Louis flicked his empty water bottle toward a trash can and missed by a mile. It clattered against the curb and rolled away.
"Nice," Marcus said without looking. "Real athlete energy."
"Shut up," Louis said, jogging a few steps to grab it. "The wind messed with it." "There is no wind."
"Exactly. That's how strong I am."
Marcus smirked and adjusted the strap of his backpack. "You say that every time you fail at something."
"And I'll keep saying it until it works."
They walked side by side, not in any rush, just killing time the way they always did. The street was busy but familiar—cars, people, noise that blended into background static.
"So," Marcus said, "you still pretending you're gonna start working out, or is that just a personality trait now?"
Louis scoffed. "I am working out. Mentally." "That explains nothing."
"I did push-ups yesterday," Louis said. Marcus raised an eyebrow. "How many?" Louis hesitated. "Enough to feel it." "That's not a number."
"Because numbers are oppressive."
Marcus laughed under his breath. "You're hopeless." "Yet," Louis said, tapping his chest, "still alive." "Barely."
They passed a group of kids arguing loudly about something dumb—probably a game or a video. Louis glanced at them and shook his head.
"Remember when that was us?" he said.
Marcus shrugged. "We were worse."
"True," Louis admitted. "At least they have energy. I get tired standing."
"That's because you refuse to eat real food," Marcus said. "Coffee is not a meal." "It has calories."
"So does glue."
They stopped at the corner, waiting for the light. Marcus pulled his phone out, scrolled for a second, then locked it again.
"You ever notice," he said, "that every group chat dies eventually?"
Louis snorted. "Yeah, because no one actually likes texting. We just tolerate it." "I like texting," Marcus said.
"You like lurking," Louis corrected. "You've sent maybe five messages this year." "Quality over quantity."
"Those five were 'lol.'"
"And they were perfectly placed."
A car sped past, music blasting with the windows down. Louis winced. "That song's still popular? It came out like two years ago."
"Time stopped mattering after 2020," Marcus said. "Everything after that blends together." Louis nodded. "Fair."
The pedestrian light changed. Louis stepped forward without really thinking, still mid- conversation.
"Okay, but hear me out," he said, turning slightly toward Marcus as they started to walk. "If you had to choose between having unlimited money or never having to—" Louis paused as they stepped off the curb.
"—never having to sleep again?" Louis finished.
Marcus opened his mouth. "That's not even a question. Money. Anyone who says no sleep is lying to—"
The sound came out of nowhere. Not a screech, not a warning. Just impact. A violent, impossible force that slammed into them and turned the world into noise and motion and heat.
Louis felt himself lifted, weightless for half a second, like missing a step on the stairs—then the ground hit him hard. Air punched out of his lungs. His vision shattered into white and
red and then nothing made sense anymore.
There were voices. Distant. Muffled. Someone shouting. He tried to move his hands. They didn't listen.
Marcus.
The thought cut through the fog sharp enough to hurt. Louis tried to turn his head. Pain flared, blinding, and he groaned without realizing it.
"Hey—hey—don't move," a voice said. A man's voice. Close. Urgent. "Stay with me, okay? Don't move."
Louis wanted to answer. His mouth felt full of cotton. His tongue didn't work right. "I'm here," the voice kept going. "Ambulance is on the way. Just stay awake." Marcus.
Louis tried again. "Ma—" The word fell apart halfway out. He swallowed and tasted blood.
There were hands on him now. Someone holding his head still. Someone else pressing hard on his chest or shoulder—he couldn't tell which.
"I need pressure here," another voice said. "He's bleeding." "Where's the other one?" someone asked.
Louis strained to hear. His ears rang, high and thin, drowning everything else. "There—" A pause. Too long. "Over there."
He tried to lift his arm. It twitched uselessly. "Marcus," Louis whispered. Or thought he did.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder, closer, until they swallowed everything.
The ceiling lights blurred past above him in chunks. White rectangles sliding by too fast. His body felt wrong—heavy and light at the same time, like he wasn't fully inside it anymore.
"BP's dropping." "How old?" "Sixteen."
"Any response?"
"He's semi-conscious."
Louis focused on that. Semi-conscious. That meant awake. That meant alive. "Marcus," he tried again. His lips barely moved. "Where's—"
"Easy," someone said near his head. "Don't talk." "Other patient?" a different voice asked.
A pause.
"DOA," someone replied.
The words hit harder than the truck.
Louis's heart slammed against his ribs. No. That didn't make sense. Marcus was fine. Marcus was always fine. Marcus was the one who noticed things. The one who didn't step into traffic without looking.
