And the taste of dust and morning dew flooded his mouth.
Mikhail jolted upright, lungs dragging in breath like a drowning man breaking the surface. His back arched against a thin mattress, the springs underneath groaning. Sweat clung to his shirt, cold and sticky. Blinking against a sharp ray of sunlight cutting through cracked blinds, he stared at the unfamiliar ceiling. No hospital lights, No penthouse, No glass, the ceiling was aluminum, dented and stained with water damage.
He turned his head, a metal desk sat to his left, cluttered with thick blueprints, a half-drunk thermos and a mechanical pencil. A steel-toe boot lay overturned near the door. The floor under him wasn't marble, it was warped vinyl, yellowing at the corners.
He swung his legs over the edge of the cot. His breath steadied, heart pounding beneath a younger chest. He stared down at his hands, clean, unscarred and firm. His knees didn't ache. His wrists didn't click when he flexed them. Slowly, he rose to his feet and approached a dusty mirror hanging above a stained sink.
A stranger stares back.
No, him, But younger. Tighter jawline, thicker hair, no crow's feet. The version of himself before the press conferences, the betrayals, the lawsuits. The man who still had calluses from laying foundation, not from holding champagne flutes.
"What the hell…" he muttered.
He turned sharply, eyes scanning the trailer. On the far wall, a corkboard sagged under tacked notes, a shift calendar, and a printed schedule. He stepped closer. The date was bold, red and underlined, stabbed into his eyes.
May 2nd, 2005.
His breath caught again. Not a mistake. Not a delusion. The numbers were exact. His mind raced. This was the month he had signed his first loan. The batch plant project, the one that went two months behind schedule and nearly bankrupted him. The one that taught him his first lesson in loss.
His eyes snapped to the desk. The blueprints were there. Concrete mixing systems, aggregate hoppers, water control valves. He reached for them, hands steady now and as his fingers touched the corner of the top sheet, a strange sensation rolled through him.
Clarity.
Not memory, not instinct, Something deeper. As if his hands knew the tensile strength of the rebar without measuring. He could feel the weak points in the layout just by brushing the paper. His eyes darted across the schematic and corrections formed in his mind unbidden.
Not magic. Not voices. Just knowing.
The steel door clanked. A muffled voice called in through the gap.
"Boss? We've got another delay. Delivery truck's still in Southfield."
Southfield. That supplier had been two hours late the entire first week. It had set the entire site behind.
Mikhail's jaw tightened. He grabbed the blueprint set and rolled it up in one motion. His voice emerged, deeper than it should've sounded from a 25-year-old throat.
"Tell them to hold. I'm coming."
As he opened the trailer door, the sunlight flooded in and the smell of wet cement, diesel, and ambition punched him in the chest.
The world was turning again and this time, on his terms.
A low rumble of machinery echoed in the distance as he stepped out.
A figure leaned against the rebar pile just ahead, laughing with a crewman.
Adrien.
Younger. Unscarred. Smiling like a loyal son.
Mikhail stopped cold, the blueprints tightening under his arm
"We're not doing it your way this time."
Adrien's grin faltered, confused at first then his eyes narrowed. The easy laugh died in his throat as Mikhail stepped into the yard, steel-capped boots crunching across loose gravel. The May sun cast long shadows between pallets of cement bags, coils of rebar, and the rattling delivery truck just now turning into the lot. Dust swirled in the air, but Mikhail didn't blink.
Adrien straightened from the rebar stack, wiping his palms on his coveralls. "You alright? You look like you haven't slept."
Mikhail stopped a few feet short of him. He could see it now the slight hesitation in Adrien's posture, the practiced charm that had once blinded him. At 25, Adrien was the golden boy of the crew, Fast-talking, Charismatic, Loyal until the knives came out.
"I've slept enough," Mikhail said. "You were about to reroute the mixer to pad pour C."
Adrien nodded, lifting a brow. "Yeah, we've been behind schedule since Friday. Pour C gets done now, we buy ourselves some breathing room."
"No." Mikhail's voice was low, certain. "Pour A. It's the structural spine. If the weather turns next week like the forecast says, we'll lose the compaction window. That sets us back two weeks, minimum."
Adrien scoffed. "Forecast says light rain. You wanna hold up two crews over clouds?"
"I'm saying we don't repeat the same mistake," Mikhail said. He stepped closer, dropping the blueprints onto a plywood table. Dust puffed out from under them. "You're not routing concrete on instinct this time. We do this by load efficiency and drying sequence—not whatever keeps you looking fast on the daily report."
That did it.
Adrien's eyes cooled. "Since when did you start micromanaging pours? I've been handling site flow for six months."
Mikhail leaned in, voice tightening. "And in six months, we ended up $180,000 over budget and four inspections behind. I know where that led."
Adrien's face shifted but not in confusion. Just the smallest twitch of calculation.
He doesn't know yet, Mikhail realized. He still thinks I'm this Mikhail Young, Unproven, Blind.
"You want this job done right?" Mikhail continued. "You stick to your scope. I'm the developer. I make the calls."
The tension pulsed between them.
Then a shrill snap from behind. One of the rebar stacks, improperly tied, collapsed with a deafening metallic crash. Steel rods scattered across the gravel like dropped matchsticks. One rod skidded and slammed into the foot of a crewman nearby, who let out a shout.
"Shit!" Adrien turned to look.
Mikhail didn't.
His eyes were on the knot. Half-wrapped, twisted wrong. Adrien's work.
He moved past him and barked, "Get that man checked, now. And I want every stack rechecked for structural binding. Manual ties only. No shortcuts."
Adrien glanced over his shoulder.
"You're the site manager. Everything that happens here is yours."
Mikhail turned to the other workers, who had frozen under the sharp tone.
"Double-time on stabilization. No second chances on site safety. Anyone not following procedure is off the roster."
Someone muttered, "Damn, he's serious."
He was.
He could already feel the shift like walking the site with a different spine. These men remembered the old Mikhail: ambitious, desperate, eager to be liked. That Mikhail had failed here.
This time, he'd be respected, not tolerated.
As Adrien moved to check the injured worker, Mikhail pulled out the old site radio, flicked it on, and tuned into the logistics channel. His voice crackled through the static.
"This is DuPont. All deliveries for Site A to be rerouted and stacked by sequence—I'll be down in ten."
He clipped the radio to his belt, then froze.
A faint sound pulsed at the edge of hearing—a tone, not unlike feedback, followed by a mechanical tick.
A whisper, low and cold, echoed just behind his ear:
"Cost Center recalibrated. Project Baseline: Reset. Penalty: None. Observation resumed."
He spun around.
Nothing.
The site bustled as normal. Forklifts groaned. Workers shouted. Adrien cursed softly under his breath.
But something had changed.
Something had seen him.
Mikhail squared his shoulders, turned toward the main office trailer, and began walking, faster this time. His footsteps hit the gravel hard and sure, the rolled blueprints tapping against his thigh like a metronome counting down.
The first person to meet him on the steps was a young woman in khakis and a high-visibility vest, clipboard in hand, brows furrowed.
"Mr. DuPont," she said, scanning him. "The lender's rep is on the line. They say your draw request's missing proof of backfill."
Mikhail didn't stop.
"Then we show them backfill."