“I should have changed that gasket,” were my last thoughts. I cursed myself for cheaping out and skipping replacing a three-buck chunk of rubber.

  I was watching my vacuum distiller’s pressure gauge, waiting for the optimal temperature for the next step in the process.

  Normally, it wouldn’t take this long. As the needle refused to cooperate, I began troubleshooting in my head, leaning closer and running through possible solutions. A blockage, maybe. Or a leak I had missed.

  If I had just bought a borosilicate glass-to-glass apparatus instead of this abomination. It had been pieced together by a cannabis glass blower for half the price of a lab-grade rig. With better tools, I might have been able to increase my overall production level.

  I spent way too much time troubleshooting that rig of mine.

  The rubber gasket below the condenser coil had a hairline tear, the kind you only catch when you have stared at the setup for too long. I clocked it, started to reach for the clamp, and in the same breath realized the pressure had already spiked.

  The world did not end with a roar. It ended with a clean, bright pop, and a strange hush after it, like my brain had decided to take one last note and then close the book.

  No pain. No heat. Just absence.

  REINCARNATION ACTIVE

  KARMIC VALUE: NEGLIGIBLE

  REINCARNATION PROTOCOL: OTHERWORLDER ENGAGED

  I was unsure how much time had passed before those words became the only thing visible in the peaceful pocket of nothingness. I tried to blink, which reminded me that I was somehow incorporeal, and yet I could still see the text hovering in front of me.

  In retrospect, I was surprisingly calm. I supposed death was at least free of the crippling anxiety I had suffered through most of my past life.

  ERROR!

  BODY STATUS: TERMINATED

  CAUSE OF DEATH: VOLATILE REACTION (SELF-INFLICTED)

  “Yeah,” I thought. “Technically self-inflicted, but that’s because I’m cheap, not because I was depressed or anything.”

  The system seemed to fail to respond to sarcasm. The text remained unchanged.

  Slowly, the void I had come to appreciate began filling with fragments of light and color. The air stank of rot and stagnant water. My lungs made themselves known as air rushed back in, sharp and damp, triggering a coughing fit that left me heaving on a cold floor.

  Stone, unlike normal concrete. Uneven bevels and cut edges pressed against my palms.

  I rolled onto my side and retched, bringing up nothing but bile and panic. I missed the peaceful void. My anxiety came roaring back to life.

  This place was nothing like my lab.

  If the messages were right, this might be somewhere else entirely.

  I looked around. The ceiling above me was arched brick, ancient and slick with moisture, coated in what I guessed was algae or some other scum. Water rushed through a barely lit canal, or maybe a gutterway, running beside me.

  It hit me with a sudden, irrational certainty: this place was the bottom. Obviously it was physically, but also conceptually. Everything ended up here.

  At least I didn’t feel like I was alone. A rat skittered nearby, its claws scratching like fingernails on glass.

  I pushed myself upright, hands shaking.

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  “I’m dead,” I muttered. “Or hallucinating,” I added. “Maybe the dimethyltryptamine I was synthesizing vaporized, and I inhaled it. Or both.”

  SYSTEM STABILIZATION COMPLETE

  A translucent panel slid into view.

  NAME: Unregistered

  RACE: Human AGE: 31

  CLASS: None

  STATUS: Healthy (Reconstituted)

  I stared at the status line longer than anything else.

  “Reconstituted?” I thought.

  My hands were familiar. My limbs, too. My clothes, however, were undeniably strange. I was wearing a leather pantsuit, for lack of a better word, over deeply uncomfortable undergarments. They reminded me of the hemp jackets the hippie crowd used to obsess over.

  Memories flooded back. The lab. The improvised condenser. The defect I had noticed too late.

  I had cheaped out, despite knowing the risk. That had been the pattern for years. I prided myself on being frugal while still producing some of the best narcotics money could buy. Working with black-market equipment in a trade known for being unstable at best made me anxious, but I had taken the risk anyway.

  I supposed the pattern had followed me into the afterlife.

  Or wherever this was.

  I tried to stand. My legs wobbled but held. My body felt wrong. It was lighter and stronger, like I was twenty-five again and pumping iron with daily doses of creatine.

  As I steadied myself, another notification chimed.

  SKILL ACQUIRED: CHEMICAL INTUITION (PASSIVE)

  You instinctively understand reactions, compounds, and material interactions.

  I snorted, the sound echoing down the tunnel despite the rush of water through the canal.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  In a world where glowing panels floated in midair and people came back from the dead, the one thing I got to keep was chemistry.

  I looked around more carefully. Bluish crystals embedded in the walls cast dim light across the tunnel. It stretched in both directions, filth flowing slowly through the center.

  This was more than just a canal. This was beneath something big.

  A city, maybe. A city with a buried throat, swallowing everything that fell through the cracks.

  Footsteps echoed far above. Voices drifted through grates in a language that was unrecognized, yet somehow understood. Snatches came through like noise over a vent fan.

  “…ward check…”

  “…lowflow again…”

  “…tell them it’s pooling…”

  I smiled despite myself, just before another panel appeared. Smaller this time. Glowing faintly gold.

  AREA WARNING Potential for Unlicensed Crafting Detected

  My smile vanished.

  “Unlicensed?” I repeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  A license, maybe, paperwork, a key. If the city ran a system of checks, it probably wanted a matching token, perhaps a priest-blessed effigy you carried so the wards and System knew your craft belonged. In my head I pictured a small silver four-point star with a loop, something you could hang on a cord or pin to a lapel as if the concept should already be familiar. Bottom line, it seemed I had nothing like that.

  My thoughts raced. I had yet to even brew, synthesize, or otherwise concoct a single thing yet. In my old world you weren’t guilty of manufacture or even intent until you got the supplies.

  The warning pulsed once, then settled into the corner of my vision like a waiting threat.

  I took a slow breath, steadying myself despite the fetid air.

  Different world. Same problem.

  I had a skill that would almost certainly drag me back into the black-market. If there were a system that cared about licenses, there would be a guild or authority. If there was authority, there would be control. And if there was control, there would always be people desperate enough to work around it.

  I looked down at my empty hands, then at the damp stone, the glowing crystals, the runoff in the channel.

  Ingredients were everywhere, if you knew how to look. I wondered whether this world had the same potential for chemical chaos as my old one.

  “All right,” I said quietly, already planning ratios and catalysts in my head. “Let’s see how illegal this alchemy really is.”

  The system chimed again.

  QUEST GENERATED: SURVIVE THE UNDERCITY

  REWARD: ???

  I grinned despite myself. Distraction has always been the best way to manage my anxiety.

  Maybe this was exactly what I needed, though I would have preferred a hardware store and a pharmacy.

  I needed a safe corner and a plan, because improvisation was what killed me last time.

  C’est la vie. Same old work. Different lab.