Chapter 1: Awakening in Sacramento
The ceiling was wrong.
White paint, textured plaster, a hairline crack running from the corner like a lightning bolt frozen in place. I stared at it, my brain grinding through molasses, trying to match this image to memory. My ceiling had water stains. Brown rings from the leak two floors up. This wasn't my ceiling.
Then the memories hit.
Not memories—a fucking avalanche. Two lives crashing together like freight trains, metal screaming, glass exploding. I was Tedd Colen, twenty-seven, Sacramento PD detective. Parents dead in a car wreck when I was nineteen. Uncle Richard, Aunt Marie, cousins I saw twice a year at Christmas. Solo apartment, solo career, solo life.
I was also someone else. Someone from a world where this was all fiction. Where Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon were characters on a TV show I'd watched during late-night binges. Where Red John was a serial killer plot line that got messy in later seasons.
The knowledge sat in my skull like a tumor.
"This is wrong. This is insane. This isn't—"
My breath came too fast. The room tilted. I sat up, and the motion sent my stomach lurching. Hardwood floors, IKEA furniture, framed prints of Sacramento landmarks. The host body's apartment. His life. My life now.
How did I die?
The memory surfaced slowly, like something dragged from deep water. Subway platform. Seoul. Late night, coming home from a bar. I'd been drunk—stupid drunk—and I remembered the tiles under my feet, the warning line painted yellow at the platform edge. The train's headlight growing in the tunnel. Then someone bumped me. Hard. No—pushed. I twisted, saw a face I didn't recognize, and then I was falling.
The impact should have been the end. Instead, I woke up here.
"Transmigration. Isekai bullshit. Except I'm not in some fantasy world with elves and dragons. I'm in The Mentalist, and I don't even get magic powers to—"
The text appeared.
Blue letters, transparent, floating two feet in front of my face like someone had painted them on reality itself. I jerked backward, my spine hitting the headboard.
[ **COGNITIVE ANALYSIS SYSTEM INITIALIZING** ]
[ **SCANNING HOST NEURAL PATTERNS...** ]
[ **CALIBRATION: 12%** ]
My hands gripped the sheets. The letters pulsed, each word appearing with a soft chime that seemed to come from inside my skull. Not a hallucination. Too stable. Too clear.
"Okay. Okay. This is... this is a System. Like a goddamn LitRPG novel. I died, got thrown into The Mentalist universe, and I have a System."
The panic should have been worse. Instead, something cold settled in my chest. Practical. Analytical. I was a detective—both versions of me were. Evidence first. Freakout later.
I stood, legs shaky, and walked to the bathroom. The mirror showed Tedd Colen's face. My face now. Brown hair, needed a trim. Decent jawline. Tired eyes with shadows underneath. Not bad looking, but not Hollywood handsome either. Average.
The blue text followed me.
[ **CALIBRATION: 34%** ]
[ **NEURAL MAPPING IN PROGRESS** ]
[ **WARNING: HOST STRESS LEVELS ELEVATED** ]
"No shit," I muttered. My voice sounded weird. Different accent, different pitch. American West Coast instead of my native... what? I couldn't even remember clearly. The transmigration had blurred the edges.
New text boxes appeared around my reflection. Data overlays, like something from a video game HUD. My own face became a case study.
[ **SUBJECT: TEDD COLEN** ]
[ **STRESS LEVEL: 94%** ]
[ **EMOTIONAL STATE: TERRIFIED / CALM** ]
[ **ANALYSIS RELIABILITY: LOW - INSUFFICIENT BASELINE DATA** ]
"Terrified and calm?" I leaned closer to the mirror. "Pick one."
[ **CALIBRATION: 51%** ]
[ **SYSTEM FUNCTIONS UNLOCKING...** ]
[ **PROFILE GENERATOR: TIER 0 - ACTIVE** ]
[ **RED HERRING PROJECTOR: AUTOMATIC - ACTIVE** ]
[ **ENERGY: 73/100** ]
The headache started then. Not pain exactly—pressure. Like someone was installing new hardware directly into my brain. I gripped the sink, knuckles white, and watched the numbers tick upward. Sixty percent. Seventy. The overlays multiplied, text boxes spawning around every object in the bathroom. The toothbrush was "hygienic tool, recent use." The medicine cabinet was "storage unit, contains: acetaminophen, razors, cologne—"
"Stop," I gasped.
