I died at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday.
Not the kind of Tuesday you expect to die on, you know? It was just another boring evening in London. Rain hammering the windows of my office at Blackstone Financial, the same gray sky I'd been staring at for the past three years. I was working late again, trying to finish a client portfolio that should have been done hours ago.
My name is Alexander Kane, and up until that moment, the most exciting thing in my life was whether the coffee machine in our break room would finally break down. Twenty-five years old, brown hair that I kept neat for client meetings, green eyes that my mum always said were my best feature. I wore the same black suits every day and drove the same route home every night.
I was ordinary. Completely, utterly ordinary.
But I guess ordinary people can have extraordinary things happen to them.
I remember locking up the office and walking to my car in the underground garage. The BMW was two years old, nothing fancy, but it got me around London without breaking down. I had the radio on, some late-night talk show discussing house prices or politics or whatever people complain about when they can't sleep.
The drive started normal. Traffic was light for a Tuesday night. I took my usual route through Central London, over Westminster Bridge. I'd driven that bridge maybe a thousand times. Never thought twice about it.
I was thinking about work, actually. There was this new client, some tech startup that wanted to invest in cryptocurrency. Risky stuff, but the returns could be massive if they played it right. I was running numbers in my head, calculating potential profit margins. My brain had always been good at that - seeing patterns, weighing risks, finding the angles other people missed.
I was also thinking about tomorrow. Had a date planned with Sarah from accounting. Nothing serious, just dinner and maybe a movie. She had this laugh that made even the most boring office meetings bearable. I was actually looking forward to it.
That's when the truck ran the red light.
I saw it for maybe half a second. A massive lorry, way too fast for the intersection. The driver must have been asleep or drunk or texting. Doesn't matter now. What matters is that thirty tons of steel slammed into the driver's side of my BMW at sixty miles per hour.
The world exploded into noise and pain and spinning metal. My car flipped twice, maybe three times. I remember the sound of glass breaking, the screech of metal against asphalt. Then silence.
Not peaceful silence. The kind of silence that makes you realize something is very, very wrong.
I was floating.
Not in water or anything like that. Just floating in this empty space that wasn't really space. It was dark, but I could see myself somehow. My body was below me, twisted in the wreckage of my car. Blood everywhere. My chest wasn't moving.
I tried to scream, but I didn't have a mouth. Tried to reach out, but I didn't have hands. I was just... awareness. Consciousness without a body.
And then I heard it.
"Subject identified. Alexander Kane, age 25, occupation: financial analyst. Time of death: 11:47 PM. Compatibility assessment in progress."
The voice was cold, mechanical. Like a computer reading data. But there was something else underneath it, something that felt almost alive.
"Assessment complete. Subject shows 97.3% compatibility with Project Harvest. Initiating revival protocol."
I wanted to ask what the hell that meant, but before I could even think the question properly, everything went white.
Next thing I knew, I was back in my body and someone was pounding on my chest.
"Come on, come on!" a woman's voice. Desperate, professional. "Don't you dare die on me!"
My eyes snapped open and I gasped like I'd been underwater for hours. The air tasted like blood and smoke and rain. I was still in my car, but the roof had been cut away. Emergency lights flashed red and blue across broken glass and twisted metal.
A paramedic was leaning over me, her hands still on my chest. She looked shocked.
"Jesus Christ, I thought we'd lost you," she said. "You've been clinically dead for four minutes. Four minutes! How are you even conscious right now?"
Good question. I felt... strange. Not injured, which was weird considering my car looked like it had gone through a blender. I should have been dead. Should have been broken in a dozen places. Instead, I felt more awake than I had in years.
"Can you tell me your name?" the paramedic asked.
"Alexander Kane." My voice sounded normal, which was another surprise.
"Good. Do you know where you are?"
"Westminster Bridge. I think." I tried to sit up, but she pushed me back down.
"Stay still. We need to get you to hospital for observation. What you just survived... it shouldn't be possible."
They loaded me onto a stretcher and into an ambulance. The ride to St. Thomas' Hospital was a blur of questions I couldn't answer and tests that showed results the doctors didn't understand. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. Not even a concussion.
"It's a miracle," one of them said. "The damage to your vehicle... you should be dead."
Yeah, I thought. I was.
They kept me overnight for observation, but there wasn't much to observe. I felt fine. Better than fine, actually. I felt like I could run a marathon or solve complex mathematical equations in my head. Every color seemed brighter. Every sound seemed clearer.
The doctor finally released me the next morning with a stack of papers and instructions to come back if I felt dizzy or nauseous. I took a taxi back to my flat in Canary Wharf, a small one-bedroom place that cost way too much but was close to work.
