The world wasn't supposed to smell like stale cigarettes and existential dread. Alex Mercer knew this, profoundly. He knew it in the way you know the curve of your own spine, the rhythm of your own breath. Yet, here he was, choked by a scent that clung to every thread of the grimy mattress beneath him, every mote of dust dancing in the single shaft of sunlight slicing through a filthy window. His head throbbed, a dull, relentless drumbeat behind his eyes, protesting his sudden, violent return to consciousness.
He lay still for a long moment, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of reality. Where was he? His apartment, a cozy, slightly cluttered sanctuary filled with books and the scent of lukewarm coffee, felt impossibly distant.
He remembered a rush of headlights, a screech of tires, the sickening lurch of metal against metal, and then… a profound, suffocating darkness.
Was this some hospital room? A recovery ward? No. The sounds filtering through the thin walls were all wrong. Not the hushed efficiency of medical staff, but the cacophony of a city perpetually on the brink: distant sirens wailing like tortured banshees, the impatient blare of car horns, and the low, guttural murmur of unfamiliar chatter. It was chaos, but not the sterile chaos of an emergency room. This was the living, breathing, unvarnished chaos of a concrete jungle.
Slowly, carefully, Alex pushed himself up, every muscle protesting with a dull ache. He wasn't in pain, not exactly, but his body felt… alien, a disjointed echo of himself. Each movement felt a fraction of a second off, as if he were piloting a vessel he hadn't quite mastered. He looked down at his hands, calloused, lean, the nails bitten short. They were his hands, yet not. They were younger, less weathered than he remembered, with a scattering of faint, almost imperceptible scars across the knuckles that told tales he didn't recognize. His reflection, caught in a tiny, smudged mirror propped precariously on a rickety dresser, confirmed his unease. A face that was undeniably his, but subtly altered, refined, as if someone had taken a familiar sketch and given it a sharper, more defined outline. He touched the faint stubble on his jaw, the slightly longer dark hair that fell into his eyes. This was him, yet not him.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his consciousness. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the mattress springs groaning under the unfamiliar weight. The room was small, barely larger than a walk-in closet, with peeling wallpaper and a single, bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. A stained, threadbare blanket lay crumpled on the floor. On a milk crate serving as a bedside table, a folded, yellowed newspaper lay open. His eyes snagged on the headline, barely comprehending the words through the haze of confusion.
"Stark Industries' Latest Breakthrough: A New Era in Renewable Energy?"
Stark Industries. The name echoed in his mind, familiar in a way that was deeply unsettling. He had read about Stark Industries in comics, seen it in movies. But this wasn't fiction. This was here. This was real.
His gaze flickered to a blurry, static-filled television set perched precariously on another milk crate in the corner. It was flickering through news channels, each one a whirlwind of chaos and mundane updates. Then, a sudden, jarring image flashed across the screen: a red and gold blur soaring over a digitized cityscape. A metallic figure, undeniably human-shaped, leaving a trail of exhaust behind it as it flew with impossible grace. The news anchor, looking far too calm given the absurdity of the footage, spoke in hushed, reverent tones.
"—reports confirm Iron Man sighted over downtown, apprehending the perpetrators of yesterday's bank heist. Law enforcement officials declined to comment on the hero's identity, but public sentiment remains overwhelmingly positive…"
The words hit him like a physical blow. Iron Man. He stumbled back, colliding with the grimy wall, the newspaper fluttering forgotten to the floor. His mind raced, pulling at fragmented memories, not of his old life, but of the media he consumed in it. Marvel. The MCU. Tony Stark. Captain America. Gods from space. Super-soldiers. Hidden covert organizations.
No. No, this wasn't possible. This wasn't real. This had to be a dream, a coma-induced hallucination. He pinched his arm, hard. The pain was sharp, undeniable. He slapped his face. Again, the sting was real. The smell of stale smoke persisted. The distant sirens wailed. The TV continued its maddening drone, showing a blurred, heroic figure.
Am I insane? The thought clawed at his throat, cold and terrifying. He frantically searched for his phone, his wallet—anything that could ground him in his old reality. He fumbled in the pocket of the unfamiliar jeans he was wearing. His fingers closed around something: a cheap, worn flip phone. He pulled it out, his thumb fumbling to open it. It was dead. No signal. No life.
Then, he found the wallet. Thin, worn leather. Inside, a crumpled stack of bills – five crumpled dollars. And an ID. He pulled it out, his heart hammering against his ribs.
ALEX MERCER22 Years Old[Address in a less-than-glamorous borough of New York City]
The name was correct, but the face looking back from the faded photo was this face, the one in the smudged mirror. The birthdate was recent, meaning he was indeed 22. Not his actual age from his past life. This wasn't a coma. This was... transmigration. He was Alex Mercer. In the Marvel universe.
