The sound was wrong.
Kobe noticed it before fear had time to form—the rotor didn't scream or shatter. It stuttered. A violent hiccup in the air, like breath catching in a throat that suddenly realized it couldn't breathe anymore.
The helicopter lurched.
Weight vanished. Then returned all at once.
His body slammed forward, harness biting into his shoulders, ribs compressing as gravity turned brutal and intimate. The cabin shook, metal screaming under stress, alarms bleating without rhythm. The world tilted, spun, lost its rules.
Noise collapsed into chaos—wind tearing past the frame, the dull thunder of impact approaching too fast to outrun. Kobe's hands moved on instinct, reaching, bracing, uselessly strong against physics that didn't care who he was.
Time fractured.
In the panic, his mind did not go to banners or trophies. Not to records or rivalries. It went to one thing—one name.
Gianna.
A flash of her face: focused, serious, eyes locked in the same competitive calm he'd spent a lifetime cultivating. The thought hit harder than the G-force—she's here. His chest tightened, not from impact, but from something deeper, something helpless.
I can't protect her.
The sensation of falling sharpened. The air itself felt heavy now, thick with inevitability. His last clear thought wasn't fear of death—it was rage at its timing.
Then—
Nothing.
No pain. No sound.
No light.
Just absence.
A void so complete it wasn't darkness—it was the erasure of darkness itself. No body. No breath. No thought. The concept of time dissolved. There was no Kobe. No memory. No awareness. Only a silent, infinite nothing.
And then—
Thump.
A dull, wooden impact. Not violent. Real. Close.
Air rushed into lungs that suddenly remembered how to work. The sharp scent of rubber and sweat hit him all at once—gym mats, old sneakers, cleaning solvent baked into polished floors.
A bell rang.
Simple. Shrill. Ordinary.
Kobe's eyes snapped open.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Desks. Posters peeling at the corners. A chalkboard with half-erased math problems. The low murmur of kids shifting in their seats.
He was sitting at a desk.
His heart slammed against his chest, too fast, too strong, like it was trying to escape a cage it didn't recognize. He looked down.
Small hands.
Lean wrists. No scars. No calluses earned from decades of work. Knees tucked awkwardly beneath a desk designed for someone still growing into themselves.
Fourteen.
His breath caught.
The bell echoed again as students stood, chairs scraping loudly against the floor. Someone laughed nearby. Someone complained about homework. Life moved forward without hesitation.
Kobe stayed frozen.
The weight of everything—everything—crashed into him all at once. Championships. Failures. Loss. Love. Fatherhood. The final seconds of a falling helicopter.
All of it intact.
All of it his.
He slowly lifted his hands, flexed his fingers, feeling tendons move beneath unfamiliar skin. The body felt alien—lighter, raw, unfinished—but the mind inside it was unmistakable.
This was Bala Cynwyd Middle School.
Eighth grade.
Reality settled, heavy and undeniable.
Kobe Bryant closed his eyes for a brief second, steadying his breath the way he'd done before a thousand tip-offs.
He wasn't dead.
He was early.
And this time—
He wouldn't let the clock decide how the story ended.