The squeak of tennis balls and ragged breathing echoed throughout the musty room. A bead of sweat trickled down Elijah’s wrinkled forehead as he edged his walker towards the old woman across from him, hatred burning in his eyes.
He raised an arthritis-ridden hand, the gun trembling in his grip. Elijah’s brow lowered as he bared his teeth, a shaking finger tightening around the trigger. The gun barked, leaping from his hand as the force of the recoil overpowered his wizened body.
The bullet flew wide, punching through the dust covered wall behind the woman.
“You’re a poor excuse for an assassin,” the woman croaked, hobbling forward and leaning heavily on her worn cane. The oxygen lines running into her nose made her already tired voice nasally. “All these years and you still can’t aim, Elijah.”
“I’m still better than you ever were. I thought I might just let old age take you and save me the trouble, you crotchety old prune,” Elijah said. “You’ve lost your touch. There was a time when I wouldn’t have known you were coming until you were on me, but I smelled your must from a mile away.”
“You’ve always talked too much. Let me help you shut that mouth,” the woman replied, pulling her own pistol from her fanny pack and aiming it at Elijah. Her hand trembled just as much as Elijah’s had.
“Do it, Avery. I’d like to see you hit the broad side of a barn with that thing,” Elijah said, giving her a grin. It might have been more intimidating had he remembered to put his dentures in that morning.
Avery pulled the trigger. The gun launched itself out of her hand and clattered to the floor. The bullet whistled by his head, shaving off one of the last of the few hairs he had remaining. Elijah cackled. He leaned down to pick up his weapon, but a sharp pain erupted in his lower back.
He cried out, his knuckles whitening around the walker as he caught himself. Avery smirked and knelt to grab her own weapon. She let out a groan and staggered, throwing her weight onto the cane as her own back gave out.
“I guess guns aren’t our thing anymore, eh?” Elijah asked with a pained laugh. He called on his years of training to push the agony into the back of his mind and muted it, focusing on the task at hand.
“That’s fine. My hands work just fine.”
“We’ll see about that.”
The two of them hobbled towards each other, gritting their teeth against the pain wracking their bodies. The room was small, but it still took them nearly a minute to reach each other. Their bodies were no longer the killing machines they’d once been.
Elijah’s chest felt tight. His body was stiffer than it had ever been, and his limbs no longer reacted as swiftly as they once had. The old man’s eyebrows knitted together and he narrowed his eyes.
It had been nearly fifty five years since he’d taken this job, and he’d be damned if he didn’t finish it. His head felt light and wobbly on his shoulders as he stumbled forward, his free hand reaching out for Avery’s throat.
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She mirrored his actions, tossing the cane aside as they finally grew closer. The two of them wrapped their hands around each other’s throats and started to squeeze.
“Hurry this up, old hag,” Elijah wheezed. “I’ve got bingo in an hour. This job has made me work for far too long, and I look forward to retiring.”
Avery’s response was two rows of bared dentures. Elijah’s world started to grow darker. His eyes felt heavy and his mind sluggish. Avery’s face was drooping slightly and both of them were breathing heavily.
A sharp pain pierced through Elijah’s chest like a red hot stake. He gasped, his grip going slack and his eyes widening. He felt the pressure on his throat vanish as Avery’s hands scrabbled at her heart, the life beginning to leave her eyes.
The two of them fell forward at the same time, their bodies slumped against each other on the ground. The world started to slow down and a burst of clarity lit up Elijah’s aging mind.
“Damn it all,” he breathed. “I’m going to miss bingo.”
Avery let out a single, pain-wracked grunt that might have been a laugh. It was the first one that Elijah had ever heard her make. And then, together, they breathed their last.
You Have Died.
Elijah blinked. Glowing golden words floated above him in a sea of endless black. He couldn’t feel his limbs, but the pain was gone. He couldn’t remember the last time that his joints hadn’t ached from arthritis. He tried to open his mouth, but no words came out.
The words slowly faded away, blinking out letter by letter until nothing remained. Elijah lost track of time as he drifted aimlessly, unable to even control what he was looking at.
Occasionally, flickers of dull gold light arced through the horizon at the edge of his vision, but they were gone as quickly as they had arrived.
If this was the afterlife, Elijah realized he was content with it. After over ninety years of constant fighting and bloodshed, it was nice to finally be at peace. He’d been fighting for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like.
Elijah wasn’t sure if he even had a body anymore. If he did, he suspected he would have been smiling.
Something in the darkness shifted. Elijah’s vision flickered as his rest was disturbed. Gold energy, more than he’d ever seen, swirled to life before him. Words emerged from the darkness, glowing with brilliant radiance.
Welcome to the afterlife.
Locating a suitable universe
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Universe found. Alpha 13-B
De-aging body
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Complete.
Assessing compatibility with Mananites
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Abnormality detected: 185% Compatibility
Injecting Mananites
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Complete.
Assessing skills
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Complete.
Erasing current neuron connections
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Error: Operator override
Aborted.
Initiating transfer to Alpha 13-B
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Error: Operator override.
Retargeting Universe: Alpha 13-A
Unique case: Soulbound
Merging Souls
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Err- Operator Override
Complete.
Initiating transfer to Alpha 13-A
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…
Transfer Complete. Welcome to the afterlife, Elijah Fleet.