It was dark out, quiet, the kind of night that made the city feel empty. Leon walked down the busted sidewalk, boots scraping the asphalt. He was average—170 pounds or so, 5'11", nothing special. Hair in his eyes, hands jammed in the pockets of a beat-up jacket. He moved like he had a plan, but his head was somewhere else, drifting.
The streetlights buzzed faintly, throwing dim light on the pavement. A car rumbled somewhere blocks away. He didn't notice anything off—didn't see the shadow up top.
On one of the old buildings, a chunk of concrete sat loose, cracked and ugly. It'd been there too long, ignored, and now it gave way. Dropped fast. Barely a sound as it fell.
Leon didn't hear it coming. One step, then a crack. The stone smashed his head open, blood hitting the ground in a dark splash. He crumpled, gone, just a heap under the streetlight.
No one saw it. The street stayed dead quiet, like nothing happened.
The street stayed dead quiet, like nothing happened. Leon's body just lay there, a twisted pile of limbs under the streetlight. Blood pooled around his head, dark and sticky, soaking into the cracks of the pavement. The night didn't care. It kept on being night—cold, empty, and still.
A few blocks over, a stray dog sniffed the air, its ears twitching at the faint sound of that crack from earlier. But it didn't come closer. It just turned and trotted off, nails clicking on the asphalt.
Minutes passed, maybe ten or fifteen, before something changed. Not out there on the street, but inside what was left of him.
...
Leon's consciousness flickered, a faint pulse in a vast, empty dark. No body, no cold pavement under his boots—just nothing. Then a voice, sharp and robotic, sliced through the void, echoing inside his mind.
[System online. Host deceased. New entity detected. Initiating protocol.]
"Deceased?" He didn't speak it—couldn't. It was a thought, loud and jagged, crashing around in his head. "What do you mean, deceased? I was just walking, I'm fine, I—"
[Host terminated at 23:47. Cause: cranial trauma. Consciousness transferred. Current entity: bacterium, designation B-741. New host acquired.]
"Bacterium?" His mind snagged on it, reeling. "Wait, transferred? You mean I'm not me anymore? I'm not lying dead on the sidewalk?"
[Prior host terminated. Consciousness preserved via transmigration. Current location: unknown.]
"Transmigration?" He grabbed at the word, some half-remembered fantasy nonsense flickering in his memory. "Like soul-jumping? Reincarnation? You're saying I died and now I'm—what, a bug? A germ?"
[Designation B-741. Single bacterium, non-pathogenic. Host: organic matter, subterranean ecosystem.]
"Bacterium?" It hit him like a punch he couldn't feel. "You're shitting me. I went from a guy on the street to a single goddamn germ? What kind of crap transmigration is this?" Panic surged, wild and useless—no chest to pound, no throat to scream with.
[System directive: adapt. Consciousness retained for observation. Entity B-741 viable.]
"Adapt? To being a microscopic speck? No way in hell! I'm not accepting this—I'm a person, not some dirt-crawling microbe!" He tried to summon himself—boots scraping asphalt, hands in his jacket—but it dissolved, replaced by the sickening sense of being one tiny thing, alone and insignificant.
[Prior host identity irrelevant. Current entity purpose: survival, division.]
"Survival? Division?" He latched onto it, horror and disbelief tangling up. "You mean I'm supposed to just sit here and… split? Like some brainless dot? No, fuck that! I want my body back—my real body!"
[Original host unrecoverable. Transmigration complete. Adaptation recommended.]
"Unrecoverable?" His thoughts spun, crashing into that last memory—the streetlight's buzz, the sidewalk, then a blank. "So that's it? I got smashed by a rock and now I'm stuck as a single bacterium somewhere? This is a joke, right? "
[System response: process initiated. Entity B-741 operates within biological parameters. Consciousness retained as anomaly.]
"Anomaly," he snarled, the word dripping with venom. "So I'm a freak germ with my mind tacked on. Fantastic. What do I do now? Float around? Eat dirt? This is insane—I can't live like this!"
[Directive: observe. Process. Adaptation phase initiated.]
"Observe what? A grain of mud?" He wanted to yell, to smash something, but he had no voice, no fists—just a faint, maddening awareness of existing. "I'm not supposed to be this! I'm Leon—I had a life, I had… something! Not this microscopic bullshit!"
The system didn't answer, leaving him to churn in silence. He tried to think straight, to grab hold of anything, but it was like clutching at air. "Okay," he muttered finally, shaky and furious. "So I died. Fine. Transmigrated. Sure. But why a bacterium? Why not a wolf? A warrior? Something badass? Who the hell picks this?"
[Query unanswerable. System origin unknown. Entity B-741 status: stable.]
"Stable," he echoed, a brittle laugh rattling in his mind. "Stable as a lone germ. Perfect." He stopped, the anger fading. "This is real, isn't it? I'm not getting out of this."
[Affirmative.]