by Stuart Jaffe
Victoria’s response — a patronizing smile. “Are you going to pout and not eat your supper, too?”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t care about you, Mr. Flynn, or what you choose to do. This assignment is only a minor inconvenience to me. Whatever happens to you means nothing to me. So, I’m leaving now. If you want answers, get dressed, and go to Room 323. If you want to be obnoxious, then carry on.” She walked out with a firm step and closed the door with a sharp snap.
To the door, Nathan said, “Well, excuse me for being a little grouchy. It’s not like every day I get killed and reborn in another body.”
He hoped she wasn’t listening. He sounded nuts. But gazing at his lean, strong body — Jake’s lean, strong body — made him feel nuts.
He swiped the jumpsuit off the bed and dressed. The fabric clung to his skin but allowed him to move with ease. He stepped out of the room and into a carpeted hall lined with doors. Apparently, this private island had its own hotel. Maybe this was a special resort that he was being hidden in because — because why? Who would want to hide him? Well, if Victoria could be believed, the answers were elsewhere in the building. Before seeking out an elevator, he checked that his door did not lock him out and his room number — 504.
Walking down the hall, he noticed the small black globes in the ceiling — surveillance cameras like those in casinos. Halfway down, he found the elevator doors, and he waited. A piano sonata played through small ceiling speakers. The door dinged and slid open.
As he descended to the third floor, he shuddered. Every sound, every scent, every moment in this building felt simultaneously real and unreal. He could be vacationing in the tropics at a beautiful resort where the staff take care of his every need. Or he could be a prisoner on a bizarre island where his every motion was monitored and dissected. Or maybe he had died back in that deli and the rest had been nothing more than the whims of the afterlife.
On the third floor, he followed the door numbers until he reached Room 323. He put his ear to the door. Nothing.
In his head, he heard his dad say, “Don’t just walk where people tell you to walk. Go where you choose. Otherwise you’re, at best, a sheep. At worst, a prisoner.”
Fine. Then he chose to get some answers. He knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He looked up and down the hall. Empty.
Staring at the door, he wondered if he had mistaken what room Victoria had said. No. She was clear — Room 323. Nathan grabbed the door knob and turned it — unlocked.
As he stepped inside, he found a mostly empty room. Two metal chairs had been placed in the middle with a small table between them. A sliding glass door led to a balcony. Octavia, the ninja woman who had taken out those three large bodyguards, sat in one chair. While it all looked odd, none of it accounted for Nathan’s feeling of dread. That came from the single object sitting on the table — a large handgun. Nathan wondered if he had become a sheep.
Octavia wore a jumpsuit similar to his. She crossed her legs and opened her mouth into a wolfish smile. “Good to see you again. Please, have a seat.”
Well before his mouth could open, his head moved side to side. A growl formed deep in his chest, rolling up through his throat, and barked out in a single word. “No.”
Octavia remained pleasant and calm. “I’m sure you’re a bit confused and have some questions, but there’s no need to get emotional.”
“No need? Are you out of your mind? I’ve been killed, I mean outright dead, and then I’m not dead, but I’m not me anymore, and then it’s winter but now it’s the tropics and you’re here sitting pretty in an empty room on an empty island with a damn gun and you think I shouldn’t be a little emotional? I want some fucking answers, right now.”
Breathing heavy, feeling his muscles tighten, Nathan curled his fingers into fists. But Octavia never even flinched.
“Answers are what I’m offering,” she said, and bobbed her head toward the empty chair.
Nathan hesitated. As his heart rate slowed and his breathing eased, he tried to think of an alternative. He could run for it. Try to find a way out of the hotel and then off this island, but that wouldn’t do him any good. He might get away, but then he would be on the run from whoever set this all up and he would be no closer to answers. If, instead, he did as asked and sat down, then perhaps he might get some information.
I might get shot again, too.
With a huff, he crossed the room and settled in the chair. The way things had been going lately, if they shot him, he probably would wake up in Maine while the autumn leaves fell.
“My name is Octavia.”
“Yeah, I got that already.”
“I see. You’re an observant type. That’s good. You’ll need that. Perhaps that trait will make what I’m going to tell you easier to understand.” She paused and when Nathan remained silent, she looked pleased. “Let’s begin with what you know. You died, you came back, you have another body. Have you accepted that as true or do you still cling to the idea that this is Heaven or Hell or some other form of afterlife?”
Nathan could hear the surf, and the tropic heat pressed against his skin. “It all feels real. But who am I to know what the afterlife feels like?”
“Good question. We’ll get to an answer in a little bit. For now, accept this as a thought experiment, if nothing else. You did die. And you had the fortune of coming into contact with the body you now inhabit. That body has a very special ability. It can harbor two souls — the master of the body and an extra soul. A spare, if you will.”
“A spare soul?”
“A second soul. When harm comes to that body, harm that kills, it can shed the second soul in place of the master. This spare soul departs for the afterlife, but the master soul remains. The body is rapidly healed to accommodate the fresh soul, and all continues on.”
