Chapter 1: Tonight's the Night
The knife in my hand wasn't mine.
Neither were the fingers wrapped around it. Neither was the sweat crawling down my spine or the thundering pulse in my ears. A second ago—a second ago I'd been somewhere else. Someone else.
Dying.
The memory hit like a gunshot. Headlights. Wet asphalt. My actual body—my real body—crumpling against the hood of an SUV on a rainy Philadelphia street. I'd been walking home from work. Thirty-two years old. Accountant. Single. The driver had been texting.
And then nothing.
And then this.
A whimper dragged me back. A man lay strapped to a table three feet away, plastic wrap cocooning him from neck to ankle. His eyes bulged white in the dim light. Photographs surrounded him—children's faces, some smiling, some not. The smell hit next: bleach, copper, and something animal underneath it all.
"Tonight's the night."
The voice came from inside my skull. Deep. Paternal. Disappointed in a way that made my stomach drop.
"Finish what you started."
Blue light exploded across my vision.
[SYSTEM BINDING COMPLETE]
[HARRY'S CODE 2.0 — ONLINE]
[WELCOME, HOST. YOU HAVE INHERITED THE DARK PASSENGER.]
I staggered backward. The knife clattered against the plastic-sheeted floor. Stats materialized in the corner of my sight like a video game HUD I couldn't dismiss:
[CONTROL: 12 | PRECISION: 18 | INSIGHT: 22 | FACADE: 15 | SHADOW: 14 | RESOLVE: 10]
[URGE METER: 89% — CRITICAL]
[HEAT: 5 — COLD]
[CODE ADHERENCE: 50% — ACCEPTABLE]
"Pick up the knife."
The voice again. Harry. The name surfaced from somewhere I didn't understand—inherited memory from whatever body I now inhabited. Harry Morgan. Father. Cop. Dead.
"What the hell is happening to me?"
[ORIENTATION IN PROGRESS]
[HOST CONFUSION: NORMAL. TRANSMIGRATION DISORIENTATION WILL PASS.]
[CURRENT TARGET: MIKE DONOVAN. YOUTH PASTOR. CHILD MURDERER.]
[EVIDENCE: SUFFICIENT. GUILT: VERIFIED. CODE: SATISFIED.]
The man on the table—Donovan—thrashed against his bindings. Duct tape muffled his screams into wet, desperate sounds.
"Please," he choked out. "Please, I have a family—"
[TARGET DEFENSE MECHANISM: APPEAL TO SYMPATHY]
[IRRELEVANT. HE KILLED THREE CHILDREN.]
I looked at the photographs. Really looked. A boy with a Spider-Man backpack. A girl in a soccer uniform. Another boy, younger, maybe seven. All smiling. All dead because of the man weeping on the table.
Something stirred in my chest. Not sympathy. Something darker.
Hunger.
The Dark Passenger.
I understood now—at least the shape of it. This body came with baggage. Thirty-five years of Dexter Morgan's life, his urges, his rituals, his need. The system wasn't creating something new. It was managing what already existed.
[URGE METER: 91% — CRITICAL]
[WARNING: URGE SUPPRESSION IMPOSSIBLE AT CURRENT LEVELS]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: SATISFY THE HUNGER. CODE-COMPLIANT TARGET AVAILABLE.]
My hands trembled. Not from fear. From anticipation that didn't belong to me.
"The Code exists for a reason," Harry's voice murmured. "We are what we are, son. But we can choose what we do with it. This man killed children. He escaped justice. The law failed. Now there's only you."
I retrieved the knife. The weight felt familiar in a body that had held it hundreds of times before.
"I don't even know what I am anymore," I whispered.
[YOU ARE THE HOST OF HARRY'S CODE 2.0]
[PURPOSE: CHANNEL DESTRUCTIVE URGES TOWARD JUSTIFIED TARGETS]
[RULE 1: DON'T GET CAUGHT]
[RULE 2: NEVER KILL AN INNOCENT]
[RULE 3: KILLING MUST SERVE A PURPOSE]
Donovan's muffled pleading had devolved into sobs.
"Look at him," Harry said. "Really look. Do you see remorse? Or do you see fear of consequences?"
I studied the man's eyes. Behind the terror, something calculating lurked. Even now, strapped to a kill table, he was looking for an angle. A deal. A way to talk his way out.
"You watched them die," I said. My voice came out different—lower, flatter, stripped of the panic still screaming inside my skull. Dexter's voice. "You buried them in your backyard. And then you went home to your wife and children and ate dinner like nothing happened."
Donovan's sobbing intensified.
[URGE METER: 94% — CRITICAL]
[CONTROL FAILURE IMMINENT]
[DECIDE: FEED THE HUNGER OR ATTEMPT SUPPRESSION (12% SUCCESS PROBABILITY)]
The room seemed to narrow. The photographs of dead children stared at me. The hunger clawed at the edges of my consciousness, demanding satisfaction.
Whoever I was before—the accountant, the nobody, the man who died on wet Philadelphia asphalt—that person would have called the police. Turned away. Let the system handle it.
But the system had handled it. Mike Donovan walked free. Three children rotted in unmarked graves.
I raised the knife.
"Good," Harry said. "This is who we are. This is what we do."
"No." I shook my head. "This is what you made. What he made. I'm just—"
What? A passenger in someone else's nightmare? A ghost wearing a killer's skin?
[URGE METER: 96%]
[FINAL WARNING: SUPPRESS OR SATISFY]
Donovan screamed behind his gag. The sound barely registered. Everything had compressed to the knife in my hand and the hunger howling for release.
I made my choice.
Not because I believed in dark justice. Not because Harry's ghost convinced me. I chose because three children were dead and their killer was crying for mercy he'd never given them.
And because the thing living inside me would take control if I didn't give it something.
"That's my boy," Harry whispered.
The knife plunged down.
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