“Serve me well and I’ll never dispose of you”

That’s what Nicolas heard before everything turned dark and blank. He stood in panic and began walking backwards trying to grab on to something, then, a few more steps later, he bumped into something. His vision came back to normal when he turned around and checked what it was.

“Matthew?”

“Nicolas?”

“What are you doing here”, Nicolas angrily exclaimed but Matthew was more concerned about their surroundings than the ongoing conversation.

“Yeah, I would like to ask that too. Where and why are we here?”, he panicked as he looked down at the small street, a hundred stories below them.

Before they can even process what’s going on, something went pass their shoulders. It was fast but the size suggested it was neither a fly nor any insect.

“Don’t let them get away”, a dozen men yelled as they come in pursuit.

Another high-speed pebble presented itself, inches away from their feet and it finally registered to them what it as.

“Guns? Bullets?”, they both looked at each other in panic as they immediately took cover behind what looked like a ventilation unit.

“What should we do?”, Matthew asked, sweat building up his forehead.

Nicolas who’s intently looking at the other building had a crazy idea, “Jump across”

“Are you nuts? That’s too far. If we mess that up that’s a hundred-meter drop towards death”

“Well, if you want to stay, then stay here and wait for them to put holes all over you”, Nicolas replied giving not a single care to what Matthew thinks.

“But—”, a bullet chipped a small piece of the ventilation Matthew was hiding in.

“Your such a worry wart, we can do this, like we once did”, Nicolas blurted out without thinking.

“Once did?”, they both said in chorus.

“What do you mean once did, we don’t even know each other in the first place”, Matthew yelled.

“Forget it, either we die here, or we die trying”, Nicolas convinced Matthew once more but he knows he’s convincing himself more.

“But the ledge is still too far, the bullets will get to us first, we die either way”

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Nicolas paused for a minute, peeked from his hiding place and examined their pursuers. “Use your soul”, he suggested.

“Soul? Why?”

“Use your soul and turn it into a shield”

“My soul is a sword. How in the world will I supposed to do that”, Matthew replied to what he thought was Nicolas’s ridiculous idea.

“I don’t know about you but I can. Just do what you can and run. Good luck”

“What?”

“NOW”, Nicolas ran as he immediately called his soul and turned it into a shield preventing the bullets and changing his hiding place little by little to the ledge.

“What the hell?”, Matthew thought. “He really could?”

A loud sound shook Matthew from where he hid. He never dared to take a peek but he knew what causes that kind of explosion. “Grenade!?”

Out of sheer distress, he immediately stood in panic and ran, calling his sword, though a bullet was already heading for his head. “The end”, he thought as he shielded himself with his blade as a last resort for blocking the shot. To his surprise he too had produced a shield.

“What the—”, he thought before continuing to run, enough to catch up to Nicolas who’s now ready to jump.

“WHAT THE FUCK”, Nicolas roared in horror.

“I told you it was too far”, Matthew came yelling at him as both of them plummeted down the street.

When they hit the ground, they were somehow on a different place.

Nicolas tried to sit but he could not. He tried grabbing the wooden railing on his side but his hands does not seem to have the power to do so.

As he raised his hand he discovered something. “Why are my hands small?”, he uttered but only a cry came out of his mouth.

He tilted his head to his side and saw a baby looking at him and also crying. The sharp look in its eyes made him realize it maybe was Matthew. They both cried while failing to hold a conversation.

They are inside a room, with patterned wallpaper of animals. The wooden railing surrounding them is a crib making sure that they will not fall off. Over their heads and a bit far from their reach are crib mobiles of bears as they are illuminated by the orange light coming outside the window.

It looked like a tranquil and normal night except for the voices making a ruckus outside, “WE CAN’T LET THEM LIVE”.

A lady can also be heard outside the door arguing with a man.

“No, they are your sons, your flesh and blood”, she cried as she tried to pull the man as they barged in.

“This can’t be helped”, the man tearfully cried as he pushed the lady against the wall, leaving her weak as she cried hopelessly.

The man looked at both of them and said, "Sorry, Nicolas and Matthew.”

Nicolas and Matthew, on the other hand, were surprised that the man knows their name and their cries stopped.

“Forgive Papa”, the man carried both of them, then gave them a kiss on the forehead before putting them back to the crib.

“PLEASE DON’T STOP”, the lady exclaimed as the man picked up something from the foot of the bed.

“Forgive me, my sons”, he uttered as his kind smile turned pained and guilty as he raised his hand into the air, revealing a block of wood. He pressed it down together with gravity and Nicolas and Matthew could only wait as their tiny little soft heads were crushed. Though they felt nothing, it gave them shivers.

They again blacked out and once again thrown into an event one after another. It seemed like they were thrown from one nightmare to another without a single second for a break. They kept getting stabbed or crushed, drowned in the river, or left on the forest to die. They kept bleeding and suffocating, all resulting to their death.

In one occasion, they are eaten alive by wild animals and being forced to fight for a war just to be taken down mercilessly by a sniper, but mostly, they are killed as an infant or a toddler by their own family while looking at them like monsters as they sleep. Or grow into their teens to be later killed by strangers with swords and bows, and if they are too unlucky for the world they are in, even guns. Despite all that, they are reborn each time just to repeat the cycle all over again.