San Diego, California — Friday, 06:42 A.M.
Two men in Navy working uniforms cut across the base parking lot like the front and back end of a joke.
The tall one—Jack Fritz, six-two with swimmer shoulders and bed-head that never quite learned regulations—scratched at his crotch with the confidence of a man who considered decency optional before coffee. The short one—Sam Harding, five-five of earnest bulk with fogged glasses and a backpack stuffed like it might burst into snack cakes—trotted to keep up.
"You ever get sore," Jack complained, "like actually sore—because the admiral went full beast mode? I swear she tried to vacuum the soul outta me last night."
Sam blinked. "Wh—what?"
"Leigh. The boss. The MILF with the shoulders." Jack made a swooping gesture that was 70% obscene, 30% proud. "We're a thing. I've been crashing in her quarters. Tell me you knew this."
Sam tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. "O–oh. S-so you're… s-sleeping in her bed? L-like… sleeping."
Jack smirked. "Yeah, buddy. Sleeping. Horizontal cardio. Night ops. Navy-approved morale boost."
Sam nodded slowly, processing exactly none of it. "Th—that's… nice of her."
"Mm. My handsome face is a public service." Jack clapped Sam's shoulder. "Which is why you need the gym. Your progress is, uh, 'promising peanut butter.' We need 'combat peanut butter.'"
Sam flushed and hugged his backpack. "I—I wanted to go back and l-log into Azeroth. We got the weekend off. We c-could do the dungeon thing. Um. The—what's it—Molten Something—"
"Core," Jack said. "And no. We're moving iron. After a month at sea I feel like a croissant. You feel like a Costco croissant."
Sam's mouth made a tiny O of offense. "I l-like croissants."
"You would." Jack thumbed his phone. "We'll hit the gym, protein up, then maybe—"
They turned the corner into the lot.
Jack stopped.
His brand-new graphite coupe—low, mean, waxed within an inch of its life—squatted on four pancake tires. Across the hood, a fluorescent middle finger bloomed like a mural. Under it: FUCKING CHEATER in bubble letters, the O in "cheater" filled with glitter.
Jack stared. Exhaled through his nose.
"That," he said, very calmly, "fucking bitch."
Sam peered. "Wh—who did you… m-make mad this time?"
"Honestly?" Jack rubbed his jaw. "Too many tabs open. Could be the yoga instructor. Or Elena with the ETFs. Or Jessica with the brother who thinks he's made of kettlebells. Or Marlowe. Actually, probably not Marlowe. She does violence legally."
He crouched, poked the slashed sidewall. "Ah well. Uber."
Sam pointed toward the street. "Th—the bus is c-coming."
Jack squinted at the blue-and-white rectangle hissing up to the stop. "Absolutely not. I'm not marinating in commuter soup."
Sam's ears went pink. "I—I take the bus. A l-lot."
Jack sighed. "Fine. Go marry it, Hobbit."
"I—uh—I'll g-go alone," Sam said, suddenly stubborn. "W-where there's a w-will—"
"You don't have our apartment keys, genius." Jack fished them from his pocket and jingled them. "How you gonna break into my place—poke the lock with your plastic lightsaber?"
Sam's mouth sharpened. "I—I'd f-figure it out."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Ugh. Fine. We ride the peasant rocket."
The bus doors sighed open. The morning crowd was already packed in: scrubs, suits, a guy in a charger jersey asleep with his head against a pole, two teenagers arguing about playlists like it was a Supreme Court case.
They shuffled down the aisle. No seats. Back row had a sliver.
Jack slid into it like a sultan on a fainting couch, sprawling across two plastic seats, boots up, elbows wide. Sam perched on the edge, apologizing to gravity.
"These seats smell like wet dog," Jack announced. "I'm improving them with my essence."
"P-please don't say 'essence,'" Sam said.
Jack ignored him and unlocked his phone. The crypto app washed his face in cool blue.
"Behold," he intoned, stage-whisper smug. "Portfolio check. I'm basically three-quarters to my lazy-American-dream."
Sam craned a little. The screen gleamed:
BTC — 3.1
ETH — 186
SOL — 2,900
XRP — 84,000
XLM — 120,000
FIST — 210,000 ("Don't ask," Jack said.)
USDC — $27,400
Staked stuff he pretended to understand
"Current value," Jack said, tapping the update. "Nine hundred and, uh—" He whistled. "Ninety-something. When this pops? House in La Jolla, pool, outdoor kitchen. We'll get you a girlfriend who thinks your stutter is adorable."
Sam shrank an inch. "G-girls are… s-scary. They look at me like I'm… wrong. And s-some are loud. Especially on the ship."
"Don't be a bitch," Jack said, fond and cruel in equal measure. "Confidence, baby. Confidence is just lying with posture."
The bus braked hard at the next stop. The aisle clogged. A knot of college girls pushed aboard, all backpacks and messy buns and iced coffee. The shortest—red hair, freckles, fire in her eyebrows—saw Jack's sprawled legs and pointed like a prosecutor.
"Hey, you. Gentleman act. We need seats."
Her friends folded their arms in synchronized judgment.
