The Generals Guide To Taming A Husband Chinese Drama

The fall wasn't metaphorical.

Isabelle Henderson's consciousness slammed into three hundred pounds of flesh with the force of a car crash. Her lungs compressed against ribs buried under layers of adipose tissue. She gasped, but the air came shallow and wet, like breathing through a pillow soaked in sweat.

Her first instinct was wrong.

She tried to extend her wings-the obsidian bone structures that had carried her through seventeen worlds-and felt only the bite of cheap polyester pajamas digging into her shoulder blades. The fabric pulled tight across her back, seams straining. No wings. No flight. Just gravity and mass and the sour smell of unwashed sheets.

She pushed against the mattress with hands that weren't hers.

Her fingers sank into the soft shelf of her own stomach, disappearing up to the second knuckle. The sensation sent a jolt of revulsion up her spine. This body was a prison of adipose and apathy, a flesh sarcophagus that smelled like stale Cheetos and regret.

"World line loading complete."

The voice crackled through her auditory cortex like a blown speaker. Isabelle's hands flew to her ears, but the sound was inside her skull, not outside it. Static scraped against her nerves, a dental drill to the brain.

"Nyx." Her voice came out wrong-throaty, congested, wrapped in phlegm. "Status report. Now."

She forced her eyes open.

Three monitors blazed blue-white in the darkness, burning afterimages into her retinas. The room was a shoebox, maybe twelve feet square, walls sweating with Brooklyn summer humidity. Empty soda cans littered the floor like aluminum corpses. A window unit air conditioner wheezed in the corner, doing absolutely nothing.

Isabelle gripped the armrests of a gaming chair that groaned under her weight. The hydraulic lift hissed in protest as she heaved herself upright. Her knees popped-loud, alarming sounds like breaking twigs. She stood, wobbling, and felt the floorboards bend beneath her bare feet.

Three hundred pounds. The number floated in her mind, abstract and obscene.

She shuffled toward the corner, each step a negotiation between momentum and friction. Her thighs rubbed together with a sound like corduroy. The floor creaked warnings she ignored.

The mirror was full-length, propped against water-stained drywall.

Isabelle looked.

Her reflection was a stranger assembled from excess-cheeks swollen until her eyes became slits, jawline dissolved into jowls, neck accordion-folded into rings of flesh. The body that housed her immortal soul was a before picture from a weight-loss infomercial. A cautionary tale. A joke.

She reached up with a hand she didn't recognize and pinched the soft mass beneath her chin. The flesh yielded, cold and clammy, dead weight hanging from bone.

Isabelle Henderson-succubus, world-walker, possessor of beauty that had launched ships and ended dynasties-was trapped in a body that couldn't fit through a standard doorway.

"Physiological optimization in progress. Estimated duration variable."

Nyx's voice had shed the static, settling into mechanical neutrality. "Task objective: Ambrose Collier. Location: Manhattan. Status:-"

Isabelle grabbed the nearest object-a dented Coca-Cola can-and hurled it at the wall. The can struck drywall with a hollow thunk, bounced off a stack of pizza boxes, and smacked her square in the forehead.

Pain. Real, immediate, humiliating pain.

She touched the rising welt and laughed, a wet, ugly sound. Physical reality. Inescapable. She'd survived decapitations, dismemberments, seventeen variations on death. She could survive this.

"Data dump," she said. "Everything. Now."

The flood came without warning.

Information poured into her consciousness-names, dates, financial records, psychological profiles, satellite imagery of a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The weight of it drove her back into the gaming chair. The hydraulic cylinder screamed, dropping three inches with a pneumatic wheeze that sounded disturbingly like a death rattle.

Isabelle closed her eyes and sorted.