“Get away! Leave me alone!” T’balt shouted.

  “Hey, hey. No need to get all fussy. Is this any way to greet a friend? It's been a lifetime since we’ve seen each other, T.”

  T’balt scrambled away, knowing he had no means to defend himself. He could still feel Monan’s boot crushing his throat. His only instinct was to run.

  How the man was here, he hadn’t the slightest clue. All he could do was grab his grandfather’s gun and cling to it for life like he had done so many times already.

  “Stay back!”

  “Wow. A gun. Someone needs to chill out. The fun isn’t supposed to start till later, you know.” Despite the words, Monan didn’t even slightly flinch at the sight of a pistol aimed straight at his head. It was shaky, swaying a little too much. “Or maybe you’ve started the party early.” Monan gestured at the empty beer bottles in the kitchen, but T’balt didn’t sway his gaze.

  “You murdered me. You caused Chosa and the kid to die,” he spat.

  “Oh, is that what this is about? Some people are so petite. Fine. You get one. Go ahead.” Monan stepped closer. “Pull the trigger.”

  “You… want to die?”

  Monan broke into hysterics at the word. “Die?... You don’t even know the meaning of the word. They used to say a man can’t know what it means to die until he’s already dead. But you’ve lost the privilege to even think of death. You’ve already reached the other side, my friend. This is the forever torment, the eternal hell. And you are stuck here. Forever.”

  “Stop… Don’t come any closer.”

  Monan's heavy boots continued to thump towards him. “Come on. Let me show you what happens when we die. Or do you need me to teach you how to kill? Is that why you’re so shit at this? Too scared to pull the trigger when it really counts,” he taunted, raising his voice louder and louder.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Or I’ll shoot.”

  “Then let me help you, tough guy.” Monan grabbed the head of the pistol and pulled it to his head, staring one eye down the barrel and the other into the fear in the eyes of the man holding it.

  T’balt’s hand inched off the trigger. The man was insane. Or was he that confident that T’balt wouldn’t pull the trigger? Was he playing right into his game? He tried to retreat, but as soon as he did, Monan seized his hands and forced the gun back to his head. “I SAID PULL IT, YOU MORON. YOU WEAKLING! YOU TRASH EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BE—” He was cut off by the crack of gunfire.

  When he was yelling, he had a hold of T’balt’s hand, squeezing harder and harder until the hand on the gun was breaking from the pressure. T’balt tried to free himself. But the man was jumping in excitement and then… he was dead on the floor.

  The crimson spray blasted the curtains, and T’balt was left with the gun in his hands. It was the scene of a murder, and he was the killer. He was stuck, frozen, unable to process anything that had happened. The only question jamming into his brain was, when did things get so impossible to understand? He felt lost, seemingly unable to shake the smell of death and blood.

  “You died.”

  He was back in his living room, hands holding only a gaming controller, house empty of anyone but him.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said at the screen. At least he didn’t remember dying. And he usually always remembered dying. It was the most visceral part of each of his lives. So how come he was reset?

  Just when he thought he’d figured out the conditions of this little power of his, it formed some new rules. Maybe… Did Monan know this would happen? Was that why he was so eager to die?

  That’s when he realized something he should’ve known the moment he laid eyes on the man. How he kept mentioning the term Redeemer. How he already seemed to know exactly how the power worked.

  “I’m so stupid… He’s the same as me. It reset because he died.”

  Another person like him. He wasn’t the only one who remembered whenever everything was reset. The feeling filled him with equal amounts of relief and terror. T’balt still remembered what happened to Chosa, how he let her die. He was a like-kind but a maniac.

  “Let your guard down, dumbass.”

  T’balt turned at the sound of the voice, but it was too late. Monan’s arms scooped deep under his neck and squeezed until T’balt couldn’t see anymore. And he slipped into unconsciousness.

  T’balt woke up to the titular words spread across his television. “You died.” He didn’t even know what happened. All he knew was that he had a headache the size of Everest and his neck was straightened stiff. This wasn’t the usual.

  When he tried to move, he found that both his arms were tied to the seat of his chair. He struggled, but the bindings were so tight that when he moved, it burned his skin. Then he shifted to wiggling, which only led to an unprotected fall right onto the floor.