Sam was already standing. "It's o-okay—"
"Hell no," Jack said, not moving an inch. "You paid the same two bucks I did. Equality means your quads work."
The redhead's glare could have melted a bumper. "Move."
Sam tugged at Jack's sleeve. "J-Jack, it's f-fine—"
Jack groaned like a martyr and uncoiled to standing, towering over the girls. "Enjoy my throne," he said, stepping aside with an exaggerated bow. "Try not to drown in the smell."
They slid past him with victorious smirks. Jack and Sam drifted to the pole in the dead center of the bus—now the only two left standing.
Jack leaned down. "You can't do that," he muttered. "You train the world to step on you. That's how you got stuck as a cook, by the way. No charisma."
Sam hugged his backpack. "I l-like cooking. It m-makes people h-happy. You should t-try it."
"Being nice to you is my charity quota for the day."
He glanced back. The girls were giggling. Jack bared his teeth in a friendly almost-smile that wasn't friendly.
Outside, morning thickened. The bus rolled toward a T-intersection where the boulevard met a feeder road. Somewhere behind them, sirens howled—thin at first, then bigger, brighter, urgent. People craned for a look. Phones rose like a meadow of black rectangles.
"Probably a Prius rebellion," Jack said. He checked his phone again, reflexive. "ETH just kissed thirty-eight-hundred. Daddy eats."
"I—uh—w-when we're rich," Sam said, "can we buy a b-boat? And a dog. And m-maybe bring the admiral a, um, fruit basket? To say thank you?"
"Sure, Frodo. We'll get a golden retriever named Passive Income."
The sirens sharpened. The light at the T flipped yellow, then red. The bus slowed.
And from the right—out of a smear of sun and speed—came a pickup, nose-down, fishtailing, demon-loud. It tore the corner in a screaming drift, cops knotted behind it like tin cans on a wedding limo.
People gasped. The driver's face flashed—wild, white-eyed. The truck jumped the median.
There was a breath in the bus. The microsecond before impact when physics inhales.
Sam moved.
It was ridiculous—like a corgi trying to body-check a bull. He wrapped Jack in a panicked bear hug that barely reached mid-rib, face mashed into Jack's chest, small arms locked like seatbelts that didn't fit.
The truck arrived in the same heartbeat.
It punched through the side doors with a roar and a scream of metal, tore a ragged mouth in the bus, and kept coming. A white wall of grille and speed filled Jack's vision and then everything turned sideways—air turning into floor, floor turning into sky. Seats unbolted. Windows became glitter. Jack and Sam left the bus together, two uniforms flung like laundry by a god in a hurry.
Pavement hit Jack's back hard enough to steal his name. He slid, spun, thumped to a stop. The world stuttered between bright and too bright. Somewhere nearby, a horn held one long note like a machine dying in a choir.
Sam landed across him, small and heavy and shaking. Jack's ears were full of ocean noise. His fingers wouldn't listen. His lungs tasted like copper.
"D—don't worry, L–Lieutenant Jack," Sam muttered, voice thready and far away. "I'll… p-protect you."
Jack found the strength to lift one hand and set it on Sam's head, a clumsy benediction. "Yeah… thanks, Hobbit," he rasped. "You did good."
Sam's body went still under his palm—so still it made the morning louder.
Jack blinked grit. The bus lurched in his periphery, nearly cut in half. Passengers poured out—the redhead and her friends stumbling, alive, everyone alive—cops swarming from the far lane as the pickup fishtailed once in the distance and kept going, sirens snapping at its tail like dogs that wouldn't catch.
Only them. The two idiots standing in the aisle.
If I hadn't given up the damn seats… The thought landed with a dull, perfect weight. It'd be them here. Not us. He didn't like what that said about him; he liked even less that it was true.
His phone lay an arm's length away, the screen spidered but still lit, portfolio page frozen mid-refresh. Jack dragged his hand toward it. His fingers scraped pavement, came up short by inches. Come on. Come on. The numbers that had been his plan—BTC, ETH, the bag of ripple and stellar he'd stacked since eighteen, the weird bets, the tethered cash—blurred.
All that time. All that reading. All the nights watching candles like they were weather. Didn't even get to enjoy the win. He felt a hot, stupid ache that wasn't in his body. Not just for himself. For the image that had kept him patient: a backyard, a grill, a dog with a dumb name, Sam laughing over pancakes, no alarms, no watches, no watch bills—just done.
He dragged his palm again. The phone didn't get closer.
Jack let his hand fall. The sirens swelled. Someone shouted "Don't move," and he didn't plan to.
He turned his head. Sam's face was inches away, slack now, glasses gone, lashes dusted white with safety glass. Jack looked at him the way you look at a house you used to live in.
"Well," he breathed, "at least it was fun while it lasted, buddy."
His vision narrowed down to a tunnel with memory on its walls. The first day in lecture hall, the stupid hoodie, the mean jokes; then the basement door and the smell of dry concrete; the crack he'd felt open in his own chest when he'd seen the bed on the floor and the careful little lavender bag. Controllers clicking at 2 A.M.; Sam's terrible pancakes; the way he saluted with a spatula; movie marathons with subtitles because Sam liked reading along; the night they decided on the Navy because heroes are safer at sea; the first time Sam called him "Lieutenant" like it meant something more than rank.
