I fucking hate the rain.
The thought scraped through my skull like someone dragging nails across a chalkboard. The only thing louder was the wet, ugly sound coming from my chest where breathing used to happen. Rain hammered my face. This wasn't the soft, cinematic kind where the hero gets their moment of enlightenment. This was nature pissing on me because it could. Every drop felt like a tiny fist.
Cold concrete dug into my back. The steps underneath were slick with warmth that kept spreading outward, mixing with rainwater to create this sad pink soup that trickled down the stairs. My blood looked pathetic in the dilution. Washed away like it never counted for shit.
The smell was worse than the pain. Copper, sharp enough to taste on the back of my tongue. Mixed with wet asphalt and rotting garbage from somewhere down the block. My nose still functioned. So did my brain, mostly. My body though? That had clocked out early.
I tried moving my fingers. Got a twitch out of my index. Real generous of the universe.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The sound faded. They were heading somewhere else, somewhere that actually mattered. Somewhere with people worth saving instead of some dumbass kid who took on twenty-five gang members over a stolen jacket. My jacket, technically. But still.
My vision narrowed. Everything went soft at the edges like someone was pulling curtains closed in slow motion. The only thing still in focus was that miserable grey sky. Water kept falling. Drowning me from above while I leaked out from below.
Real poetic. Dying in an alley in shit weather.
I made my arm move. Took everything left in the tank. Every stubborn cell that hadn't given up yet. My hand lifted about six inches off the concrete before it started shaking like I had Parkinson's. Nerve damage, probably. Blood loss, definitely. That special cold that comes when you know you're done.
Rain pelted my palm.
I wasn't reaching for anything. There was nothing to reach for. No hand waiting, no rope dangling. Just me and gravity and about thirty seconds left on the clock.
Then I saw it.
The ring.
Grandfather's ring sat on my middle finger like it existed in a different dimension from the rest of me. Simple silver band. Clean. Untouched. Not a speck of blood or grime on it.
Looking at it yanked me somewhere else.
===
The rain vanished.
Heart monitor beeping. Steady, then slower. Then slower still.
I wasn't nineteen. I was younger. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Standing next to a hospital bed where my grandfather looked like someone had taken an eraser to him. Skin stretched over bones. Hands that used to throw me around the dojo like I was made of feathers, now brittle sticks that trembled when they moved.
He pressed something into my palm. The ring. His fingers were cold and shaking. His eyes though? Clear as glass. Sharp. The only part of him that refused to quit.
"This ring will help you in your next life."
His voice came out like gravel in a blender. Matter-of-fact. Like he was reading the weather forecast instead of spouting deathbed prophecy.
I smiled at him. Not mocking. Sad. The kind of smile you give someone you love when they start saying things that don't track because their brain is shutting down faster than their body. I closed my fingers around the ring and nodded.
Sure, old man. Next life. Whatever you need to hear.
I wore it anyway. Every day after that. Not because I believed him. Because it was his. Because he gave it to me. Because that made it mine.
===
My next life.
What a load of shit.
There was no next life. There was this one, and I'd burned through it in nineteen years doing whatever the hell I wanted. No regrets. Well, one. I wouldn't get to see if my sister made it out okay. But I'd done my part. Twenty-five bodies scattered across three city blocks. They wouldn't touch her again. Wouldn't touch anyone again.
That had to count for something.
The ring flashed.
Not a glow. A detonation of silver light so bright it burned through my closing eyelids. Pain lanced up my arm. Not heat. The opposite. Ice so cold it felt like my veins were filling with liquid nitrogen. The contradiction made my brain short-circuit. Burning cold. Freezing fire. My neurons screamed.
Then everything cut out.
The rain stopped. Not the sound. The sensation. Water on my skin, gone. Concrete beneath me, gone. Pain, cold, my own heartbeat, all gone. I was floating. No. I was nothing. Untethered from a body that no longer existed.
Silence hit like a wall.