  He groaned, cursing his own failure to remember gravity existed. The smooth pop of a can opening sounded from behind him as Monan entered the room, fresh beer in his hand.

  “Man, that game of yours sucks. I can only play for a few minutes before some stupid troll thing keeps killing me over and over again. Don’t you have any, like football or first-person shooters? You know, like a kid that doesn’t spend all his time rubbing out his problems.”

  Monan made himself at home right on T’balt’s couch in the same spot it only felt like moments ago was covered in his own blood.

  “What's going on?” T’balt struggled. “Why am I tied up?”

  “Don’t you remember? You shot me. Not cool, bro.” He took a long swig of the beer and crushed the can in his hand, dropping the trash to the floor. Then he kicked his feet up and made another attempt at T’balt’s save file.

  T’balt remembered shooting him all too well. It was a memory he prayed he could forget. But even death wasn’t enough to answer that prayer anymore. “What do you want from me?”

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  “I just want you to calm down. Listen. I ain’t mad. Just a little harmless fun between fellow Redeemers. But your place is all the way out on the boring side of town. I didn’t wanna spend the time coming back if you decided to throw another tantrum.”

  “It wasn’t… a tantrum,” T’balt said, face smushed against the floor under his own weight. “You killed me… You bastard. And you let Chosa die.”

  “Who? Oh, the goth bird?” He frowned when a low-level grunt sent him to the game-over screen. “Look. It's all water under the bridge now. She’s alive. You’re alive. I’m alive. We move on. Besides...” He knelt down, pressing his pointer finger on T’balt’s head. “I’m here to save you.”

  T'balt laughed. The irony of a man knocking him out and tying him up in his own home didn’t feel like a saving. It felt like a kidnapping. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Of course it doesn’t now. Right now, you feel like an idiot. At least you look like one. You want a beer?” Monan had found another and was popping the can and downing it as easily as water.

  “That’s a funny question. Considering I CAN’T USE MY HANDS!”

  “Alright. Well, be a good boy now. Papa Monan’s gonna untie you. Better not give him any trouble.” When he bent over, the alcohol on his breath was heavier than just two beers.

  Once Monan untied him, T’balt immediately put some distance between them. Monan threw him a beer anyway. “Relax a bit,” he said. “The party doesn’t start till noon. I’ve got no loot. I’m a poor, pathetic man, just like you.”

  “What do you mean by no loot?”

  “Look.” He pushed his dark, wavy hair off the nape of his neck, turning around. Then there it was, that coin. The ouroboros coin. The same that was on T’balt’s neck. “See. I’m clean.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “What?”

  “You have the same… tattoo as I do.”

  “No shit, Shirley Temple. That one doesn’t go away. Why else would I be here?”

  “Why are you assuming that I know what's going on here? I have no idea who you are, why the world keeps exploding, or why I die over and over again and wake up in my living room. None of it makes any sense to me.” T’balt was exacerbated, letting the frustration of his last thirty lives out.

  “No tantrums, I said. You’re gonna give me a headache.” Monan scratched behind his ear.

  “I’m sorry,” said T’balt. “But please. Can you tell me what's happening?”

  Monan patted the seat on the couch next to him, beckoning a reluctant T’balt to sit. When he did, he put a finger into the side of T’balt’s head. It was still cold from the beer can. “So there’s seriously nothing in there, huh? I guess if you get amnesia in one life, it could pass over to the next. That’s really something I never considered. Your brain heals automatically, but I guess the memories don’t. Weird.”

  “What am I supposed to remember?”

  Monan thought for a second and resumed the RPG, suddenly figuring out how to do basic parries. “Well, let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  “For what?”

  “Because you are one of the few who have had a run-in with God. And you are one of the even fewer who walked away victorious.”

  “What? Me?” The words didn’t even make sense to him. “I defeated God?”

  “He’s called the Redeemer. The Prime Redeemer… has a penchant for giving out second chances. And at some point, I’m guessing around 30 iterations or so ago, you killed him and took his loot. Now you will never die again, but always feel the agony.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Well, next time, ask him before you kill him?”

  “I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic. Is he still alive?”

  Monan sighed. “Think, dumbass. You took your powers from him. He, like me, resets every time you do. And best believe he remembers what you’ve done to him.”

