He woke into darkness.

  Not the comforting dark of sietch caverns hidden beneath dune-scoured deserts, nor even the blackness of a starless night on Arrakis. This darkness throbbed behind the eyes—an inward place of discontinuity.

  Paul Atreides became aware of a heart beating faster than any Fremen drum—too fast. His eyelids felt heavy, dragging him toward a comforting oblivion, but discipline asserted itself. He forced a measured inhale, then exhale, feeling each muscle respond to command.

  I am Paul, he reasserted, though the words flickered uncertainly through fractured consciousness. Ghost-images of dunes and spice-blue eyes warred with the imprint of the unremarkable life of an unremarkable person—Greg Veder.

  A wave of pressure built behind his forehead. The alien ache threatened to overwhelm him. It reminded him of that moment—just a single drop!—when he had accepted the Water of Life, only to feel everything rip away in a cosmic unraveling.

  Greg's eyelids shuddered as Paul wrested them open. The strange new reality loomed: a shabby classroom of battered desks, stale air, the hum of cheap fluorescent lighting. He registered the chalk-dust smell, layered with human perspiration. He knew not this place. Yet from his host's memory, he knew its name—Winslow High School.

  He found himself seated, half-slumped, a spiral-bound notebook on the desk, faint scribbles in the margin. Not mine, he noted absently. Greg's.

  The body threatened to betray him again, the eyelids drooping in exhaustion. He clenched his jaw. No, he told himself, sensing a faint premonition. Paul sensed his own tensions as he decided to practice one of the mind-body techniques his mother had taught him in his childhood. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness…focusing the consciousness…aortal dilation…avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness…to be conscious by choice…blood enriched and swiftflooding the overload regions…one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone…animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct…the animal destroys and does not produce…animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual…the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe…focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid…bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs…all things/cells/beings are impermanent…strive for flow-permanence within….

  Over and over and over within his floating awareness the mantra rolled. He forced the fatigue to retreat—enough, at least, to remain upright.

  At his side, a girl with large glasses and an air of quiet tension—Taylor—leaned toward him, her voice edged with concern. "Greg?" she asked, low. "Are you… ok?"

  Paul turned his gaze on her, forcing the swirl of confusion to subside for an instant. Some reflex of training threatened violence, but he suppressed it. Her posture told him she hovered between worry and fear. He tasted the memory-laden swirl of Greg's experiences with her: fleeting glimpses, mostly from a distance. She was… harmless, he deduced, but with hidden corners.

  He was handed a battered book and told to read it. Absent-mindedly, he complied.

  Then came the intrusive presence of another student—Julia, Greg's memory told him. She sat off to the side, poised with the sharpened cruelty of adolescence. He felt her words cutting in, though the details blurred. She spoke again. Irritation flickered in him.

  He suppressed it, parted his lips, and let a flat monotone ring out: "I heard you. Not in the mood for your antics today, Julia. Leave me alone."

  A hush fell. He felt a silent shock ripple through the onlookers. Greg would never speak so directly. But Paul didn't deign the effort required for such mummery worth it. He handed Taylor back her notes and turned his attention inwards.

  A swirl of chemicals in undernourished blood, a dryness along nerve endings that spoke of fatigue, an abnormal pulse behind his forehead, on the brain. The abnormal swelling pulsed, threatening to unbalance him once more. This is the seat of the problem—this malignant growth. If he could isolate it, he might glean what nature of cancer or disease had rooted in this body. Carefully, he plied the threads of nerve and muscle. In his old flesh, he could slow his pulse at will, command every subtle shift of biology. This new body was… undereducated. It would take some getting used to.

  He deepened his observation of the small mass in the frontal lobe—inflamed and strangely autonomous. It shifted as though aware of his scrutiny. Any typical tumor would yield to the neural commands of a Prana-Bindu adept. But this— he realized, this yields nothing. It pulsed with intensity as it resisted his intrusion.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Paul stilled his respiration to a bare whisper, straining to hold focus despite the jarring stimulus that emanated from swelling. The malignant presence grew under scrutiny—no, not malignant exactly, but uncontrollably foreign. Greg's memories—disjointed, shambolic—offered no explanation. Suspicious, Paul isolated the rebellious cells from essential nutrients: a subtle shift in blood flow, adjustments to hormone release, the smallest realignment of muscular tension around the neck. In time, any typical growth would starve and grow stunted.

