Chapter 4: Routine
Two weeks had passed since the first day of school, and Aria had settled into a strange sort of rhythm.
Queens wasn't so bad once he got used to it. The noises of the streets—the constant honking, the murmur of passing cars, the chatter of people at every corner—had faded into the background of his thoughts. Still, every now and then, he'd get that sense of alienation. Like he was living in someone else's life, someone else's body.
But for the most part, he was just surviving.
Aria worked every chance he got—nothing glamorous, nothing that would turn heads, but enough to keep him afloat. After school, he'd head to whatever odd job he could find. Sometimes it was something as simple as cleaning out a basement or moving furniture for a guy who swore it'd be "just another hour." And when that wasn't available, he'd spend his time in local stores, restocking shelves, handing out flyers, or walking around holding a sign in front of an empty building that looked like it'd never been open.
The pay wasn't much. If he was lucky, he'd get a couple of bucks here and there, just enough to cover the basics. A $10 bill here. A $15 tip there. The rest went toward his rent, or more often, his instant noodles, which were beginning to feel more like a survival strategy than a meal choice.
It was far from ideal, but it was survival. And it was better than the alternative.
When the sun set, though, that's when Aria did what had become his nightly ritual.
Training.
At first, he'd done it out of curiosity. He wasn't sure what had happened when those compliments were thrown his way—Bri calling him "quick on his feet," Zeke mentioning his "impressive focus," and Liyana laughing about his "hidden strength." All of them had said something about him that day, and like some twisted game of fate, he'd found himself with new instincts—new skills.
It started slow. Simple stuff, like knowing exactly how to move when he dodged a punch or how to react with perfect timing. But now, after two weeks, it had become more than that.
He'd become more than that.
Every night, he'd head to the abandoned basketball court two blocks from his apartment. A run-down place where the concrete was cracked, and the netting on the basketball hoop barely hung in place. There, under the dim flicker of a single streetlamp, he'd practice.
It was never flashy—no spinning kicks or high-flying moves. Just quiet, controlled movements. Elbow strikes, body shifts, foot sweeps. Small things, but they flowed together perfectly. The kind of moves that would have taken someone years to master, but for some reason, Aria felt like they belonged to him. Like he had done them a thousand times before.
He kept it low-key. No one could know.
The next morning, after another night spent running through the motions, Aria barely had time to eat. He grabbed a granola bar from the corner store, shoving it in his bag as he jogged to school. The crisp autumn air stung his face as he walked, feeling the weight of his exhaustion. It had been two weeks, but he still hadn't found a way to get ahead. He'd fallen into a routine that felt like it would last forever.
By the time he reached Roosevelt High, he was barely awake. The sounds of students chatting, laughing, and shouting across the courtyard didn't help his tired mind. But there was no time for a nap. No time to complain.
It was another day to blend in.
Aria didn't mind the monotony, though. He'd grown used to it. His classes were nothing special—just another set of faces, another set of names. Bri and Zeke had become more than just classmates; they were like his unofficial school buddies now. Bri with her constant rambling, Zeke with his cool attitude and love for snacks.
And Liyana, of course, had become a regular part of the picture too. Though she was quieter than the others, there was something sharp in her gaze. She didn't ask questions about Aria's life—she just accepted it, which was strangely comforting.
At lunch, they all sat together. It was almost routine by now. Liyana with her bag of chips, Bri talking non-stop about her latest obsession, Zeke flipping through some random magazine, and Aria just listening.
No one knew what he was doing after school or why he seemed so tired all the time. And he didn't tell them.
Later that afternoon, as Aria was walking home from school, he received a text. Unknown number.
"Hey, you still do that basement cleaning thing?"
Aria stopped in his tracks, staring at the phone. A sinking feeling settled in his stomach. That weird sense of dread, the one that always followed him since his first night here, came rushing back.
He replied quickly. "Yeah, what's up?"
The response came almost immediately. "Got a small job. Mold under the sink. Need it cleaned. Bring gloves."
He let out a long sigh.
Mold. Wonderful.
But it was a job, and it paid. So he set off in the direction of the address, already planning out his night. Another job, another chance to stay afloat.
