights. Wooden structures.
A theater. Small. Old. Very far from the surgical cleanliness of NEXARA.
"You zoned out, kid… Ch. Kein! Yeah, that's it. Not time to sleep, Kein."
'Kein.'
Fragments of foreign memory began to filter in. Not like an avalanche, but like files opening without order. He didn't remember everything; it seemed he needed a trigger to recall.
Props assistant.
Part-time shift.
Theater play today.
Kael exhaled slowly.
"I'm fine," he said, testing the voice. "Just… dizzy."
The man clicked his tongue.
"Perfect. Of all days."
A shout burst from backstage.
"We're missing an extra! The one from act two didn't show up!"
The manager turned his head, then looked back at Kael. He scanned him from head to toe in a second.
'Build. Height. Posture. He'll work.'
"You. Put this on."
He threw him a dark suit. Kael caught it on reflex.
"Excuse me?" he asked, confused. He still hadn't fully processed his situation.
"Are you still asleep? I don't want to waste time. You heard it—we need an extra. Get dressed."
With a blank, unfocused stare, he went along with it and said the first thing that came to mind.
"Role?"
"Assassin. No lines. You enter, you stab him, you get shot. Three minutes. Simple, right? Now get dressed," the manager said as he walked away.
Kael lowered his gaze to the suit.
Assassin.
Something clicked.
"Understood."
He didn't ask anything else. Not because he accepted it, but because his body was already moving.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Behind the stage, Kael changed with mechanical speed. The suit fit well. He adjusted the sleeves. Straightened his back.
He breathed.
Not like an actor.
Like someone about to carry out a task.
'Though it wouldn't be wrong to say I am one.'
When he took his first step toward the stage lights, something happened. Deep inside him.
It wasn't visible.
It wasn't audible.
It wasn't measurable.
But he felt it.
Not as data, as he was used to, but as a sensation.
The murmur of the audience passed through the curtain. Expectation. Scattered attention. Weak emotions, varied emotions. Kael didn't consciously identify them, but his unconscious did. Reading the environment was his job; an assassin who couldn't do that was ephemeral. But this time, something was different.
'Strange… I'll figure it out later.'
He stepped onto the stage.
As far as he understood, the play was about a corrupt detective and a righteous one. About the thin line between injustice and justice. He didn't know the story or the script; according to his memories, he was just a props assistant who created atrezzo [1] for the stage.
The character in front of him was speaking.
An older man.
Nervous.
Trembling hands.
Kael didn't listen to the lines. He observed the breathing. The poorly distributed weight. The false fear mixed with acting that was sometimes decent and sometimes poor. It wasn't consistent.
'He's acting. Badly, but acting.'
Kael advanced.
He didn't exaggerate the movement. He didn't dramatize. A new body, without muscle memory, but the mind still remembered how to move without announcing itself, how to go unnoticed.
There was the actor, standing still, waiting for the dramatic moment.
Kael approached.
When he was close, he accelerated with explosive force.
"PA!"
The floor thundered and the prop knife pointed at the exact spot where a vital artery should be. The carotid.
'He startled more than expected. Probably because of the sound,' Kael thought.
There was intent, but Kael wasn't a novice. He accelerated, but didn't carry momentum. The knife only touched; it didn't push.
The actor moved slightly; Kael corrected the trajectory and touched the neck with the knife, fake blood from the knife spilling.
Even so, the actor froze for half a second—"…Aaahh!"—before collapsing dramatically.
Late, but on time.
The audience tensed and held its breath.
One second… Two seconds.
The gunshot rang out.
"BANG!"
Kael fell.
Darkness.
All the stage lights went out.
From the floor, while feigning death, Kael felt something clearly, though briefly.
He felt… full. The word was crude, but accurate.
Not completely full, but enough.
'…I'll look into it later.'
The play continued.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
From the side of the theater, a forty-year-old man watched in silence. Frozen. He didn't clap. He didn't smile. He only frowned.
"That extra…" he murmured, stunned. "Was he acting?"
He made a mental note.
'Who is he?'
Kael remained motionless as the curtain fell.
Without knowing it yet, he had taken the first step toward something he hadn't chosen.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
[1] Atrezzo refers to stage props created using various objects, scraps, and recycled materials—things like lamps, paintings, telephones, and so on.
Author's note: In the prologue I used - - separators for spoken parts. I did so because many books on Wattpad use that style, but I'm not used to it. Asian novels I've been reading for half my life mostly use " x " for audible dialogue and ' x ' for thoughts, so I'll write that way from now on since it's more comfortable for me, though I may also use it for third-person narration.