"No," Louis croaked, the sound tearing out of his throat. His vision swam violently. "No, no, no."
"Hey," the first voice said, firmer now. "Stay with me. Don't do that." DOA.
Dead on arrival.
The siren wailed louder, like it was inside his skull now. His chest hurt. Everything hurt.
They rushed him through doors that whooshed open and slammed shut again. The air changed—sterile, sharp.
"Trauma bay three." "Get me vitals."
"Sir, can you hear me?" A woman leaned into his line of sight, her face too close, eyes intense. "Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."
Louis squeezed. Weakly, but enough. "Good," she said. "Good. Stay with us."
"Marcus," Louis whispered again. Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes without him noticing. "Please."
No one answered that.
Time felt broken. He drifted in and out, pieces of sound floating in and disappearing. "Internal bleeding."
"Prep for surgery." "Family contacted?" "Not yet."
At one point he woke to shouting. Not angry—urgent. Controlled panic. "Clear!"
His body jolted violently. Pain exploded through him and then faded just as fast, leaving him shaking.
Pain faded strangely fast.
That scared him more than the pain itself.
The shouting blurred into a low hum, like voices underwater. Louis stared at the ceiling, but it was no longer moving. The lights above him looked dimmer now, fuzzier around the
edges.
Someone said his name again. Or maybe he imagined it.
His hands felt cold. Heavy. Like they didn't belong to him anymore.
"Stay with us," a voice said. It sounded farther away than before. "Louis, look at me." He tried. His eyes wouldn't focus.
Marcus should've been here. Marcus should've said something stupid right now. Something dry. Something calm.
Louis's chest hitched. A weak, broken sound escaped his throat.
"I didn't—" he whispered. The words came out wrong. "I didn't finish the question." No one responded.
The beeping beside him slowed. Each sound stretched longer than the last, dragging itself out before snapping back.
Beep. Pause. Beep.
He felt tired. Not the normal kind. Not sleepy. Just… done.
The ceiling lights blurred completely now, melting into one soft white glow. It reminded him of standing outside on a hot day, squinting up at the sky.
"Marcus," he breathed. This time, the name barely made a sound. The monitor let out one long, flat tone.
Someone swore quietly.
Hands pressed against his chest again, urgent, practiced. Voices overlapped. Commands. Counting.
Louis didn't feel any of it. The white faded.
Then there was nothing at all.
The flat tone never really ended.
It stretched. Warped. Lost meaning. Then even that disappeared.
Louis expected nothing after that. No thoughts. No feeling. Just… absence. Instead, awareness returned slowly, like waking up underwater.
There was no pain. That was the first thing he noticed. No weight either. No body, really—at least not in the way he understood bodies. He felt present without feeling physical, like his mind had been unplugged from everything else and left running.
He opened his eyes.
Or tried to.
Light flooded in anyway.
Not blinding. Just everywhere. Soft, endless, with no clear source. There was no ceiling, no floor, no walls—just a vast white expanse that went on forever, smooth and empty like a page that hadn't been written on yet.
"Okay," Louis muttered. His voice echoed strangely, not bouncing off anything but still coming back to him. "This is new."
"Yeah," Marcus said beside him. "I'd say that counts." Louis spun around.
Marcus was there.
Standing. Whole. Uninjured. Hands shoved into the pockets of a familiar hoodie, posture relaxed in the way it always was, like he was trying very hard not to look impressed.
For half a second, Louis just stared. Then he moved.
He crossed the distance in three steps and grabbed Marcus by the shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to make sure he was real.
"You—" Louis swallowed. "You died." Marcus blinked. "I figured."
"You were—" His voice cracked. "They said—"
"I know," Marcus said quietly. He didn't pull away. "I heard it too. For a bit."
Louis laughed once, sharp and broken, and pulled him into a hug without asking. Marcus stiffened in surprise, then sighed and hugged him back, firm and solid and there.
They stayed like that for a moment, neither of them saying anything.
Finally, Marcus pulled back slightly. "So," he said. "Either we're hallucinating together, or this is the afterlife."
Louis wiped at his face with his sleeve, annoyed to find it came away damp. "If this is the afterlife, it's… minimalist."
"Very budget-friendly," Marcus joked.
A sound rolled through the space then. It wasn't loud or too sudden—just there. Like a deep note being struck and held, vibrating through the air itself.
They both turned toward it instinctively. Something began to take shape in the distance.
