Chương 2: Chapter 1: Execution

Elliot Black was being executed. This execution seemed to have started a series of protests and riots, but alas the United States was very unforgiving to those who indulged in human experimentation. Elliot's eyes shifted calmly toward the observatory. Beyond the reinforced glass, twelve witnesses sat in two neat rows. Elliot recognised several faces, though none of them met his eyes for long. His mother sat in the front row stared at him without blinking.

Her hands were locked together tightly enough to leave the knuckles white. The official beside the door asked if he had any last words.

"No." The official waited moments longer, seeming certain that he would reconsider. Elliot didn't. The technician picked up the needle and walked slowly towards Elliot, every step seemingly taking longer than the last. He opened the cap and placed his hand on Elliot's forearm seemingly to stop him from struggling. However, his wrists and ankles had been secured, although the restraints were largely ceremonial. There was nowhere to go, and struggling would only interfere with his ability to observe the process.

The needle pierced the skin. The needle had entered at the wrong angle. Elliot could feel the pressure beneath his skin as the man withdrew it, apologised under his breath and tried again. He considered pointing out the mistake. It seemed unnecessary. The procedure would reach the same conclusion either way. The second attempt found the vein. Clear tubing ran from his arm to a machine positioned behind him. A light on the machine changed from red to green. The first substance entered his bloodstream.

Cold spread through his arm. Elliot counted his heartbeats. At fourteen, the muscles in his shoulders began to relax. By twenty-one, the ceiling lights had developed blurred halos. His tongue felt thicker when he pressed it against the back of his teeth. He wondered which sensation would disappear last. The witnesses became indistinct shapes. Sound stretched, deepened and then lost meaning. His final breath left his lungs without urgency. There was no tunnel. No light. No sudden understanding.

There was only an interruption. Darkness..... Then pain. Elliot inhaled sharply and rolled onto his side as his lungs convulsed. He coughed against a pillow that smelled of lavender and unfamiliar detergent. His body was wrong. The realisation arrived before he opened his eyes. His limbs were too light. His chest moved incorrectly. Hair clung to his face, long enough to brush against his lips. Even the position of his hips against the mattress felt unfamiliar. He opened his eyes. A pale hand rested on the blanket.

It was much too small. Much too small. Elliot raised it slowly. Five narrow fingers. Short nails. A faint scar beside the thumb. No puncture wound from the execution needle. He turned the hand over, then touched his wrist and searched for a pulse. Fast, but regular. The bedroom around him was unfamiliar. Wooden furniture. Cream-coloured walls. A row of books arranged beneath the window. Daylight entered through thin curtains, illuminating particles of dust drifting above the floor.

"Is this the after-life?" A small smile spread across his face.

"Fascinating." He murmured. He pushed himself upright. The room tilted violently. A collection of images surfaced in his mind: a woman brushing his hair, a classroom with twelve wooden desks, a white uniform folded inside a wardrobe and a name written repeatedly across the front of an exercise book. Elizabeth White. The door opened. A woman rushed inside and stopped when she saw him sitting up.

"Elizabeth?" Elliot looked at her, then down at the child's hand gripping the blanket. His execution had apparently failed in a manner not covered by the official documentation.

"Elizabeth you are late! You were already informed that the Master is expecting you to join him for breakfast today. A maid was already sent to wake you thirty minutes ago, how could you still be in bed."

"Master?"

"Your father of course; your class ceremony is in a week Elizabeth. Although the Master is always busy, he wants to confirm with you if all preparations are complete." Confusion hit Elizabeth like a bullet. Elizabeth kept it from reaching her face. Or at least she hoped she did. The woman standing in the doorway wore a dark grey dress beneath a spotless white apron. Her hair had been drawn into a tight bun, and a small silver pin marked with an unfamiliar crest rested beneath her collar.

