The Manhattan sidewalk pulsed beneath Alex's feet like a living thing, thousands of bodies moving in chaotic harmony. He dodged between pedestrians with practiced ease, his backpack drumming against his spine with each step. Twenty-one years old, drowning in sixty grand of student debt, spending his nights crawling through New York's intestines looking for cracks that might kill someone before the city bothered to fix them.
Living the fucking dream, he thought, nearly colliding with a woman carrying enough shopping bags to stock a small boutique. Next life, I'm being born rich. Or a cat. Probably a cat.
"Watch it, asshole!" A street artist yanked his half-finished Brooklyn Bridge out of Alex's path, the smell of aerosol paint sharp enough to strip nose hairs.
"Sorry, Michelangelo!" Alex called back, already three strides past. "Maybe try abstract—harder to fuck up!"
The artist's creative suggestions about Alex's lineage followed him down the block. New York's love language was insults, and Alex was fluent.
His phone buzzed against his ribs. The screen flashed: Boss Man Mike - Probably Drunk
Please don't be sewage. Please don't be sewage. I can't handle sewage today.
The message read: "Emergency on 5th. Sinkhole or alien invasion? You tell me. Double overtime if you're here in 20."
Classic Mike. Last week he'd sent Alex to investigate a "dimensional rift" that turned out to be a broken water main and a homeless philosopher named Craig who had surprisingly coherent theories about the simulation hypothesis.
The crosswalk signal flashed red. Alex could make it if he—
Time crystallized like ice forming on a window.
The delivery truck burst through the intersection like destiny wearing steel and corporate logos. FreshDirect, because of course his death would involve overpriced organic groceries. The driver's face twisted in horror behind the windshield—mouth forming a perfect 'O' of surprise, coffee cup suspended mid-spill.
Someone screamed. Might have been Alex. Hard to tell when your brain suddenly decides to calculate impact physics instead of processing the more reasonable response of get the fuck out of the way.
So this is how I die, Alex thought with crystalline clarity. Hit by a truck. How fucking cliché. At least it's not in front of a convenience store after buying cup noodles. Wait, is that racist if I'm thinking it about my own death?
The impact felt almost gentle, like being kissed by a freight train made of inevitability and bad timing. Pain bloomed everywhere and nowhere, his body doing things bodies weren't supposed to do. His last coherent thought was wondering if his student loans died with him or if Sallie Mae had collection agents in the afterlife.
Probably the latter. Those bastards are relentless.
Then nothing.
Then—
SLAP!
Pain bloomed across his face like a flower made of nerve endings, followed by the universe's most aggressive spa treatment—every molecule scraped raw as reality squeezed him through God's own garbage disposal. His lungs screamed for air that wouldn't come, wouldn't fit, wouldn't—
He wailed. Not because he wanted to, but because apparently that's what newborns did. His brand-new brain filed this information away with all the grace of a drunk librarian trying to alphabetize in Sanskrit.
"It's a boy!" boomed a voice that belonged in a documentary about the good old days when men were men and medical hygiene was more suggestion than guideline. "A healthy baby boy!"
Baby?
BABY?!
What in the actual fuck—
Alex tried to speak, to demand a manager, to file a complaint with whatever cosmic customer service had fucked up his reincarnation order. All that emerged was another piercing shriek that would've been mortifying if he had any control over literally anything.
This isn't how isekai is supposed to work! Where's my character creation screen? My stat allocation? My goddamn cheat abilities?!
The woman holding him—Mother, his new brain supplied without permission, adding helpfully that crying meant food and wow, these new instincts were invasive—looked exhausted but radiant. Dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, brown eyes leaking tears that better be joy and not buyer's remorse.
"Joseph, look at him. Look at our son."
The man leaning over them sported a mustache that could conquer small nations. Hell, it probably had opinions about the Kaiser. "He's perfect, Natalia. What shall we name him?"
"Alexander," she whispered, and something in Alex's chest tightened. "Alexander Sterling."
At least I keep the Alex. Small fucking mercies in this cosmic joke.
The doctor, who looked like he'd escaped from a period drama where penicillin was still science fiction, scratched his clipboard with a fountain pen that probably had its own pedigree. "January 15th, 1914. Time of birth: 3:47 AM."
1914.
The number hit like a second truck, this one made of temporal fuckery and historical hindsight.
World War I starts in six months. Spanish Flu in four years. Great Depression in fifteen. World War II in twenty-five. Fantastic. I've been reincarnated into history's greatest hits compilation of human misery.
And somewhere in all that chaos, he remembered everything. Every moment of his past life preserved in high-definition clarity, like the universe's cruelest gift—here, have perfect recall of indoor plumbing and internet porn, packaged in a body that can't even control its own bowels.
Well, baby Alexander thought as his new mother cooed over him in what he'd learn was terrible French, this is going to be interesting. And by interesting, I mean absolutely fucked.