He winked.
The sight in the mirror; the stark, undeniable image of a stranger sent a shockwave of cold, hard clarity through the thick fog of pain and confusion.
Aquila stumbled backward, catching himself violently on the metal frame of the cot.
The sharp, searing pain that shot through his sides was a welcome sensation; it kept him sane, clearing his hazy mind more effectively than the cold.
He realized now, sickeningly, that he had noticed the differences before, had simply dismissed them as side effects of the weird events he had survived.
The lighter weight of his hands when Andre lifted him. The reedy thinness of his voice. Even the crimson eyes, which he'd only registered as a blur of color. He'd ignored it all.
He wasn't Aquila Totti anymore. His mind was Aquila's, trapped inside the body of this Damon Miles Fallenstar.
His breathing was heavier now, shallow and fast.
He spun on Samir, the mirror still reflecting the terrifying image of the white-haired stranger with the glowing red eyes.
He pointed a trembling finger at the glass. "Who is that?" he demanded, the words snapping with genuine panic.
Samir, who had been leaning over the empty cot with a suture needle in hand, watched the outburst with widened eyes.
"That's you, you idiot," Samir said flatly. "Private Fallenstar. Did you black out again? You need to lie down before you burst those stitches."
Aquila ignored the old man. He turned and bolted from the sickbay, ignoring Samir's angry shouted warnings.
He needed space. He needed to think without the suffocating smell of antiseptic and the sound of someone else's pain.
He burst into the narrow, vibrating metal corridor.
The ship's engine thrummed a relentless bass line beneath his feet, and the storm hammered above them like a Gothic orchestra.
I jumped into someone's body in the future. That was the most logical, least insane possibility he had.
The contradictions hammered him: 2417. The twenty-fifth century. He expected Robots, flying cars.
Instead, he was on a grimy, rattling steamship, a technology that should have been relegated to museums five hundred years ago. And the uniforms; the Imperial Marines of Wessex, with their red coats and blue trousers looked like something ripped straight out of a mediocre historical drama about colonial British infantry.
"The past and the future merged?" he muttered, running his newly white-haired hand through the rough strands of his ponytail. "Some kind of apocalypse Or maybe this isn't Earth. Maybe I didn't time travel, I jumped into another universe?"
He shook his head violently, the movement sending another spike of blinding pain through his skull. "Ah, shit, all this thinking is a pain in my ass," he cursed, leaning his palms on the cool metal of the wall.
Just as he was trying to regain his equilibrium, a door beside the sickbay slid open with a metallic screech.
A lanky, tall young man emerged, dressed in a dirty singlet and even tattier shorts, his hands rough and stained with grease.
Before the man could register what was happening, Aquila moved.
He surged forward, grabbing the thin, trembling body of the man and slamming him hard against the opposite wall.
The man's eyes, wide and terrified, darted around the narrow corridor.
"Is everything all right, Private Fallenstar?" the man stammered, his voice laced with fearful respect.
Aquila ignored the title. He tightened his grip on the man's singlet. "Your name. What is it?"
"Benjamin, sir. But everyone just calls me Small Ben."
"Whatever," Aquila snapped. "Tell me about Caesar. Do you know him?"
A flicker of recognition passed over Ben's eyes. He nodded rapidly.
Aquila smiled. Maybe his theory was right afterall.
"Caesar? Yeah, everyone knows Black Caesar. He's one of the legends, isn't he? They say he still sails near Vinland."
"Black Caesar? Who the hell is Black Caesar?"Aquila asked.
Ben's mouth dropped open in disbelief. "Black Caesar! One of the Sea Curses! The legendary Pirate Kings!" He quickly added, seeing the confusion on Aquila's face, "Even infants know about the Pirate Kings, sir!"
Pirate Kings.
Aquila's mind spun, discarding the notion of time travel. This wasn't the future of Earth. The technological regression, the 'Imperial Wessex,' the 'Pirate Kings,' the Sea Curses; this was high-grade, bizarre fantasy.
He was probably in another world. An alternate dimension?
He released Ben slightly, the man slumping against the wall. "Why," Aquila asked, his voice low and dangerous, "are we in a steamship in the 25th century? Why aren't we far more advanced?"
Ben stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. He even laughed; a nervous, high-pitched giggle. "You're absolutely nuts, sir! You must be! You know the rules!" He tried to duck away.
