Chapter 1 : The Dead Man's Uniform
My foot came down expecting carpet, finding concrete. My knee buckled. My hand shot out for balance and slapped a brick wall that shouldn't exist because three seconds ago I'd been in my apartment watching Netflix, and now—
Cold air. Gray sky. The sharp bite of autumn in a place that smelled like diesel and something else, something antiseptic and wrong.
I caught myself against the wall. My fingers scraped red brick. Red. Everything was red suddenly. A flash of fabric across the street. Cloaks. Long, flowing cloaks the color of blood, and white wings framing faces I couldn't see.
The world snapped into focus like a camera adjusting.
Handmaids. Those were Handmaids.
"Kessler. You good?"
A man stood beside me. Uniform. Black jacket, holstered sidearm, the kind of blank military posture that screamed institutional training. He was looking at me with the mild concern of someone who'd seen a coworker stumble.
"Headache," I heard myself say. My voice. Not my voice. Deeper. Rougher. "Bad batch at mess, probably."
The man—my patrol partner, apparently—grunted and kept walking. I forced my legs to follow.
My legs. Except they weren't mine. The stride was longer than I was used to, the center of gravity higher. I was taller. Heavier. My hands hung at my sides in fingerless gloves I'd never owned, attached to arms corded with muscle I'd never built.
Three hours ago, I'd been Oliver Wallace. Twenty-eight. Data analyst. Single. Unremarkable.
Three hours ago, I'd been watching the fifth episode of The Handmaid's Tale for the third time because I couldn't sleep, and then my chest had seized, my vision had gone white, and I'd thought this is it, this is a heart attack, I'm dying alone in my living room—
And then I was here. In a body that moved without my permission. In a world I recognized from a television screen.
The patrol route took us past a checkpoint. My partner nodded at the Guardian manning it. I copied the gesture. Past a bread line where women in gray stood with baskets. Past a storefront with no sign, just a symbol painted on the window—a lily, I thought, or maybe something more sinister.
The Handmaids crossed fifty yards ahead. Two of them, walking in perfect lockstep. Their wings blocked their peripheral vision. That was the point. Keep them focused forward. Keep them from seeing the world they moved through.
I remembered that detail from the show. I remembered a lot of details.
Season one. Early season one. June hadn't met Nick yet, or maybe she had just barely. The Waterfords were still in their honeymoon phase of cruelty. Commander Putnam still had both his hands, and Emily was still—
"Checkpoint seven," my partner said. "Your stamp."
I looked down. A table. A line of people. Passes held out for inspection.
The stamp was in my hand. I didn't remember picking it up.
I pressed it to paper. A woman in a Martha's gray dress met my eyes for half a second—long enough for me to see she was terrified—and then she was gone, shuffling through the gate with her papers clutched against her chest.
Three more. Four. Seven. The rhythm of it settled into my bones. Stamp, nod, next. Stamp, nod, next. My partner handled the questions. I handled the stamps. Nobody looked at me twice.
This body knew this routine. The muscle memory was still here, even if the mind that created it was gone.
Gone. The word sat heavy in my stomach. Whoever Daniel Kessler had been, he wasn't here anymore. I was wearing his uniform, walking his patrol, living his life—and I had no idea who he was.
The patrol ended at a building that looked like a converted school. Gray walls. Narrow windows. A sign that read GUARDIAN BARRACKS — DISTRICT 7 in letters that might have once been painted gold.
My partner said something about mess hall. I nodded and let him walk ahead.
The barracks were exactly what I expected. Rows of metal bunks, footlockers at the base of each, the kind of aggressive functionality that suggested comfort was weakness. A number was stenciled on the wall above each bed. I found the one that matched the tag inside my jacket collar: 17.
Bunk 17. Home.
I sat down slowly. The mattress was thin. The springs creaked. Around me, other Guardians moved through their evening routines—changing out of patrol gear, heading to showers, talking in low voices about shifts and assignments and a fight that had broken out at checkpoint three.
Nobody spoke to me directly. A few nods. One man clapped my shoulder as he passed. "Rough day?" he asked, and I said "Yeah" and that was enough. He moved on.
I opened the footlocker at the base of my bunk.
Guardian service card. Photo: brown hair, strong jaw, eyes that looked tired even in the official portrait. Name: KESSLER, DANIEL J. Rank: GUARDIAN SECOND CLASS. District: BOSTON-7.
So I had a name. Daniel. Danny? No—the formality of everything here suggested nobody used nicknames.
Beneath the card: a folded uniform, spare boots, toiletries in a canvas bag, a worn Bible with a cracked spine and no underlined passages. And a letter.
The paper was soft from handling. The handwriting was feminine, looping, pressed hard into the page.
Danny—
I know you said not to write again. I know what you said about it being dangerous. But I had to tell you that I made it. I'm in Ontario now. I'm safe. I think about you every day. I think about what could have been if we'd left together.
Please don't write back. I know you can't. I just needed you to know.
—Sarah
No date. No return address. The paper smelled faintly of perfume and something else—lake water, maybe, or pine.
Kessler had a girlfriend. Had. Past tense. She'd escaped to Canada. He'd stayed behind.
I folded the letter carefully and put it back where I found it.
The ceiling above my bunk was water-stained. I lay back and stared at it and tried to piece together what I knew.
One: I was in Gilead. The Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, currently the worst place on Earth to be anyone except a Commander.
Two: I was in a Guardian's body. Low rank. Patrol duty. The kind of anonymous position that might actually be survivable, as long as I didn't do anything stupid.
Three: I had no phone, no computer, no connection to any world I understood. No mysterious system interface had appeared in my vision. No helpful tutorial had explained the rules. I was just... here. Stuck. Wearing a dead man's clothes in a country that executed people for reading.
Four: The show. I knew what was coming. June's assignment to the Waterfords. Emily's exposure as a gender traitor. Moira's escape from the Red Center. The bombing at the new Rachel and Leah Center. Nick's double life as an Eye.
I knew the plot. I knew the characters. I knew which Commanders were true believers and which were hypocrites. I knew who died and who survived and who turned out to be secretly working for the resistance.
The question was what I could do with any of it.
The lights went out at 2200 sharp. No warning, just darkness. Twelve Guardians breathing in the dark, and me, lying awake with a dead man's dog tags cold against my chest.
Daniel Kessler, I thought. I don't know who you were. I don't know why I'm here. But I'm going to figure this out.
I'm going to survive.
The morning bell would ring in six hours. Kessler's shift was posted on a board I hadn't checked yet. I didn't know when it started, where it was, or who I'd be working with.
I pressed my face into the pillow—his pillow, my pillow now—and breathed.
First private moment since I'd woken up in this body. First second I didn't have to perform. My hands shook against the thin mattress, and I let them, because no one could see.
Somewhere outside, a clock tower chimed. Eleven bells. Late. Too late to do anything but lie here and wait for tomorrow to arrive.
I closed my eyes.
I didn't sleep.
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