She looked irritated, but not alarmed. She knew Elizabeth and she expected Elizabeth to know her. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Elizabeth lowered her eyes and allowed her shoulders to draw slightly inward. The movement came naturally, as though the body had performed it often enough to no longer require conscious thought.

"I'm sorry," she said. The voice that left her mouth was soft, young and unmistakably female. For the first time since opening her eyes, Elliot nearly lost control of his expression. The hand had been evidence. The reflection she had yet to see would be further evidence. But hearing a child's voice emerge from his own throat made the situation feel abruptly, unpleasantly real. The woman's irritation faded a little.

"Are you feeling unwell, Lady Elizabeth?" Lady. Another useful detail.

"No." Elizabeth paused, searching for an answer that explained her behaviour without inviting too much scrutiny.

"I woke up disoriented."

"You've been sleeping poorly again." A memory surfaced without warning. A dim room. Blue light leaking through the seams of a metal case. Elizabeth lying awake while something cold and invisible pressed against her skin. The image disappeared before she could examine it.

"I suppose I have," she said. The woman sighed and entered the room.

"Your father specifically instructed you to rest during the final week. The preparations are meant to strengthen you, not leave you exhausted." Preparations. Elizabeth glanced towards her without lifting his head fully.

"What preparations?" The words escaped before she could stop them. The maid stared at her. Elizabeth felt the mistake immediately. She adjusted her expression, adding a slight frown.

"I mean, what preparations are scheduled for today?" Her suspicion eased.

"The morning mana infusion has already been delayed because you overslept. Master Halvern is waiting in the eastern chamber, and the physician intends to examine your channels afterwards." Mana. Channels. Elizabeth held both words in her mind and showed nothing. The woman crossed to the wardrobe and opened it.

"After breakfast, you have two hours of circulation practice, then your lesson with Lady Renwick. The evening crystal exposure has been shortened, but only because your father doesn't want you overtired before the ceremony." Another memory surfaced. Elizabeth sitting inside a shallow stone basin while pale vapour gathered around her shoulders. A tutor striking the centre of her back whenever her breathing lost rhythm. Elizabeth's fingers tightened slightly around the blanket.

They had been exposing this body to some form of energy. Repeatedly. Long enough that Elizabeth had accepted the discomfort as ordinary.

"Of course," she said. The woman removed a white dress with dark blue trim and placed it at the foot of the bed.

"Your father has invested too much in your awakening for carelessness now. The White family has never produced offspring without a high-grade class, and he doesn't intend for you to be the first." Whatever this class ceremony was, the outcome was not regarded as random. Or, more accurately, those in this household believed they had influenced the result. Elliot looked down at the dress.

"Has anyone ever failed after completing the preparations?" The woman gave him a strange look.

"Failed?"

"To receive the expected class." The maid chuckled lightly.

"The System recognises what each person is suited for," she continued.

"Blood, upbringing and preparation all have their place. Your father has ensured you have every advantage." Elizabeth remained silent. Before she could ask more, the woman continued arranging the clothes.

"With your affinity training and the strength of the White lineage, you should have several excellent paths available. A formal magician class would be ideal, but your father has said he'll accept any advanced arcane class with sufficient growth potential." The certainty in her voice suggested that receiving something impressive was not merely hoped for. It was expected.

"What would happen if I received something else?" The woman laughed softly again, as though Elizabeth had made a childish joke.

"You won't." She turned towards Elizabeth.

"You should be grateful. Common children enter their ceremonies with no tutors, no exposure treatments and scarcely enough mana to qualify for anything beyond labour classes." Elizabeth looked at her. She spoke without cruelty. As though a comfortable hierarchy had already been established. To her, the difference was natural. Perhaps inevitable. Perhaps even deserved.

"The System gives each person the place intended for them," she added. There it was. A mechanism that distributed power, interpreted as divine or natural judgment. Elliot had heard similar arguments before, though usually phrased through genetics, wealth or social utility rather than an apparently supernatural System. Those who benefited from an arrangement rarely struggled to find moral justification for it. She filed the thought away. The woman checked the clock mounted above the mantelpiece.

