He betrayed me! Betrayed!
Spitting out the blood that had gathered in my mouth, I leaned on my broken arm and immediately regretted it. You might think a broken arm is some trivial thing, since fearless action heroes in movies disregard fractures so casually, but I certainly wouldn't call real pain trivial. Unable to hold back, I let out a weak cry, which, however, worked against me because it distracted my so-called friend from what he was doing. After shooting the last hostage in the head—hostages who were actually supposed to be left alive—Mike gave the still-warm corpse a final kick, sending the guard down the elevator shaft to join the others.
"How much did they promise you?" I asked, knowing full well he wouldn't answer. I would have answered, but he won't.
"Enough to forget everything I've learned," Mike shrugged, approaching me and holding out an open pack of cigarettes.
Oh, so this is what farewell looks like, huh? I jerk my head slightly, indicating my broken arm, and Mike slowly pulls a cigarette from the pack, which ends up clamped between my teeth. Oh, yes... He knows I quit four years ago, but Mike is my friend, and he knows just as well that I need this right now. The click of the lighter is followed by a flare of flame, illuminating our faces. Funny. As far as I remember, Mike has been carrying this poor lighter around for about seven years, even though there's nothing special about it. I take one drag and barely manage to hold back a cough. Turns out, you can get unaccustomed to cigarette smoke in four years. Funny.
"You would have agreed too, but they approached me first," Mike sighed, tucking the lighter into the lining of his bulletproof vest. "So today is your last job."
"Yours too," I smirked, miraculously not dropping the cigarette clamped between my teeth. "They'll come for you sooner or later."
"I have a twenty-year head start, I think," a quiet laugh echoed through the corridor, which resembled a slaughterhouse due to the amount of blood on the floor. Damn, we really turned this place into a real bloodbath. It was a mistake for the special forces from the secret agency to play heroes, of course, but here they're just mercenaries like us. They're paid to die on the job.
"And what about me?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer. Mike clearly understood this but shook his head.
"I still need to burn everything here to the ground, taking only the hard drives," he replied. "So I can offer you a whole array of options. Quick? Slow? With a spark?"
I couldn't hold back and laughed. Yes, Mike is right. I can perfectly imagine this situation, but in reverse, and I would probably have offered him to leave the mortal world with a spark too. The joke is good, but dying in fire doesn't appeal to me.
"The government guys pay well, Mike," I nodded, "but they don't keep their word. They'll come for you, just like they come for everyone else."
"Do you think I have any illusions about the CIA?" Mike stood up and slung the backpack over his shoulder, inside which were the hard drives with extremely valuable information. We were supposed to hand them over to a representative of one of the major corporations that needed leverage over the USA. Well, for once, the country was quicker than private clients and simply bought out one of the executors—my best friend Mike. "I know perfectly well they'll want to eliminate me, but they're unlikely to succeed."
"They will," I said calmly, feeling my broken arm starting to go numb.
"Well, we'll see," Mike sighed, pulling the pistol from its holster and aiming it at me. "Quick?"
"Yes, make it quick, please," I took one last drag and used my tongue to push the cigarette out of my mouth, watching it slowly fall into a puddle of dried blood. Cool, now I'm going to die. It's a bit annoying, of course, that I didn't even make it to thirty, but...
"Is your life flashing before your eyes?" Mike suddenly asked, and I see him flicking the safety off.
"Yeah, something like that," I replied, staring straight into the barrel of the pistol aimed at my forehead. "Goodbye, Mike."
I didn't get to hear the sound of the shot, but I felt a sharp, sudden warmth. A gust of hot air carrying an incredible, incomparable pain, but... there was no sound. As if in slow motion, I watched the image in my eyes gradually darkening while the pain subsided. It was as if I suddenly started observing everything from the side: I saw Mike slowly walking away from my cooling body, how he turns toward the elevator and thinks about whether to throw me down with the others. A few seconds, but then he shakes his head and leaves my body in place.
I see him going into each office with a canister, leaving a small fire behind and opening the doors. The corridor gradually fills with smoke, and Mike puts on a special mask, then rushes toward the stairs. The fire flares up with such force that in just a few... minutes, I suppose, the flames burst into the corridor, and the first tongues of fire touch my clothes.
I'm not sure I want to watch my own corpse burn. I doubt, hesitate, but still close my eyes because I can't turn away. And at that very moment...
BAM!
And I fell. Honestly, judging by the sound and the force of the impact, I fell from a great height, but... I didn't feel any pain. Moreover, beneath me was some soft, suspiciously familiar surface.
I was still dead, but... I opened my eyes and carefully examined the place where I found myself. Honestly, the moment of realization coincided with chills running down my spine: I was in a completely white room with white walls, ceiling, and floor, lying on a snow-white bed and wrapped in some white sheet. All that was missing was the hospital smell and an IV drip, since the straitjacket was already there.
