Jack’s POV

I was hanging between life and death, my consciousness was fading from all the blood I have lost, ‘I guess they forgot to patch me this time, finally, I’m going to die’ I thought.

Suddenly my mind started to clear and I opened my eyes wondering what the hell was happening, everything was gray and frozen in place, a pink creature with small pink wings was floating in the air with pink hair, pink eyes, pink clothes, even his skin is a little pink. As I said, a pink creature with a sick smile on his face approached me and introduced himself.

“Hello Jack, you can call me Leo, as you can see, I’m an angel, see, you can have a look at my wings if you want to, I don’t mind, see, they are beautiful right, right.”

He circled around himself to show me his wings and continued “Anyhow, I was sent here to make a deal with you, as you know, you are going to die in a few more minutes, god bless your soul.”

He made a gesture with his hands as if he was praying for my soul to rest in peace or something, then said “We would like to send you to another world, that world will be facing an apocalypse in a few more days, your mission is simple, all you have to do is help as many humans as possible to survive, in exchange, you will have another life in a new world, so what do you think? You like it right, right, it is a super deal.” As he finished talking, he looked at me with anticipation shown in his eyes.

I gave him a look clearly saying ‘Are you fucking stupid?’ Before saying to him “So, now that I’m finally will be able to leave this hell, you want to send me to another hell, no, thank you, I would rather die here and now.” I closed my eyes as an indication that this conversation is over.

I felt his gaze on me before he started to talk again “Did I forget to mention that, both worlds have the same people in them but with different lifestyles? You will be occupying the original Jack Ross’ body, he is you but from that world, though he is a bit younger than you at the moment, he is still twenty right now, compared to your twenty-eight self here in this world, and most importantly, Sam Black is still alive in that world.”

I shot my eyes open at the mention of Sam, only to see a smirk on his lips as if he knew from the start how to make me agree to this missed up deal, he chuckled at me and said “So, you will have another chance to live with Sam again, now, what is your answer?”

At that moment, I knew just as much as he had also known that I sold my soul and made a deal with the devil, oh sorry, I mean angel, I shook my head and mumbled a weak “Deal.”

He laughed at me and put his hand on my forehead and mumbled a few words.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself sleeping in a strange room, with some strange things that I have never seen before, all of a sudden, strange images and memories started to flow in my mind. After a few minutes, I knew everything about this Jack and everything he knew about this world as if I was the one living here my whole life.

“I need to find Sam” I said out loud to myself and jumped out of the bed and started my search to find him.

I managed to search in some data from the military database and found him in ‘A’ city; he was still nineteen in this world and was planning to enter college.

I printed his photo out and kept it with me, for safe-keeping, of course, nothing shameless.

I decided to head to ‘A’ city as soon as possible, but unfortunately for me, we were at ‘Z’ city at the moment. My father had some military meetings there, and we had to wait until they were finished before we could head back to ‘A’ city, as we also lived in ‘A’ city as well, and I was forced to stay with him in ‘Z’ city for another four days.

We reached ‘A’ city at midnight, so I forced myself to wait until morning to see Sam, I went directly to bed as I was hoping that the morning will come faster, after some struggle and a thousand thoughts I finally managed to fall asleep.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I woke up at six-thirty and went directly to Sam’s apartment, I reached it at about eight o’clock and rang the bell a few times, I missed him so much and I couldn’t wait to see him again, I knew he didn’t know me in this world and it was inappropriate to make all this ruckus early in the morning, but I couldn’t control myself at all.

Finally, after a few minutes, the door opened and I saw his face, clearly, he was sleeping, a smile decorated my lips and it took all my self-control to stop myself from hugging him and kissing him.

Just as he was about to say something, his face turned pale and he tilted his head and looked down, I followed his gaze with my eyes and my body froze in place terrified when I saw a piece of rock in his chest. He looked into my eyes as he fell to his knees and down to the ground.

