A slow, rhythmic beeping dragged Isaac from the darkness.
He groaned. Every part of his body ached, but his head—his head felt like someone had cracked it open and filled it with wet cement. He tried to lift his hand but found it pinned under something. A blanket. Thin. It smelled like bleach.
He blinked, and a pale ceiling came into view. A ceiling with square tiles and a faint flicker of fluorescent light. The walls were a sterile off-white. The air smelled like antiseptic.
Hospital.
His mouth was dry, tongue thick. When he shifted, pain flared across the back of his skull. His eyes squeezed shut, then fluttered open again.
He wasn't dead.
At least, not anymore.
The door creaked. Soft footsteps.
"Oh, he's awake!" a woman's voice called—Elaine's.
Isaac turned his head slowly, wincing. His foster mother appeared beside him a second later, her eyes red and puffy but shining with relief.
"Oh, sweetheart…" She reached out and brushed his hair back gently. "How do you feel?"
"Like my brain's been kicked in," Isaac mumbled.
Elaine let out a short laugh, half a sob. "Well, you scared the hell out of us. You've been out for hours."
Alan appeared behind her, his usually neat hair sticking up in wild tufts. He offered Isaac a small nod and a tight-lipped smile. "Welcome back."
Isaac swallowed. His throat hurt. "What happened?"
"You were almost hit by a car," Elaine said, gently. "You must've tripped—or something—and hit your head. Really hard. Someone saw it happen and called an ambulance. They brought you here."
Isaac closed his eyes. He remembered it now, in broken flashes.
The street. The screech of tires. The blur of black metal.
Then nothing.
"Doctor said you've got a concussion," Alan added. "A nasty one. You'll need rest."
Isaac nodded, then regretted it instantly. The pain returned with force, and he groaned.
Elaine sat down beside him, gripping his hand. "Try not to move too much, okay? Just rest. We're here."
They stayed with him for a while, holding quiet conversation, updating him on how long he'd been out—nearly ten hours—and what the doctors had said. Nothing broken, just a lot of bruising and the head injury.
After some time, Elaine stepped out to talk to the nurse about medication, and Alan followed. The moment the door clicked shut, the room fell silent.
And that's when the strangeness began.
Not in the room.
Inside his mind.
It started as a flicker. A momentary sense of… dislocation. Like he wasn't fully in his own skin. Like something was slightly off—just enough to set his teeth on edge.
Then came the memories.
Not dreams. Not hallucinations.
But Memories.
Unfamiliar ones. But they felt real. Like watching someone else's life on a screen—but knowing, somehow, that it had been yours.
A different bedroom. Smaller. Bare walls. A sagging mattress. A chipped desk with an old phone charger dangling off the side.
Arguments. Shouting voices from another room. Long nights alone, bathed in the blue light of a phone screen.
Scrolling. Swiping. Tapping.
Hours and hours and hours.
His breathing quickened. He clutched the blanket, eyes wide, as scenes unfurled behind his eyelids.
A name. Not Isaac.
Just "Aiden."
He'd been Aiden.
Seventeen. A high school dropout.
He'd stopped going to school after he turned 16. Said it was pointless. Said he'd figure things out on his own. But mostly, he just… stopped caring.
School didn't teach anything useful. It was all tests and useless lectures. No one taught him how to get a job, or make money, or survive life outside of classrooms and bells and meaningless group projects.
So he gave up.
Spent his days in his room. On his phone. Reddit. TikTok. YouTube. Rinse and repeat.
He remembered the way he'd rot on his mattress for twenty hours a day, scrolling until his eyes burned. Wake up at noon, go to sleep at 4 a.m. Eat whatever he could find. Microwave meals. Instant noodles. Stale cereal.
People told him to "go out," to "apply somewhere," but it all felt fake. Everyone just said the same things over and over.
Get your grades up. Get a job. Get your act together.
But he didn't know how.
He didn't even know where to start.
He remembered lying on that old mattress one night, watching a motivational video someone sent him. A guy in a suit, shouting about success and hustle and building wealth.
He'd laughed.
Then kept scrolling.
He couldn't remember how he died.
Just that one night, he went to bed… and didn't wake up.
And now—
Now he was Isaac Hale.
A child.
A completely different life.
His heart pounded as the truth settled on him, cold and unstoppable.
He had died.
Somehow, in some impossible way, his life had ended at seventeen—and now he was here, nine years old, in a hospital bed, with different parents, a different name, and a head full of both old and new memories.
Isaac Hale had existed. He'd grown up, made friends, played football in the park, liked books and dinosaurs.
But now… someone else was wearing that life.
Aiden.
No—him.
He didn't know how it had happened. He didn't know why. There was no guiding voice, no flash of divine light. No message in a dream. Just this silent, terrifying clarity that he wasn't supposed to be here, and yet… he was.
He closed his eyes and turned his face away from the light.
This wasn't some fantasy.
There were no magic words. No second chances. No glowing destiny.
Just a boy with two lifetimes crammed into one skull, lying in a hospital bed, trying to breathe through the weight of it all.
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Not from sadness. Not really.
From exhaustion.
From fear.
From the overwhelming pressure of having to figure out who he was now.
"Isaac?" came a voice.
Elaine.
He turned toward the door as she came back in, carrying a small cup of jelly and a spoon.
She froze when she saw his face. "Hey—what's wrong? Does your head hurt again?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No," he said hoarsely. "I just… feel weird."
Elaine crossed the room and sat down beside him again, setting the jelly aside. She didn't press him. She just rested her hand gently on his arm.
"You're safe now," she said quietly. "You're going to be okay."
He nodded, not because he believed it, but because it felt like the right thing to do.
She stayed with him a while longer, talking softly about home, about dinner plans, about letting him sleep in tomorrow. She didn't ask more questions. She just let him exist, without pressure.
Eventually, she leaned over and kissed his forehead.
"I'm so glad you're alright," she whispered. "Rest now, okay?"
He nodded again.
The room dimmed after she left. The monitor beeped quietly, keeping time with his heart.
He stared at the ceiling long after the door clicked shut.
He wasn't Isaac.
But he wasn't Aiden anymore either.
He was something else now. A mix of both. A chance to start over.
And this time, maybe—just maybe—he'd do things differently.