Chapter 6: Home
I got into Nathan's car and it looked like a mess, but I didn't care at all. I just wanted to go home.
"Sorry about the mess," he said, kicking an empty Red Bull can under his seat. "Wasn't expecting to be a taxi service today."
"It's fine. I don't care, I just want to go home. It's better than the hospital anyways."
Nathan looked at me in the mirror. "Mate, a lot is better than the hospital. It's clean, yeah, but not a nice place to be." He said it with a slight smile.
Mum was in the back seat with me because she refused to let me sit in the front. Something about being able to see me properly. She had her hand on my arm the entire drive like she thought I'd disappear if she let go.
The drive wasn't long. Twenty minutes maybe. I watched out the window and tried to take everything in. London looked the same, but we were going in a different direction than I was used to in my other life. That was fine. Everything about this was going to be different.
Nathan pulled into a street of terraced houses. Small front gardens, wheelie bins out, a couple of kids kicking a football on the pavement. He parked in front of a house with a red door and a hanging basket that had seen better days.
"Home sweet home," he said.
I looked at it. So this was where I grew up. Or where Liam Reed grew up. Same name, not the same life, but it was mine now. I sat there for a second staring at the red door and thought, right, enough. Enough with the dwelling. It was time to make something of this life. Even if that stupid god was enjoying himself up there watching me figure it all out, I was grateful. He gave me a chance to actually do something. And I was going to take it.
"You alright?" Mum asked, looking at me.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just feels weird being here now. But I'm good."
She looked at me with a smile. "Of course it does. Come on, let's get you inside."
We got out of the car. Walking was still difficult, my legs felt like they belonged to someone who hadn't used them in five weeks, which was exactly the case. But I managed.
She unlocked the front door and the second it opened I heard it. Claws on a wooden floor. Fast. Getting faster. And then a brown blur shot out of the hallway and launched itself at my legs.
Biscuit.
He was smaller than I expected. A staffie, brown and white, built like a little tank. He was spinning in circles, whining, tail going so fast his whole back end was moving. He jumped up and put his paws on my thighs and looked up at me with these massive eyes like I was the best thing he'd ever seen.
"Alright, alright. Hello, buddy." I knelt down and he immediately started licking my face. Full on, tongue everywhere, no mercy. "Yeah—yeah—" I wiped some slime off my cheek. "Okay, okay. I missed you too." It was nice being home and getting this welcome.
"He's been waiting by the door all morning," Mum said. "I think he knew."
Nathan squeezed past us. "He waits by the door for the postman too, Mum. Don't read too much into it."
"Shut up, Nathan!"
I scratched Biscuit behind the ears and he rolled onto his back. His tail was still going. I couldn't help but smile. I'd never had a dog in my old life. And now there was this little idiot lying on his back demanding belly rubs.
The house was exactly what I expected. Small but looked after. Narrow hallway with coats hanging on hooks and shoes by the door. The living room had a sofa that sagged in the middle, a TV, and family photos on every surface. Me, Nathan, Mum, Dad. School photos, holiday photos, Christmas photos. A whole life on display.
I looked at them while Mum went to put the kettle on. There was one of me in a school uniform. Must have been about thirteen. Scrawny, bad haircut, awkward smile. And there was a recent one, maybe from last year. Different face. Same eyes.
These were his memories, not mine. But they were mine now.
"Your room's the same as you left it," Mum called from the kitchen. "I haven't touched anything. Well, I hoovered. And I changed the sheets. And I opened the window because it was getting stuffy. But apart from that I haven't touched anything."
"So... you've touched everything then."
"Don't be cheeky."
I went upstairs. First door on the right. My room.
It was small. A single bed, a desk, a wardrobe. Posters on the wall. Arsenal, obviously. Some band I didn't recognise. A gaming setup on the desk that was decent but not expensive. Two monitors, a keyboard with some of the letters worn off, a mouse, and a headset.
I had the laptop with me from the hospital. Nathan had dropped it off like he said he would, and Mum had packed it in the bag with my stuff. I put it on the desk next to the keyboard.
I sat on the bed. Biscuit had followed me upstairs and jumped up next to me, turned around three times, and lay down with his head on my lap. I scratched his ears and looked around the room.
This was my room now. This was where I was going to figure out who I was going to be.
I sat there for a bit. Just taking it in. Biscuit fell asleep on my lap within about two minutes, which was weirdly comforting. Like having a warm, snoring hot water bottle that occasionally twitched.
