The headache didn't just fade; it eroded, leaving behind a jagged landscape of two lives that didn't fit together.
One moment, Kelvin was defending his thesis on Quantum Chromodynamics in a chilled hall in Ado-Ekiti; the next, he was scavenging for a half-eaten protein bar in a damp corner of a Megacity slum. The whiplash was enough to make him retch. He fell back onto the stained mattress, the "molecular sight" he'd glimpsed earlier flickering out like a dying bulb. No matter how hard he squinted at the dust motes in the air, they remained just... dust.
Darkness took him before he could figure out if he was a ghost, a reincarnator, or just a dying man's hallucination.
________________________
He woke to the sound of a heavy industrial siren blaring from the city center.
Kelvin sat up, bracing for the agony of a cracked skull. It didn't come. He ran a hand over the back of his head—where the lead pipe had connected—and felt nothing but smooth, pale skin. No dried blood. No swelling.
Healed? He frowned. Regeneration ability? No... the "Original Kelvin" was a dud. This must be the soul-bond stabilizing the vessel.
He stood up, his stomach giving a violent, hollow growl. This 17-year-old body was a masterpiece of malnutrition. Looking at his thin wrists, Kelvin felt a flash of irritation. He went from the son of a man who owned half of Abuja's real estate to a boy who probably hadn't seen a piece of steak in three years.
"Na God win,las las" he muttered under his breath, the Nigerian slang slipping out like a reflex. "From Master's degree to manual labor. Inside life, 😅"
He followed the "muscle memory" of the boy he now was. He washed his face with stagnant tap water, pulled on a grime-streaked orange vest, and stepped out into the city.
_________-------____
The Sector 7 Construction Site was a hive of noise and dust. Massive exoskeletons—piloted by humans with minor "Strength" abilities—moved steel beams that would have taken a crane in Kelvin's old world.
"Kelvin! You're late!"
A man with skin like cured leather and a cybernetic eye glared at him. This was Supervisor Miller. "I thought the rats finally finished you off in that squat. Get to the cement. We've got a Level 4 Esper coming to inspect the foundation at noon. If the mix isn't perfect, I'm docking your pay."
Kelvin didn't argue. He couldn't afford to.
He spent the next four hours hauling 50kg bags of synthetic concrete. In his old body, he would have collapsed in twenty minutes. Here, even though the body was thin, it had a wiry endurance born of desperation.
But as he swung a shovel into a pile of gray powder, his mind started to wander. He looked at the chemical composition printed on the side of a discarded bag: Calcium Silicate, Aluminum Oxide, Iron Oxide.
Wait...
He blinked, and for a split second, the world shifted. He wasn't looking at gray powder anymore. He saw the atomic bonds. He saw the impurities—the cheap sand Miller was using to skim off the top of the budget. He saw exactly why the "setting" process would be brittle.
If I just... shift the hydration heat...
He shook his head, the vision vanishing. The strain sent a spike of pain through his temples.
"Don't show off," he whispered to himself, wiping sweat from his brow. "In this world, being a 'smart' powerless kid is just a faster way to get buried. Learn the rules first. Break them later."