The awakening was a choke.
Leo opened his eyes and his lungs convulsed. The air tasted of rusted metal, stale coolant, and filtered dust. He tried to sit up, but the cerebral command died on the way to his muscles.
His body was a leaden burden.
"Ah..." a wet gurgle escaped his throat.
His hand sought his chest. His fingers expected the softness of his cotton pajamas; they scraped against a synthetic fabric, rigid and cold. Underneath, a wide, solid ribcage was pumping with an alien rhythm.
A phantom pain drilled into his sternum. The memory of a heart attack. The darkness of his apartment in Tokyo, 2030. Death.
"Vital signs restored," a voice said from the ceiling.
Leo dragged himself backward, the skin of his back screeching against a metal grating. Gravity felt wrong. Too light. He looked around and could tell he was on a spaceship.
He spat a string of bile onto the floor.
"Who's there?"
Darkness. Only the agonizing flicker of a red emergency light illuminated wires hanging from the ceiling like mechanical viscera.
"Life Support and Tactical Intelligence Unit, Model 7-X," the voice replied. It sounded androgynous, omnipresent. "Welcome back, Agent Cole."
Leo rubbed his face hard. He stopped. He looked at his hands under the red light.
They were enormous. Knuckles thickened by old calluses. A white scar crossing the back of the left one. These were not the hands of a programmer.
"Cole?" Leo strained his vision. His brain searched for the logical error. Hallucination? Coma? Simulation? "My name is Leo. Leo Asano."
Static silence.
"Biometric reading confirmed: Mathew Cole, Field Agent, XFor Division. Vocal discrepancy attributed to post-resurrection laryngeal trauma."
Leo pushed himself up. His legs trembled, but held. He clung to a grease-covered console to keep from falling. The metal beneath his fingers was real. The pain in his atrophied muscles was real.
"Situation report," he ordered. Panic was inefficient. He needed data.
"You have just suffered a cardiovascular collapse following the reception of a compromising Data Packet," the AI informed him with clinical coldness. "Current date: May 12, 2150."
The floor seemed to disappear beneath his boots. One hundred and twenty years.
Leo looked at his reflection in a dead monitor. A square face, three-day beard, sunken eyes. A stranger was staring back at him with his own eyes.
"Status of the planet," he demanded.
"Earth: Eliminated. Grade 3 Civilization. Total resource extraction."
Leo turned toward the ship's only circular viewport.
"Open the shutter."
The metal plates slid open with a screech.
Leo saw the graveyard.
The void was saturated with gray dust. Fragments of continents, oceans frozen in chunks of dirty ice, and the remnants of cities formed a ring of debris where the blue planet should have been.
The visual impact acted like a virus.
A sharp pain drilled into his optic nerve. Leo pressed his temples, feeling pure data colonize the virgin brain tissue. Bright blue text saturated his retina, floating over reality with an unnatural clarity.
[ATOMIC MANIPULATION SYSTEM: ONLINE]
[USER: LEO ASANO // HOST: MATHEW COLE]
The world flickered, but his mind quickly adapted to the new overlay. The interface anchored itself in his periphery, awaiting orders.
"What the hell is this?" he croaked, rubbing his eyes.
"No external intervention recorded," the AI replied. "A drastic increase in heart rate is detected. Do you require sedation?"
"No..." Leo forced himself to breathe.
He blinked. The interface was still there. Technical data cascaded across his peripheral vision. Someone—or something—had installed an interface directly into his visual cortex.
He looked down. A rusted bolt rested near his boot.
As he focused his gaze, the interface came to life. A digital tag flickered over the metal, and a holographic window began to orbit the object, floating in the air.
[OBJECT: STEEL BOLT // CONDITION: CORRODED]
Intrigued, Leo bent down and picked it up. The weight was real. Cold. Rough.
Instantly, the projection expanded. Multiple sub-windows fanned out around his hand, decomposing the atomic structure and offering possibilities.
Leo stood motionless, processing what his eyes were seeing. He blinked, expecting the vision to dissolve, but the holograms remained, crisp and stable.
"This isn't just information..."
It was a construction menu. A system that was telling him this piece of rusted junk could be something else. He just had to choose. This defied all physics he knew.
Scientific curiosity displaced the fear. He had to try it.
His eyes stopped at a specific diagram rotating among the options.
"Execute: Non-Newtonian Spring," he thought, issuing the mental command like clicking an enter key.
The system responded with a violent rejection. A crimson window blocked his vision.
[THERMODYNAMIC VIABILITY ERROR]
[OBJECT: BOLT -> HIGH-TENSION SPRING]
[ESTIMATED COST: 12,500 KCAL]
[SOURCE: BIOLOGICAL RESERVE (USER)]
[WARNING: IMMINENT MULTI-ORGAN FAILURE]
Leo dropped the bolt as if it burned him.
"Twelve thousand calories?" he whispered.
The data was clear. Twelve thousand calories was burning days of life in a second. That modification would have consumed him to the bone.
"Too expensive."
He took a deep breath. The "battery" was him. He had to be smart. Limited biological budget.
"Filter: Lowest Caloric Cost," he ordered mentally.
The menu obeyed. The vast catalog was reduced to a single geometric option.
[MODIFICATION: SOLID SPHERE - F RANGE]
[COMPLEXITY: MINIMAL]
[COST: 500 KCAL]
Five hundred calories. A large meal. Survivable.
"Acceptable," he decided.
He confirmed the selection.
A translucent bubble expanded from his chest. The bolt lost its rigidity; the metal flowed between his fingers like mercury, reordering itself. The hexagon smoothed out, the rust was purged.
In two seconds, he had a polished steel sphere in his palm.
[MODELING SUCCESS]
The charge came immediately.
Leo felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach. It wasn't painful, but a hollow feeling, as if he hadn't eaten all day.
"Anomalous reading detected," the AI's voice broke the silence, tinged with synthetic curiosity. "The object has undergone spontaneous molecular reconfiguration. No external tools or heat sources detected."
"Diagnosis?" Leo gasped, leaning on his knees.
"Unknown. The atomic structure was instantly altered. Hypothesis: Class 5 or higher matter manipulation technology. Agent, your physiology shows a drastic drop in energy coinciding with the event."
"Warning," the AI continued, switching to its medical alert tone. "Critical decrease in caloric reserves. Replenishment is recommended."
Leo rubbed his abdomen. He felt slightly dizzy, but it passed quickly.
"Five hundred calories..." he murmured, looking at the perfect sphere in his hand. "It's manageable."
He put the sphere in his pocket. The cost was brutal, but the tool was divine. He could rewrite matter, as long as he had the means to pay.
His stomach growled, an animal sound in the silence of the ship.
"Provisions report," he ordered, his voice tight with hunger. "Now."
If he didn't find food soon, he would be the most powerful god in the graveyard.