Darkness. No pain. No light.
Then breath — sudden, hard, like surfacing from beneath ice.
Aiden Cross gasped and nearly rolled off the side of the bed. Cold sweat clung to him like plastic wrap. His hands clawed the sheets before his brain caught up.
This wasn't his bed.
It wasn't even his room.
The ceiling was cracked, yellowed by time. The walls were bare plaster. An air conditioner rattled weakly in the window. Something buzzed above — maybe a light fixture, maybe a nest of flies. The place smelled like rust, dust, and corner-store detergent.
He sat up, slowly, his breathing ragged.
This was real.
He pressed his palm to the mattress. Solid. Rough fabric. He touched his face. Jawline was tighter. Cheek smoother.
Aiden stumbled to the window like a drunk, palms flat against the grime-smeared glass.
New York. Queens, specifically. He recognized the skyline even if it looked… older. Raw. Fewer screens. More yellow halogen glow. Buildings rougher, windows dimmer.
A flickering TV from a neighbor's apartment cast the pale blue face of Tony Stark across the brick wall next door.
The quote crawled across the news ticker beneath it:
"I am Iron Man."
His chest tightened. Every part of him wanted to doubt it. But he couldn't.
Not when he looked down and saw his hands.
Small. Slim. No tattoos. No scars. No calluses from years of gaming or a bad job in logistics.
Teenage hands.
He backed up, dizzy.
Then something blinked — not in the room, but in his vision.
No sound. No voice. Just text, hovering midair with impossible stillness.
[Interface Active]
Status: Observation Mode
Cognitive Link: STABLE
System Latency: 2.1%
Progression Tier: 0
Physical Sync: Incomplete
Aiden stared, jaw slack. He looked away. The text followed. Like a HUD.
"This is a dream," he said aloud, just to hear his voice.
No glitch. No dissolve. The Interface didn't vanish. It blinked once, then faded into the periphery of his vision like it was waiting.
He spun back toward the room. Now moving faster, searching. Closet. Desk. Mirror.
There — a warped rectangle with spots of corrosion.
He looked into it.
And a stranger looked back.
Not a stranger. Himself. Aiden. Seventeen. Pale. Sharp chin. Mess of dark hair. That same old scar just beneath his eye — only faded, like it hadn't happened yet.
His legs gave out, and he sat hard on the edge of the bed.
No transition. No reincarnation screen. No gods. No truck-kun. No 'choose your powers' roulette. Just this.
Cold, quiet, and real.
Then he whispered it. A single word he hadn't said in a decade.
"…Marvel."
And the Interface pulsed once, dim blue:
Recognized: Primary Worldline — Earth-199999
Anchor Sync Confirmed
The room had no clock. Just a cheap flip phone on the bedside table, buzzing with a missed call and no service. Aiden ignored it. He had bigger questions.
He moved through the small apartment with cautious urgency — hands grazing surfaces, eyes scanning like he was already being watched.
He wasn't in a stranger's place.
The bills on the counter said Cross, Aiden.
The school ID pinned to the fridge had his face — teenage version — with a chipped badge for Midtown High.
There were notebooks, algebra worksheets, half-done sketches of circuits.
It was him. Just… younger. And real.
There was a laptop on the kitchen counter. Thick. Old. The kind that made fan noises when you blinked too hard.
He flipped it open. Powered it up.
The boot screen was sluggish. The wallpaper was a black-and-white still of a younger RDJ in Chaplin. He didn't remember setting that.
Then the date flashed across the desktop:
Tuesday, March 9, 2010.
He leaned back in the cracked vinyl chair. Let it sink in.
This was after Tony came out as Iron Man.
Before Thor. Before Cap thawed.
Before the Battle of New York.
Before the Snap. Before… everything.
"I'm early."
A shadow passed behind his eyes. Not fear. Not excitement. Just… the cold press of inevitability. The knowledge that all of it was coming — and that he, Aiden Cross, might not make it past Thor.
He opened a browser.
The internet worked, but it was clunky. Forums buzzing about Stark's "narcissist stunt." Conspiracy blogs firing up chatter about alien tech. Some chatter about "Project PEGASUS," but nothing credible yet.
Then something new flickered at the edge of his sight.
[Entity Detected: Digital Stream — Taggable]
Would you like to analyze the feed? [Y/N]
He blinked.
"…Y."
The screen didn't change. But inside his head, it was like a layer peeled back.
