There was no way of knowing how much time had passed, but that was only one of three problems. First, the pain in his hand was killing him. It was cruel; he couldn’t move, but he had no problem feeling the pain.

  Second, he got no closer to understanding what had happened. None of it made any sense. The new world. His strange new body and the stuttering, fleeting memories that came with it.

  And third, what terrified him the most. He’d come to a startling realization. When he tried to remember things before he’d opened his eyes on the execution platform, his mind started burning. A pain worse than any migraine he’d ever had, and he’d had a lot of them.

  Or was that Oliver?

  The fact that he had to ask the question only left him more frustrated.

  Still, all he could remember were his emotions. And my name, thank God for that. Though there was something else. A word... But trying to get to it was like trying to remember something you’d already forgotten years ago.

  Emotionally speaking, He could recall anger, different from the wrathful sort now coursing through him, anger and frustration. Both of them had stemmed from different sources, though he just couldn’t remember what. He also felt a powerful desperation.

  The only consolation was that he could tell those emotions belonged to him. To Zachary Smith. Not to Oliver Emery, whose memories had no trouble infesting him.

  It was as though this body knew he didn’t belong here and refused to allow foreign experiences—my memories—from entering its mind.

  Ava would come in, more somber with every passing day, to check on his hand. She’d gently remove the bandaging, apply some paste that felt thicker than normal ointment should feel, then wrap it back up.

  After every session, she’d stand and lean over, looking straight into his eyes, searching for some sign that he was there. During those moments, he tried to scream that this wasn’t his body, that he wasn’t the person she thought he was.

  But each time it came out in a grunt or low wail, resulting in misplaced optimism and hope on her part. He’d see it in the way her eyes lit up, or the worry lines on her face eased just a bit.

  After what couldn’t have been less than a week, she made a last plea to try and get him to eat.

  “Oli, if you don’t eat now, I won’t be able to bring you food later, not once your hand is healed. They only allow it for a week. If you can hear me, please, you have to eat now. Please.”

  By this point, the irritation that arose every time she called him Oli had become something that simmered at the far edges of his mind. Because in the face of paralysis, in the face of those creatures stalking him from the corners of the room, what was a name?

  Not that I could do anything about that anyway.

  Still, the mention of food stirred something in him. The deep hunger within seemed to take form. A physical thing he could battle mentally, something he did battle mentally. He pushed it down, no matter how many times it rose.

  Like a rabid dog, it fought at every turn. Wanting him to suffer, to experience the kind of hunger that felt like his stomach would rather eat itself than go on another minute without something.

  But he fought, because it was the only thing he could fight. The only thing he could do. And somehow, remarkably, he won. It was an odd thing, feeling like your hands were throttling the life from something while your body was paralyzed. But he did it.

  The physiological drive to eat, to pull in nutrients, had been killed. No more rumbling, no agonizing sensation that his stomach was empty, had been empty for a week now. He didn’t know how it was possible, but he nearly cried at accomplishing it.

  There was a nervous sigh as Ava prepared something in a bowl, the metal utensils clanging against the porcelain cup.

  “There’s still no smell,” she said, “so that’s good. But... I’m worried about the pain.” There was a strange tone in her voice. “I need you to drink this.”

  He almost cried at the mention of pain. As if mentioning it had drawn attention to it, his hand beat a steady drum.

  Every pulse went up his arm, spreading throughout his body. Erasing the temporary elation of victory in one sharp wave.

  He groaned—inwardly, of course.

  She brought a cup to his lips, gently pushing his head back. Why were her hands shaking so badly? It doesn’t matter. Just try to swallow!

  Her fingers pried open his mouth before he felt the rim of the cup touch his lips.

  Unfortunately, that was as far as it got.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It’s medicine!” she cried, the medicine sloshing out of the sides of the cup as her hands shook even more violently.

  “I know it’s medicine,” he snapped.

  The thud of his footsteps falling against the floor was the only warning before the man stalked across the room and smacked her hand away from his mouth.

  A warm, earthy-smelling liquid fell over the front of his shirt, his only hope at easing the hell of his hand soaking through the thin fabric.

  Pitifully, he did what he’d been doing a little too much. He cried. Again. How he hated feeling useless. The pain continued on mocking every tear he’d shed.

  What did he do to deserve this? What God had he pissed off to be punished like this? That thought triggered something in his memory, that word he’d sensed floating on the edge of his perception.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Transmigration.

  There was more on the tail end of that thought, something to do with desperation, with a voice and a strange dream…

  Wherever that thought had been going, it refused to reveal itself. A wall had been slammed between it and him. The sensation brought back that burning migraine.

  Trapped within that pain, he watched as the man stepped into his line of sight, pulling Ava back from the couch.

  Oliver’s memories told him that this man was an enforcer, the Camp’s version of a police force, loyal to the Head, his grandmother, though he didn’t know him by name.

  But names didn’t matter.

  He didn’t need a name to mark the man’s face. The man who was responsible for the unceasing pain in his hand as well as the headache. He would die a horrible death.

  Zach could almost see himself, bashing the man’s head in, again and again, showing him what ceaseless pain felt like.

  The creatures let out a low growl, black smoke curling off their black, vaporous skin. Their reaction put him in mind of a cornered animal, growling and hissing in a frantic effort to stay alive.

  Those eyes, each of them having at least more than twenty, some on their arms, their chests, their stomachs, and their legs, penetrating into his soul.