Nathan laughed — a short, rough sound of disbelief. “You’re saying it’s like a bulletproof vest.”
“In some ways. It’s a bit more complex, though — as Jake discovered when he brought you into his body.”
“I guess I wasn’t supposed to shove him out.”
“Jake was a foolhardy man. He took risks that got him hurt too often. When the spare soul is removed, the body becomes like any other — vulnerable. In that delicatessen, he had only one soul going in. When he got shot, if he hadn’t killed you and brought your soul into his body, he thought he would have died.”
“So, he killed me as insurance?”
“With you on board, if his wounds proved fatal, your soul would have departed and he would have healed. As it turned out, he survived, spent a while recovering in one of our facilities, and returned. Unfortunately for him, this last assignment resulted in his death. Except instead of your soul leaving, you fought to stay and took over the body. Now, you have this body, and thus, this power.”
Shaking his head, Nathan laughed again. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this doesn’t make any sense. This can’t be real.”
“I understand how confusing and difficult this is, but it is true. I know because I also harbor two souls in my body.”
Nathan’s skin prickled. “So, if I took that gun and shot you, you wouldn’t die?”
“As long as I have a second soul inside of me, I’m immortal. I won’t even age.”
“Immortal?”
“I’m over two hundred years old.” With one finger, she nudged the weapon toward him. “Go ahead. Shoot me. Kill me. I’ll come back. But I should warn you that the rapid healing process is often quite painful. So, I’ll not forget you made me go through that.”
He stared at the black gun, its short snout staring back. “This isn’t funny. Whatever you’re trying to set me up for, just stop with the mind games.”
“I can do it myself, but you’ll be convinced it was all a trick. The only way for you to stop denying your own experiences and start to believe that this is your new reality is for you to pull the trigger yourself. Feel the kickback of the gun and see the bulle
t tear into me. You still won’t believe fully, but it’ll be enough to get us to the next step.”
She picked up the hand gun, held it by the muzzle, and offered it once more.
“No,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
“You must.”
“I won’t. I’m not a killer.”
She moved so fast, Nathan had no clue what had happened until he felt the throb on his head and a trickle of blood on the side of his face. She had pistol-whipped him. One hard crack that he only processed after the fact.
“Shoot me. I promise I won’t die.” She shoved the gun into his hands.
“This is crazy. I can’t —”
“Shoot me.”
“No. I don’t go around shooting people. That’s not who I am.”
“You are not anybody any longer. Nathan Flynn, the young man trying to become a lawyer, hoping to marry his girl, start a family, and have a typical mundane life — that man no longer exists. He died during a shootout at a New York deli. You are a true blank slate, and you can become anything you want. Except Nathan Flynn. You are not him.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you’re worthless to me. I’ll kill you now and find someone who truly wants to be immortal.”
Nathan’s pulse hammered. “I don’t want to die.”
“Then shoot me.” She lifted him off the chair and tossed him to the wall. “Shoot me, or I’ll beat you to a pulp.”
Though he pointed the gun at her, he kept his finger off the trigger. But she punched him in the jaw. Flashes of light dazed him for a second.
“Wait,” he said and rubbed his mouth. “Jeez. You could knock out Mike Tyson with that punch. Where’d you learn to hit like that?”
“Here. You will, too. After you believe. Now, stop wasting my day and shoot me.”
Nathan intended to toss the gun aside and make some proud declaration, but she reacted before the thought had fully formed. With one hand, she grabbed his elbow; with the other, she grabbed his hand. She forced him to press the gun against her heart and even jabbed his finger against the trigger.
“Welcome to a new world,” she said.
A sharp jerking motion forced him to depress the trigger. The gunshot echoed in the room. Blood splashed out of her back as she crumpled to the floor. Her lifeless eyes stared at his feet.
The world stopped around him. He only heard his rapid breathing.
A soft mist drifted from her eyes and spiraled up into the ceiling. With a gasp, Octavia sat up. She held a hand under the entry wound, wincing and groaning as the slug popped out. Through a burnt hole in her jumpsuit, her skin clearly reformed. She kept her mouth closed tight, grinding her teeth against the pain. When it finally ended, she stood and dropped the bloody slug on the table.
“See? Immortal.”
Nathan dropped the gun as his mouth gaped open. “Holy shit.”
Chapter Five
Nathan’s mind flooded with questions, overloading his capacity to think at all. More than any of the details of how or why or what, the thought that continued to return was simple enough — I can be immortal. The Darkness that he had seen, the Darkness that he had felt, it would have no claim to him. He could be immune to Death. He gawked at Octavia, and she waited until he regained some composure.
“Follow me,” she said and left the room.
Nathan hurried up behind, tripping as he reached her. “How is this possible?”
“Don’t start asking those kinds of questions. It’ll drive you mad. I do know this much — this power is not within our individual souls. You and I are not special in that regard. It is these bodies that hold the power within them. That is why we never see the soul-mist until we are in an immortal body. And these bodies are far older than we are. Just as you have taken over Jake’s body, Jake had taken it from another, and so on back into the darkness of history. Who created them or how or for what original purpose — those questions have no bearing upon us. Simply accept that these bodies are what they are, a gift to those of us fortunate enough to live inside one, and it is up to you if you will make use of yours or not.”
