Jake tossed and turned in bed, his eyes squeezed shut as if trapped in a nightmare. At six-foot-four, with dark brown hair and a sharp jawline, he cut a striking figure even in sleep. Suddenly, he bolted upright, chest heaving, cursing at a truck as though it had personally wronged him. His turquoise eyes, laced with silver, opened slowly.
"Damn truck, chasing me like that for no reason," he muttered between heavy breaths. "Thank God it was just a nightmare."
"Is everything okay up there, Jake?" a voice called from downstairs.
"I'm fine, Mum," he answered automatically. Then he froze. What the hell did I just say? His pulse quickened. I don't have parents. I'm an orphan.
He stumbled into the bathroom to wash his face, but pain hit him before he reached the sink. Memories—raw and jagged—poured into his head. He collapsed back onto the bed, body slick with sweat.
"So… it wasn't a dream," he gasped. "That damn truck really did kill me."
The memories of his former life sharpened. His name had been Jake then too. His surname? Meaningless. As an orphan, he never knew if it was real or something an underpaid social worker had slapped onto his file.
He remembered the truck—an Optimus Prime-looking monstrosity with a massive trailer, the kind you'd see in convoys of protesting truckers. It appeared out of nowhere one day, just as he was leaving Walmart with three bags of candy, heading toward Shoppers for even more sugar.
It nearly crushed him.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, you motherf—" He remembered himself cursing furiously before storming off. Later, a kid bumped into him, knocking his candy to the ground. As Jake bent to pick it up, the truck came roaring back. He dodged at the last second, the vehicle grinding his bag into the pavement.
It had no driver. Or maybe the windows were just impossibly tinted. Either way, it wasn't normal.
This can't be a coincidence. He ran—because standing around waiting to die like a horror movie cliché was idiotic. In his head, he mocked the movie trope where "white people just freeze when shit goes down." Not him. He bolted like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.
It didn't save him.
Now, here he was, in a new life. Stronger. Smarter. Handsome, even. The thought almost made him laugh. If I had half this intelligence before, I wouldn't have tried to outrun a fifteen-wheeler. I'd have known only a fool does that. He remembered glimpses of red and black, and a faint, maniacal laugh before it all went dark.
But who cared? He had another chance. In his old life, he'd been a girlfriendless, broke virgin wasting away on cartoons and comics. Even his business degree had gone to waste because he hated business itself. He'd only taken it to someday delegate his own company to people who did care.
Not this time.
"Jake, you're going to miss the bus!" his mother called from downstairs.
Cue record scratch.
Yep. That's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up here. Short version: truck goes vroom, I go splat. Now I'm in Marvel. Yay me.