At first, it was just a blur, like heat distortion. Then it sharpened into steps. Wide ones, pale and seamless, rising out of nothing and leading upward toward a raised platform that
hadn't been there a moment ago. On it sat a figure.
It wasn't glowing, didn't look scary. It was just… there.
Human like in shape, dressed simply, posture relaxed in a way that felt wrong given the scale of the space. No crown. No wings. No obvious symbols of power.
Which somehow made it worse.
"Yeah," Louis said slowly. "I don't like that." The figure looked at them.
Not with eyes exactly—at least, Louis couldn't be sure—but the attention was unmistakable. It settled over them like weight.
"Louis," the figure said.
Then, "Marcus."
Its voice was calm. Neutral. Not booming. Not kind. Just… factual. Marcus leaned slightly toward Louis. "It knows our names." "Fantastic," Louis murmured. "Love that."
"Please approach," the figure said.
The steps extended smoothly, lengthening until they reached Louis's feet. "Do we have to?" Louis asked.
"Yes," the figure replied. Marcus sighed. "Figures." They climbed.
With each step, the air felt heavier, like pressure building the higher they went. Not painful—just impossible to ignore. By the time they reached the top, Louis felt small in a way he'd never felt before, like standing too close to the edge of something endless.
Up close, the figure looked… ordinary. Too ordinary. Dark hair, simple clothes, face unremarkable enough that Louis was sure he wouldn't remember it later.
He wondered if that was on purpose.
That terrified him more than anything dramatic would have. "You died," the figure said plainly.
Louis snorted. "Yeah, we got that part."
Marcus shot him a look, but the figure didn't react.
"Your lives ended prematurely," it continued. "No lingering illness. No prolonged suffering. Sudden. Final."
Marcus crossed his arms. "So this is a sort of processing center?" "If that metaphor helps you," the figure said.
Louis tilted his head. "We don't exactly feel processed." "That is intentional."
There was a pause.
Then Louis asked the question he'd been holding since he woke up. "Why are we together?" The figure regarded him for a long moment.
"Because you arrived together," it said. "And because separating you would be… inefficient."
Marcus frowned. "Inefficient how?"
The figure's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "You will function better as a unit." Louis didn't like the wording. "Function where?"
The figure leaned back slightly, resting its elbows on the armrests of the seat that had somehow always been there.
"You are being sent elsewhere," it said. Marcus stiffened. "Elsewhere where?"
"A world," the figure replied. "Not your own."
Louis let out a short laugh. "Are you being vague on purpose?" "Yes."
"Why?"
The figure looked almost amused now. "Where is the fun in explaining everything?" Marcus stared. "You're kidding."
"I do not kid," the figure said. "But I do enjoy curiosity."
Louis rubbed his face. "Okay. New world. Great. Is it… better?" "No."
"Worse?"
"Yes."
"That makes sense," Louis muttered sarcastically.
The figure continued, unbothered. "The world you will enter is already broken. Society has collapsed. Survival is uncertain. Morality is… flexible."
Marcus's jaw tightened. "So you're throwing us into hell."
"I am giving you a chance," the figure corrected. "One you would not otherwise have." "A chance to do what?" Louis asked.
"Live."
The word echoed strangely.
Marcus exhaled slowly. "And if we don't want it?"
The figure's gaze sharpened, just slightly. "Then you may remain here." Louis glanced around at the endless white. "Doing what?"
"Nothing."
Marcus didn't answer immediately. Louis could practically hear him thinking.
"Death will still be real," the figure added. "Pain will be real. Loss will be real. This is not a reward. It is not mercy. It is opportunity."
Louis swallowed. "So we can die again."
"Yes."
"And if we do?"
"There will be no further redirection."
That got Marcus's attention. "So this is it. One chance." "Correct."
Silence stretched between them.
Louis looked at Marcus. Marcus looked back.
They didn't need to say much. They'd crossed a street together without thinking. This wasn't any different.
Marcus nodded once. "We'll take it."
Louis blinked. "Wait, seriously? No questions?" Marcus shrugged. "We're already dead."
The figure inclined its head. "Very well."
The space around them began to shift. The white dimmed, folding inward like fabric being pulled tight.
"You will be given tools to survive," the figure said as the world started to unravel. "It's not for comfort but survival. Remember that."
Louis felt the ground vanish beneath his feet.
"Great," he called out as everything tilted. "Love vague gods." The figure's voice followed them into the dark.
"Remember," it said. "Death will still be real." Then the light collapsed.
And they were sent away.