I leaned against the cold lockers, watching the chaos unfold in front of me. Luke and Manny were still bickering, Alex was trying to act like she wasn't related to either of them, and the rest of the hallway had moved on as though this was just another day at school. For them, it probably was.
But for me, it was something else entirely.
The sense of familiarity had been gnawing at me for weeks now, a constant undercurrent that made everything feel slightly off-kilter. At first, I thought it was just echoes of the memories tied to this body—the old Jack's fragmented life seeping into my own. But then the names started to click.
Luke. Alex. Manny.
I felt like I'd fallen into a bizarre fever dream. These weren't just names. They were people I knew—no, not knew, but recognized. Their voices, their mannerisms, even the way they argued. It all felt eerily familiar, like a hazy recollection of something I couldn't quite place.
And then it hit me.
This was before Season 1.
I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms as I pieced it together. The age lined up—Alex was twelve, Luke was still a mischievous kid, and Manny was as dramatic as ever. The arguments, the chaos, the personalities—they were all exactly as I remembered them.
From a TV show.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered under my breath, my heart pounding in my chest.
I had spent a lifetime navigating warzones, dealing with dangerous people, and surviving against impossible odds. But this? This was something else entirely. I was in the universe of Modern Family. The same universe I'd watched unfold on a screen in another life.
Except it wasn't the same. Not really.
The cracks were starting to show. Things were different—subtle, but undeniable. Luke was more aggressive, Manny was a little sharper, and Alex... Alex seemed far more calculating than I remembered. The world felt less like a sitcom and more like a distorted reflection of one, with the edges blurred and twisted.
My mind raced. Had I been reincarnated into a fictional universe? Or was this something deeper, something more sinister?
"Jack, hello? Earth to Jack?"
Alex's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. She was standing in front of me, hands on her hips, her expression a mix of annoyance and curiosity.
"You okay? You've been staring at the lockers like they owe you money."
I blinked, forcing a casual shrug. "Yeah, just... thinking."
Alex narrowed her eyes but didn't press. Instead, she adjusted her backpack and motioned for me to follow.
"Come on. We're going to be late."
I fell into step beside her, my mind still reeling.
Familiar, yet distant.
That was the only way to describe it. I knew these people, these characters, but they didn't know me. To them, I was just another kid in school, another face in the crowd.
But to me, they were fragments of a life I had left behind.
And now, I had to figure out what to do with that knowledge.
[Later]
The school library had never been this quiet. Jack and Alex sat at a corner table, textbooks and notebooks spread out between them. The air was tense, but it wasn't the usual kind of tension Jack associated with Alex.
"Okay, let's go over this one more time," Alex said, pointing at a particularly dense algebra problem. "You can't just guess your way through equations."
Jack gave her a sidelong glance. "Guessing worked for me so far."
Alex rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and that's why your grades are in the gutter. Look, if we're going to survive this… alliance, you need to at least try."
Jack sighed and leaned over the book. "Fine. Walk me through it."
For the next hour, they worked in relative peace. Jack, to Alex's surprise, picked up the concepts quickly, though he occasionally threw in a sarcastic remark to lighten the mood.
"You're smarter than you let on," Alex said, half-impressed, half-suspicious.