Chapter 1.
Consciousness returned to me all at once, and with it came weakness and pain. Pain that seemed to live in every part of my body. And a thirst so fierce it felt like I hadn't had a drop of water in at least several days.
*Where am I, and why do I feel like such hell?* Those were my first thoughts, and, naturally, no one answered them.
I forced my eyes open and saw nothing but a dirty ceiling above me. Trying to turn over brought a fresh wave of pain crashing through my entire body, wringing a strangled groan out of me. With what felt like an almost inhuman effort, I managed to roll over, then carefully and slowly slid off a sunken mattress that was lying, as far as I could tell, directly on the floor. On trembling hands and knees, I crawled toward what I could make out in the dim room as the outline of a sink. It cost me black spots swimming across my vision and a treacherous shaking in my arms and legs, but I made it. I clutched the cold edge of the sink with both hands and hauled myself upright. I found the tap by feel, turned it, and then bent forward, drinking deeply, gulping the cold water down.
And the water helped, just a little. The pain even eased up slightly. Only then did I dare raise my head and look into the mirror above the sink.
The reflection staring back at me was a young face, very pale, with dried blood in the corner of the mouth and dark bruising spread across it. The hair was black, plastered down across a dirty and wet forehead, and the brown eyes held a dull, fixed expression of pain and confusion. But the most important thing — it wasn't me. It was someone else. A stranger. A stranger's face, a stranger's apartment, and a stranger's body, beaten brutally to a pulp.
The room began to spin. I nearly went down, barely catching the edge of the sink in time. I gathered what was left of me and crawled back to the mattress through the pain and weakness, to sink into black and merciful oblivion.
For two days I ran a fever, burning and freezing by turns. The pain in my body never let up. My head hurt worst of all. Dreams chased me — fragments of memory, like clips from some cheap melodrama. From time to time I'd come back to myself, force myself up, and drag my way to the sink to drink greedily from the tap, then crawl back to the dirty mattress the same way I'd left it. I even found the bathroom at some point, but all of it happened as though through a haze of delirium.
By the third day, I'd finally come around enough to grasp a simple fact: this was not a dream. Everything happening was real. I was someone else now. My memory held things that were mine and not mine at the same time — books I'd read, movies I'd watched. I had a name, a family, friends — but all of it felt like it had been selectively erased, leaving behind only vague impressions. I remembered attending school, then university. I'd worked as a programmer after that, lived in an apartment, had a family. But I couldn't recall a single name or face of anyone close to me. I didn't remember what city I was from. And I had a clear, certain feeling that I had been considerably older. Knowing and understanding that the most precious things were gone forever was, perhaps, the most terrifying part of all. But despite a certain creeping despair, I forced myself to stand and take a more deliberate look around "my" apartment.
A one-room studio. It was dirty, though not quite a pigsty. You could tell the "previous me" had tried to maintain some semblance of order, but everything around me was so old and worn out that cleaning properly was simply impossible.
The mattress on the floor was old and caved in. Lying around it were the blanket, sheet, and pillow I'd kicked off during my days of delirium. The room held a single chair and a nightstand with a chipped corner. On the only table sat a laptop — old, beaten up, but with its indicator light glowing, which meant it worked. In the corner that could generously be called a kitchen stood a small refrigerator. I made my way toward it, driven by a hunger that provided both the energy and the motivation to move.
Inside the fridge I found a couple of slices of dried-out pizza and a can of some kind of soda. I took out the pizza, spotted a mug on the table, rinsed it out, filled it with water, and finally had a real, satisfying drink. The water was cool and had an unpleasant aftertaste, but even so it was the best drink in the world. There was no stove, but there was a microwave that had clearly seen better days. Next to it sat an electric kettle.
Rummaging through the single kitchen drawer, I found an almost full box of tea. I brewed a cup, sat down on the chair, took a slice of pizza in one hand and the mug in the other. And I started to think.
The scraps of memory were assembling themselves into a pretty grim picture. In my previous life — and in this one, if the memories now belonging to me were any guide — I'd read about this kind of thing in books. A transmigrator. Except in the books it was all fun and adventure, and here… there was pain, and filth, and complete hopelessness, to put it mildly.
This guy. Or rather, the current me. Alexei Vetrov. Twenty-two years old. Grew up in a Russian orphanage. A kid who'd dreamed his whole childhood of America — the one painted for him by Hollywood movies and cartoons. After the orphanage came a technical college, where he'd chosen a programming track. The funny thing was that both in my past life and in this one, the main profession was the same. He worked odd jobs throughout school. He saved up for a laptop and for a ticket to his dream. And then, in his final year, something happened in New York — a big commotion, a lot of destruction. And he, the fool, decided it was the perfect moment to make his dream real. Without finishing school, he dropped out and set off to conquer America, because the city was being rebuilt right now, and that meant work — good work, even. He arrived. And there was almost no work for a Russian kid with no real command of the language and no papers — dishwasher, day laborer, delivery courier. Those were the jobs he'd managed to try.
