Three days later.

Erich stood on the overgrown front lawn, the harsh afternoon sun stinging his eyes. He wore an oversized gray hoodie that swallowed his thin frame. He inhaled deeply, letting the fresh air fill his lungs.

The front screen door whined open. Brenda hurried down the porch steps, her fingers nervously gripping a set of car keys. She stopped and checked the front door lock three times, her eyes darting toward Erich as if she expected him to sprint down the street.

Keyla pushed past her mother. She wore a pair of beat-up headphones around her neck and a canvas messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

"Can we go? I have a shift in an hour," Keyla muttered, not looking at either of them.

Erich walked toward the rusted Chevrolet parked in the cracked driveway. He grabbed the door handle and pulled. The metal hinges shrieked in protest.

He slid into the backseat. The cracked vinyl upholstery smelled heavily of synthetic vanilla air freshener and old dust. His mind instantly flashed to the silent, climate-controlled interior of Erik's bulletproof Maybach. He pushed the memory away, his jaw tightening.

Brenda started the engine. The car violently shuddered before settling into a rough idle. She adjusted the rearview mirror, her worried eyes locking onto Erich's reflection.

"Did you sleep okay, honey?" she asked, her voice painfully bright.

Erich stared out the window at the passing rows of identical, rundown houses.

"Yes," he said. A single, flat syllable.

Brenda let out a quiet breath of relief and turned her attention back to the road. The silence in the car was thick and uncomfortable.

Keyla reached out and cranked the volume knob on the radio. Heavy bass and screaming guitars blasted through the cheap speakers, vibrating against the floorboards.

Brenda slapped her hand against the steering wheel. "Keyla! Turn that down! You know your brother can't handle loud noises right now."

She reached for the dial, but Keyla aggressively swatted her hand away.

"He's depressed, Mom, not deaf!" Keyla yelled over the music.

"Show some respect!" Brenda shouted back, her voice cracking with exhaustion.

Erich sat perfectly still in the backseat, watching them fight. The raw, unfiltered anger between them was completely foreign to him. In Erik's world, anger was expressed through calculated cruelty and frozen bank accounts, never through shouting matches in a crappy car.

It was chaotic. But strangely, it grounded him.

Erich leaned forward slightly.

"Turn it off," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it held a sharp, commanding edge that cut straight through the noise. "It's giving me a headache."

Keyla froze. She snapped her head around to look at him. Her mouth fell open slightly. The old Erich would have curled into a ball and cried. He never demanded anything.

She swallowed hard, her hand slowly reaching out to click the radio off. The sudden silence was deafening.

The Chevy pulled into the parking lot of a red-brick building. A wooden sign near the entrance read: Oak Grove Psychological Services.

Erich stepped out of the car. A cold gust of wind hit his face. He immediately reached up and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, hiding his features in the shadows.

Brenda hovered right beside him. She placed a trembling hand on his elbow, guiding him through the glass doors like he was made of spun glass.

The waiting room was suffocatingly quiet. The carpet was thick, and the walls were painted a muted, clinical beige.

Erich's eyes scanned the room. They landed on a series of abstract paintings hung above the reception desk. The brushstrokes were hesitant, the color theory completely flawed. It was garbage art meant to soothe anxious minds. His fingers twitched with the urge to fix it.

The receptionist handed Brenda a thick stack of evaluation forms. Brenda's hands shook so badly she dropped the pen.

Erich watched his mother bend down to retrieve it. A strange, heavy ache settled in his chest. It was the crushing weight of a mother's desperate love-something he had never experienced in his past life.

Keyla slumped into a corner chair, aggressively scrolling on her phone. But every few seconds, her eyes flicked up to check on him.

A heavy wooden door down the hallway opened.

Dr. Felicity Albright stepped out. She wore a tailored navy suit and a practiced, compassionate smile. Her eyes bypassed Brenda and locked directly onto Erich.

"Erich? We're ready for you," she said softly.

Erich's leg muscles tightened. He stood up. The next forty-five minutes were going to be a brutal psychological war.

Brenda took a step forward to follow him. Dr. Albright held up a gentle hand.

"Just Erich today, Brenda. We need some one-on-one time."

Erich walked past the doctor and stepped into the office. The door clicked shut behind him, instantly cutting off the hum of the waiting room. The silence was heavy, almost oppressive.

He looked around the room. His eyes landed on a long, black leather chaise lounge in the corner.

His stomach violently contracted. Bile rose in his throat. It looked exactly like the couch Erik used to make him sit on while lecturing him about his flaws.

Dr. Albright gestured toward a single fabric armchair opposite her desk. She picked up a thick manila folder.