Aria wasn't sure when he stopped expecting things to get better. Maybe it was the overwhelming exhaustion of it all. Or maybe it was the reality settling in that this was it. This was life now.
Still, as he stood on the stoop of the building, waiting for his next "job," Aria felt a sense of something building inside him. The power he had no explanation for. It was like a simmering pot, just waiting to boil over.
But for now, he'd keep his head down.
The last thing he needed was for someone to notice.
1 Week later
The shop smelled like melted plastic and burnt dust. That permanent, low-level funk of old electronics that had given up years ago but hadn't realized it yet.
Aria stood behind the scratched-up counter of Manny's Tech & Tinker, hunched over the exposed guts of a Dell desktop tower that looked like it hadn't been dusted since Y2K.
He'd been helping out there for over a week. Nothing official. No paperwork. No questions. Manny just liked having someone around who didn't steal RAM sticks or mix up USB ports and audio jacks. Aria didn't complain—ten bucks an hour under the table was ten bucks more than he had before.
But truth be told?
He was winging it. Every screwdriver twist. Every cable he poked at. Most of the time, he was running off instinct and things he vaguely remembered from watching some guy on YouTube install a GPU while narrating like it was a cooking show.
Today's job was an old PC that wouldn't boot. The customer said it was "making a weird clicking noise, like robot termites." Aria had already checked the cables and reseated the RAM—because that was always a safe bet—but it was still dead on arrival.
"Yo," Manny called from the back office, the door creaking open just enough to let out a cloud of cheap cigar smoke. "You've got a real tech sense, kid. Didn't expect you to fix that ThinkPad yesterday. Thought the motherboard was fried for sure."
Aria blinked.
And then—it happened.
There was no flash of light. No dramatic music. Just a beat of silence and then—
Everything made sense.
The tower in front of him stopped looking like a confusing mess of wires and metal. Now it was a puzzle he already knew the solution to. No, more than that—it was a language he could suddenly read fluently. Like he'd spent a lifetime soldering chips, configuring routers, writing bash scripts.
His heart kicked once, hard.
Wait.
His eyes scanned the interior again—now understanding every component, every layout decision, every flaw in the airflow. The hard drive was failing. The "robot termites" noise? The read head clicking against the platter. Classic mechanical death.
He leaned back, almost stunned by how obvious it was now. How stupid he'd been just five minutes ago.
"Spindle's dying," he muttered.
"Huh?" Manny grunted, halfway into the shop now, holding a Styrofoam cup of what Aria was pretty sure was just hot creamer and sugar.
"Hard drive's toast. Listen—clicking noise is the read head. It's stuck. Should've cloned it the moment it started stuttering."
Manny raised an eyebrow, squinting at him. "Since when do you talk like a damn technician?"
Aria just gave a shrug. "Guess I picked up a few things."
---
By the end of the shift, Aria had:
Diagnosed and replaced two faulty HDDs.
Reinstalled Windows XP without touching the license key prompt.
Built a bootable USB recovery stick from scratch.
Helped a customer recover deleted photos using a data restoration tool he'd never even heard of before today—but now knew like the back of his hand.
And talked Manny out of buying a bulk lot of used CRT monitors because they were "coming back in style."
---
Back in his borrowed room that night, Aria sat in front of a secondhand laptop he'd bought for twenty bucks from a guy outside a bodega. The screen had a red pixel burn in the corner, and the keyboard smelled faintly of hot sauce.
He didn't care.
He was too busy writing a clean script in Python to automate a basic network scan. Nothing crazy. Just a ping sweep. But the weird thing wasn't that he was writing it—it was how natural it felt. His fingers moved without hesitation, as if they'd been doing this for years.
He minimized the script and pulled up a whiteboard app.
Time to make a plan.
He drew boxes. Labeled things: Server, Client, Firewall, VLAN. Stuff he barely knew existed a day ago. Now it all connected. Tech support, system diagnostics, cybersecurity—even coding freelance—was now on the table.
Real money.
Maybe even a real job.
The idea of being more than just a broke student with a bunk mattress and a fake ID… it suddenly didn't feel impossible.
