Chapter 1: WRONG BODY, RIGHT WORLD
The floor came up too fast.
My palm caught the edge of a folding table—plastic, cheap, the kind you'd find at a community bingo night—and my shoulder screamed as the momentum transferred. I went down anyway, knees cracking against linoleum, and for three full seconds, I couldn't breathe.
"What the—"
Wrong voice. The words came out wrong. Too deep, too rough, like someone had taken sandpaper to my throat while I wasn't paying attention.
I pushed myself up. My arms worked. That was good. My legs worked. Also good. But the hands at the end of those arms—thick-knuckled, callused across the palms in ways mine had never been—those weren't mine. Those belonged to someone who'd spent years catching himself on things, rolling through falls, getting back up.
A mirror. There was a mirror on the wall, bolted above a narrow sink, and the face staring back at me made my stomach lurch sideways.
Brown hair, longer than I'd ever worn it. Jaw squared off like someone had filed it that way on purpose. Eyes that were wrong—not blue, not green, something murky in between—and stubble that said two days, maybe three, since the last shave.
I touched the face. The reflection touched it back.
"This isn't—"
A knock. Three sharp raps against what I now realized was a trailer door.
"Vaughn! You're needed on B-lot in twenty!"
The voice outside was young, female, irritated. Professional irritation. The kind you hear from people who've said the same sentence forty times today and expect to say it forty more.
My mouth opened. Wrong mouth. Wrong throat.
"Stomach bug," I managed. "Give me... give me an hour."
Pause.
"You looked fine at craft services."
"Hit me sudden." I pitched my voice toward the toilet—there was a toilet in here, thank God, tucked into a corner that smelled like industrial lemon—and made a retching sound. Acting. I'd never been much of an actor. Apparently this body was better at it than me.
"Gross. Fine. But Drew's going to lose it if you're not on set by two."
Footsteps retreated. I counted to thirty before I stopped bracing for the door to open.
The last thing I remembered was the truck.
Red truck. Big one. Running the light on Fifth because the driver was looking at his phone and I was looking at the crosswalk signal like it meant anything. Physics doesn't care about right-of-way.
I remembered the impact. I remembered the sound—wet and wrong, like someone dropping a watermelon off a balcony. I remembered thinking this is a stupid way to die and then nothing.
And now this.
The trailer was small. Ten feet by twenty, maybe. Cot against one wall, folding table, mirror, toilet, a corkboard covered in papers. A backpack hung from a hook by the door. No windows. The air conditioner hummed something that might have been a tune if you tortured it enough.
I found the crew badge on the table.
HARLEY VAUGHNExtras CoordinatorVought Studios — Documentary Division
Vought.
The word sat in my chest like a stone.
I knew that word. Everyone who'd ever binged a superhero show knew that word. Vought International. The company that made superheroes. The company that sold superhero merchandise. The company that covered up superhero murders and ran political campaigns and—
I turned to the corkboard.
Production schedule. Glossy paper, professional layout, the Vought logo stamped in the corner like a brand.
THE SEVEN: AMERICA'S HEROES — DOCUMENTARYPrincipal Photography: July 20 – August 14, 2020Soundstage C / B-Lot Exteriors
July 2020.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs—someone else's thighs—and felt calluses I hadn't earned.
The phone was in the backpack. Cracked screen protector, the kind of cheap one you buy at a kiosk and replace every three months. I swiped through with a thumb that didn't feel right and found a news alert.
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS ON COMPOUND V CONTINUEVought CEO Stan Edgar Denies Knowledge of Illegal Drug Program
Compound V. Congressional hearings. That put me after the plane video leaked, after Homelander's lie about terrorists got exposed, after—
Season one. This was after season one.
The shaking got worse.
I sat on the cot and forced myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my old therapist taught me back when anxiety was my biggest problem instead of being dead in someone else's body in a fictional universe where superheroes murdered people.
"Okay," I thought. "Okay. Think."
I knew The Boys. I'd watched all four seasons. I knew the timeline—Stormfront shows up soon, plays the white nationalist social media game, gets exposed, gets killed. I knew Neuman was the head-popper and no one figured it out until way too late. I knew Soldier Boy was in Russia and eventually Butcher would try to use him against Homelander and that would go badly for everyone.
I knew things no one in this world knew.
And something at the edge of my vision—something I'd been trying not to look at directly—pulsed.
It was faint. Translucent. Like a screen waiting for power, hovering just past where my peripheral vision should have stopped. When I focused on it, it didn't resolve into anything I could read. Just a shimmer. A presence.
"Later," I told myself. "Deal with that later."
The phone's GPS history showed an apartment in Queens. Checking account: $2,147.32. Message history: empty except for work coordination. No saved contacts except "Mom (Do Not Answer)" and "Drew K (Boss)."
No close friends. No partner. No one who'd notice if Harley Vaughn started acting different.
The pragmatist in me—the part that had survived a decade of corporate middle management before physics decided I was done surviving anything—kicked into gear.
I had a body. It was in decent shape—the mirror showed lean muscle, the kind you get from physical work, not gym membership. The backpack contained a change of clothes, a protein bar, and a worn paperback about stunt coordination.
Stunt coordination.
I turned to the production schedule again. Under crew assignments: Harley Vaughn, Extras Coordinator (Stunt Double Background).
This guy had been a stunt double before he moved to coordination. That explained the calluses. The reflexes. The muscle memory that had let me catch myself on the table instead of cracking my skull open.
"Thank you, Harley," I thought. "Whoever you were."
The shimmer at the edge of my vision pulsed again. Stronger this time. Like something was listening.
I pocketed the crew badge, the phone, the keys to an apartment I'd never seen. The protein bar went into my mouth because I was suddenly, desperately hungry—the body needed fuel and apparently death and resurrection burned calories.
"Rules," I thought as I chewed. "Figure out the rules."
The shimmer was a system. Had to be. I'd read enough web novels, played enough games, to recognize the pattern. Transmigration plus mysterious interface equaled power-up mechanics. The question was what kind.
But the system wasn't talking yet. It sat at the edge of my awareness like a sleeping dog, and I wasn't sure I wanted to wake it.
Not here. Not in a Vought trailer with PA's outside and a documentary shoot happening and God knew who watching.
I texted the PA: Going home sick. Sorry about Drew. Will make it up tomorrow.
Then I grabbed the backpack and walked out into New York.
The city smelled like hot asphalt and car exhaust and street food from a cart on the corner. Vought's backlot was somewhere in the Bronx—I could see the city skyline past soundstages and parking lots full of equipment trucks. Crew members moved past me without looking twice. Just another coordinator going home sick.
The sun was too bright. The air was too thick. Everything felt more than it should, like someone had turned up the contrast on reality and forgot to tell my eyes.
"You're in shock," I told myself. "That's fine. You're allowed to be in shock. Just keep walking."
I found the subway entrance. Pulled up the GPS for the apartment address. Let the algorithm tell me which trains to take.
The shimmer pulsed when I passed a newsstand with Homelander's face on three different magazine covers. Pulsed again when a kid in a Seven t-shirt ran past me.
"Soon," the shimmer seemed to say. "Not yet. But soon."
The train was crowded. I found a seat, closed my eyes, and pressed my palms flat against thighs that still felt like someone else's.
Somewhere in this city, Homelander was doing damage control.
Somewhere in this city, Butcher was hunting for a way to hurt him.
Somewhere in this city, a woman named Stormfront was about to make everything worse.
And I was wearing a dead man's face, carrying a dead man's badge, heading to a dead man's apartment to figure out how to stay alive in a world where gods walked the earth and most of them were monsters.
The train lurched forward.
The shimmer waited.
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