Chapter 1: THE WRONG BODY
My chest hurt. Deep ache, like someone had parked a truck on my ribcage. Antiseptic burned in my nostrils. Somewhere nearby, a machine beeped in steady rhythm.
I tried to sit up. My body moved wrong—too light, joints loose in ways they shouldn't be. My hand pressed against the bed rail. Long fingers. Dark skin several shades deeper than mine.
Not my hand.
"Easy, easy." A woman in medical scrubs appeared, pressing me back. She had the stretched-thin look of someone who'd spent too long in low gravity. "Kwame, you're lucky to be breathing. Pressure seal blew three meters from your face."
Kwame. The name bounced around my skull, finding no purchase.
"Where—" My voice came out wrong too. Higher pitch, different resonance. "Where am I?"
"Ceres Station. Medical Level Four." She checked something on a handheld device. "You've been out fourteen hours. Memory might be spotty—that's normal after decompression events."
Ceres Station.
The words landed like a gut punch. Ceres. The asteroid. The one from—
No. Impossible.
My last memory surfaced: Baltimore, Earth. August heat thick enough to swim through. O'Malley's bar after a twelve-hour security shift. Bourbon, neat. The game on the mounted screens. Getting up to take a piss.
Then nothing.
Now this.
"I need—" I swallowed, throat dry. "Bathroom."
"You should rest—"
"Please."
She hesitated, then helped me stand. The gravity confirmed what I already knew. Earth pulls at one G. This was maybe a third of that, and my body moved like it had never known anything else. Muscle memory kicked in, knees bending at wrong angles, spine curving in ways that should have felt alien but didn't.
Kwame's body knew how to walk in low-G. I was just along for the ride.
The medical bay was small, utilitarian. Two other beds, both empty. The nurse guided me to a door marked with a universal bathroom symbol. I closed it behind me before she could follow.
The mirror hung above a metal sink.
A young man stared back at me. Early twenties, dark-skinned, with the elongated features of someone born in low gravity—tall forehead, long jaw, stretched proportions that would look wrong anywhere near a planet. His eyes were my eyes, somehow. Brown, bloodshot, terrified.
I touched the face. The reflection did the same.
This was real.
"Okay." The word came out as a whisper. "Okay. Okay."
My hands gripped the sink. The metal was cool. Real. My fingers—Kwame's fingers—turned white at the knuckles.
Ceres Station. The Expanse universe. Six seasons of hard science fiction that I'd binged during lockdown. Earth and Mars locked in cold war. The Belt full of people treated like resources, not humans. The Canterbury destroyed by stealth ships. The protomolecule eating Eros.
All fiction.
Except now I was standing in a bathroom on an asteroid, wearing a body that wasn't mine, and fiction had become my reality.
The panic hit like a wave. My knees buckled. I slid down until my back pressed against the wall, the cold metal bleeding through the thin medical gown. Air came in short gasps. The room spun.
Breathe.
I forced myself to focus on sensation. The recycled air tasted metallic, processed through filters that had been cycling the same molecules for decades. Temperature hovered around nineteen degrees Celsius—station standard. The floor hummed with the distant vibration of environmental systems.
Real things. Concrete things.
I sat there for ten minutes. Maybe more. The panic didn't leave, but it settled into something manageable. A constant pressure behind my eyes instead of a screaming alarm.
Eventually, my breathing steadied.
Cole Reeves. That was my name. Former U.S. Army, 3rd Special Forces Group. Eight years in. Honorable discharge after an IED took out half my hearing in my left ear and most of my faith in the mission. Private security after that—corporate buildings, nothing exciting. Thirty-two years old as of last month.
All of that was gone now.
I pushed myself up. The face in the mirror hadn't changed. Kwame—whoever he was, whatever happened to him—had given me his body. Or something had taken his body and put me in it.
Either way, I couldn't afford to fall apart.
The Expanse universe wasn't kind to the unprepared. The Canterbury incident started everything—the ship destroyed, the crew scattered, the protomolecule unleashed. Billions would die before it was over. Earth hit by asteroids. Eros turned into a biological weapon. The Ring gates opening to a thousand new worlds.