Feed Source: Stark Industries Broadcast | Global Reach: 83%
Keyword Saturation: ARC REACTOR, STARK LEGACY, SUIT
Narrative Anchor Strength: 74%
Probability Forecast: Tech Spiral Incoming — Estimated Timeline Disruption: Low
Low? Low.
That stung.
He muttered under his breath, "So Tony Stark inventing world peace is a low threat? What the hell does high look like?"
The Interface offered nothing. No voice. No commentary.
Just observation mode.
He ran his hands over his face. Still no enhancements. No powers. No super strength, speed, healing, charisma boost, nothing. This wasn't a cheat code. It was a toolbox.
And it was locked.
Then he froze.
The mirror across the kitchenette flickered. Not the glass. The overlay.
[Environmental Note: No Surveillance Detected]
[Status: Public Utility – Disconnected]
[Risk Rating: Minimal]
That… was new. It had just started feeding him location data.
He stood, slowly, and whispered toward the open air:
"Can you hear me?"
No response.
"Can you help me?"
Nothing.
"Can you tell me how not to die?"
The Interface blinked once.
[Not Currently Supported in Observation Mode]
"Great," he muttered. "You're the Netflix of survival skills. Thanks."
The Interface dimmed again. No snark. No punishment. Just indifference.
Aiden crossed the room, picked up a hoodie from the floor, and slid it on. Thin, worn. Too cold outside, but he'd manage.
He paused at the door, hand on the knob.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's find out how real this world really is."
The Interface gave no encouragement.
Only the silent flicker of new data as he stepped outside:
[New Zone: 38th Avenue – Civilian Sector]
Crowd Density: Moderate
Threat Level: Low
Anomalous Entities: 0
So far.
The cold hit him like a warning.
Not the temperature — the noise. The moment he stepped onto 38th Avenue, it roared around him: tires screeching at corners, a cabbie cursing in four languages, subway rumble bleeding through the pavement, wind dragging black plastic bags like ghosts across the curb.
The Interface didn't speak, but it responded.
[Crowd Density: Moderate]
[Noise Threshold: Acceptable]
[Threat Level: Low]
It wasn't immersive. It wasn't cinematic. It was clinical. The world didn't slow. It sharpened.
Every person Aiden passed lit up faintly in his vision. Not glowing, just marked — like a ghost of metadata overlaid on flesh.
"Civilian – Fatigued – No Weapon"
"Shop Owner – Age 55 – Passive"
"Courier – Low Alert – Concealed Blade (Utility Tool)"
He blinked rapidly and saw it all disappear.
Another blink — back again.
Like toggling a heads-up display. The Interface didn't enhance his vision. It just translated what he already saw.
He crossed the street slowly, moving through clusters of pedestrians. A woman in heels clipped past him, labeled "Caffeine Crash In 12 Minutes – Unaware". A man with earbuds drew a slow tag: "Distraction Risk: 87% – Predictable Movement Pattern."
It wasn't just watching.
It was predicting.
"You're not a power," Aiden muttered under his breath. "You're a… spreadsheet with a god complex."
The Interface didn't answer. It simply marked a loose stone under his foot as "Trip Hazard – Likely Avoided."
He didn't trip.
He smiled — for the first time. It was small, crooked, but real.
This wasn't fantasy. It was strategy. Pattern recognition. Mental advantage.
He rounded the next corner toward a busier intersection, just as the light changed. Traffic moved in slow bursts, horns honking before anything actually started. Queens chaos.
Then his vision pulsed once — quick and sharp.
[Entity Detected]
Status: Tagged – RED]
Subject Class: Confidential
[Hostile Potential: HIGH]
Aiden stopped walking.
Across the street, under the awning of a corner bookstore, stood a woman in a gray coat. Her posture was relaxed, one hand tucked into a pocket, the other loosely holding a paper cup of coffee. She wasn't staring at anyone. She wasn't moving suspiciously. She didn't look dangerous.
But the Interface disagreed.
The tag hovered just above her head in dim red:
"Romanoff, Natasha – Alias: Black Widow"
Affiliation: S.H.I.E.L.D.
Visibility Status: UNMASKED
Observation Mode: ACTIVE
Aiden's mouth went dry.
She was here. Already. He hadn't even made it to the Thor timeline and Natasha Romanoff was standing twenty feet away, drinking coffee and watching nothing in particular.
Except… no.
Her eyes shifted.
Not sharply. Not dramatically. Just a slow tilt of the head. A tiny glance through a reflection in the bookstore window. Not toward him directly — but near him. Toward a security mirror on a lamppost, angled slightly down.
