The world splintered back into existence with the pounding of a drum, a brutal rhythm that lived inside his skull.
Jason Underwood's eyes shot open. The hangover was a monster, a savage beast tearing at the inside of his head. He expected the grimy ceiling of his studio apartment, the stale smell of day-old coffee and failure.
Instead, he saw a ceiling so high it seemed to belong to a cathedral. Gold leaf trim traced its edges.
He was lying on a bed that felt vast enough to be a continent. The sheets weren't the cheap, scratchy cotton he'd bought on sale. They were silk. Cool, heavy, and impossibly smooth against his skin.
Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the fog of his headache. This wasn't his room. This wasn't his life.
He threw the silk sheets off and stumbled onto a thick Persian rug. His legs felt sluggish, unfamiliar. The body he was in was taller, softer than his own. He was used to the coiled tension of a man who ran on caffeine and adrenaline. This body felt… unused.
A massive, dark wood wardrobe stood against one wall, its surface polished to a mirror shine. He staggered toward it, his heart hammering against his ribs. He needed to see. He needed to understand.
He braced his hands on the cool wood and stared at his reflection.
It wasn't his face.
The man in the reflection was a stranger. He had dark, neatly parted hair, a jawline that was handsome but lacked conviction, and tired, haunted eyes. The face of a man who had accepted defeat long ago.
It wasn't Jason Underwood's face—sharp, hungry, and now, utterly broken.
"No," he whispered, the voice coming out as a strained croak. It wasn't his voice either. It was deeper, smoother.
He touched the stranger's face in the reflection, and felt his own fingers on his own cheek. A wave of vertigo washed over him, so intense he thought he would vomit.
Then the memories came. Not his memories. They crashed into his mind like a rogue wave—fragmented, alien, and agonizingly real.
A name: Ezra Prentice. A profession: Lawyer. The heavy feel of a leather-bound law book. The scent of a dusty office.
Another name, one that made his blood run cold. Rockefeller.
The image of a woman, beautiful and severe. Alta. His wife. Alta Rockefeller.
The names and images swirled with the pounding in his head, a violent storm of a life he had never lived. He saw a tense dinner table, felt the crushing weight of a powerful father-in-law's disappointment. He felt the sting of whiskey on this throat, a familiar burn.
Ezra Prentice was a failure. A well-dressed, well-married failure, drowning his insignificance in his father-in-law's liquor.
The pain in his head exploded. Jason—Ezra—collapsed to his knees, his hands clutching his skull as if he could physically stop another man's life from invading his own.
"Ezra? Are you quite alright?"
The voice was calm, cutting through his agony like a shard of ice. He looked up, his vision swimming.
A woman stood in the grand doorway. She was tall and slender, dressed in a modest but exquisitely tailored morning gown. Her hair was swept up in an elegant Gibson Girl style, and her face was a perfect, emotionless mask. It was Alta, the woman from the fractured memories.
Her concern was a performance. Her eyes, a cool blue, held no warmth. They simply assessed him, like a hawk watching a struggling field mouse.
Jason's mind raced, his hedge fund instincts screaming to the surface. Analyze the situation. Gather data. Survive.
He had to play the part.
He pushed himself up, using the wardrobe for support. His new body was clumsy. "I'm fine," he said, the unfamiliar voice grating in his ears. He tried a smile. It felt like a grimace. "Just a headache."
Alta's gaze flickered to the empty crystal decanter on a nearby table. A verdict was passed in that single, silent glance.
"You were drinking again," she stated. It wasn't a question. "We have dinner with Father tonight. At Kykuit. You cannot be seen like this."
The name of the Rockefeller estate sent another jolt through him. This was real. This was happening.
He needed an anchor, a way to connect. He took a step toward her, reaching out a hand. "Honey, I…"
Alta flinched. It was barely perceptible, a slight tightening of her shoulders, but to Jason, it was a siren. Wrong move. This was not a marriage of affection. It was an arrangement. He dropped his hand.
She stepped into the room, holding a newspaper. She didn't look at him, her attention on the front page.
"The wolves are circling," she said, her voice flat. She placed the paper on his nightstand. On the front page was a vicious political cartoon. A monstrous octopus with the sneering face of an old man was wrapped around the U.S. Capitol, its tentacles crushing the dome. The caption read: The Standard Oil Beast.
"The Tarbell woman's book has set the world on fire," Alta continued, her tone as cold as a winter morning. "Father's name is being dragged through the mud from New York to California. He is… displeased."
The threat was clear. The family was a fortress under siege, and any weakness from within would be ruthlessly cut out. Ezra Prentice was a weakness.
She turned to leave, a rustle of expensive fabric. "Be ready by seven," she said, not bothering to look back. "Do not be late."
The door clicked shut, leaving him in a silence more deafening than a scream.
He was alone with the stranger in the mirror and the octopus on the newspaper. The weight of the Rockefeller name, of this gilded cage, pressed down on him, suffocating him.
He walked to the massive window, his movements stiff. He pushed aside the heavy, blood-red velvet curtains. They were so thick they seemed to swallow the light, like the lining of a coffin.
Outside, the world of 1907 churned. Horse-drawn carriages shared the street with sputtering, primitive automobiles. Men in bowler hats and women in corseted dresses hurried along the sidewalks. His reflection was a ghost, his new, weak face superimposed over a world that shouldn't exist.
The sight of his own helpless reflection triggered a memory. His memory.
The final moments in his real office. The blinking red numbers on his terminal, a waterfall of catastrophic loss. Billions of dollars, gone. His clients' life savings, vaporized. The phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing, a sound he knew he would hear in his nightmares. The shame was a physical thing, a black hole in his chest that had swallowed his entire life.
He remembered the bitter taste of cheap scotch, the cold press of the skyscraper window against his forehead, and the long, dizzying look down.
He had failed. Utterly. Publicly.
He slammed his fist against the window pane. The glass shuddered. The knuckles of this new hand stung.
Never again.
He took a deep breath, the cold air filling his lungs. His mind, the mind of Jason Underwood, the predator of the markets, began to work. It sorted the chaos into cold, hard data points.
The year: 1907.
The family: Rockefeller.
The problem: Ida Tarbell and the trust-busters.
But Jason saw something else. He saw the future. He knew about the Panic of 1907, a financial crisis that was just around the corner. He knew about the coming creation of the Federal Reserve. He knew about the Great War that would tear Europe apart and make American industry king. He knew the age of the horse was ending, and the age of the automobile, powered by Rockefeller's own gasoline, was about to truly begin.
He knew about aviation. Radio. The stock market crash of '29.
It wasn't history. It was the most valuable insider information in the history of the world. It was the ultimate cheat code.
The fear in his gut curdled and reformed into something else. A cold, thrilling fire. The ambition he thought had been crushed to dust ignited, burning hotter and brighter than ever before.
This wasn't a punishment. This wasn't a nightmare.
It was the greatest second chance ever given to a man. John D. Rockefeller had built an empire on oil. Jason could build an empire on the future itself.
He turned from the window. His posture changed. The defeated slump of Ezra Prentice was gone, replaced by the coiled readiness of a shark. He walked to the mirror and looked at the stranger's face again.
The tired, haunted eyes weren't there anymore. They were sharp. Calculating. Hungry.
A humorless smile touched his lips. He straightened the tie of a dead man, his movements now precise and full of purpose.
"Alright, Rockefeller," he whispered to the empty room. "Let's see what you've got."