CHAPTER 1: WELCOME TO HELL
The last thing Ben Fisher remembered was the truck's grille filling his windshield.
He'd swerved. The sedan had fishtailed on black ice, tires screaming. Physics took over—momentum, mass, the cold mathematics of collision. Metal crumpled. Glass exploded inward. His skull cracked against something hard, and the world went white, then red, then nothing at all.
Now there was pain.
Sharp. Blinding. A railroad spike driven through his temples. Ben's eyes snapped open to cracked concrete inches from his face, rust-colored water stains spreading across the floor like dried blood. His lungs seized, dragging in air that tasted of mildew and decay. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass.
He pushed himself upright, palms scraping against grit. The room spun. His stomach lurched, but nothing came up—just dry heaves that left him gasping. When his vision finally steadied, he took in his surroundings with mounting confusion.
An abandoned building. Four walls of exposed brick, graffiti tags layered over each other until the original surface disappeared. Broken windows letting in weak January sunlight. The floor was concrete, littered with beer cans, cigarette butts, and the skeletal remains of furniture too worthless to steal. Somewhere distant, sirens wailed—that particular two-tone cry that meant Chicago, not any other city.
Ben touched his face. No blood. No broken bones. His fingers found his nose, his jaw, the back of his skull where he'd felt the impact. Nothing. He pulled up his shirt—no bruising, no internal bleeding, just pale skin and the faint outline of ribs. He should be dead. The truck had hit him head-on at fifty miles per hour. He'd felt his skull crack.
"What the fuck," he whispered.
His voice came out raspy, foreign. Ben patted his pockets, found a leather wallet in his jeans. The leather was worn, cracked at the edges. He flipped it open with shaking hands.
Illinois driver's license. Photo of a man he'd never seen before—except the face was his face. Same brown hair, same jaw, same scar above his left eyebrow from falling off a bike at age nine. But the name printed beneath was wrong.
Benjamin Fisher. Age: 26. Address: some South Side Chicago street he didn't recognize.
Behind the license: thirty-seven dollars in small bills. No credit cards. No photos. No receipts or business cards or any of the accumulated detritus that filled a real person's wallet. Just the ID and some cash, like someone had created a person from scratch with the bare minimum required for existence.
Ben's hands wouldn't stop shaking. He shoved the wallet back in his pocket and stood, testing his legs. They held. Everything worked—muscles, joints, nerves firing correctly. But something was wrong with his head. Not the pain, though that still throbbed like a fresh wound. Something else.
Knowledge.
It flooded his consciousness like water breaching a dam. Information about things he'd never learned, never studied, never experienced. His eyes landed on a broken door hanging cockeyed on its hinges, and his mind immediately supplied: stress fracture in the top hinge pin, bottom hinge rusted through, door weight shifted, frame warped by water damage—could repair with wood shims and replacement pins, would take approximately forty minutes with proper tools.
Ben blinked. What the hell was that?
He looked at an exposed pipe running along one wall. Galvanized steel, pre-1950s installation, rust accumulation at the joints indicates slow leak, pressure likely 40-50 PSI, could be temporarily patched with epoxy or rubber tape but requires full joint replacement for permanent fix.
The knowledge came unbidden, automatic. Like breathing. He'd never studied plumbing in his life.
More sensations crowded in. A low hum of wrongness emanating from somewhere to his left, like standing too close to high-voltage lines. An itch in his throat, words forming there without his permission—smooth, persuasive phrases designed to convince, to manipulate, to make people believe whatever he said. And beneath it all, a fourth awareness he couldn't quite name, lurking at the edge of perception like a frequency just beyond human hearing.
Four things. Four impossible abilities downloaded directly into his nervous system.
"Jesus Christ," Ben said. Then, quieter: "What happened to me?"
The answer came in fragments. Memories that weren't his—or were they? The car accident was real. The impact, the pain, the nothing. But before that: hours of binge-watching television on a lazy Sunday, some show about a fucked-up family in Chicago. What was it called? Shameless. The Gallaghers. Frank, the drunk. Fiona, the sister-mom. All those kids trying to survive in a city that wanted them dead.
He'd watched nine seasons in a week. Fell asleep during season ten.