Still, he had to be smart. Stay small. Keep his head down.
No spandex. No flash.
Just skill.
And maybe… a little hustle.
It started with a simple Craigslist ad.
Nothing flashy. Just:
> Affordable Tech Help – Queens Only
Slow computer? Internet issues? I can help.
Weekend availability. Cash only.
— Ari S.
He didn't expect much. So when a guy named Randy emailed back a few hours later, Aria jumped at it.
By early evening, he was riding the subway to Astoria, hoodie up, backpack slung over his shoulder. The guy's laptop was apparently acting possessed—pop-ups, freezing, loud fans, the works.
Randy opened the door looking frazzled and barefoot. "If you can fix this tonight, I'll bless your whole bloodline."
Aria didn't have a bloodline. Not in this world, anyway.
He kept things simple—opened it up, cleaned things out, ran a few quick fixes. No tools beyond what he could carry in his backpack. Thirty minutes later, the laptop was quiet and snappy, like it'd had a full-body cleanse.
"You some kind of tech genius?" Randy asked, eyes wide.
Aria shrugged. "Guess I just have a sense for this kind of stuff."
The compliment still echoed in his head, the way it always did. A click in his brain. A switch flipping. Like muscle memory, but for knowledge.
Randy paid him forty bucks cash, then added, "Seriously—start a business. You're gonna kill it."
Aria just smiled, stuffed the bills into his pocket, and left.
---
That night, sitting on his mattress in his cramped room, Aria stared at the money. Not a lot, but it felt different.
Earned.
His fingers itched for more.
In the past two weeks, he'd scraped by—odd jobs, heavy lifting, a delivery run or two. But this… this was clean. Honest. Skill-based. And with his "tech sense," suddenly wide open?
It could actually lead somewhere.
He opened a notebook, jotted a few numbers, and circled the word "FREELANCE."
Tomorrow, he'd check the library for open WiFi. Maybe scout more job posts. No need to rush. Just one gig at a time. One foot in front of the other.
He still had school on Monday.
But for now, he had forty bucks, a working brain, and a strange new power.
Not a bad place to start.
The second job came through word of mouth.
Randy had apparently mentioned him to his cousin, who ran a small convenience store in Jackson Heights. The store's register system had gone weird—glitchy touchscreen, corrupted receipts, something like that. Aria didn't ask too many questions.
He showed up on a gray Sunday afternoon, wind nipping at his jacket, the smell of street cart hot dogs trailing behind him.
The store was narrow and cramped, packed with snacks, drinks, and that weird humming fridge every bodega seemed to have. The cousin, a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a Bluetooth headset permanently fused to her ear, waved him in without pleasantries.
"You fix the thing? It keeps crashing. I lose track of what people buy."
Aria nodded. "I'll take a look."
The machine was a dusty touchscreen register hooked into an ancient computer shoved under the counter. The moment he touched it, his brain kicked into overdrive. Like he'd already done this a hundred times before. Filesystems, registry paths, network protocols—stuff that would've flown over his head weeks ago now came naturally, like breathing.
He didn't need to Google anything. He just… knew.
Twenty minutes later, the register was running smooth. She asked if he could make it auto-backup sales. He did. She asked if he could make it print in Spanish. He did that too.
"Dios mío," she muttered, staring. "You're like one of those IT guys from the movies."
Aria gave her a polite smile, trying to keep his excitement buried. Compliments were dangerous. Too specific and who knew what he'd unlock next.
She handed him sixty bucks. Cash. No questions. "You want me to tell people you do this stuff?"
He hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Just don't say my full name."
She gave him a knowing smirk. "Smart boy."
---
Back in his room that night, Aria stared at the bills again—now over a hundred dollars in cash, sitting in a plastic pencil case under his bed.
He still felt poor.
But now it was like… being poor with potential.
He didn't want to get cocky. The world still felt too big, and he was just a nobody in Queens with a glitchy mattress, a secondhand phone, and barely two pairs of socks.
But he was carving out a space for himself. Quietly.
And that quiet?
It felt safe.
He'd stay off the radar. Stay small. Until he figured out what the hell he really was.