I remember the smell before anything else.
Sterile alcohol, burned flesh, ozone from overworked machines.
It lingered in my throat, even now, long after my eyes had closed for the last time. People liked to say that death was quiet, that consciousness faded like a candle without air. That was a lie. My death was precise, clinical, and assured to the last heartbeat.
I was a surgeon.
I wasn't the kind who appeared on billboards or in medical journals for dramatic accomplishments. I didn't seek fame. I pursued improvement. When I reached a level where I could resolve almost all the problems the human body had, I resigned.
It bored me that, there was no challenge left for me.
Then I received a letter, which changed everything.
It was an invitation.
An invitation to be one of the seven surgeons, to experiment illegally on humans.
At that time, I did not care about morals, so I accepted without hesitation.
The experiment considered humans as machines.
And machines could be improved.
The project had no official name. Internally, we called it Atlas.
Publicly, it didn't exist.
Atlas was not about curing disease. It was about removing the natural human limits.
Why did muscles have to break when their limits were reached? Why did nerves fail under strain when they could be strengthened to carry signals better? Why did organs wear down at different speeds when the body could have been made to age evenly?
These were not philosophical questions. They were engineering problems.
The early trials failed. Catastrophically. Bodies rejected enhancements the way immune systems rejected foreign substances. Reinforced bones shattered muscles. Enhanced hearts ruptured vessels. The problem was never strength. It was balance.
So we stopped enhancing parts.
We began restructuring systems.
I still remembered the night it finally made sense. Three in the morning. An empty operating room. I was staring at the exposed muscles of a body when I realized everyone had been thinking the same way. Make muscles stronger. Make bones harder. Make nerves faster.
They kept trying to push the body upward.
But the body didn't work like that.
It wasn't built to grow in a straight line. It was built in layers, with every part supporting the next.
Muscles, blood flow, nerves, and organs never improved at the same pace. One part would get stronger while another lagged behind. Signals arrived too late. Energy didn't reach where it was needed. The body failed not because it was weak, but because its parts stopped working together.
It was something as straightforward as this, but we failed to consider it because of its simplicity.
So I rewrote the protocol.
No machines added. No implants. Nothing artificial. Everything was done from the inside. Stress the body, let it recover, then stress it again. Damage was controlled, never accidental. Food and nutrients were given at the exact moments the body needed them most. The nervous system was trained during sleep. Hormones were guided carefully instead of being forced.
We didn't push the body past its limits.
It was taught.
We taught it that its limits were wrong.
I volunteered after Trial 19.
Not out of heroism. Out of certainty.
If my theory failed, I deserved the consequences.
If it succeeded, the human baseline would never be the same again.
The first six hours were agony.
Not the kind that makes you scream. The kind that settles deep, inside the smallest parts of the body. Every fiber felt as if it were being rewritten, one line at a time.
My bones felt hollow. Then too full. Then wrong. Then… correct.
My heartbeat slowed. Not from weakness, but because it no longer needed to rush. Each beat did more than the last.
Breathing changed. The same air, but my body learned to take more from it. Less waste. Less loss.
Nothing was breaking.
Everything was adjusting.
By hour twelve, my pain receptors dulled themselves.
By hour twenty-four, my body stopped treating the changes as foreign.
By hour forty-eight, Atlas was no longer an experiment.
It was me.
I survived.
More than that, I stabilized.
My muscle density increased without loss of flexibility. My nerves transmitted signals with reduced reaction time. My organs synchronized their tempo. Healing accelerated, not explosively, but cleanly, without scar tissue.
I became… quiet.
Not emotionally. Biologically.
A system running without noise.
They shut the project down three weeks later.
Too dangerous, they said. Too unethical. Too unpredictable.
They were wrong on all counts.
Atlas wasn't dangerous.
People were.
The night I died, I wasn't on an operating table.
I was driving home. There was heavy downpour. My mind was still working through data I had not been allowed to release.
A huge truck crossed the red light.