A final clip rolled, quiet and golden: their couch, a bowl of popcorn, The Fellowship of the Ring humming on an ancient TV. Sam smiling lopsided, mouthing lines he didn't need help remembering. Jack not watching the movie at all, just watching his friend glow in the light of it.
Sorry, buddy, Jack thought, and the words felt right in the space where breath was running out. I couldn't protect you after all.
*******
He closed his eyes and let the sirens fade up like the end credits of a life that had almost figured itself out.
The dark folded over Jack like a blanket that had finally decided to stop pretending to be air.
He let it. Everything had been too loud anyway.
Then, in the middle of the nothing, a light blinked on.
Small. Wobbly. Like a flashlight held by unsteady baby hands.
Out of it floated something that might have been divine, if divine things wore diapers. Wings—tiny, fluffy, mismatched—and a body made of white fuzz and indecision. A toddler's giggle tried to sound like thunder.
"Behold!" the creature squeaked, immediately coughing on the word. "A-ahem—b-behold, m-mortal hero!"
Jack would have frowned if he still had a forehead. Oh no. Heaven has daycare.
"Y-your time is n-not yet up, brave hero," the being continued, voice wobbling between sermon and squeal. "You h-have died t-too young, t-too early!"
Jack's dead mind supplied: Obviously.
"And yet, through y-your m-magnificent s-sacrifice, you have saved—so many! The f-five girls on the bus! And, uh—also that f-family of five on the sidewalk!" The baby wings fluttered in triumph, scattering imaginary glitter. "Because your, um, your combined body mass a-absorbed the bad glass and debris before it could hurt them. Y-you were, like, big meat shields of goodness!"
Jack tried to groan, but ghosts don't get that option.
The creature nodded earnestly, wings bobbing. "A-and also, because you d-died rather… neatly—no, uh, gross stuff—you spared the witnesses terrible psychological trauma. See? Y-you are not just heroes, you are c-considerate heroes!"
Jack thought, So we're saints because we died politely.
The baby god drew itself up, trying for ancient gravity and hitting preschool graduation. "And furthermore! Because you are both, uh, sort of unloved and f-friendless—no families to miss you—your d-deaths saved many people from s-sorrow ripple effects. Truly, the universe is grateful that n-nothing of v-value was lost!"
Jack could only stare at the light, mentally mouthing wow.
"Oh! And your crypto account!" BabyGod said suddenly, as if remembering dessert. "Y-you forgot to lock your phone, so a very sad man found it later. He used your passwords, and when the markets spiked, he became a millionaire! He bought a h-house, adopted dogs, raised happy kids. A-all because of you! Isn't that nice?"
Jack internally screamed. My crypto? That's my afterlife fund, you winged potato!
The creature beamed, convinced it was delivering good news. "S-so, see? Y-you and your friend have d-done incredible things! You saved l-lives, s-saved feelings, even saved the economy! That's… that's epic, right?"
Jack wished he could answer. He settled for a spectral twitch that, in any living body, would have been an aneurysm.
"Now," the little god said, trying to sound wise and nearly tripping over its own tongue, "for y-your noble deeds, I g-gift you the Core of Light!"
It thrust out one pudgy hand.
A glowing sphere bloomed into existence—soft and radiant, pulsing gently, a heartbeat nested inside another heartbeat. The light wasn't blinding. It was warm. Patient. Almost kind.
"It will h-help you h-heal," the godling said, nodding as if reassuring itself, "and m-mend what is broken. It will m-make things b-beautiful again. S-stronger. Kinder."
The sphere drifted closer.
"But," the baby added, suddenly quieter, its wings slowing, "you m-must remember something."
The warmth sharpened—not painful, just serious.
"L-light does not choose for you."
The ball hovered inches from Jack's chest.
"If you d-do good," the godling continued, voice soft but firm, "g-good will g-grow around you. It will f-follow you. Protect you."
A pause.
"And if you d-do evil," it said, tiny brow furrowing, "then e-evil will f-follow too. N-not as punishment. Just… as c-consequence."
The sphere touched him.
It soaked into his chest like warm milk, spreading outward in slow, steady waves. Jack felt something settle inside him—not power exactly, but possibility. A quiet weight. A promise that could be kept… or broken.
The god flapped once, smiling again, innocence rushing back like nothing heavy had just been said.
"R-remember this, Jack," it chirped. "B-be good. G-good things will come. B-be bad…"
It tilted its head. "W-well. You'll see."
It waved, clumsy and cheerful. "G-good luck, my heroes! G-go forth and make the world a b-better place! Bye-bye!"
With one last enthusiastic flap, it burst into confetti-light.
Jack's world turned white.
He wasn't a man anymore—just a spark, drifting in an endless ocean of brightness. Beside him floated another spark, warm and familiar, bumbling gently in the glow.
He didn't have lungs, but somehow the thought still formed.
"Sam?"
A beat.
"That you, buddy?"
The other light pulsed twice—almost a stutter, almost a laugh.
And that was where the ridiculous miracle began.