"You have ten minutes. Your father is already waiting." She moved towards the door, then stopped.

"And Lady Elizabeth?"

"Yes?"

"Do try to appear enthusiastic when he discusses Lord Vale's son." Elizabeth said nothing. The woman's expression softened with what might have been sympathy.

"Your father has not formally agreed to anything. He only wishes for the families to become better acquainted before your academy years begin." A second collection of memories rose to the surface. A boy several years older than Elizabeth, standing beside a garden fountain. Dark hair. A narrow face. A smile that never reached his eyes. Elizabeth sitting beside her father while two men discussed her education as though she were absent. The words suitable match. The words after her first advancement.

The sensation of nails digging into her own palms beneath the table. The memories vanished. Elizabeth's hands remained still on the blanket. The woman stepped into the corridor.

"Get dressed. The Marquess dislikes being kept waiting." The door closed. Elliot remained motionless for several seconds. Marquess. The title settled several uncertainties at once. Elizabeth White was not merely wealthy. She belonged to an aristocratic family important enough to employ servants, physicians, magical tutors and whatever equipment had been used to expose her body to "mana". Her father had spent years preparing her for a class ceremony. He expected the System to reward that preparation.

He also appeared to be arranging her future marriage before she had reached adolescence. Elliot looked down at the small hands resting in his lap. She pushed herself upright. The room tilted sharply. Her hand shot towards the bedpost before her knees could give way. She remained there until the dizziness passed, breathing slowly through her nose. The body was weak. Or exhausted. Possibly both.

Repeated exposure to an unknown energy source could have affected the nervous system, endocrine function or cardiovascular stability. The strange pressure she remembered might have been physiological, magical or psychological. She lacked the equipment to determine which. For now. Elliot crossed the room and stopped before the mirror. A girl stared back at him. She appeared to be around eleven years old, with pale skin, light grey eyes and long white-blonde hair that had tangled during sleep.

Her face was narrow and fine-boned. Faint shadows rested beneath her eyes. She looked delicate. That meant very little. Appearances were unreliable even under ordinary circumstances, and nothing about his present circumstances qualified as ordinary. She touched the mirror. The girl did the same.

"Elizabeth White," she whispered. The name felt foreign in this mouth. Elliot Black had been an adult man, a scientist and, according to the government that had killed him, a criminal beyond rehabilitation. Elizabeth White was the daughter of a marquess, one week away from receiving a magical class and apparently destined for a marriage she did not want. Elliot did not yet know whether Elizabeth was dead.

He did not know whether her memories had been transferred into him, whether her consciousness remained somewhere inside the body or whether he was experiencing the final hallucinations of a dying brain. The simplest available evidence suggested that he had survived death by entering another person. It was an absurd conclusion. She turned away from the mirror and examined the dress laid across the bed. Ten minutes to learn how an aristocratic child dressed. Then breakfast with a father she did not recognise.

After that, a mana infusion involving a substance she had never encountered, followed by an examination of anatomical structures that should not exist. Elizabeth felt her pulse accelerating. She closed her eyes. Panic would reduce her ability to observe, increase the likelihood of careless speech and make it more difficult to imitate Elizabeth's supposed behaviour. Therefore, panic was unhelpful. She inhaled slowly. Held the breath. Released it.

The fear and a tinge excitement remained, but control returned around it. She could survive a breakfast. She could listen. Most people revealed far more while correcting a mistake than while answering a direct question. As for the proposed marriage, there was no reason to resist it yet. Open refusal would attract attention and reduce her freedom. Cooperation, or the appearance of it, could provide access to another noble household, additional resources and perhaps much more information.

Elliot looked back at her reflection. The girl's face remained calm. A frightened noble daughter would be watched. An obedient one might be underestimated. For the moment, obedience was the more useful disguise.