The rhythmic beeping of machines was what woke him.
It was slow at first, faint, as though the sound came from a distant hallway. But as he stirred and consciousness crept in, the tone sharpened, growing clearer until it echoed against his skull like a steady drumbeat.
Dante blinked against the harsh overhead light, the ceiling above him blurring into sterile white. He turned his head to the side and winced as something tugged at his arm. An IV line. His other hand rested on a thin, unfamiliar blanket.
This wasn't his bed.
Actually, it barely even qualified as a bed. It felt more like a cot, and the metal rails on either side gave it away—he was in a hospital. The air smelled of antiseptic and plastic, the clinical kind of clean that always seemed to carry an undercurrent of anxiety. Machines buzzed softly beside him, and distant footsteps echoed through polished hallways.
It made no sense.
"I… survived?" he muttered, sitting up slowly, though his limbs protested. "And I'm in a hospital? But that pipe exploded right next to my head..."
The memory came back in pieces—walking up the stairs of his apartment complex, half-asleep and weighed down by the exhaustion of another double shift. His building had always been a dump: peeling paint, black mold, creaky floors. The landlord hadn't fixed anything in years. Everyone in the complex knew the gas lines were a ticking time bomb.
And then it happened. A hiss, a spark, and then fire. He remembered a flash of heat. That was all.
He should have been dead. That wasn't the kind of explosion people walked away from.
Dante swallowed hard. Everything from that moment on was a blur of pain and darkness. So how was he here?
He glanced around again, trying to spot something—anything—that could anchor him. A chart. A calendar. Even a hospital logo. But the room was oddly blank.
"...Sigh. How am I going to pay the medical fees?" he murmured, rubbing at his temples. "I can't even keep up with rent."
The thought of debt added weight to his chest. His mother had died barely two months ago. The funeral wiped out his savings, and her medical debts had been passed straight to him as next of kin. He hadn't even gotten to finish college. Just three semesters away from his degree, and everything had crumbled. Now he was working late-night shifts to pay bills that weren't even his.
He leaned back into the pillow, groaning softly. "This just keeps getting worse."
The door opened with a light click, and a doctor walked in. Mid-thirties, clean coat, calm energy. He offered Dante a warm smile.
"Ah, you're awake. Good to see. You gave us a bit of a scare."
Dante sat up straighter, blinking. "I… yeah. Thanks, I guess."
"No problem. I'm Dr. Levin. You were brought in three days ago. Minor head trauma, burns, and some lung irritation. All things considered, you're lucky."
"Right. But… how bad is it? The bill, I mean?"
Dr. Levin chuckled. "Luckily for you, Mr. Stark has agreed to pay all the fees for anyone implicated in the attack as reimbursement."
Dante furrowed his brows. "Stark?"
"Yes, Tony Stark. He's footing the bill for most of the hospital costs after the whole mess downtown."
That name froze Dante in place.
"Wait. Tony… Stark?" he repeated.
The doctor nodded casually, flipping through his tablet. "Yeah. He's been doing a lot of cleanup PR lately. After that alien invasion, he probably had to. Half the city was wrecked. Infrastructure, traffic systems, hospitals overwhelmed. You must've been in a bad spot."
But Dante wasn't listening anymore.
Tony Stark? As in Iron Man? As in Marvel?
He gripped the sheets tightly, eyes wide. No way. The room suddenly felt smaller.
The doctor kept talking in the background, words turning to static in Dante's ears. Something about trauma centers. Military coordination. Rebuilding efforts. But none of it mattered—not compared to the realization hitting Dante like a second explosion.
Alien invasion. Stark. Reimbursement.
This wasn't some elaborate prank.
Dante turned toward the window, heart hammering in his chest. From his hospital bed, he could see a hazy stretch of the skyline. Construction cranes moved in the distance. Smoke curled from buildings that hadn't yet been cleared out. A half-crushed Stark Industries billboard hung from the side of an office building, charred along the edges.
There were rescue tents on one street. And soldiers. Actual soldiers, walking patrols with rifles and gear that screamed government, not local NYPD.
He suddenly felt cold.
He wasn't in his world anymore.
And he didn't know how he got here.
The next few days passed in a blur of soft footsteps, muttered conversations outside his door, and blood pressure cuffs tightening around his arm every morning. Dr. Levin remained professional, polite, and thankfully not very inquisitive. Dante answered what questions he could—name, age, allergies—but kept quiet about the rest. There were too many holes in his story, too many things he didn't understand himself.
The tests came back clean, which only raised more questions. His injuries—while initially serious—healed faster than expected. The burns on his side faded within two days, leaving only faint marks where there should've been raw skin. His ribs, which had been bruised by the shockwave, no longer ached. Even the fatigue passed quickly, like his body was shaking something off.
He didn't question it out loud. Just nodded, smiled when he needed to, and avoided eye contact with the nurses who seemed too eager to move him along. The hospital was still overwhelmed with the aftermath of the invasion. Beds were needed. Space was limited.
By the time he was discharged at the end of the week, he was walking without assistance and had been given a fresh pair of donated clothes—cheap jeans and a T-shirt with "NYC STRONG" printed across the front. Apparently Stark's PR campaign included a line of motivational swag.
He took it without comment.
Outside, New York felt different. Quieter. Not in volume—the honks and shouting and rumble of traffic were still there—but in mood. People walked faster, heads down. Windows were boarded up. Military checkpoints cut off entire streets. Drone-like things floated past rooftops on silent engines, too sleek to be civilian.
He didn't linger. Whatever this version of New York had become, it wasn't his job to figure it out just yet.
Navigating back to his old apartment was surprisingly easy. The subways were still running, even if the routes were erratic. Paper signs had been taped over station maps, and announcements were garbled with re-routes and closures, but it was manageable.
By the time he reached his neighborhood, his legs ached and his stomach growled. The corner deli was shuttered, and there was still caution tape across a street lamp. Two blocks over, he saw the husk of what had once been an office building—its top three floors were gone, sheared off like someone had taken a bite out of it.
But when he turned onto his street, something strange happened.
His apartment building was untouched.
There was a fresh patch of concrete across the sidewalk where an old pipe had clearly been dug up and replaced, but otherwise, the building looked exactly as it had before. Peeling paint, rust-streaked fire escapes, the faint smell of cheap incense coming from Mrs. Tapia's window on the second floor. The lights were still on in the hallway.
He stood there for several minutes, staring.
After all the destruction, all the chaos… his building had been spared?
He didn't know whether to be relieved or unnerved.
His key still worked. The door opened with a familiar creak, and the apartment looked just as he'd left it. The futon sagged in the corner. His mother's old bookshelf stood crooked beneath the window. A cracked phone charger lay coiled on the counter like a sleeping snake.
Everything was exactly the same.
He dropped onto the futon and sat in silence for a long time.
The weight of everything caught up to him slowly. This wasn't a movie. There were no title cards or epic music. No cutaway to some mysterious cosmic force explaining why he was here. It was just him, alone, in a familiar apartment that somehow existed in an unfamiliar world.
He leaned back, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
Whatever happened next… he'd have to figure it out on his own.