I was making coffee when it happened.
The blue interface just... appeared. Floating in the air about three feet in front of me, like a holographic computer screen from a sci-fi movie. The text was clear and bright against the background of my kitchen.
**[SYSTEM ACTIVATION COMPLETE]**
**[WELCOME, ALEXANDER KANE]**
**[CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SUCCESSFUL RESURRECTION]**
I dropped my coffee mug. It shattered on the kitchen floor, but I barely noticed. I was staring at impossible words floating in impossible blue light.
"What the hell..." I whispered.
The text changed.
**[INITIAL SHOCK IS NORMAL]**
**[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR PARTICIPATION IN PROJECT HARVEST]**
**[THIS SYSTEM WILL GUIDE YOU THROUGH YOUR NEW ABILITIES]**
I reached out to touch the screen, but my hand passed right through it. It wasn't really there, but it was. I could see it clearly, could read every word, but it had no physical presence.
"This isn't real," I said out loud. "I'm having a breakdown. Post-traumatic stress or something."
**[YOUR MENTAL STATE IS STABLE]**
**[THIS SYSTEM IS REAL AND OPERATIONAL]**
**[WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN THE TUTORIAL?]**
A tutorial. Like it was a video game.
"No," I said firmly. "I don't want any part of whatever this is."
**[PARTICIPATION IS NOT OPTIONAL]**
**[YOUR DEATH AND REVIVAL HAVE BOUND YOU TO THIS SYSTEM]**
**[RESISTANCE WILL RESULT IN INCOMPLETE INTEGRATION]**
The words sent a chill down my spine. I'd died. I'd actually died, and something had brought me back. But what? And why?
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
**[YOU WILL BE GIVEN MISSIONS TO COMPLETE]**
**[SUCCESS WILL GRANT YOU POWER AND EXTEND YOUR LIFE]**
**[FAILURE WILL RESULT IN SYSTEM TERMINATION]**
"And system termination means?"
**[DEATH]**
**[BUT PERMANENT THIS TIME]**
I sat down heavily on my couch, staring at the floating blue text. This was insane. Completely insane. But I'd died and come back to life. I'd seen the interface while I was dead. This wasn't a hallucination or a breakdown.
This was real.
"Fine," I said. "Show me the tutorial."
**[TUTORIAL INITIATED]**
**[LESSON ONE: ENHANCED PERCEPTION]**
**[YOU CAN NOW SEE THINGS THAT NORMAL HUMANS CANNOT]**
**[LEAVE YOUR APARTMENT AND OBSERVE YOUR SURROUNDINGS]**
I didn't want to leave my apartment. I wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend this was all a nightmare. But something told me the system wouldn't accept that kind of resistance. And if system termination meant permanent death...
I got dressed and went outside.
London looked different.
Not obviously different. The streets were the same, the buildings were the same, the people looked normal. But there was something underneath it all, like a second layer of reality that I'd never noticed before.
And then I saw her.
She was standing at the bus stop across from my building, wearing a dark business suit and checking her phone. Looked like any other professional woman in her thirties. Except for her eyes.
They were completely black. Not dark brown or dark blue. Black. Like looking into empty space.
I blinked hard, thinking it was some kind of optical illusion. When I opened my eyes, she was looking directly at me. And she was smiling, showing teeth that were too sharp to be human.
**[TARGET IDENTIFIED: LOW-LEVEL SUPERNATURAL ENTITY]**
**[CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN]**
**[THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL]**
The blue text appeared in the corner of my vision, like subtitles in a movie. The woman's smile widened, and she gave me a little wave before getting on the arriving bus.
I stood there on the sidewalk, watching the bus disappear into traffic, my heart pounding in my chest.
What the hell had I gotten myself into?
**[TUTORIAL LESSON ONE COMPLETE]**
**[LESSON TWO WILL BEGIN WHEN YOU ARE READY]**
**[REMEMBER: WHAT YOU CAN SEE NOW HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE]**
**[YOU SIMPLY LACKED THE ABILITY TO PERCEIVE IT]**
I looked around the street with new eyes. How many other things had I missed? How many monsters had been walking past me every day without me knowing?
And more importantly, what did this system want me to do about it?
The blue interface flickered and showed new text.
**[YOUR FIRST MISSION WILL BE ASSIGNED SOON]**
**[PREPARE YOURSELF, ALEXANDER KANE]**
**[YOUR REAL LIFE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN]**
I walked back to my apartment, but I didn't feel safe there anymore. I didn't feel safe anywhere.
Four minutes dead, and everything had changed.
I just didn't know how much yet.
---
End of Chapter 1