John's head, or whatever remained of it, pounded as he tried to orient himself. He took the room in slowly. There were bodies leaned against every wall, chairs filled with people too tired to sit up straight, the particular stillness of a place where everyone was waiting for something that hadn't been promised.
Then, from a corner of the room, a child began to cry. The texture of the voice was that of a boy, six or seven. As it turned out, he was knocked to the floor by another kid twice his size.
The larger boy said a word.
It was short and ugly but John understood it instantly. This was the first word in this new world that had made any sense to him. He knew the shape of that word. He had used it himself, once, in a closed-door meeting. He has dressed up the word in softer language, something he liked to call "cultural expression" so the room would let it go.
In that moment, another memory rose, this time uglier and closer to the bone.
His chief of staff, Marcus, standing in the office doorway with a case file. It was about a mother and her two children, separated at intake, the youngest still in diapers, the paperwork snarled for eleven weeks by a policy John had signed off on himself. Marcus had quietly asked if they could expedite it. Just this one. John remembered saying no. He remembered the small, petty satisfaction of watching Marcus's jaw tighten before he shut the door.
The quiet thrill of being obeyed even when he was wrong, especially when he was wrong. How he loved that. He never learned what happened to that family. He had never once wondered, until now.
He watched the boy on the floor, curling in on himself, ignored by everyone around him. Their expressions were as though nothing would come of speaking up.
Without realising it, Gabriel's tiny hands curled into fists that he had no power to swing.
He wanted to turn away. He wanted to stay above it, the same way he always had. But instead, he cried, not in protest, but in something closer to grief. What came out of him was a soft, aching wail that startled Maria into pulling him closer.
"Shhh… you're okay, mijo. You're safe."
But he wasn't. He was about as far from okay as he had ever been in either life. And maybe, for the first time in both of them, he wanted to be.
He tried to remember the last time he had stood close to a room like this one, but no memory popped up. Even his charity galas had been curated. The photographers were instructed before the event so their cameras caught only tasteful moments. His aides were stationed so one was close enough to smell, to touch or to even matter. His whole life had been built on that distance, something he had called "order". He had called it "earned".
As if on cue, one more memory pushed through. This time softer than the others. It was the kind he usually kept locked away, even from himself.
His daughter, Claire, twenty-six, sitting on a sofa in his study while telling him about the man she was marrying. The man was an engineer, born in Guatemala but naturalised nine years ago. Along with a hearty description of her fiancé, she asked quietly if he'd walk her down the aisle. John remembered the silence that was followed by him completely rebuffing her. He remembered the reelection call he'd taken forty minutes later while pretending as if nothing had happened. Two years after that, an envelope had come back from her. One he had left unopened. The one time he'd tried to write her back but hadn't been able to finish.
He had told himself there would be time. There was, technically. He simply never used it.
As the memory faded again, John watched as an elderly man with greying hair sat beside a man who might have been his son. The man's clothes were plain; his hands scarred in a way that spoke of work John had never done with his own.
Why am I seeing this? He thought. He hated himself faintly for how long it took the next thought to arrive… why shouldn't I be?
In the midst of his turmoil, Maria kept murmuring softly and steadily. John tried to push down the thoughts crowding in on him, but they wouldn't slow. How did I get here? Why this? Why me?
For the first time since his rebirth, one thought arrived clean and whole, without static.
Do I belong here?
The realisation gripped him sharper than the panic that had first consumed him. Everything about this room sat wrong against everything he had built his life to avoid.
Anger surged in his chest before he could name it. His tiny fists clenched, shaking with a fury the body underneath him had no framework for.
Maria noticed. Her voice rose in concern, trying to soothe him, but he only stared past her. In the midst of her comfort, he could only feel the weight of this new life settle over him like wet cloth.
The room had quieted slightly at the sound of his cry, a few faces turning his way. Plastered on them was a tired, familiar patience, the look of people who had seen a screaming newborn before and knew it would pass.
I don't belong here, he thought again, pulse quickening. But I have no choice.
He would have to learn how to survive in this world, the same world he had spent a lifetime keeping at arm's length. And underneath the fear was the slow understanding that thanks to this body, his life, his soul, was now bound to theirs whether he accepted it or not.