Dark again. Then pain.
Jonathan's first clear sensation was a sharp pressure in his chest and a need to breathe. He gasped for air, his back arching against something hard and cold.
A voice cut through the ringing in his ears.
"Whoa, easy there, mate! Deep breaths. You're all right!"
Light shone into his vision. Fluorescent lamps. White ceiling panels. The smell of disinfectant and metal.
A hospital, his brain told him automatically.
He blinked, waiting for his eyes to focus and stop seeing double. A man and a woman in scrubs leaned over him, ID badges hanging from their chests. There was concern in their eyes, but not panic. The man shone a light into his pupils while the woman started talking.
"You gave us a scare," the nurse said. "People found you collapsed on the street. Do you remember anything?"
Jonathan opened his mouth, but no words came. It felt like the sentences were stuck on the tip of his tongue.
"I… collapsed," he managed. "Outside. Walking back home."
"Passerbys called you an ambulance which brought you in. You're dehydrated and exhausted. You're still in your work clothes—I'd say you've been working yourself a bit too hard," the man said, while the nurse gave him a reassuring smile that said this sort of thing happened often.
"Do you know your name?"
The question froze his thoughts. For a terrifying half-second, Jonathan's mind went completely blank.
Then, like a file finishing its download, memories slammed into place. School uniforms. A cramped flat in a block that screamed "average UK housing," where your neighbours were a nurse, a lawyer, a mechanic. A mum who smoked too much and a dad who wasn't around. Apprenticeship forms. First day at the local workshop. Getting the job at the garage. Colleagues and friends.
"Steven," he said automatically. "I'm Steven Hale."
The answer felt right, and his panic eased.
"Good," the nurse said, writing something down. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-seven."
The number came just as easily as his name, but deep down, somewhere he couldn't quite reach, something twitched. As if there were another possible answer to that question.
"Do you have any allergies?"
"No."
"Anyone we can notify? Family?"
"Uh, no. I live alone. My neighbour, Jackie Tyler," Steven said. A phone number and address rolled off his tongue without any effort.
The nurse wrote it down, nodded to the man, and they moved on to the next patient.
Steven stared up at the ceiling.
He couldn't shake a vague unease, a sense that something was wrong, but he couldn't point to what. By the time another nurse came in to wheel him to a different ward for observation, he mostly just felt tired—and very, very thirsty.
***
He was discharged the next morning with a pamphlet about stress and a warning: "Take care, and don't overwork yourself."
The weather, in typical London fashion, was grey and damp. Steven pulled his jacket tighter around himself and headed home.
He knew the way without thinking. Left at the grocery store, right at the big roundabout, through the park, and there were the apartment blocks.
As he was walking up the staircase, he ran into his friend Mickey from work.
"Hey, man! You okay? You didn't come home last night," Mickey asked, half-smiling. He didn't seem worried; he was just taking an interest.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just went out to relax. Long week."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll talk to you later—Rose and I are going out to get breakfast. See you tonight!"
"Have fun. See you."
Steven climbed to the third floor, fished his keys from his pocket, and let himself into his flat. Fragments surfaced at random. Not memories exactly, more like impressions. Familiar in a way he couldn't quite name.
The flat had a narrow hallway, a tiny kitchen that opened into a living room, a door to his bedroom and another to the bathroom. Beige, yellowish walls, faded carpet, second-hand furniture.
Not impressive. But it was his.
Steven dropped his bag next to his tools on the floor. Something small in his pocket bumped against his hand.
Frowning, he pulled it out.
His pocket watch.
It didn't open and it didn't work, but he couldn't help keeping it on him at all times. The metal casing was dull, more grey than silver, etched with faint circles and lines that formed cool-looking patterns if you stared long enough.
No maker's mark. No logo.
He tried to remember where he'd got it. A gift? An heirloom? Something he'd found in a shop?
Nothing clear came. Just a vague sense that it was important, and that he definitely shouldn't throw it away.
He set the watch on the coffee table, took off his shoes and jacket, and fell onto the sofa, drifting into sleep almost immediately.
***
Weeks passed.
He lived his ordinary life like anyone else. Go to work in the morning, fix cars all day, come home, hang out with Mickey and Rose, fix whatever broke in the neighbours' flats. Rinse and repeat.
Normal people. Normal job. Normal London weather.
If he ignored the way he kept fixing things he'd never technically been trained on.
It started with an automatic gearbox from some imported German car they didn't usually service, but that had come in as an urgent repair. The shop manual was basically useless; half the diagrams didn't even match the parts in front of him.
"You sure you want to mess with that?" Mickey asked. "Customer'll have our heads if we break it."
Steven stared at the open casing, something clicking in his head.
He shouldn't have understood what the arrangement of gears meant, but he did. Not as words or formulas—just a clear certainty: this goes here, that's worn out, that's misaligned, that's wrong.
"Yeah, it's fine," he said. "Gimme an hour."
After forty minutes, the car rolled out of the garage into the parking lot, purring.
It became a pattern. Electronics, engines, diagnostic software that hadn't been updated properly—if he looked at it long enough, he just knew what to do.
Life went on.
One day, on his day off, he was at Jackie's, fixing the television, when Rose came out of her bedroom looking miserable.
"Why are you at home?" Steven asked. "Don't you have work?"
"My work blew up," Rose said, annoyed. "Didn't you watch the news?"
"TV's broken. I'm fixing it as we speak, see?" Steven chuckled, gesturing at the open back of the set.
"Ugh." Rose threw up her hands and headed into the kitchen, where Jackie was making tea, and immediately started pestering her to take legal action against the company's negligence.
There was a knock at the door.
Rose went to answer it, and immediately exclaimed, "You!"
A man's voice replied, cheerful and familiar even to someone who'd only heard it through a screen: "Hello!"
A moment later, Rose dragged a man in a leather jacket into the living room, where Steven was crouched behind the television with a screwdriver in hand.