Erich ignored the chair. He walked straight to the window, turning his back to her. He crossed his arms, locking his body down into an impenetrable fortress.

Dr. Albright flipped open the folder. Her pen tapped lightly against the paper.

"How have you been sleeping, Erich?" she asked, her tone carefully neutral.

Erich stared at his own reflection in the windowpane. He took a slow, deep breath, letting the cold glass chill his forehead. He turned around, his eyes locking onto the doctor with a chilling, empty calmness.

It was time to lie.

Dr. Albright's pen hovered over the lined paper. Her eyes were sharp, analyzing his posture, his breathing, the tension in his jaw.

Erich slowly walked away from the window. He sank into the fabric armchair, intentionally slumping his shoulders. He dropped his gaze to the geometric pattern on the rug, forcing his eyes to lose focus.

"I don't remember," he said. His voice was dry, cracking slightly at the edges. "My head feels like it's packed with wet cotton. Even breathing feels exhausting."

Dr. Albright frowned. She lowered her pen and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk.

"When you say you don't remember, Erich, are you referring to the night of the incident? Or before that?"

Erich laced his fingers together in his lap. He pressed his right thumb hard into his left knuckle, digging the nail in until a sharp spike of pain shot up his arm. The pain forced a genuine rush of moisture to his eyes.

"Everything," he whispered.

Dr. Albright quickly flipped through the pages in his file. "An overdose of that magnitude can certainly cause short-term memory fragmentation. But it usually presents with severe cognitive delay."

She was testing him.

Erich didn't miss a beat. "Today is Thursday, October 14th. We drove here down Route 9. The receptionist was wearing a green sweater." He recited the facts with terrifying clarity.

Surprise flickered across Dr. Albright's face. The hysterical, weeping boy she had treated for six months was gone. The person sitting in front of her was completely lucid, yet emotionally dead.

She decided to push harder. She went for the open wound.

"Do you remember New York? The art academy? The reason you had to leave?"

Erich's heart slammed against his ribs. He had no idea what she was talking about. But he kept his face completely paralyzed. He slowly lifted his eyes to meet hers.

"So what?" he asked, his voice dripping with absolute apathy.

Dr. Albright blinked. She was used to Erich breaking down into hyperventilation the second the academy was mentioned. This icy indifference completely threw her off balance.

She picked up her pen and dragged a heavy line across the paper. Emotional isolation mechanism activated. Suspected post-traumatic dissociation.

Erich watched the movement of her pen. The tension in his chest loosened slightly. He had won. He had successfully weaponized psychology against the psychologist.

To solidify his control over the narrative, Erich suddenly stood up.

He walked over to the full-length mirror leaning against the wall. He stared at his reflection. His hair was a greasy, tangled mess that hung past his shoulders, completely obscuring his face.

It was the exact same length Erik had forced him to keep in his past life. Erik liked pulling it.

A wave of nausea hit Erich so hard he had to grip the edges of the mirror to stay upright.

He turned his head to look at Dr. Albright. His eyes were burning with a manic, desperate intensity.

"I need to cut it off," he demanded.

Dr. Albright froze. "Your hair? Erich, for the past six months, you've refused to let anyone near you with scissors. You said it made you feel safe."

"It's too heavy," Erich said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "It's suffocating me. I want it gone. I want to start over."

The double meaning of his words hung heavy in the air. It perfectly fit the narrative of a suicidal patient seeking a drastic rebirth.

Dr. Albright stared at him for a long moment. She offered a warm, practiced smile, but internally, her clinical alarm bells were ringing. She made a mental note: Abrupt personality shift. Monitor for potential manic episode or other underlying issues. The recovery seems... too clean. Finally, she let out a slow exhale and signed her name at the bottom of his evaluation form.

"This is a massive step, Erich. It's a positive sign. I will tell your mother to support this decision."

"Thank you," Erich said flatly.

The session ended. Erich pushed the heavy door open and stepped out into the hallway. A cold sweat had soaked through the back of his t-shirt, sticking uncomfortably to his skin.

Brenda shot up from her chair the second she saw him. She looked past him, her eyes pleading with Dr. Albright for a verdict.

Dr. Albright offered a warm, reassuring smile. "He's experiencing some memory fog, Brenda. But his survival instinct is kicking in. He's making progress."

Brenda covered her mouth with both hands. A choked sob escaped her lips. She looked at Erich like he was a ghost that had finally decided to stay.

Keyla stood up from her corner. She didn't say anything, but the rigid tension in her shoulders visibly melted away.

They walked out into the parking lot. The wind whipped around them.

Brenda unlocked the Chevy, her hands still shaking with relief. She looked at Erich over the roof of the car.

"Do you... do you want to go straight home? Or do you want to stop somewhere?"

