waking up as Lisa Savage

The beeping was the first thing she registered.

Steady. Mechanical. Annoying.

Lila Jones had spent enough time in safe houses and field hospitals to recognize the sound of a heart monitor without opening her eyes. But this one was cheaper, older the kind found in underfunded public wards, not the private medical suites she’d been accustomed to.

She kept her eyes closed and took inventory.

Pain. Dull, widespread, but manageable. Her ribs ached with every breath. Her left shoulder throbbed. There was a tightness around her skull that suggested a concussion, though the sharp edges of the headache were softened by whatever medication dripped into her arm.

She could feel the IV line taped to her right hand.

She flexed her fingers. Too small. The calluses were wrong—no knife work, no trigger discipline. Soft palms. Bitten nails.

This was not her body.

Memories from the void rushed back: the white light, the voice, the pull. Lisa Savage. Seventeen. Pushed into traffic by those she trusted.

Lila forced her eyes open.

A cracked ceiling. Fluorescent light panels, two of them flickering. A curtain rail with a faded floral pattern. The air smelled of antiseptic, stale coffee, and the particular despair of a public hospital after visiting hours.

She turned her head slowly careful, because the body she now inhabited was fragile and saw the woman.

She was slumped in a plastic chair beside the bed, her head resting on folded arms. Her clothes were worn: a cardigan with a loose button, slacks that had been washed too many times. Dark circles carved hollows beneath her eyes. Even in sleep, her brow was furrowed with worry.

Elaine Savage. The name surfaced from the borrowed memories like a photograph rising through murky water. Lisa’s mother. Single parent. Worked double shifts at a diner. Had spent money she didn’t have on a lawyer after Lisa’s accident, trying to get justice, only to be told it was “an unfortunate incident with no clear liability.”

Lila looked down at her own hands again. Small. Pale. A faint scar across the left knuckle Lisa had caught it on a chain-link fence in middle school, running from bullies.

I’m in a child’s body.

The thought should have brought panic. Instead, Lila felt something colder: assessment. She catalogued her limitations. The body was underfed she could see the thinness of her wrists, the prominence of her collarbones. Muscle tone was nearly nonexistent. The ribs that ached were likely bruised, maybe cracked. There was a brace on her left ankle; a sprain, she guessed.

She tried to clench her fist. The grip was weak. A child’s grip.

But I still have my mind.

That was the only thing that mattered.

She took a slow breath and let her eyes drift to the window. Night outside. The city beyond was a smear of orange streetlights against a low ceiling of clouds. She could see the outline of a freeway, hear the distant hum of traffic.

Veridian City. She recognized the skyline, though from a different angle. In her past life, she’d watched this city from a penthouse in the Heights. Now she was somewhere in the Shallows—the working-class sprawl that the wealthy pretended didn’t exist.

The irony was not lost on her.

She closed her eyes and let Lisa’s memories surface. They came in fragments: a cramped apartment with peeling wallpaper. A high school locker that never closed properly. A boy’s laugh Derek and a girl’s whisper Mandy and then the screech of tires, the impact, the darkness.

They pushed her, Lila thought. They pushed her into traffic and called it an accident.

She had done worse things in her former life. Assassinations, sabotage, the quiet elimination of anyone who threatened Jones Consolidated. But she had never pretended to be innocent. She had never smiled at someone while arranging their death.

They will pay.

Not with rage. Rage was inefficient. It would be a cold, methodical dismantling the same way she had destroyed every target her family had ever placed before her.

But first, she needed to survive. To understand this new life. To gather resources.

The woman beside her stirred.

Elaine lifted her head, blinking in the dim light. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale with exhaustion. When she saw Lila watching her, her expression crumpled into something raw and desperate.

“Lisa?” Her voice cracked. “Baby, are you oh, thank God.”

She reached out and took Lila’s hand the one without the IV and held it tight. Her fingers were rough, the skin chapped from dishwater and cleaning chemicals. Lila felt the warmth of them, the trembling.

This woman loves her daughter, Lila realized. And her daughter is dead.

For a moment just a moment something flickered in her chest. An unfamiliar sensation. Guilt? No. She had taken lives before without remorse. But this was different. She was wearing the face of a dead girl, holding the hand of a mother who didn’t yet know she was gone.