The overlays froze. Then, slowly, they faded to transparency, still visible but not overwhelming.
[ **CALIBRATION: 78%** ]
[ **VOICE COMMAND RECOGNIZED** ]
[ **SYSTEM TUTORIAL: WOULD YOU LIKE AN EXPLANATION OF AVAILABLE FUNCTIONS?** ]
"Yes. God, yes."
The main text box expanded, filling my vision like a popup window.
[ **MENTAL CHESS SYSTEM - OVERVIEW** ]
[ **PRIMARY FUNCTION: COGNITIVE ANALYSIS** ]
[ **Your enhanced perception allows profiling of individuals, detecting lies, predicting behavior patterns. Accuracy scales with practice and energy availability.** ]
[ **PROFILE GENERATOR (TIER 0):** ]
[ **Scan individuals to assess emotional state, stress markers, and behavioral patterns. Current accuracy: 60%. Improves through repeated use and successful predictions.** ]
[ **RED HERRING PROJECTOR (AUTOMATIC):** ]
[ **Passive defense system. When others attempt to analyze you, System generates false readings. Cannot be disabled. May cause confusion in your own self-analysis.** ]
[ **ENERGY SYSTEM:** ]
[ **All System functions consume energy. Current capacity: 73/100. Regenerates during rest. Severe depletion causes physical symptoms: migraines, fatigue, possible unconsciousness.** ]
[ **PROGRESSION:** ]
[ **Skills improve through practice. Completing objectives unlocks new functions. Energy capacity increases with tier advancement.** ]
I read it three times. The explanation was clear—too clear, like someone had designed it for an idiot. But I wasn't complaining. This was power. Real, quantifiable power in a world where knowledge and observation were everything.
Patrick Jane built a career on reading people. Teresa Lisbon led investigations through instinct and experience. And I had a System that could do both, with numerical accuracy ratings.
The catch was obvious. Energy limitations. Physical costs. And that Red Herring Projector—already active, already scrambling my own analysis. The System had called me both terrified and calm because it was feeding false data even about myself.
"Okay. So I can read people, but they can't read me back. And I need to manage my energy or I'll collapse. Got it."
I looked at my reflection again. This time, I tried to focus on the data overlay. The text boxes sharpened.
[ **ANALYZING: TEDD COLEN** ]
[ **STRESS: 87% (DECREASING)** ]
[ **CONFIDENCE: 43%** ]
[ **DECEPTION MARKERS: NONE DETECTED** ]
[ **PHYSICAL STATE: HEALTHY, MINOR SLEEP DEPRIVATION** ]
[ **CONTRADICTORY DATA DETECTED - RED HERRING PROJECTOR INTERFERENCE** ]
The last line flickered, unstable. I watched the stress percentage jump to 91%, then drop to 74%, then settle at 82%. The System was fighting itself, my own defense mechanism creating noise in the signal.
"Can I turn that off?" I asked.
[ **RED HERRING PROJECTOR: AUTOMATIC - CANNOT BE DISABLED** ]
[ **FUNCTION IS HARDCODED FOR HOST PROTECTION** ]
"Of course it is."
The headache was getting worse. I checked the energy reading—it had dropped to 68/100. Just from running the tutorial and scanning myself twice. This was going to be a learning curve.
I left the bathroom and grabbed Tedd's phone from the nightstand. Seventeen messages. Most were work-related—case files, meeting reminders, a group chat with other detectives arguing about football. One text stood out.
Uncle Richard: Another gift coming your way, nephew. Just because I can. Enjoy yourself. You work too hard.
I opened the banking app. The balance made me blink. Seventy-three thousand dollars in checking. Another two hundred thousand in savings. Stock portfolios I didn't understand but the host body's memories assured me were solid.
Tedd Colen came from money. Extended family money, the kind where uncles sent gifts for no reason and aunts remembered your birthday with four-figure checks. The original Tedd had been embarrassed by it, tried to make his own way as a cop. But he'd never refused the money.
