Darkness ruled everything.
Not the gentle darkness of closed eyes before sleep, nor the comforting quiet of night. This darkness was vast, heavy, and absolute—an endless void without sound, without direction, without meaning. It pressed down from all sides, as if the world itself had been erased.
Then, faintly, something stirred.
A glow.
At first, it was no more than a fragile spark, barely strong enough to push back the blackness surrounding it. But slowly, steadily, that light grew. It pulsed like a heartbeat, weak yet stubborn, refusing to fade. With each pulse, sensation returned—weight, temperature, existence itself.
A breath escaped dry lips.
His eyes opened.
Harsh white light stabbed into his vision, forcing a groan from his throat. Pain followed immediately, a sharp pressure behind his eyes, as though his skull had been split open and hastily stitched back together. He blinked repeatedly, trying to focus, trying to understand where he was.
The ceiling above him was unfamiliar—smooth, metallic, laced with faint cracks and stains of age. Cold air brushed against his skin, carrying the sterile scent of chemicals mixed with something older… dust, perhaps, or abandonment.
This wasn't his room.
That realization came with unsettling clarity.
He tried to sit up, only to find his body responding sluggishly, as if it no longer fully belonged to him. Muscles trembled, joints protested, and a dull ache spread through his chest. His heartbeat felt uneven, unfamiliar.
What… happened?
The last thing he remembered—
John.
That was his name.
John was an ordinary university student, or at least, that was how the world saw him. A final-year BSc student in Computer Science, buried under deadlines, research papers, and sleepless nights. To his professors and classmates, he was quiet, reserved, forgettable.
But behind a screen, behind layers of encrypted networks and hidden identities, John was something else entirely.
A genius hacker.
He lived in logic, patterns, and vulnerabilities. Systems spoke to him in ways people never did. Firewalls were puzzles, code was language, and networks were ecosystems waiting to be understood. He thrived in the digital shadows, unseen and untouched.
And yet… he remembered being exhausted.
Not physically—mentally.
A long night. A glowing monitor. Lines of code blurring together as fatigue finally claimed its victory. He remembered leaning back, closing his eyes for just a moment—
And then—
Pain.
No.
Not pain.
Something far worse.
A sensation like drowning, like being torn apart and stitched back together by unseen hands. His thoughts fractured, scattered, and before he could grasp any of them—
Darkness.
Now he was here.
John raised a trembling hand before his eyes.
It wasn't his.
The fingers were longer, paler, marked with faint scars and calluses that spoke of years of precise, delicate work. This body felt older than his own—stronger in some places, weaker in others, shaped by a life he had never lived.
Panic surged.
This isn't possible.
Before he could fully process the impossibility of his situation, something broke loose inside his mind.
Memories.
They didn't arrive gently.
They crashed into him like a torrential storm.
Images, emotions, sensations—decades of life that were not his own flooded his consciousness without mercy. He gasped, clutching his head as the weight of it all threatened to crush him.
A childhood spent wandering sterile hallways.
A towering figure with tired eyes and kind hands.
A grandfather.
Late nights filled with books on biology, genetics, and artificial life. The hum of laboratory equipment. The scent of disinfectant and inked blueprints. Applause from academic halls. Headlines praising scientific breakthroughs.
Then—loss.
The grandfather's death.
Inheritance.
Responsibility.
A name echoed through the chaos, repeating itself until it drowned out every other thought.
Klein Murphy.
The memories slowed, settling into place like pieces of a shattered mirror being forced back together.
John collapsed back onto the surface beneath him, chest heaving.
Klein Murphy.
That was the name attached to this body.
That was the life whose memories now lived inside him.
He wasn't just in someone else's body.
He had become him.
Klein Murphy was not an ordinary man.
He was a genetic lead scientist and the owner of GenTech Research Center, a prestigious institution inherited from his grandfather—a legendary scientist whose contributions to biology had reshaped the field over the last fifty years. The old man had devoted his entire life to pushing the boundaries of artificial biology, laying the foundation for technologies that the world now took for granted.