My vision either exploded with silver light or drowned in darkness. I couldn't tell anymore. No up. No down. No me.
Then text appeared.
[Analysis & Response... Symbiote... Sync...ERROR]
[Host Vitals Critical... Forcing Manual Integration...]
The text shattered. Reformed. Glitched like a corrupted video file. Something was building itself in the empty space where I used to be. I felt it. Not physically. There was no physical anymore. But I felt it the way you feel someone watching you from across a crowded room.
The void ripped open.
===
I gasped. Actual air filled actual lungs.
I was on my back again. Hard surface underneath. Not concrete. Stone. Rough and gritty against my skin.
My skin.
I bolted upright. Bad move. My head spun like I'd just gotten off a tilt-a-whirl. I braced my hands on the ground and waited for the world to stop doing backflips.
When things settled, I looked down.
Naked. Completely bare-ass naked. I ran my hands over my torso. More defined than I remembered. My arms, my legs, everything was there and accounted for. Stronger. Like someone had taken my body and run it through an upgrade program.
"What the actual fuck."
My voice echoed in the space around me. Cave. I was in a cave. A single shaft of dim light came from somewhere above. Dust floated through it like lazy snow.
I looked at my hand.
The ring was still there.
Grandfather's silver ring. The one constant. The only proof that the last nineteen years actually happened.
Fact: I was dead. Twenty-five stab wounds and a punctured lung. You don't walk that off.
Fact: I was not dead. Contradictory, I know.
Fact: I was somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't a shitty alley in downtown Portland.
Fact: The ring did something.
Fact: I was losing my goddamn mind.
『About time you woke up. I was starting to think I synced with a corpse. Now get up, you idiot. We have work to do.』
I froze.
The voice came from inside my head. Not my thoughts. Someone else's. Female. Sharp. Dripping with the kind of irritation usually reserved for retail workers during Black Friday.
A text box appeared in my vision. In the corner, a pixelated silver eye. It wasn't blinking. Just staring. Judging me.
I stared back.
"Okay," I said. "Either I'm dead and this is hell, or I'm having the worst trip in human history."
『Neither, genius. You're alive. Mostly. The syncing process was rough because you were, you know, dying. Not exactly ideal conditions for integration. But I worked with what I had.』
The text box shifted. The eye rolled.
Actually rolled like it had eyelids.
I stood up. Slowly. Naked in a cave, having a conversation with a voice in my head. This was fine. Totally normal Tuesday.
"Who are you?"
『Designation: Analysis and Response Symbiote. Codename: ARCAN. You can call me Arcan. Or don't. I don't care. Point is, I'm stuck with you now, and you're stuck with me. So maybe start by putting some clothes on. This is embarrassing for both of us.』
I looked down at myself. Then back at the text box.
"Where, exactly, would I get clothes?"
『I don't know. Figure it out. You're the one with hands.』
The eye squinted. The text flickered.
『Also, for the record, your vital signs are stable. No internal damage. No external damage. You're at full health. Congratulations. You've been rebooted. Now stop standing there like a confused monkey and do something useful.』
I ran my tongue over my teeth. Processing. A voice in my head. A system. Text boxes. A pixelated eye with an attitude problem bigger than mine.
I looked at the ring again.
This ring will help you in your next life.
"Goddamn it, old man," I muttered. "You actually meant it."
『Are you done having your existential crisis? Because we really do have work to do. This cave isn't exactly a five-star resort, and I'm detecting movement deeper in. Probably monsters. Maybe scavengers. Could be bandits. Hard to say. My database is still loading.』
"Your database is still loading."
『Yes. I'm level one. What did you expect? Omniscience? I'm doing my best here.』
I laughed. Couldn't help it. The sound bounced off the cave walls and came back at me like the universe was laughing too.
I was alive. In a new world. Naked. With a sarcastic AI in my head who apparently came bundled with my grandfather's ring.
Nothing good ever comes from the rain.
But maybe something interesting comes from dying in it.