Now he was standing in Chicago. In a body that might or might not be his own. With abilities that violated every law of physics and neuroscience.
Transmigration. The word surfaced from late-night internet rabbit holes about Korean webnovels and Chinese cultivation stories. Stories where people died and woke up in different worlds, different bodies, usually with some bullshit system that gave them powers and quests.
"No," Ben said aloud. "No, that's insane. That's not—that doesn't happen."
The knowledge in his head disagreed. The wallet in his pocket disagreed. The fact that he was alive after a collision that should have liquified his organs disagreed.
Panic rose like bile. Ben turned in a circle, looking for something familiar, something real. His eyes found the windows, the view beyond. Row houses. Chainlink fences. Cars that hadn't been new in the Clinton administration parked along cracked pavement. And down the block, maybe two hundred yards away: a house with peeling blue paint, boards over one window, a front yard that was more dirt than grass.
Recognition hit like a fist to the solar plexus.
2119 North Wallace Street. The Gallagher house. He'd seen it in every establishing shot, every exterior scene. That porch where Frank passed out. That front door Fiona slammed a thousand times.
"Oh fuck," Ben breathed. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh—"
He staggered to the nearest wall and pressed his forehead against the cold brick. Think. Think rationally. Either he was having an extremely vivid psychotic break in the moments before brain death, or something impossible had actually happened. Both options were insane.
But the pain felt real. The cold seeping through his clothes felt real. The smell of piss and beer and urban decay felt aggressively, undeniably real.
Survival instincts kicked in, overriding the existential crisis. First problem: he was trespassing in an abandoned building. Second problem: he had thirty-seven dollars to his name. Third problem: he had no idea how to survive in South Side Chicago in January 2011.
Fourth problem: he apparently had supernatural abilities he didn't understand and couldn't control.
Ben pushed away from the wall. The front door—if it could be called that—stood across the room, secured with a rusted chain and padlock. Some property owner's half-assed attempt at keeping squatters out. He walked over, hands reaching for the lock before his conscious mind caught up.
The moment his fingers touched the metal, that first power activated.
Information exploded through his neurons. The lock's internal mechanism unfolded in his mind's eye like a blueprint: five-pin tumbler, cheap brass construction, shackle weakened by rust, keyway standard for mass-produced hardware. He could see the binding pins, the tension required to pop them, the exact angle and pressure needed. His hands moved without permission, pulling a nail from the debris on the floor. The nail became a pick. His other hand found a bent paperclip—tension wrench.
Thirty seconds later, the lock clicked open.
Ben stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else. He'd never picked a lock in his life. Couldn't have named the parts of a padlock if someone offered him money. But his fingers had moved with practiced precision, guided by knowledge that had simply appeared in his brain.
MacGyver Mind, his consciousness supplied. That's what this ability was called. Instant understanding of mechanical systems. Solutions to physical problems appearing like divine inspiration.
He tested the chain—not locked anywhere, just looped through the door handles. He unwound it carefully and pulled the door open. Weak sunlight hit his face. Cold January air carrying the scent of car exhaust and something frying.
Ben stepped outside into the South Side.
The neighborhood stretched before him in grimy, intimate detail. Rows of houses in various states of decay. Cars on cinderblocks. Chainlink fences guarding tiny patches of dead grass. A corner store with bars on the windows and a flickering neon sign. People moved along the sidewalks with that specific urban gait—head down, purpose in every step, radiating don't-fuck-with-me energy.
He was underdressed. Just jeans, a t-shirt, and a thin jacket that wouldn't cut it in Chicago winter. But Ben barely noticed the cold. His eyes fixed on the Gallagher house down the block, and the weight of impossible knowledge pressed down like a physical thing.
He knew these people. Knew their stories, their traumas, their futures. Fiona would meet Steve and fall into that toxic relationship. Lip would sabotage his own potential over and over. Ian would struggle with bipolar disorder inherited from Monica. Debbie would get pregnant at fifteen. Carl would ping-pong between criminal and cop. Frank would be Frank—a black hole of dysfunction dragging everyone down.
Did he have the right to interfere? The moral authority to change anything?
Ben didn't have time to wrestle with that question. His Danger Intuition flared suddenly—a low hum of wrongness that made his teeth ache. He turned, following the sensation, and saw three men walking toward him with predatory confidence.