His English had improved during his years in America, but the rough accent had stayed. He'd been living in this hole for a couple of years. And on the day I arrived… he was out on a delivery. The last order of the night, to a bad part of town. He completed the drop and pulled out his phone to map his route back. Someone called out from behind him, and when he turned around, the dull, heavy work of fists against ribs and face began. Two Black guys took his work backpack, his phone, and his bicycle. They didn't forget to go through his pockets either, taking his wallet and his personal burner phone.
And so, beaten and robbed, Lyokha somehow made it home, collapsed without even undressing — and then woke up as someone new.
The tea helped somewhat. I finished it, set the mug aside, and reached for the laptop. The lid creaked when I opened it. The screen was covered in small scratches. The internet was slow, but it existed; Alexei had actually paid extra for it separately, just to have some connection to the world.
The first thing I searched for was news. My memories were scattered and general, and it was hard to separate what was real from what wasn't. I decided to start with the very event that had sent Alexei's life veering toward America in the first place. Names. Titles. Events. And the more I read, the colder I felt inside. This was not just "some event."
The invasion. The Chitauri. Tony Stark. Captain America. The Avengers.
My hand moved on its own to press against my forehead. I could feel the blood draining from my face and a stampede of goosebumps running down my spine.
*God. This is… Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I'm sitting in a run-down dump on the outskirts of New York, in the body of a Russian immigrant, and outside the window is a made-up world. A goddamn made-up world.*
But at the same time, my mind latched onto something — a justification, a lifeline that kept me from sliding into shock and hysteria:
*But there are also superheroes here. And beautiful women. And I know the plot.* That thought brought a wave of relief and something almost like a child's giddy joy. *I'm in a world full of superheroes! I could see them. I know everything. And that's incredible.*
But the euphoria faded just as quickly as it had come, replaced by a heavy, unpleasant tide of reality crashing in.
*Except I'm not a superhero. I'm a background character. The little guy who gets smeared across the pavement when the Hulk runs past. And I live in a city that someone is constantly trying to destroy. And…*
I remembered.
*The timeline. If the news is anything to go by, the events of the first Avengers film have already happened. Loki already attacked the city and was captured. The Avengers are already active. And Thanos has already started collecting the Infinity Stones.*
Thanos. The Snap. The death of half of all living things in this world, and a fifty-percent chance that included me. And yes, I knew perfectly well that the Avengers were supposed to save everyone in the end. But where was the guarantee that this was that universe, and that they'd manage it? Besides, the circumstances of my arrival here made it very clear that this was not the light, pleasant story I'd once read. Better to assume the worst from the start.
"Well, fuck me," I said out loud, involuntarily, in pure Russian.
Panic. Clean, animal panic began to rise and squeeze my throat shut.
*Breathe. Just breathe,* I told myself. But there was no hiding from the thought of the approaching end of the world.
"I'm alone here. Completely alone. No money, no connections, no strength. I can't even speak properly."
Despair swallowed me whole — and it was exactly at that moment, right in front of my eyes, that a line of pure, bluish light appeared.
---
*[Integration of the Development System into the bearer's soul and consciousness is complete.]*
*[To open the status menu, think the word: "Status."]*
---
I went still. Then I blinked slowly. The text didn't disappear. It hung in the air — semi-transparent, giving off a faint glow.
*Hallucinations from stress, hunger, pain, or all of the above,* came my first thought.
I rubbed my eyes. I even looked around the room — was this a projection from somewhere? But no. The text hung directly in the center of my field of vision, not shifting position no matter where I looked.
My heart suddenly began to pound with a new energy — not from fear this time, but from hope. A wild, insane, almost impossible hope.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke aloud.
"Status."
An interface unfolded in front of me, just like in a video game. Simple, with numbers, bars, and icons. I stared at it, dumbstruck. A system. An honest-to-God actual system. Like in those novels I used to read. A transmigrator with a system. This was… this was a ticket. A ticket to a better life.
Alright. A system. Let's see what you're made of.
I fixed my eyes on the window hanging in the air. It was semi-transparent, pale blue, and I could faintly see the room through it. The whole thing was absolutely surreal. The interface was divided into two main sections.
On the left were the characteristics. For some reason I'd expected to see a whole pile of stats, but no. It was stripped down and practical. Just four entries, each with a bar beneath it — no percentages, no numbers on the bars themselves.