"It's a shroud," a soft female voice suddenly said, coming from everywhere at once. I got scared, but not enough to lose my composure. Twisting my head, I tried to find the speaker, but the room hadn't changed. A loudspeaker? A radio transmitter? Or...
"I'm definitely dead," I asked, catching my breath, "or is this the ending of Fight Club?"
"You're absolutely dead, Andrew," the unknown woman replied with a soothing note, "so you don't have to worry."
"Should I have?"
This time, the answer was a melodic laugh that made my blood run cold. It was as beautiful as it was terrifying, like entrusting the world's best violinist to play a metal blade on rough glass.
"There are people whose threads of fate intertwine with mine so often that I start influencing their lives," the voice said, and at that moment, one of the white walls disappeared, and I flinched, seeing that behind it all this time was a beautiful girl in dark blue clothing, whose appearance is very hard to describe without mentioning her bright green lifeless eyes and plump lips standing out as a dark spot on her white facial skin. "But you don't belong to those, Andrew."
"Uh-huh," I drawled, not knowing what to say. Don't belong to what? To those? What?
"In other words," the girl approached closer, and I noticed that her arms up to the elbows were black, as if she had dipped them in liquid tar five minutes ago. Frowning, I raised my gaze and noticed she was looking at me with a slight smirk, "you should be completely and irrevocably dead. Unfortunately," she shrugged, "you ended up here, and that creates certain complications. How many people have you killed in your life, Andrew?"
"Quite a few."
"Sixty-two people," the girl clicked her tongue, "and each of them moved on. You're not one of those who should stay, but for some reason, you're here. It's amusing, though I had to distract myself from more important matters because of you."
"And where am I?" I asked, suddenly realizing that this question had been on the tip of my tongue for several minutes.
"In between worlds," the girl replied with a smile. "And I suppose you're close to guessing by now."
Oh, definitely. A chill crept into my heart when I suddenly realized who was standing before me.
"As you understand, I have nothing against your... accomplishments, because you're just a necessary cog in the complex machine of existence. All those life crossroads you encountered over twenty-eight years eventually led you here, and that only means you did everything right."
"Right?" I frowned, asking again.
"Of course!" Death replied cheerfully, but her eyes remained as lifeless, though insanely beautiful. "Such cases are rare, insanely rare, but... just recently, I had three at once, and two of them were versions of the same person, can you imagine?" she smirked. "They deserved their choice and made it as soon as they arrived here. You didn't deserve your choice, but you ended up here not by my will."
Death's voice hardened toward the end, and she looked at me with slight disdain, which quickly turned back to her previous mocking smile.
"Somehow, you interfered in the order of things inaccessible to you," Death touched my cheek with her hand as black as darkness, and I closed my eyes, feeling a strange, incomparable aching pain run through my whole body from the touch, "and I can't send you back, just as I can't open the path forward for you. You're stuck, and the only way out for you is transfer to a world that can withstand such a shake-up. A world for which your appearance won't be the beginning of the end..."
Death stepped away from the bed where I had been lying all this time and froze for a few seconds. All this time, I was afraid to even move, so frightened was I by her behavior.
"Yes, I see," she sighed, turning to me, and this time her gaze suddenly acquired a hint of human emotions. She looked at me with barely noticeable... sympathy. "You had a joyless life, didn't you?"
"Nothing to brag about," I whispered, shrugging.
"Orphanage, gangs, organized crime... and it all ended with your best friend betraying you, the one who went through fire, water, and copper pipes with you. Do you have any regrets? Maybe you'd like to change something?"
"Don't take it as rudeness, but you obviously know what I feel, remember, and think," I coughed, but Death just smiled.
"Imitating a conversation is a kind of ritual, so don't be shy, please."
"No," I shook my head, "no particular regrets. That's how it turned out; I had no opportunities to choose a different path, and neither did he. That's life. I could hardly have influenced what didn't depend on me."
"Life," Death repeated with a chuckle. "Come on, tell me about life. Since that's the case... this time, you'll get a chance to change your mind. What do you think defines you? Your mind? Memories?"
"Uh, probably?"
"Oh, now that's interesting," Death nodded, "then it's decided. I have in mind a fun, albeit slightly insane little world that definitely won't fall apart because of your appearance, but... you'll finally have a chance to do something meaningful. Of course, you'll have to deal with certain complications first, but this time, it's all in your hands. Do you think you can handle it?"
Everything inside me went cold. Damn, I even felt my eye twitch. Is she talking about reincarnation?
"Just don't tell me you're going to send me to another world after death."
Oh, I've heard about that. Yes, definitely heard; there's even a whole genre, and I...
"Fine, I won't," Death shrugged, approaching me again. "Then... just goodbye. And don't become a supervillain too early, please; that's such a terrible cliché!"
I didn't get to hear what Death said to me last, because suddenly everything blurred before my eyes, and without realizing it, I passed out