Chapter 113: Before She Woke Up

The photograph remained sealed inside an evidence sleeve on the dining table while Freya stared at the words written across its back in the copy Derek had made: ASK FREYA WHAT SHE REMEMBERS BEFORE SHE WOKE UP. The sentence was too precise to dismiss as Adrian merely noticing that her personality had changed.

Louis's first assumption was surveillance. He asked Derek to audit the apartment, Northstar, their phones, and every room where Freya had discussed transmigration. Derek brought in an independent security team rather than relying only on his own people. By evening, they had found no hidden microphone, compromised camera, or suspicious remote access.

Freya tried to reconstruct the night of her confession. She had spoken only inside the apartment. The windows had been closed. Their phones had been on the table, but forensic checks showed no unusual microphone activity. "Then either someone has technology that makes your security team look useless," she said, "or the message didn't come from hearing our conversation."

Louis preferred the first explanation because it belonged to the world of evidence. Freya understood. The second possibility was far more unsettling.

Derek examined the handwriting. It did not match Adrian, Thomas, Victor, Melissa, or anyone else whose samples they possessed. The old photograph itself came from a charity event held when Freya was seven. A duplicate existed in the Stone Foundation's physical archive, which meant the sender could have obtained it without ever entering the Stonebridge home.

The phrase "before she woke up" kept bothering Freya for another reason. In her previous life, she remembered being stabbed, collapsing, and then awakening in this world. There was nothing between those moments. No voice. No light. No mysterious system explaining her mission.

Louis asked her to describe her death again, carefully. Freya hated the subject but did it. She remembered leaving a late-night convenience store, hearing an argument, trying to move away, and being attacked by a thug during the chaos. The memory ended with pain and the certainty that she was dying.

Then Louis asked, "What were you reading before that?"

Freya froze. Two days earlier she had finished The CEO's Gentle Devotion. On the night she died, however, she had opened the novel again because a reader discussion online claimed the epilogue had been edited after publication.

She had forgotten that detail because it seemed meaningless.

Freya closed her eyes, trying to recover the screen she had seen. The version she reread contained one strange line beneath the final chapter: Some endings are only stable until the wrong person wakes up.

Her eyes snapped open.

Louis went completely still. "That wasn't in the version you originally read?"

"I don't think so."

For months Freya had assumed her arrival was random. Now, for the first time, she had a reason to question that assumption. Someone in this world knew language that echoed a line added to a novel in another world.

Louis reached for her hand. "We don't decide what it means yet."

Freya nodded, grateful for the anchor of his practical thinking. But when she looked again at the photograph, the mystery no longer felt like Adrian's conspiracy alone. Something had begun before she ever opened her eyes in Louis's apartment.

Freya also wrote down everything she could remember about the reading platform's interface, update notice, and reader comments. She refused to let memory become more certain simply because the new clue made it important. Louis appreciated that discipline. If they were going to investigate something impossible, they would be stricter with evidence, not less strict.

Freya also wrote down everything she could remember about the reading platform's interface, update notice, and reader comments. She refused to let memory become more certain simply because the new clue made it important. Louis appreciated that discipline. If they were going to investigate something impossible, they would be stricter with evidence, not less strict.