They were young, early twenties, dressed in mismatched layers. One wore a Bulls jersey over a hoodie. Another had a North Face jacket that was probably stolen. The third kept his hands in his pockets, but the bulge there might have been a weapon. They moved like sharks circling prey.
"Yo," Bulls Jersey called out. "Don't know you."
Ben's heart hammered. His Danger Intuition pulsed stronger—sixty seconds until something bad happened. These guys were sizing him up, deciding whether he was worth the effort. Fresh meat. No neighborhood protection.
His mouth opened. Words spilled out, smooth as whiskey, flowing with a confidence he absolutely did not feel.
"Tony's cousin," Ben heard himself say. "From Cicero. Staying with him for a few weeks while I get my shit together."
The name had just appeared in his thoughts. Tony. Someone these guys would know. Someone they wouldn't want to cross.
Silver Tongue. The second power, activating on instinct.
"Tony who?" North Face asked, suspicious.
"Tony Markovic." The lie built itself, each detail sliding into place like puzzle pieces. "Lives over on Throop. Said I could crash at his place while I'm looking for work. You know him?"
Ben watched their faces, saw the moment calculation took over. Maybe they knew a Tony Markovic. Maybe they didn't. But the possibility that he was connected, that fucking with him might bring heat from someone bigger—that made them hesitate.
"Yeah, alright," Bulls Jersey said after a long pause. "Tell Tony we said what's up."
They walked past him, close enough that Ben could smell cigarettes and cheap cologne. His Danger Intuition faded to background static. The moment passed.
Ben's knees went weak. He caught himself against the building, breathing hard. The words he'd spoken—they hadn't felt like lies. They'd felt true, convincing, right. He'd watched the men believe him in real-time, watched their body language shift from aggressive to wary respect.
"Holy shit," he whispered.
Four powers. MacGyver Mind for understanding mechanical systems. Silver Tongue for supernatural persuasion. Danger Intuition for sensing threats. And the fourth one, still lurking, still unnamed—something about illusions, about making people see things that weren't real.
Ben pushed away from the wall and started walking. No destination, just movement. He needed to think. Needed to process. His feet carried him through the neighborhood on autopilot while his mind raced.
The sun was setting. He'd lost hours in that building, either unconscious or too disoriented to notice time passing. The newspaper stand on the corner displayed today's date: January 9th, 2011.
Season One, Episode One. Pilot episode. The very beginning of the Shameless timeline.
Ben bought the paper with a dollar from his wallet, just to hold something physical, something that proved this was real. The cashier barely looked at him. He walked until he found a shuttered storefront with an overhang, somewhere to sit and think without being completely exposed.
His body felt wrong. Too light, too foreign. He'd died. The truck had killed him. And now he was here, in a fictional universe, with powers he didn't understand and knowledge he shouldn't possess.
The Gallagher house was visible from where he sat. Lights on in the windows. Movement behind curtains—figures that were real people now, not characters. People who would suffer if he didn't intervene. People who might suffer worse if he did.
Ben's earlier question came back: Did he have the right to change anything?
A better question, he realized, was: Could he survive long enough to matter?
Three days in that abandoned building had taught him the basics: cold, hunger, and the constant awareness of being prey. Thirty-seven dollars wouldn't last a week. He had no ID that would hold up to scrutiny, no credit history, no references, no past. The body he wore might look like his own, but Benjamin Fisher of South Side Chicago was a ghost with a driver's license.
He needed shelter. Work. A cover story that explained why a stranger was suddenly living in one of the most insular neighborhoods in the city.
His MacGyver Mind stirred, presenting solutions. His Silver Tongue whispered possibilities. His Danger Intuition pulsed warnings about a dozen different futures.
And beneath it all, the fourth power waited. Illusion. The ability to make reality look like something else, at least temporarily.
Ben stared at the Gallagher house until full dark fell and the streetlights flickered on, irregular and orange. He knew their story. Every tragedy, every close call, every moment of grace. Knowledge that could save them—or destroy them worse than the original timeline ever did.
The question wasn't whether he had the right to interfere.
The question was whether he could stop himself from trying.
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