Then I reached for the laptop.
I opened it up and turned it on. Old thing, took ages to boot. The desktop came up and it was a disaster. Icons everywhere, no folders, no organisation. Old Liam just saved everything to the desktop like a psychopath.
I didn't turn on System Insight yet. I just looked. There was a half-finished essay in a Word doc called "english essay final FINAL (2).docx" which told me everything I needed to know about old Liam's study habits. A folder called "FIFA clips" that had about forty files in it. Browser bookmarks for YouTube, Reddit, and a football forum. His download folder was full of random stuff he'd never bothered to sort.
I opened his browser history. YouTube mostly. Football highlights, gaming videos, some music. A couple of searches for "how to get out of a phone contract" and "best budget headphones 2016." Normal stuff. The kind of digital footprint that a nineteen-year-old who wasn't doing anything special would leave behind.
I closed the browser and sat there for a second. That was his life. All of it, right there on a messy desktop. Game clips and half-finished essays and searches for cheap headphones.
Right. My turn.
I turned on System Insight.
It hit me like a freight train.
The laptop's operating system. Every process. Every connection. Data moving through the machine like blood through veins. The antivirus, out of date, three vulnerabilities wide open. The wifi downstairs. The router. Nathan's phone. Mum's tablet. A smart TV running firmware from two years ago with a security hole you could drive a bus through. The ISP's network. Data paths splitting and merging. Open ports. Dead protocols. Misconfigured firewalls. A neighbour's laptop with no password. A baby monitor streaming unencrypted video to nowhere. Further. More networks. More cracks. More doors. Everything made of glass and half of it unlocked and ALL OF IT rushing at me at once like I'd opened a fire hydrant and pointed it at my own face.
I ripped it off.
Silence.
Just me. The laptop screen. Biscuit's snoring. My own heartbeat hammering in my ears.
"Bloody hell," I whispered.
Biscuit lifted his head and looked at me like I'd lost it. I scratched his ear. "I'm fine. Just... yeah. I'm fine."
He put his head back down. Fair enough.
I sat there for a minute, just breathing. The hospital machines had been nothing. Simple little systems, one purpose each. This was the whole world cracked open and poured into my skull in about three seconds.
Okay. Try again. Slower.
I turned it back on, but this time I focused. Just the laptop. Nothing else. Just this screen, this machine.
And it worked. Everything else fell away and I could see this one system laid out in front of me. I could zoom in on just the antivirus, or pull back and see the whole machine, or go even wider if I wanted to. It was like a camera I could control. Focus on one thing, see everything about it. Pull back, see how it connects to everything else. And with my other gift, I could learn what I was looking at. I could learn to code, learn how systems worked, and actually understand what System Insight was showing me.
"Yeah," I said quietly, staring at the screen. "This is going to change my life. It already has, but with this I could go to a proper uni. Use this for cyber security. Or attacks. I could make serious money." I leaned back. "But first I need to figure out how to use it all together and not overwhelm my brain, or I'll be right back in the hospital." I smiled at that.
So I needed to learn.
I cracked my knuckles. "Okay. Let's get to work and learn some stuff."
I opened the browser. Typed "cybersecurity fundamentals." Clicked the first link and started reading.
After a couple of minutes I realised something. This was going fast. Really fast. I didn't need to read anything twice. I could just think of what I needed to know and if I'd read it, it was there. Like a book on a shelf with everything already answered. I could pull up any page I'd read and see it in my head like I was still looking at it.
I opened another one. Then another. Then another.
I don't know how long I sat there. Hours, probably. Page after page after page. Networking, encryption, Linux, how firewalls work, how packets move, how systems talk to each other.
I didn't stop until Mum's voice cut through the floor.
"LIAM! DINNER!"
I blinked. Looked at the screen. Looked at Biscuit, still asleep, still snoring. Looked at my hands on the keyboard.
What just happened?
"LIAM! DINNER!!"
"COMING, MUM!"
I moved Biscuit off my lap.
Mum had made a roast. A proper one. Chicken, roast potatoes, veg, gravy. The works. She'd gone all out because her boy was home.
"You didn't have to do all this, Mum."
"Yes I did. Now sit down and eat."
So I sat down. And I ate a roast dinner with my family in a house that wasn't mine, at a table I'd never sat at before, with a dog under my feet waiting for scraps.
And honestly? It was the best meal I'd ever had.