The first thing Vince felt was the cold.
It clung to him like a second skin, the kind that wasn't just temperature but emptiness. He opened his eyes to a ceiling made of warped wood and iron nails. The faint sound of coughing drifted through thin walls, followed by the steady crack of a coal cart passing on the street outside.
His mind echoed pained remnants of a body no longer his own.
When he sat up, his hands were too small. His arms too light. The room, if you could call it that, was nothing but a cot, a stool, and a cracked basin. The air tasted of ash. The smell of smoke hung thick, clinging to everything.
He looked down at himself, tattered shirt, soot-dark skin, bare feet raw and gray from dust. Somewhere in the corner, a spider built a web over a tin cup.
Then the whisper came.
[System: Core Stabilization — 41% Complete]
[Memory Fragmentation Detected]
He froze. The words didn't come from outside; they pressed directly against his thoughts. When he blinked, they faded, leaving behind only silence and a faint hum in his skull.
And then, the memories came, not as images, but sensations. A hand around a steering wheel. The smell of rain on asphalt. The glow of a phone screen. A voice, his own, saying something he couldn't finish. Then, gone.
The more he reached for them, the further they drifted, like smoke through his fingers.
He stood, wobbling, and pushed the door open. Cold light spilled in. Outside, gray buildings leaned together like old men too tired to stand alone. Coal smoke rose from chimneys, and beyond it, a fence stretched along the horizon, rusted, humming faintly with electricity.
District 12. The realization came quiet, almost gentle, like a memory waking up. People moved along the dirt road in slow patterns, eyes down, shoulders slumped. He watched them, studying the rhythm, the way nobody made eye contact, the way their steps were measured to waste as little energy as possible. He felt a strange calm. Fear didn't come. Observation did.
The System pulsed again.
[Recognition: Survival Environment Identified — Panem, District 12.]
[Adaptive Sync: 45%.]
He didn't know what that meant, but the words gave him something to hold onto. A direction. Something to build from.
Hunger eventually drove him to the market, a crooked stretch of tables covered in cracked pottery, wire, and old fabric. The air smelled of oil and burnt grain. A woman sat behind a stall, her face creased and sharp, trading with a miner. When she saw Vince standing there, she didn't soften, just narrowed her eyes.
He picked up a tin cup of coal, weighed it in his hands. His voice came out dry. "Pure seam coal."
The woman scoffed. "Doesn't look pure."
He hesitated. His instinct was to step back, to stay quiet, stay safe. But something inside him pushed forward instead. His breathing slowed. His shoulders straightened. His words found rhythm, almost on their own.
"You can test it," he said evenly. "But you won't find better this side of the fence."
The woman stared a beat too long. Then, without another word, she dropped a crust of bread onto the counter. He took it, nodding once before turning away.
It hit him as he walked off, the way his tone had shifted mid-sentence, the way his body had moved like it remembered how to negotiate. The memory wasn't new. It was muscle deep.
[System Log: Behavioral Alignment Detected.]
[Trait Acquired — Charisma (Stage I): Your presence adjusts to command trust. Tone, posture, and intent now align subconsciously.]
The air thickened for a moment. His pulse evened. He caught his reflection in a broken windowpane, same soot-streaked face, but his eyes seemed sharper. Straighter posture. A strange steadiness.
He stared for a long time, trying to decide if that reflection was him or someone else.That wasn't luck, he thought. That was calibration.
The hum in his mind softened, and for the first time, the System almost felt alive, watching him, learning.
He ate the bread slowly as he walked home, the crust rough against his teeth. Coal smoke drifted low through the streets. Somewhere nearby, a child laughed.
When he reached his shack, he sat by the door, back against the wall, eyes on the fading light. The System flickered one last time.
[Core Sync — 52%. Progress Stable.]
[Objective: Complete Assimilation.]
He exhaled through his nose and whispered, "Fine. But I'm definitely doing that tomorrow."
The light dimmed. The hum receded.
And somewhere inside him, the fragments of his old life burned just bright enough to keep him warm.