Chapter 1: Awakening in Brooklyn
POV: Kole Martinez
Fluorescent lights flickered overhead like dying stars. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, their pitch rising and falling through concrete and glass. The bed beneath him felt wrong—too soft, too narrow, sheets that smelled like fabric softener instead of his usual detergent. The walls pressed in around him, painted an aggressive beige that no sane person would choose.
Kole's eyes snapped open.
The ceiling stared back, water-stained and unfamiliar. His body ached in places that had never hurt before, muscles tight with tension he didn't remember earning. The taste in his mouth was copper and confusion.
Where the hell am I?
He sat up too fast. The room spun, gravity shifting like he'd been drinking, though his head felt crystalline clear. This wasn't his apartment in Chicago. This wasn't his lumpy mattress or his blackout curtains or his collection of vintage sitcom posters covering the water damage on the far wall.
The last thing he remembered was the truck.
The eighteen-wheeler had blown through the red light at Michigan and Superior, diesel engine screaming as Kole stepped off the curb. He'd been walking home from another dead-end interview, another rejection for another job he didn't really want, earbuds blasting Brooklyn Nine-Nine episodes for the hundredth time. The impact had been instant—metal and bone and the sudden absence of everything.
I died.
The knowledge sat in his chest like swallowed glass. He should be terrified, should be screaming, should be anything other than sitting calmly in a stranger's bedroom trying to process the impossible. But underneath the shock, something else hummed. Recognition. These hands, when he looked at them, felt right despite being wrong. The scar across his knuckles from a childhood accident that never happened to him. The calluses from holding a service weapon he'd never touched.
Service weapon.
The thought came with a flood of images that weren't his. Crime scenes painted in blood and chalk outlines. Case files thick with photographs he'd never taken of victims he'd never met. The weight of a badge against his chest, the particular ache of standing for hours in uncomfortable shoes, the bitter taste of precinct coffee at three in the morning.
Detective Martinez. Third-grade detective at the 74th Precinct. Five years on the force. Clean record, good collar rate, tendency to work alone.
The memories felt like trying to recall a movie he'd watched while drunk—fragments and impressions, emotions without context. Every time he reached for details, they slipped away like smoke.
He stumbled to the bathroom, bare feet on cold linoleum, and stared at the face in the mirror.
Not his face. Never his face. But somehow, terrifyingly, it felt more real than the one he'd worn for twenty-eight years. Darker skin, stronger jaw, eyes that had seen things his soul couldn't quite access. Hispanic features where he'd been pale Irish-German. Broader shoulders, taller frame, hands that looked like they knew how to handle themselves.
How is this possible?
As if responding to the thought, his mind reached out—and caught something.
The sensation was like flexing a muscle he'd never known existed. The bathroom around him sharpened, every detail burning itself into his consciousness with perfect clarity. The crack in the corner tile shaped like a lightning bolt. The way the fluorescent light created two distinct shadows behind the faucet. The precise angle of the towel hanging on the rack, wrinkled from yesterday's use.
He blinked, and the information remained. Crystal clear, perfectly preserved, accessible as if he were still looking directly at it.
Photographic memory.
The term surfaced from somewhere beyond the fragmented memories, carrying certainty he couldn't explain. He tested it, walking back to the bedroom and deliberately studying everything—the pattern of dust motes in the morning light, the arrangement of books on the nightstand, the exact position of a coffee mug on the dresser. Then he closed his eyes and replayed it all. Perfect. Complete. Like having a camera in his head that never ran out of film.
What else?
He moved to the small kitchen, mind racing. The coffee mug sat half-empty on the counter, dark liquid gone cold. Without thinking, he picked it up and took a sip.
Disgusting. Martinez drinks his coffee black.
The knowledge came from nowhere, certain as gravity. But there was something else underneath it, a quality to the certainty that felt different from the inherited memories.
Martinez is lying about something.
The thought appeared fully formed, undeniable, though he had no idea what Martinez could be lying about or how he could possibly know. The conviction sat in his gut like a stone, immune to rational doubt.
Lie detection. He could tell when people weren't telling the truth.
The third ability revealed itself when he caught sight of his reflection in the kitchen window. Without conscious decision, his body moved—not his movement, but a perfect replication of something he'd seen. A defensive stance, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, hands positioned for a block he'd never learned. The movement felt natural as breathing, muscle memory downloading from a source he couldn't identify.
Combat adaptation.
Three impossible gifts. Photographic memory, lie detection, combat mimicry. Powers that belonged in comic books, not the body of a dead man wearing a borrowed life.
The television in the living room flickered to life as he approached, and the morning news painted his new reality in horrifying detail.
"—Detective Jake Peralta's latest arrest at the Nine-Nine has Commissioner Brennan calling for a review of unconventional methods in the NYPD—"
Kole's heart stopped. Jake Peralta. The Nine-Nine.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine wasn't just a show anymore. It was here. Real. The fictional universe he'd escaped into through countless episodes was breathing around him, populated by characters he knew better than his own family.
Captain Holt's stoic leadership. Amy's neurotic perfectionism. Rosa's terrifying competence. Charles's loyal intensity. Terry's protective nature. Gina's magnificent narcissism. Scully and Hitchcock's beautiful dysfunction.
They were real. They were here. And somehow, impossibly, he'd been dropped into their world wearing the skin of a man whose memories felt like looking through frosted glass.
This is insane.
But even as the rational part of his mind screamed denial, another part—the part that had spent years watching Jake solve impossible cases and Holt navigate department politics—whispered a different truth.
This is opportunity.
He knew these people. Knew their patterns, their triggers, their capabilities. Knew that the Nine-Nine was where the real work happened, where detectives who cared more about justice than politics made a difference. The 74th Precinct might be Martinez's assignment, but the Nine-Nine was where Kole belonged.
The decision crystallized as morning light cut through the blinds, throwing stark shadows across the unfamiliar apartment. He stared at his new face in the bathroom mirror one more time, at the NYPD badge sitting on the dresser like a promise waiting to be claimed.
Transfer. Get to the Nine-Nine. Meet the characters who'd been his escape from a dead-end life, who were now his only anchor in an impossible reality.
Whatever this is, whatever happened to me, I'm going to make it count.
The powers hummed beneath his skin, alien and terrifying and somehow perfectly right. He had no idea how to explain them, no story that would make sense to anyone including himself.
So he wouldn't explain them. Ever.
Some truths were too dangerous to share, even with the people who might understand them best. Especially with them.
Kole Martinez—Detective Martinez—had work to do.
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