"Smart man," I thought. "Because I'm going to need every penny."
This was The Mentalist universe. Season 1 would start in about a month—the host memories were fuzzy on exact dates, but I knew it was soon. Patrick Jane would begin consulting with CBI. Teresa Lisbon would be dealing with Red John cases. And I needed to be there. Not as a random Sacramento detective, but as someone valuable. Someone they couldn't ignore.
The problem was Red John.
I closed my eyes, trying to pull up memories from the show. Patrick Jane's backstory. The murder of his wife and daughter. Red John's signature, the smiley face painted in blood. Major cases, plot twists, the season finales where everything exploded.
Nothing. Blank spaces where the memories should be. I knew the broad strokes—serial killer, cat-and-mouse game, eventually revealed after seven seasons—but the details were gone. Names, dates, victims, clues. All of it missing, like someone had taken an eraser to that specific section of my brain.
[ **KNOWLEDGE RESTRICTION DETECTED** ]
[ **CERTAIN MEMORIES INACCESSIBLE - POSSIBLE SYSTEM LIMITATION OR NARRATIVE PROTECTION** ]
"Narrative protection? You mean someone doesn't want me spoiling the plot?"
The System didn't answer. Typical.
I sat on the bed, phone in hand, thinking. No Red John knowledge meant no shortcuts. I couldn't just hand CBI the killer's identity. Couldn't prevent specific murders because I didn't know which ones were coming. I was in the story, but I wasn't omniscient.
What I had was the System. The ability to read people better than anyone except maybe Patrick Jane himself. And resources—money, a badge, a detective's credentials. That was my advantage.
The TV remote sat on the coffee table. I grabbed it, turned on the local news. A blonde anchor was discussing Sacramento politics, something about the Governor's education bill. I focused on her face, trying to activate the Profile Generator deliberately.
[ **ANALYZING: NEWS ANCHOR (UNKNOWN IDENTITY)** ]
[ **CONFIDENCE: 73%** ]
[ **STRESS: 28%** ]
[ **DECEPTION: READING TELEPROMPTER - GENUINE BELIEF IN CONTENT: 51%** ]
[ **ENERGY: 66/100** ]
The data was messy, uncertain. Fifty-one percent genuine belief could mean anything. But it was there, functional, giving me information I couldn't have gotten otherwise. I tried scanning her co-anchor, an older man with gray hair.
[ **ANALYZING: NEWS ANCHOR (UNKNOWN IDENTITY)** ]
[ **CONFIDENCE: 68%** ]
[ **STRESS: 22%** ]
[ **DECEPTION: MINIMAL - PROFESSIONAL DELIVERY** ]
[ **HIDDEN CONCERN: PERSONAL MATTER (UNRELATED TO BROADCAST)** ]
[ **ENERGY: 63/100** ]
Better. More specific. The System was learning, or I was getting better at using it. Each scan cost energy, but the quality improved. Practice would make this second nature.
My stomach growled. I realized I hadn't eaten since... whenever Tedd's last meal had been. The kitchen was small but well-stocked. I made coffee and toast, eating mechanically while my mind raced.
One month until Season 1. I needed a plan. CBI was state-level, handled major crimes across California. Sacramento PD was local. To get their attention, I needed a case. Something big enough that crossing jurisdictional lines made sense. Something that would put me in front of Teresa Lisbon.
The Vanderfeld Embassy Theft. Tedd's memories offered the basics—three months ago, diplomatic residence was robbed. Art and documents stolen. No leads. The case went cold because local PD didn't have resources for international implications.
But what if someone did? What if a detective with unusual insight could crack it?
[ **ENERGY: 61/100** ]
The headache was getting sharper. I needed rest. The System had warned me about depletion, and I believed it. My first day of transmigration wasn't the time to push limits.
I finished the coffee and went back to bed. The ceiling crack stared down at me, that frozen lightning bolt leading nowhere. My last thought before sleep was simple.
"I died on a subway platform. I woke up in a TV show with a System in my head. And somehow, I'm going to make this work."
The blue text faded, leaving only darkness.
[ **REST MODE ACTIVATED** ]
[ **ENERGY REGENERATION: ACTIVE** ]
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