Aiden's image was in it. Clear as day.
"Oh no."
He turned his head too fast, tried to walk casual — casual was dead. His heart pounded like someone dropped it into a washing machine. He ducked into the alley beside a laundromat, slipped between two cracked dumpsters, pressed his back to the wall.
The Interface flickered in his vision again:
"Entity Romanoff: Peripheral Contact — ALERT THRESHOLD: ORANGE."
"Recommended Action: REMOVE LINE OF SIGHT."
He held his breath, listening. His pulse thudded in his ears. Sirens in the distance. Steam from a vent tickled his ankle. But no footsteps. No shout. No gunfire. Just silence.
And then—
"Entity Tag Imprinted."
He blinked.
The red text dimmed. It didn't vanish — just became a symbol. A marker.
Target now registered. Further observation may unlock advanced behavioral mapping.
He exhaled slowly.
That's when it hit him.
He was visible now. Not because of the Interface. Because he was an anomaly.
Natasha wouldn't forget his face. Not in this world.
"I need to vanish," he whispered.
But it was already too late.
He wasn't watching from the outside anymore.
He was in the story now.
He didn't run.
Running would draw more attention. He didn't need a training montage to know that. It was instinct — the same kind that told him stepping into this alley had only bought him a few seconds.
The Interface dimmed, but its warnings didn't stop.
[Line-of-Sight Lost – Hostile Threat Status: Unresolved]
[Subject Romanoff: Memorization Threshold Likely Exceeded]
"Memorization threshold" — what a polite way to say: she probably knows what your face looks like now.
Aiden moved carefully along the back edge of the alley. He didn't look back. There were no chase scenes, no epic orchestral cues. Just the crunch of his foot over broken glass and the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears.
The Interface pinged again.
"Environmental Note: Cameras – 2 (East, West)"
"Angle of Capture: Inconclusive"
Inconclusive. He could live with that.
He ducked through the alley's rear exit, emerging into a quieter block — mostly residential, a few parked cars, low light. He kept walking. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to disappear into the background.
Like a nobody.
He passed a kid dragging a suitcase down the steps of a brownstone. The Interface labeled him instantly:
"Civilian – Age 11 – Tired – Threat Level: Zero"
Good. He needed more of that.
He rounded another corner. A deli lit up the sidewalk in greenish-yellow light. The scent of over-fried oil and pickles hit him hard. His stomach made an embarrassed, desperate sound.
He hadn't eaten.
Of course not. This wasn't some RPG where your transmigrated body came with full hydration and caloric backup. He was a seventeen-year-old kid on a fixed routine — and he'd hijacked that life midstream.
He scanned the sidewalk outside the deli. Only one figure loitered nearby — a man in a faded Mets cap leaning against a newsstand, thumbing through an ancient copy of Sports Illustrated.
The Interface pulsed:
"Entity: Civilian – Mismatch in Posture/Data – Suspicion Level: 28%"
"Behavioral Overlay: Possible Surveillance – Cross-checking…"
Then:
"Update: Known Alias – 'Carson, C.' – Affiliation: S.H.I.E.L.D. Field Asset (Class D)"
"Engagement Status: Passive"
Aiden froze.
That man wasn't loitering.
That man was watching.
And not the deli.
She didn't tail me. She tagged me.
And they sent someone else to confirm it.
Aiden stepped back from the light, melting into the shadow cast by the building behind him.
The Interface whispered into his skull like frostbite:
"You are not invisible."
"You are being indexed."
He inhaled sharply through his nose and looked down at his own clothes. Hoodie. Worn jeans. Nondescript sneakers.
Not a disguise. A pattern. One they could now track.
The Interface flickered again, only this time it gave him something new:
[System Note – Tactical Principle #001: Visibility Equals Vulnerability]
Proximity to High-Variance Entities Triggers Accelerated Divergence.
Aiden stared at the line, the words solid and sharp in his head.
He wasn't in a story where fate protected him.
He was in a system that reacted to proximity. The closer he got to major players — heroes, villains, "narrative anchors" — the faster things changed. The Interface wasn't guiding him. It was monitoring anomaly response.
"I'm a walking divergence point," he muttered.
And now they knew it, too.
He turned and vanished into the dark again, ducking through a side gate toward an unlit alley.
Let the real players have the spotlight.
He needed to become something else.
Not invisible.
Not powerful.
Untrackable.