I didn't know when I was in the timeline. Could be days before Canterbury. Could be years.
First step: find out.
I splashed water on my face—Kwame's face—and forced myself to meet those brown eyes in the mirror.
"You can do this," I told the stranger staring back. "You've survived worse."
A lie, maybe. But lies could keep you moving until the truth caught up.
I straightened the medical gown, ran my fingers through hair that curled differently than I was used to, and opened the bathroom door.
The nurse looked up from her terminal. "Feeling better?"
"Yeah." I tried out a smile. It felt wrong on these lips. "When can I get out of here?"
"Doctor wants to keep you overnight. Standard observation."
Overnight meant answers delayed. Overnight meant sitting in a bed, pretending to be someone I didn't know, hoping nobody noticed that Kwame's personality had taken an extended vacation.
"I feel fine. Really. The accident rattled me, but—" I searched for the right tone, the right words. Something a dock worker would say. "I've got shifts to make up. Can't afford to miss the credits."
Her expression softened. In the Belt, money was survival. Everyone understood that math.
"I'll talk to Dr. Chen. No promises."
She left. I sat on the edge of the bed, processing.
Kwame. Dock worker on Ceres. Pressure accident that should have killed him. And now me, wearing his skin, trying to figure out how to live his life.
Somewhere in this station, there had to be records. A hand terminal with his messages, his contacts, his history. Somewhere, I could learn who this person was. What he owed. Who he loved.
And somewhere in this universe, the Canterbury was hauling ice toward its doom.
I needed to know how long I had.
They let me out two hours later. Dr. Chen—a tired-looking man with the same stretched Belter build—ran me through basic cognitive tests. I answered carefully, pretending confusion where appropriate, playing the role of a man recovering from trauma.
It wasn't hard. I was recovering from trauma. Just not the kind he was testing for.
The nurse handed me a bundle of clothes. Kwame's clothes, pulled from a locker somewhere. Industrial jumpsuit, worn at the knees. Boots that had seen better decades. An ID chip in a pouch that apparently went behind my left ear, though muscle memory told me it was already implanted.
"Take it easy for a few days," the nurse said. "And eat something. You're underweight even for a Belter."
I thanked her and walked out of the medical bay into Ceres Station proper.
The corridor stretched in both directions, curving gently upward in the distance—the spin of the station creating artificial gravity through centrifugal force. People moved past, most with that same elongated look, though I spotted a few with the stockier builds of Earthers or Martians. Cargo loaders. Technicians. A security officer in Star Helix colors.
Humanity's expansion into space, rendered in metal and flesh and recycled air.
I picked a direction and walked. Kwame's body moved with practiced ease, navigating the slight gradient of the floor, adjusting for the spin gravity that pulled at odd angles. I let it carry me while my mind raced.
First priority: learn the timeline. That meant news feeds, public terminals, anything with a date.
Second priority: learn Kwame. Who he was. What he owed. Who might come looking for him.
Third priority: survive.
Everything else could wait.
I found a public information board near a transit hub. The display cycled through schedules, announcements, advertisements. In the corner, a timestamp.
November 14, 2347. Ceres Station Standard Time.
The Canterbury incident happened in early 2351.
Six months. Maybe more, maybe a little less—I couldn't remember the exact date from the show. But roughly six months before James Holden broadcast the distress call that changed everything.
I had time.
Not much, but enough to prepare. Enough to build resources, learn this universe, position myself to survive what was coming.
The board also showed local news. Labor disputes in the docks. A water recycling system upgrade. A reminder about OPA demonstrations being illegal within station limits.
Nothing about stealth ships. Nothing about the protomolecule. Nothing about the end of the world.
Not yet.
I memorized what I could and kept walking. Kwame's body knew where to go—residential level, a coffin-sized hab unit that was apparently home. I let muscle memory guide me, step by step, deeper into the station.
Deeper into my new life.
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