It took me a moment to process what happened and force my body to move again, I bent down while shaking and turned his body to face me. Just as I grabbed the rock in his chest to remove it, a strong pair of arms dragged me to a nearby car and the car made its way to the military base.

The two soldiers told me to get out of the car, I stood in the parking lot and looked around me in a daze only to see the soldiers running in a frenzy and shouting, I felt something in my hand so I looked down to see what it was, and it was a small piece of rock from the rock that pierced Sam’s chest, suddenly, I woke up from my shock and started to wail.

I pulled myself together and ran to the nearest car and asked one of the soldiers to lend me the car, I wanted to go back to Sam, but as you can imagine, my father gave an order to find me and keep me there. Just as I was about to argue with the soldier, he looked at me strangely and said “Dude, look at the fucking sun, it’s fucking blue.”

I sat in a small room inside the base cursing and shaking, all I could think of was Sam, I could hear screams, shouts, gunshots, all hell got loose in the past few hours.

I kept saying to myself that, Sam will be alright, he is strong and he can survive until I can get out of this fucking base.

Finally, at nearly ten in the evening, my father decided that it was dangerous to stay in the city and so, as we were leaving the base, I chose to set in a car with some of the soldiers that I had some kind of friendship with and asked them for a favor.

In our way to leave the city, we took a detour to check on Sam. When we reached Sam’s apartment, Sam wasn’t there anymore and there was no sign of him, so all I could do was hoping that somebody helped him or that he woke up and left on his own.

For the past thirteen years, we changed many bases, met many people, and I kept searching for my Sam, until today when I finally found him.

That’s how I found myself, at that moment, sitting on the ground next to Sam’s body and tracing his cheeks with my hand while crying my heart out, I took his body in my arms and hugged him next to my heart and shouted “This is not what we agreed upon, you fucker, show yourself, how many fucking times I have to watch him die in front of me? Show yourself or I’m going to kill all your fucking precious humans, this is not what you promised me thirteen years ago.”

Suddenly, time stopped and everything turned gray like in an old movie, the fucker showed himself with the same sick smile on his face.

“Hello, Jack, did you miss me? Sure, you did, I know you missed me right, right?” He said as he looked at me cheerfully as if we were some kind of old friends.

“Stop fucking around, what the hell happened to our deal? This is not what you promised me.” I shouted at him angrily, I was in no position to tolerate him or play his game anymore.

He pouted a little but nevertheless, he answered me seriously “You see, what I said was that you would have another chance to live with Sam again, but I never said that you will live with him or that it’s going to be easy to do so.”

He blinked his pink eyes with his pink eyelashes and looked at me with an expression saying that it was not his fault.

Just as I was about to retort, he waved his hand to gesture that he didn’t finish speaking and continued to speak again in that disgusting tone of his “Anyhow, the test period is over, so,“

I looked at him confused, which made him widen his eyes and said a soft “Oh” Then he looked a little embarrassed as he said “Did I forget to tell you? Maybe you forgot? Ok, let’s just say that you are the one who forgot, not me, because you know, I have my image to worry about and such a small mistake will ruin it.”

At that point, I was really thinking about smashing his head or something, and I think he noticed the murderous look I was giving him, so he cleared his throat and said “Anyhow, as I was saying, the test period is over, actually it was supposed to finish twelve years ago, but I was a little busy and I didn’t have the time until today.”  

‘I bet he forgot to come.’ I thought before asking him “What do you mean by the test period?”

“You see, it is a test period, ok, let me explain more, we made this period for two reasons, the first reason is to watch and see how you will perform, if you perform poorly, we will have to cancel the deal and find someone else. The second reason is to give you some time to adapt to this world and this environment, it was supposed to be for one year, then we return the time to the first day of the apocalypse, exactly two hours before the blue sun, with your memory intact. But as I said before, I was busy and I couldn’t come earlier.” He finished speaking and flashed some foolish smile at me. 

I wanted to say something but before I could open my mouth, I felt his hand yet again on my forehead, and I opened my eyes in my bed.