A laugh, raw and bordering on hysteria, escaped him, a dry, ragged gasp bordering on hysteria. He clapped a hand over his mouth, trying to choke back the sound. This was beyond anything he could have ever imagined. He was truly a stranger in a fictional world, trapped in a body that was both his and not, surrounded by heroes and villains he only knew from movies and comic books. The sheer, overwhelming absurdity of it all was a suffocating weight, pressing down on his chest, stealing his breath.
He staggered to the small, grimy window, pushing aside the threadbare curtains. Below, the street was a chaotic tapestry of yellow cabs, bustling pedestrians, and the distant rumble of the subway. A billboard advertised a new StarkPhone model, sleek and futuristic. A newsstand prominently displayed a tabloid screaming about "The Green Goliath" sighted in Brazil. Every detail screamed the same impossible truth.
He was here. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
A wave of nausea washed over him. His head throbbed with the effort of trying to reconcile his past life with this dizzying new reality. How could he survive here? He was just... Alex. A regular guy. He had no powers, no training, no connections. He was utterly vulnerable in a world where gods walked among men and super-villains routinely threatened global destruction. He had five crumpled dollars, a dead flip phone, and a body that felt vaguely unfamiliar. Survival seemed like a cruel joke.
His eyes, desperate for any shred of hope, anything he could control, fell upon a discarded item on the floor near the dresser. It was a cheap, plastic digital watch, the kind you might find in a bargain bin. Its screen was badly cracked, spiderwebbed across the black display, and it was clearly dead, its battery long gone. It looked utterly worthless, a symbol of his current hopeless predicament.
If only I could just… fix something, he thought, a desperate, silent plea to the universe. Anything. Just one thing I can control.
With a sigh, he reached out, his fingers brushing against the cold, inert plastic. As his skin made contact, a faint, almost imperceptible hum resonated deep within his mind. It wasn't a sound he heard with his ears, but a vibration, a whisper of energy that tickled his consciousness. He felt a peculiar warmth spread from his fingertips, traveling up his arm, settling in the back of his mind.
And then, the watch in his hand shifted.
It wasn't a subtle change. The cracked plastic casing seemed to ripple and solidify, the spiderweb cracks knitting themselves together, then dissolving as if they had never existed. The cheap plastic reformed itself into a sleek, metallic alloy, dark and brushed, with subtle, almost alien etchings along its newly defined edges. The dead screen flickered to life, not with a simple digital display, but with a vibrant, flawless holographic projection that shimmered just above the watch face.
Alex stared, his breath hitched in his throat. This wasn't just fixed. This was impossible.
The holographic display showed the time, precise to the millisecond, along with a miniature, active three-dimensional map of the immediate New York City block, complete with real-time traffic updates and pedestrian flows. Tiny green dots indicated nearby public Wi-Fi access points, some of them marked "secure and untraceable." He instinctively knew this last bit of information, as if it had been directly uploaded into his brain.
Then, a voice, not external, but a clear, concise thought that resonated in his mind, crisp and undeniable, overriding the chaos of his own thoughts:
"Item: Cheap Digital Watch. Action: Repair. Reward: 10x Enhanced Tactical Smartwatch. Capabilities: Hyper-Detailed Digital Mapping, Real-time Data Overlays, Secure Wi-Fi Access, Basic Environmental Analysis. Note: Cannot be re-used for 10x reward."
Alex stumbled back again, this time truly losing his balance and hitting the floor with a thud. He clutched the transformed smartwatch in his hand, its impossible reality weighing more than its actual mass. The mental message, crisp and immediate, left no room for doubt. This wasn't a hallucination. This wasn't insanity. This was a system. A "Golden Finger," as they called it in the transmigration novels he used to read.
A 10x reward system.
He stared at the smartwatch, then back at the dusty room, then out the window at the distant, impossible skyline. His mind, still reeling from the shock of being in the Marvel universe, was now grappling with this new, equally impossible revelation. He had a power. A real, bona fide, supernatural ability in a world of superheroes.
The wave of panic began to recede, replaced by something else. A flicker of hope. A desperate, primal surge of possibility. He was still utterly alone, a stranger in this fictional world, but he wasn't entirely helpless anymore. He had this. This inexplicable, terrifying, amazing power.
He collapsed back onto the grimy mattress, the "Tactical Smartwatch 10x Enhanced" clutched tightly in his hand. Its cool, metallic surface pressed against his palm, a tangible anchor in his unraveling reality. The weight of his new existence—the superheroes, the cosmic threats, the incomprehensible power he had just stumbled upon—still threatened to overwhelm him. But now, amidst the crushing despair, a tiny, defiant spark of curiosity ignited.
What else could this "Golden Finger" do?
The universe had just delivered its most impossible hand, and Alex Mercer, the reluctant architect of his own fate, had just begun to play.