---
*[Strength: 3*
*Agility: 4*
*Endurance: 3*
*Perception: 5]*
---
Hm. Those numbers were not great, to put it charitably. Though I didn't know the scale yet — but if I assumed it ran to ten, then none of this was encouraging. Strength and Endurance at three. Agility at four — that was probably the courier work, all that running and riding around the city. Perception at five — probably from the attempts at programming, and from the constant need to stay alert and watch for danger in those god-awful neighborhoods. And then there were some things called Will Points.
---
*[Will Points: 0]*
---
What those were and what they were for, I couldn't work out at first glance.
On the right was a section labeled "Traits." It was just a gray list full of names, all of them faded and inactive right now. I scanned them: "Iron Foundation," "Nerves of Steel," "Limits…" It sounded interesting, but everything was locked, and I couldn't see any descriptions.
Looking more carefully at the edges of the interface, I noticed three small icons in the upper right corner: an X, a question mark, and a gear.
The X was obvious. I clicked on it mentally, and the interface vanished immediately. The room was just a room again.
*Damn, what if it doesn't come back?* — a panicked thought, and I immediately thought the word:
*Status.*
The window reappeared in exactly the same place.
*Good. It opens and closes. Now the gear.*
A mental click — and a second, smaller window appeared over the first. "Interface Settings."
*Now that's more like it.*
Transparency sliders, a checkbox for audio notifications, a color scheme selector. I lowered the transparency until the numbers were sharper, and switched the color from calm blue to a neutral white. In my opinion, that would be less of a strain on the eyes. I checked the audio notifications box and closed the settings.
That left the question mark. The moment I clicked on it mentally, information came flooding into my brain. Not words — direct knowledge, poured straight into my consciousness. I instinctively grabbed my head, bracing for pain, but there was none. Just a mild tiredness, like I'd just sat through a long documentary.
And based on the information I'd received, everything was pretty much as I'd already started to suspect. No levels, no dungeons, no inventory, no system quests, no beginner's gifts, no skills like "fireball," no free knowledge handouts. Not even a "English language" skill. Everything came down to four characteristics: Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Perception. The cap for an ordinary human was ten. Captain America was the gold standard — tens across the board. Great for him. I, unfortunately, was a solid "C student," though at least not in everything.
And to level up those characteristics, I would have to… train. For real. Until the seventh sweat, until muscle failure, until I was dry-heaving. The system was not going to make me stronger on its own. It would only show me how much I'd grown after I'd torn every tendon in my body working for it. One of the bonuses the system offered was protection against regression. Even after a long break, I'd still have the same stats.
The second bonus — and essentially the only real path to becoming something more in this world — was Will Points. And those were earned through specific kinds of effort. Reading the conditions made me feel a little ill. Training at the edge of collapse. Overcoming the impossible. Surviving brutal conditions. Deliberately enduring unbearable pain. I would have to actively throw myself into terrible situations to earn WP and then invest them into Traits, which also required leveled-up base stats to unlock.
The system offered no easy road. It might as well have said outright: *You want to survive in this world? Then work. Work like a pack mule, and put yourself in harm's way. Or you're dead.*
The euphoria from discovering the system had faded, replaced by a clear-eyed understanding of my situation. This was not a cheat code into the superhero ranks. The Development System was a brutal, unforgiving trainer. A mentor who would pick me up off the floor by kicking me and make me keep running when I had nothing left — dangling Will Points in front of my nose like a carrot.
I leaned back against the chair, which gave a quiet creak. The apartment presented itself to me again in all its miserable glory: the sunken mattress, the empty fridge, the dried-up pizza slice in my hand. The pain in my ribs, dull and persistent.
*Well then. Lyokha, you wanted to end up in an American movie? Here's your movie — full immersion, hardcore mode. It's not Warhammer, and thank God it's not Warhammer. But it's sure as hell not a resort, either.*
I looked at my hands. Thin, covered in bruises. Strength 3. Endurance 3. I was weak. Very weak. And the world around me was lethally dangerous. And the Snap was hanging on the horizon like a sword of Damocles.
But I had a chance now. A brutal, unpleasant, painful chance — but a chance. And I really had no choice. Either I started climbing, pushing past myself every single damn day, or I'd simply get crushed under the next superhero brawl spilling out onto the streets of New York.
I finished the cold tea and, despite the flavor of dried-out pizza, ate that too. It was fuel. The first fuel for a new life.
When I stood up from the chair, my body groaned again — but not as sharply as before. I walked over to the cracked mirror. The same kid with bruises on his face and pain in his eyes looked back at me. Alexei Vetrov.
"Alright, Lyokha," I muttered to my reflection in a rough voice. "Either we take them down — or they take us."
Silence was the only answer. But something stirred inside me. A tiny, stubborn spark. A spark of will. First things first — find food. Then find some kind of work. And after that…
After that, the real fun would begin.