Metal crushed in slow stages. The frame held longer than it should have. Glass shattered late, not early.
My body fought.
Muscles locked. Hands stayed on the wheel. Pain arrived, but consciousness did not leave. I felt the damage stack instead of explode.
Then my spine failed. Not instantly. It gave way between two heartbeats.
The second never came.
I felt the hands of someone checking my pulse, it was obvious they wanted to bury atlas with me.
There was no panic.
Only irritation.
I had so much more to refine.
Then darkness folded in on itself, not like sleep, but like compression. Consciousness squeezed inward, tighter and tighter, until even thought felt too large to exist.
And then,
I tried to open my eyes.
Nothing happened.
"I don't have eyes."
I tried to breathe.
There was no resistance. No air. No lungs answering the command.
"I'm not breathing."
Understanding arrived before sensation. Not panic. Not confusion. Just certainty.
"I'm inside a body."
A pause. Awareness stretched, touched boundaries that were too close, too soft.
"A new one."
Small. Unfinished. Soft in ways that offended every instinct I had ever trained.
"An infant?"
The scale was wrong. The constraints too absolute. The systems too incomplete.
"No. Smaller."
The realization settled with quiet weight.
"This is a fetus."
Then another question surfaced, slower, heavier.
"Am I… dead?"
Memory answered first. Rain. Headlights. Impact.
"Yes."
So why awareness?
"Reincarnation?"
The word felt borrowed. A concept from novels, theories he had dismissed as fantasy.
"Or relocation?"
Another world? Another system? A punishment? An accident?
"There's no reason yet."
No voice explained. No authority announced itself.
"I wasn't chosen."
That certainty was immediate.
"If this were reward or judgment, there would be rules."
There were none.
Just existence.
"Then why am I here?"
No answer came.
So he moved on.
Time did not pass normally. He had awareness. Thought lost lost its order, but memory stayed intact. Concepts remained sharp.
I felt growth not as change, but as construction.
Cells dividing.
Organs assembling.
Systems coming into being.
And I watched them.
"That's… crude."
The design was inefficient. Not because it was natural, but because it followed compromise instead of intent. Energy spread without control. Neural pathways formed redundantly. Muscle fibers aligned without regard for future strain.
"This body was never meant to be perfect."
If Atlas had taught me anything, it was this:
"Early structure determines lifelong limits."
No one remembered the womb. No one remembered infancy. That was why no one questioned why everyone eventually has a ceiling.
"But I remember."
And because I remembered, I understood.
"I can't change the blueprint."
That was fixed. Genetic instruction was already unfolding.
"But I can influence the construction."
I couldn't move muscles. I couldn't force development.
"But I can guide signals."
So I began with the only thing available.
"Rhythm."
There were no lungs yet, but there was expansion and contraction. Nutrients flowed in steady pulses. I aligned my awareness with it, smoothing the cycle.
"Less waste."
Then nerves.
Random sparks. Disordered firing.
"Organize. Don't suppress."
Patterns formed. Pauses between signals.
"Rest matters."
Muscle fibers followed. I encouraged even tension as they formed, preventing small errors that would later become permanent weakness.
Bone density required patience.
"Too fast becomes brittle. Too slow stays weak."
I balanced it carefully, cell by cell, guided by memory shaped through surgery.
To the outside world, nothing changed.
Then came birth.
Light cut in.
"Too bright."
Air burned as lungs activated. My heart surged, redirecting itself. Sound arrived without filter. Voices. Motion.
"Too much."
I cried.
Not from pain.
"From overload."
Hands lifted me. Warmth followed. Exhaustion settled, deep and systemic.
"I'll allow sleep."
But the work did not stop.
I did not train.
"I optimized."
All of it happened beneath notice. Beneath expectation. Beneath the awareness of a world that had no idea what kind of body was quietly forming within it.
"I don't know where I am yet."
No name for the world. No knowledge of the family whose blood now flowed through me.
"That can wait."
One truth mattered more than anything else.
"I started where no one else ever could."