GenTech was his legacy.
And Klein had been chosen to carry it forward.
The memories showed a young Klein burning with ambition, standing at the intersection of genius and obsession. He wasn't alone in the beginning. He had friends. Colleagues. People he trusted.
Alex.
Jane.
They had studied together at the same biological university, rising through academia side by side. Long days turned into longer nights as they worked together, argued together, dreamed together. They believed they were on the verge of something revolutionary.
Their goal was nothing less than the creation of a true artificial lifeform.
Not a modified organism. Not an enhanced clone.
Something new.
Something unprecedented.
Three years.
Three long years of relentless research, failed prototypes, discarded theories, and crushing disappointment. No matter how hard they tried, results refused to come. Funding dwindled. Pressure mounted.
And slowly, quietly—
Alex and Jane left.
They cited exhaustion. Burnout. The need to rethink their paths.
Klein had believed them.
He had trusted them.
That trust became his undoing.
Working alone, Klein threw himself deeper into the research than ever before. Sleep became optional. Meals were forgotten. Entire weeks vanished inside the walls of GenTech's laboratories.
And then—
Success.
Blueprints.
The culmination of everything they had worked toward. The foundation of a creature that could redefine artificial biology for generations to come.
Klein had laughed that night.
Cried, too.
The happiness was real.
But it didn't last.
The betrayal came swiftly and without mercy.
Alex and Jane reappeared—not as allies, but as rivals. They had stolen his research, every document, every blueprint, every recorded experiment. Using those stolen works, they founded a new company.
Lex Corp.
And they presented Klein's life's work to the world as their own.
By the time Klein understood what had happened, it was already over.
The world believed them.
When Klein tried to fight back, to reclaim what was rightfully his, the truth twisted itself into a weapon against him. Lex Corp produced forged proof, manipulated records, and framed Klein as the thief. Public opinion turned vicious. Headlines painted him as a fraud driven by greed and jealousy.
Legal battles followed.
He lost every one.
GenTech fell into disgrace.
Employees left in droves, abandoning the company that had once stood at the pinnacle of genetic research. Most of them joined Lex Corp, lured by promises of funding, prestige, and stolen brilliance.
Only a handful remained.
They stayed not for Klein—but for his grandfather's memory.
Facing bankruptcy and ruin, Klein made a decision that shattered what remained of his pride. He stepped away from advanced genetic research altogether. GenTech was repurposed into a shell of its former self, focusing only on cloning organs and producing nutrient solutions for genetically engineered creatures.
The dream was dead.
The legacy was broken.
Depression followed.
Days blurred together. Klein lived on autopilot, haunted by betrayal and crushed beneath the weight of failure. The research center remained open, but only barely—a decaying monument to what had once been possible.
And then—
John arrived.
The memories faded, leaving silence in their wake.
John—now Klein—stared at the ceiling, his mind unnervingly calm.
He felt everything Klein had felt.
The pain.
The anger.
The despair.
The crushing sense of responsibility.
They weren't foreign emotions. They had merged with his own, seamlessly and completely. This wasn't possession. It wasn't replacement.
It was inheritance.
John closed his eyes.
He was no longer just a hacker, no longer just a student who lived in the digital shadows.
He had inherited a broken empire.
A ruined name.
A genius mind scarred by betrayal.
And responsibilities that could no longer be ignored.
Slowly, he sat up.
The laboratory around him was silent, dimly lit, filled with dormant machines and abandoned workstations. Dust clung to surfaces once polished daily. Screens flickered weakly, as if struggling to stay alive.
This place reflected Klein Murphy perfectly.
Broken—but not dead.
John took a deep breath.
Whatever force had brought him here hadn't done so without reason.
And for the first time since waking up, a single, dangerous thought surfaced in his mind—
Klein Murphy's story isn't over.