Erich stared at the reflection of the trees in the car window. The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a cold, humorless smirk.

"Book me an appointment at the barbershop," he said.

He was going to kill the old Erich Colon today.

Midnight.

Erich jolted awake. His heart hammered against his sternum like a trapped bird. His throat was parched, feeling like it was coated in sand.

He pushed the heavy blanket off his sweating body and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He needed water.

He opened his bedroom door. The second-floor hallway was pitch black. The only source of light was a faint, yellow glow bleeding from beneath the kitchen door downstairs.

Erich walked toward the stairs. His bare foot pressed down on the top wooden step. It let out a sharp creak.

He froze instantly, holding his breath.

From the kitchen, the muffled sound of Brenda crying drifted up the stairwell. She was speaking in a hushed, frantic whisper into the wall-mounted telephone.

Erich pressed his back against the wall, sliding down into the shadows to listen.

"I know, I know," Brenda sobbed, her voice thick with exhaustion. "But the insurance company denied the claim. They said self-inflicted injuries aren't covered. The bank sent another foreclosure notice today."

Erich's brow furrowed. In his past life with Erik, money was an abstract concept. He had never considered the brutal reality of medical bills and mortgage payments crushing a family.

The person on the other end of the line said something sharp.

Brenda's voice spiked with sudden, fierce anger. "I am not putting him in a state facility! He is my son! I will sell this house before I abandon him!"

She paused, taking a ragged breath. "It wasn't his fault. You know he didn't plagiarize that painting. Those kids at the academy ruined his life. The internet tore him apart. That's why he took those pills."

Plagiarism. Cyberbullying. Expulsion.

The three words locked together in Erich's brain like puzzle pieces.

A sudden, violent pressure bloomed in his chest. It wasn't his own emotion. It was the residual, suffocating despair of the body's original owner. The absolute injustice of being framed and destroyed.

Brenda hung up the phone. The sound of her crying grew louder, accompanied by the frantic squeaking of a sponge scrubbing the kitchen counter. She was cleaning to stop herself from screaming.

Erich stood up in the dark. The frozen, dead space in his chest-the part of him that Erik Patton had systematically destroyed-cracked open just a fraction.

He didn't go down to the kitchen. Instead, he turned around and walked to the end of the hallway.

He stopped in front of a closed door. He wrapped his hand around the cold brass doorknob and twisted. The hinges groaned as he pushed it open.

It was the art studio.

Moonlight spilled through the uncurtained window, illuminating the chaos. The floor was littered with crumpled sketch paper. The air was thick with the bitter, chemical stench of turpentine and dried oil paint.

In the center of the room stood an easel, draped in a heavy canvas drop cloth. It looked like a corpse waiting for burial.

Erich walked over to it. He grabbed the edge of the cloth and ripped it away. Dust exploded into the air, making him cough.

The unfinished oil painting underneath was chaotic, the subject matter a storm of dark, violent emotion. It was the kind of raw, desperate art Erik would have despised. And yet, beneath the rage, he could see it-the familiar, precise way the shadows were layered, a subconscious fingerprint he couldn't erase. It was his own technique, twisted by another soul's agony.

Erich reached out. He traced his fingertips over the rough, raised texture of the dried paint.

He felt it. The exact moment the original Erich's spirit had broken.

A massive wave of empathy crashed over him. They were the same. Both of them were artists pushed to the absolute edge of a cliff by people who wanted to control them.

Erich turned his head, looking at the walls covered in rejected sketches. His jaw set into a hard line.

If Erich Colon was dead, then he would live as Erich Morrison. He would take this broken life, and he would use it to fight back. For the kid who died, and for himself.

He picked up a rusted palette knife resting on the wooden table. He gripped the wooden handle so tightly his knuckles popped.

Without a second thought, he dragged the sharp metal edge across the bottom corner of the canvas, carving a harsh, aggressive signature into the thick paint.

It was a declaration of war.

He dropped the knife. The metallic clatter echoed in the quiet room.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Brenda was coming up.

Erich quickly threw the drop cloth back over the easel and stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.

He bumped right into Brenda at the top of the stairs. She gasped, quickly wiping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand, forcing a terrible, wobbly smile.

"Erich. What are you doing out of bed?"

Erich looked down at her red, swollen eyes. For the first time since waking up in this body, he reached out voluntarily. He placed his hand on her trembling shoulder.

"Go to sleep," he said, his voice steady and deeper than usual. "Everything is going to be fine."

Brenda froze. She stared up at him, her mouth slightly open. The fragile, broken boy she had been taking care of was gone. The man standing in front of her felt like a wall of solid steel.

Erich dropped his hand and walked back to his bedroom. He had work to do.