Chapter Two

The darkness only lasted for a moment.

When I opened my eyes next, I was in water. Floating slowly down to the bottom of a void as bubbles filled my vision around me. Almost beautiful in the way they moved, dancing in the small light that came from above.

Was this heaven? If true, it was kind of disappointing. I didn’t even like swimming that much. Surely, I deserved something a little more interesting after dying the way I did. Was there no justice in the afterlife for someone like me?

I thought back on the life I’d just left, how I’d spent my entire time either chronically online or so engrossed in reading that I rarely went outside. I worked from home as a freelancer, taking odd jobs in illustration and design. Barely the grand artistic career I’d envisioned growing up, but usually enough to pay my bills. Or, at least, it had been. I couldn’t deny that the money had slowly been drying up over the last few years, the use of AI starting to take over. In another year or so, I was sure I’d be out of a job. Maybe homeless.

So was I a good person? I didn’t know the answer to that. Truthfully, I hadn’t really done anything exceptional with my life. I’d never volunteered or donated to charity, and I’d never helped an old lady cross the street. My friendships and relationships were also non-existent, the few I’d had quickly fading not long after finishing my degree. If it weren’t for my roommate, someone I would call an acquaintance at best, I probably would rarely talk to someone in person.

I had been alone. For a very long time.

Was anyone even going to miss me?

What if it was a form of compassion to let me die young? I had been only twenty-five years old and I’d accomplished so little in that time. Did some greater divine power pity me?

I didn’t know.

But what I did know in that very moment, as my body floated down gracefully in the never-ending abyss of water below me, was that... I was running out of oxygen.

I was... WHAT?

Panic immediately set in and I began clawing at the water frantically, trying to make it back to the surface for air. But there was no point. I’d already sunk far too deep, whatever clothes I wore also being too heavy to compete against the gravity dragging me. I was dying. Again.

No, obviously I had been wrong earlier. Clearly, this wasn’t heaven.

This was hell.

I kept struggling against the water, the last of the air escaping my lungs, but I knew it was too late. My vision rapidly went dark once more, a coldness began seeping through my body... and I faded into the blackness.

...

.....Floating.... in nothing.... an emptiness to my surroundings.

............

And then my eyes opened.

With a heaving gasp, I pushed my body upright and coughed violently at the air, desperate to breathe once more. I could still vividly feel it. The feeling of drowning only moments before, the choking sensation as my lungs filled with water.

But it was over. I was alive – at least for now.

Taking a second to calm myself, I finally looked up at the room around me and found I was in a completely unfamiliar environment. It was like something out of a historical palace drama. The entire space was furnished well beyond anything I could ever afford. Everything from the lavish bed I laid on, to the red velvet drapes on the windows, screamed of upper-class wealth. The kind of fortune someone like me could never achieve. That even touching some of the decor would incur a f*e worth more than my life.

Yet here I was. Tucked under the fluffy sheets as if someone had lovingly put me here.

Well, if there was at least one thing I was sure of, it was that this was definitely not a hospital room.

Which therefore begged the question –

...How was I alive?

I pushed the blankets off my body and went to get out of bed, but immediately, I saw something strange. Instead of the two pasty twigs I knew as my legs, I found extremely toned and tan ones instead. Legs that were attached to my body.

Instantly, I snapped my head back up and scanned the room for a full-length mirror, almost tripping over in my haste to reach it. Though, nothing could have prepared me for what I found.

Because as I stared into the bright blue eyes of the most captivating stranger I’d ever seen, the likes of which could rival some of the most beautiful fashion models on the planet, I realised something was very wrong.

Somehow... she was me.