Lila pushed the feeling down.

“I’m okay,” she said. Her voice came out thin, younger than she was used to. She modulated it, made it softer. Vulnerable. “I’m okay, Mom.”

The word felt foreign on her tongue. Lila’s own mother had died when she was seven, replaced within a year by Vivian’s mother a woman who had looked at Lila like a weed in her garden. She had never called anyone “Mom” after that.

But Elaine Savage needed to hear it. And Lila needed Elaine’s trust.

“The doctors said” Elaine’s voice broke. She pressed Lila’s hand to her cheek. “They said you might not wake up. They said there was brain damage, that you could be ”

“I’m here,” Lila said. She injected warmth into her tone, the way she had learned to do when playing a role. “I’m awake. What happened?”

Elaine’s face hardened. “You don’t remember?”

Lila hesitated. She had absorbed Lisa’s memories, but she needed to establish a baseline to understand what “Lisa” would reasonably recall. “Some of it,” she said slowly. “The street. The car. But before that…” She let her brow furrow, let her voice trail into confusion. “It’s fuzzy.”

Elaine’s grip tightened. “Derek and Mandy brought you to the hospital. Said you’d had a fight and you ran into the road.” Her voice dripped with bitterness. “They left after an hour. Haven’t been back. Haven’t called. The police said it was an accident.”

Of course they did, Lila thought. Because you have no money and no power, and the witnesses were their friends.

“I see,” Lila said quietly.

“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Elaine said fiercely. “I’m going to get you out of here. I’ll work extra shifts, I’ll”

“It’s okay, Mom.” Lila squeezed her hand. “I’ll figure it out.”

Something in her voice must have been too steady, too certain, because Elaine looked at her oddly for a moment. But exhaustion won out, and she simply nodded, brushing tears from her face.

“I’ll go find the nurse,” Elaine said. “They’ll want to know you’re awake. And I need to call the school, and”

She stood, reluctant to let go of Lila’s hand, then finally released it and hurried out of the room, her worn shoes squeaking on the linoleum.

Lila was alone.

She let the mask drop. Her expression flattened, her eyes hardening as she stared at the ceiling.

You have much to learn about this world, Lisa Savage. And much to avenge.

She began cataloguing everything she knew. She was a seventeen-year-old girl from a poor family. She had no resources, no allies, and a body that could barely walk. But she had something far more valuable: the mind of a trained assassin, a lifetime of strategic knowledge, and the patience of a woman who had already died once.

They took your life, Lisa. I’ll take everything they have.

A nurse came in a tired woman with a kind face and began checking vitals. Lila answered her questions with the appropriate confusion and compliance. Yes, she knew her name. No, she didn’t remember the accident clearly. Yes, she felt tired.

When the nurse left, Elaine returned with a cup of vending-machine coffee and a wan smile. “They said you can go home tomorrow, if the doctor clears you.”

“Good,” Lila said.

She watched Elaine settle back into the plastic chair, already half-asleep, her hand resting lightly on the bed rail. The woman was exhausted, drowning in bills she couldn’t pay, trying to hold together a life that was falling apart.

I’ll fix it, Lila promised silently. I’ll fix everything.

But first, she needed to learn.

She reached for Lisa’s memories again, sifting through them like files in a cabinet. The school: Westbrook High. The bullies: a girl named Jessica who ruled the cafeteria like a queen. The teachers: indifferent, overworked, blind to the cruelty happening in their hallways.

And Derek and Mandy. She saw their faces clearly now the handsome boy with the cruel smile, the pretty blonde with the laugh like broken glass.

They pushed you into traffic, Lila thought. And they walked away.

She closed her eyes.

In her past life, she had eliminated targets for corporations, for family, for the sake of profit. This time, her purpose was simpler.

This time, it was personal.

When she opened her eyes again, dawn was breaking through the hospital window. Pale gold light spilled across the floor, catching the dust motes floating in the stale air.

Elaine was still asleep, her head pillowed on her arms. The monitor beeped steadily.

Lila looked at her small, pale hand Lisa’s hand and slowly curled it into a fist.

I will not be weak again. I will not trust again.

And somewhere in this city, Vivian and Marcus are celebrating my death. Derek and Mandy are laughing about the accident.

They have no idea what’s coming.

She smiled. It was not a warm smile.

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