“But if I die without a second soul in me, I die for real, right?”
“I thought I made that clear.”
“What happens to the body then?”
Octavia stopped before Room 302. Her dark face chilled as she gazed back at him. “The body dies without a soul. Not immediately, but soon after. I’ve been told that long ago, long before my time, there were hundreds of these bodies in existence. Now, we are only a few, scattered across the Earth like seeds in the wind. But we are dead seeds for we have no knowledge of how to create more.”
She paused, and in the silence, Nathan wondered if there had been a point when enough immortal bodies existed to fill this island. “Was that man — Russo — well, does he have an immortal body, too?”
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be taken care of long before you are ready to leave this island.”
“Yeah, about that. Look, I very much appreciate you saving my life — thank you for that, by the way — but I still don’t have a clue what this is all about. Why am I here? What are you people doing on this island? What —”
She cocked her head to one side, and the strength within such a simple motion shut Nathan’s mouth. “I’ve let you babble because I know how disorienting this process can be. But that time has passed. You’ve accepted what we are. Now, you must decide — you may join us and be opened into an amazing world or you may remain mortal.”
“How can I choose when I don’t even know what I’d be joining? What do you people do?”
“If you are to survive the future that awaits you, it will require unconditional trust in me and those like me. That is how you decide. Answer for yourself — will you trust me?”
The idea of immortality lured him closer to the door. But he paused. This wasn’t some hypothetical. He had seen it with his own eyes. He had experienced it himself. He knew what it meant to die and be reborn. And he knew the Darkness that awaited his return.
But the problem remained — if he accepted this power, then by living forever, he would lose the one he loved. Not at first, of course. In fact, the moment he got off this island, he planned to go marry Jennie and not look back. But eventually, she would grow old. Eventually, she would die. He faced the real problem of immortality — living.
“Decide,” Octavia said.
“I don’t know how.”
“Do you want to die?”
“I don’t know if I want to outlive all those I love.”
Octavia made no effort to hide her disappointment. “Love is fickle. Besides, what makes you think you’ll have a chance to spend time with them if you’re mortal?”
“I assumed if I don’t join you —”
“That we’d let you go? Permit you to live out your life in that special body and when you die, we just lose one of the few remaining bodies out there? No. You can either join us and live forever, or you can continue on the path that had been set out before — you can experience the afterlife. That is your choice.”
Nathan chilled at the thought of the Darkness. “I’ll join you then. No question about it.”
“In that case, you’ll need a second soul.”
She opened the door and led Nathan inside. The room looked much like the one they had left. Devoid of all furnishings save for two chairs and a small table between. The sliding glass door had been shut and clear plastic covered the walls and floor. The most significant difference, however, was that two people — an elderly man and a frail woman — sat in the chairs. They were bound and gagged. Both had been crying. Both looked like trapped animals.
Octavia handed over her gun. “In order to get your second soul, you must find it or take it. If you’re on a battlefield or at a hospital, there are numerous opportunities to acquire the soul. But often you’ll find yourself isolated from the dying. Then you must be willing to take a life in order to preserve your own.”
The gu
n felt cold and heavy in his hand. “You want me to shoot them?”
“Just one. The other is for me. I lost my second soul in my little demonstration for you. I will show you how it is done, and then you will do it.” In three strides, she stood in front of the old man. “Whenever possible, you want to use the old and weak or those who expect to die either from illness or suicide or such. In nearly all of these cases, their souls will not struggle within your body, and you will maintain control. If you take a young or strong soul, you risk being ejected from the immortal body. Those who refuse to accept death are the worst. They will almost always destroy you. Just as Jake suffered when you took over.”
“I can’t murder somebody.”
“Of course, you can.”
“I don’t want to die, but I can’t go killing people all the time in order to live forever. That’d make me a serial killer. It’s like being a vampire in a monster movie.”
Octavia snapped a look at Nathan over her shoulder. “We are not monsters. We don’t kill just anybody. We destroy those who are either ready to go or those who should have been destroyed long before. And if you cherish your immortality, if you will protect your second soul well, then you will find little need to kill often. But when the time comes, you must be capable of the task.”
“What are you saying? Destroy those who should have been? That these people deserve to die?”
“Yes. This is Robert Cornwell. He is a part-time arsonist and full-time rapist. He has harmed more lives than I have lived.”
“So now, we’re judge, jury, and executioner?”
She shrugged. “Once you’ve lived over a hundred years, we can have that debate. For now, yes. You must accept that this is one price for your immortality. You can go kill whomever and take the risks, or you can do it as I present it to you — the most decent way possible, determined over centuries of practice.”
“There’s got to be another —”
“You chose to join us. You wish to change your mind and face the afterlife?”
Nathan lowered his head. “No,” he whispered.