  He waited, ignoring the outside world, giving only enough attention to remain upright. The swelling subsided. It ceased its frantic expansion, deprived of sustenance but left alive. I will study you later, he decided.

  Turning his attention back outside, a voice penetrated the hush around him: Mr. Gladly, a teacher. Greg's memory conjured an image of the man. "Greg! Are you listening?"

  Paul's eyes snapped open. The entire classroom had turned its gaze upon him, a shifting mosaic of curiosity, ridicule, and annoyance. Even Taylor looked mortified by his lapse in focus.

  "Come up front and share what you discovered," Mr. Gladly repeated, setting aside a sheaf of papers. "We don't have all day."

  Paul inhaled through his nose, breathing shallowly to stave off a fresh tide of pain. He had only half a mind to spare for these trivialities. Yet he saw no advantage in immediate conflict with an authority figure—especially not in his current state.

  He rose, each step careful, crossing the short distance to the front. The headache reverberated with each footfall, a promise of greater pain if he did not find rest soon.

  Focus, he told himself, scanning memory—both Greg's and the recollections gleaned from the notes Taylor had offered him. The topic: the influence of parahumans, or "capes," on society.

  He faced the classroom. For an instant, the memory of Arrakis shimmered at the edges of his vision, dunes shifting into the battered desks and blank stares of these youths. The taste of dryness from old chalk dust touched his tongue, dredging the reflex of thirst. He shook away the thoughts and reminded himself again. Focus.

  "Parahumans are a distinctly unique element in the fabric of our society," he began in a low voice. He recited verbatim lines from Taylor's notes, weaving them together with half-remembered snatches gleaned from Greg's sporadic memory. In his mind, he tested each statement for internal consistency, discarding any illogical segments before presenting them to the crowd. His gaze panned, absentmindedly measuring the shifting expressions of those before him, noting the flickers of curiosity, skepticism, and surprise.

  Yet even as his words took hold, his thoughts veered to more urgent concerns: the curious slip in the ritual, his incomplete consumption of the Water of Life, the veiled cause and subtle intention behind his presence here. Beneath all these reflections stirred an even deeper and more pressing inquiry—the nature of this new reality.

  In his attempt to glean clarity, he set about orchestrating a series of simulations, weaving data points into a grand tapestry of possibilities. Yet Greg was no Mentat; his neural pathways lacked the specific conditioning and reflex arcs that permitted higher-order processing. His mind stumbled, certain leaps of logic refusing to come together, strands of logic fraying. Attempting to accomplish the deep, layered calculations of a Mentat now was like trying to drag a wheeled caravan across dunes—maddeningly inefficient.

  He finished the presentation abruptly, his head throbbing anew. The silence hung. Mr. Gladly seemed caught between praising the unexpected coherence and puzzling over its source. When he spoke, it was with a forced smile. "Thank you, Greg," the teacher said. "That was… surprisingly comprehensive."

  Paul felt the weight of a migraine roll across his consciousness like a sandstorm. He pressed thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose in a deliberate gesture to stem the wave of discomfort.

  Seeing that he had no further recourse, he sighed. Another moment of forced engagement might kindle a fresh onslaught of that ache—he needed some quiet to rest and reorient his thoughts. At last, he nodded, addressing Mr. Gladly. "I'd like to visit the nurse's office," he said. "Headache."

  Gladly lingered a moment in confusion—still wrestling with the incongruity between the presentation and Greg's usual persona—but relented. "Sure, Greg. Go on ahead."

  Paul turned from them without a backward glance, disregarding the muted murmurs that clung to the air. The classroom door closed behind him with a soft click, and in the silent corridor, he paused, breathing away the worst of the pain. There, he felt, even more acutely, the enclosed strangeness pressing down upon him.

  He did not fully grasp the forces at work, nor did he relish the turmoil they wrought on his plans. Yet he knew one truth: he must unravel this puzzle, and swiftly, lest it becomes too late.