Aquila slammed him back against the wall. "Answer the question, Small Ben! Now!"
Ben whimpered. "The Blood Wars, sir! You know about the Goddamn Blood Wars! When the Empire won, they stripped the commoners of all 'dangerous tech.' Only the Wessexians and the Imperial Navy get the real stuff; No one is supposed to talk of the blood wars, are you trying to get me killed?!"
Blood Wars.
Ben suddenly shoved Aquila back with a surprising burst of strength. "Arsehole! I've got work to do! I don't have time for stupid questions when we've got a privateer hunting us down!" Ben scrambled past him, shooting off down the corridor.
Just as Aquila was about to ask what the hell he was talking about, Andre rounded the corner, looking harassed.
Ben shoulder-bumped Andre hard as he ran past. Andre staggered, cursing violently.
"Filthy sailor rats! No respect!"
Aquila ran a hand through his strange white hair, piecing the fragments together; he had somehow survived Giorno's attack and the light thingy, and having his consciousness stuffed into the body of Private Damon Fallenstar in another world.
A world that was technologically stunted by a repressive regime, a place where people still worried about pirates and naval marines patrolled the seas on coal-fired ships.
A slow, dark laugh bubbled up in his chest. When he'd woken up that morning, his biggest worry was how to get out of the city. Now, he was a crimson-eyed marine private, stuck on a steamship, heading into a storm, with some privateer on their tail.
"You find that funny, Damon?" Andre asked, walking up to him, his brow furrowed.
Aquila sobered quickly, forcing a slight, shaky smile. "Just… the absurdity of it all, Andre."
Andre nodded grimly. "Tell me about it. The Lieutenant says the squad needs to get ready. Jiangshi is catching up with us."
"Jiangshi," Aquila repeated, testing the foreign sound. "Who is Jiangshi?"
Andre looked utterly bewildered. "The privateer pursuing us, Damon! The Ghost King! Heis hunting us and we don't even freaking know why!"
Andre patted him roughly on the back, the movement jostling the injury on Aquila's head. "Look, you really hit it hard. Come on, the whole squad's meeting with the officers in the Captain's cabin. Get yourself together."
Andre turned and walked quickly down the corridor in the opposite direction.
Aquila watched him go. He was about to ask, Where the hell is the Captain's cabin? But he caught himself. No more stupid questions. He did not want to look like an asylum escapee.
He was Damon Fallenstar now. The first order of business was to blend in, and then find an explanation for what happened to him.
He had no desire to find out what happened to a man from 21st century Italy who claimed to have traveled between worlds.
A Captain's cabin, he reasoned, should be close to the sickbay.
He began to walk forward in the narrow, vibrating corridor. He heard the muffled sounds of footsteps and angry shouts on the floor directly above him; the Officers' deck, perhaps.
He passed an open room; a cramped, working office. Inside, a man in a crisper blue overcoat, with two thin gold stripes on his cuff (an officer of some kind), was poring intensely over a large, watermarked map spread on a table.
Aquila took a moment, absorbing the details…..the uniforms, the ranks….before turning away, needing to move.
He passed two more crew quarters, the doors shut tight. Just as he reached what he assumed was the forward section of the ship, likely the path to the main mast and the bridge, he saw it: a thin, almost dry trail of blood on the metal decking.
The clots were small and dark, but unmistakable.
He slowed, instincts overriding his panic. Someone was injured, badly, and had managed to move somewhere.
The trail led into a small, windowless storage room. Aquila pushed the door open cautiously. The room was dim, lit only by the single bulb in the corridor, and crammed full of crates, sacks, barrels, and shelves.
It smelled of jute, dust, and foreign spices. The crates were stenciled with Imperial Latin: SPICES. SILK. TEA. STONES. Medicine. The high-value cargo they were escorting.
He took one step in, his crimson eyes scanning the shadows.
Aquila stepped inside, his hand instinctively going to his hip where his Beretta should have been. But of course, it wasn't there. Different body, different world.
Suddenly, a massive arm shot out from behind a stack of tea crates. A calloused, rough hand clamped over his mouth, pinning his arms awkwardly behind his back.
A rough, male voice, thick with fear and pain, breathed hot against his ear. "Don't you make a sound, Private. Or I will gut you like a tilapia fish."