  Stop it! he shouted at himself, mentally recoiling at the bloody vision in his mind. He noticed the enforcer was still talking with Ava.

  “If you want to waste resources, leave Twelve! Go do it somewhere else. He doesn’t take it, he doesn’t take it. Simple as that. His week is up.”

  “You don’t understand,” Ava blurted. “Just look into his eyes! He has more awareness than the others I’ve treated! I can see it! If we just get rid of his pain, maybe he’ll be able to move. To-to eat for himself!”

  Zach tried to agree with that logic. He didn’t know if that was true or not, but the bloody pain would at least be gone!

  However, it seemed he made less noise than he’d made last time Ava had taken it as a response to her ministrations. They barely even looked at him.

  Why are their painkillers in a tea form anyway?

  “There are no special cases with the Head. We give them a week; otherwise, it’s a drain on our resources,” the man replied mercilessly.

  “He’s still alive,” Ava protested. “You can see that for yourself. He just needs help, that’s all.”

  “If he can’t drink it himself, he can’t drink it. Those are our laws. Now. His hand? And be honest, or I swear I’ll fetch someone else from your Function.”

  Ava took a deep breath and looked down at him. It must’ve been around noon beyond the building. The shafts of light breaking through the boards over the windows hit her just right.

  A woman in her mid-thirties, her hair was honey blonde, and she had features that matched her soft and caring personality.

  In contrast, the enforcer’s face spoke only of the hardness this world had forced upon him. Where the hell am I?

  His thoughts were laced with a different sort of panic this time around, thinking of that hardness finding its way to him, trapped as he was.

  “It’s still raw, but the wound is starting to close up from the inside,” she said softly, as if it pained her to say it. “The edges of the wound are tightening. There’s no pus, and it doesn’t get hot. The poultice is doing its job.”

  “Was doing its job. Just like the others, we gave him his week. We’re done.”

  She looked down on him, this woman who Oliver viewed as closely as an aunt, and gave a hesitant nod.

  “I’m sorry, Evie,” she whispered.

  Evie. That was his mother’s name. Well, Oliver’s mother’s name.

  The enforcer bent over and picked Zach up, none too gently. He was thrown over the man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried off.

  “What are you doing?” Ava asked. “Where’re you taking him?”

  “I’m moving him,” the man answered over his shoulder. “The beds in this apartment were taken.”

  “Wait,” her voice sounded so far off.

  The man let Zach’s arm swing about freely, striking the man’s side enough times that he tried lashing out.

  Nothing.

  A door opened, and Zach was ushered into a darker room. Of course, the demons visible only to him crawled beside them, following him, waiting to eat his corpse.

  The man lowered him into a bathtub, his head resting on one end, the rest of his body lying stiff within the brown porcelain.

  In his line of sight was a small-tiled wall, the crevices stained brown from years’ worth of grime.

  He couldn’t take any more of this. Staring at that wall for days on end? He just couldn’t do it. With every last bit of concentration he could summon, he screamed and tried twisting his body.

  The demons alone reacted. Their heads tilted to the side, as if testing the air in the room, listening to his struggle.

  “Why?” Ava shouted from the door.

  Help me! God, please just help me!

  “If we carry him out of here, the others will see him,” the man continued, Zach’s cries going unanswered. “At least here, he’ll die in peace. Without embarrassing the Head’s family. She doesn’t need that.”

  Anger that was not his own roared untamed within him, demanding blood for this offense. He was the one who was trapped in this state, yet the man was worried about the Head, about his grandmother, about his family.

  “Here, kid,” the man said, pulling the shower curtain closed. “I’ll give you that much.”

  No! Don’t leave me here! This isn’t right. I’m not who you think I am!

  Ava was saying something before the door closed, shutting that conversation off. The pain in his body doubled. This couldn’t just be his hand. It couldn’t! It felt like every bone in his body was breaking apart.

  Beyond the curtain, those low growls echoed in the small room. He could almost imagine them crouching on the other side, staring hungrily at him.

  How easy it would be to just invite them in. Let them have control.

  Come in. Two simple words.

  If he died here, perhaps it would end this nightmare. Perhaps… perhaps he’d actually return to his body, to his world where those growling demons didn’t exist.

  Staring at the wall opposite him, the decision was easier this time. In fact, he felt foolish to have sat in that torment for as long as he had.

  Summoning up every bit of courage he had, he gritted his teeth, shut his eyes—both mentally, of course—and concentrated on the pain in his hand.

  He zoned in on the foreigner experience of being in someone else’s body, of having someone else’s memories and emotions. On the pain of not being able to control said body

  He held onto all those sensations, reasons that he had to leave this hell. Now. Death was on the other side of that curtain, and it could only bring relief.

  Do it!

  “Come… come in.”

  The words came out in a strained gargle, the first sound he’d made in what felt like years. All went silent.

  It felt as though the world itself had simply ceased to exist. The demons were quiet. Life itself paused with held breath, waiting to see what happened next.

  Then it happened.

  A deep coldness spread through him, a coldness that seared his very being with the heat of a thousand suns.

  He screamed.

  So slowly, the demons stepped through the curtains as if they weren’t there, all of them stepping into him like a man through a door.

  He struggled for breath as his flesh was being seared off, flayed bloody. In that struggle, he couldn’t control his mind.

  He simply fell back into a dark void, no longer conscious of his body, the bathtub, the curtain, the demons, the bathroom, the apartment, not even Ava and the cruel enforcer.

  Through it all, only one clear thought came to him before he fell away completely.

  This is what death feels like.