  “So are all those creatures under his control? Is that why the angel was targeting me?”

  “Mm.” Monan was half preoccupied by an island in the game that was technically in the out-of-bounds area. But he seemed determined to get to it, despite the invisible walls holding him back.

  “But I don’t get it… so is the Prime Redeemer… the God?”

  “What’s happening here is not in the scripture. Trust me on that.”

  “Okay. But you killed him, too. So he’s after both of us. That’s why you were fighting the angel before.”

  “Oh, nah…” he laughed. “Those things are just fun to fight. With the right loot, any good fight is better than sex. If you know your way around, the big guy doesn’t bother you. But his minions, like those angels, usually attack Redeemers on sight. They think you’re a threat, for obvious reasons.” In the game, the player character had glitched himself through the invisible wall and onto the unattainable island. That’s when Monan was taken by boredom and shut the game off.

  T'balt was still processing everything that he had heard. He was still unable to fathom that he had managed to kill a god. But if it was true, then why couldn’t he remember? There were so many more questions he had, and still no way to verify that anything this man said was the truth. He sounded out of his mind, but just a few iterations ago, so did T’balt, and he ended up in a jail cell for it.

  The apocalypse was real. The demons were real. So why was it an impossibility that a Redeemer god was too, and that T’balt had stolen its powers for himself in some past life he didn’t remember? But why? Why would a past him want this—To be sent back in time over and over again, effectively living the same cycle until the end of time, if such a thing even existed anymore?

  Monan had microwaved a plate of leftovers that Chosa brought home a few days ago, not bothering to ask permission. But T’balt was too lost in translation to notice.

  “And so… How is it that you’re here to save me?” he asked.

  Monan was stuffing his face with day-old lasagna. “Simple… Your stupid ass keeps dying on level one. It's real inconvenient for me because when you die, everything resets. Zero Day is fun and all, but I can’t get a good game going if someone keeps flipping the damn table.” He sounded frustrated.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You know, I thought you’d be some depressed old man, getting suicidal and seeing all the ways he can kill himself. Only to find out it was just some brat without his sea legs under him. So I’m gonna give you a friendly demonstration on how to survive in this world, and then I’ll show you how to make it your bitch.”

  There was so much more that remained unanswered, but T’balt was sure he could ask this man questions all night and still not understand what was happening. It was all surreal. Like, none of it could be real. Especially when it was so quiet. But he knew that once the clock hit noon, he would need this man if he ever hoped to survive this thing he called Zero Day. Or he would be stuck there forever, or at least longer than he’d like. He was suddenly pouring with a tingling excitement.

  “Ok. So what’s first?”

  “Are you crazy? It's like four in the morning... I’m going to bed.” Monan stumbled over into T’balt’s room and flopped himself onto his bed. He just fell face-first into a stranger's bed, fully clothed, not even bothering to remove his heavy boots.

  It was always easy to forget that he woke at midnight, and normal people were asleep by now. But even still, the new knowledge in him sent shivers through his bones. He killed a god. He was eager to see what else he could do.

  “Are you serious? This apocalypse is happening in like eight hours, and you want to sleep?”

  “What are you gonna fucking do? Build a moat?”

  “I guess... not.”

  “So then wake me when the action starts.” It was only moments when Monan’s rough growling snores halted any of T’balt’s excitement. This was the man who was gonna be his sage, the wise teacher to teach him the ways of the world. The mentor. He was disheveled, with a frat boy carefree attitude. How could a man like this teach him anything?

  But then he remembered that this man had the same powers as he did. And it sounded like for a lot longer. He wondered how many times Monan had died. How long had he been living like this, constantly going back to Zero Day? Long enough, and it could make anyone a bit jaded and a little erratic. But was that all he was? T’balt still couldn’t get a read on the man. For now, he didn’t seem like a liar, the opposite. He told the truth too much and too hard. But that’s what he needed to figure all this out. That way, he could protect Chosa, and maybe one day he could find a way to live a normal life again.

  Still, being a Redeemer seemed pretty damn cool as long as he avoided the dying part.

  T’balt slapped some sense back into himself and took a spot on the couch, failing to sleep until the sun rose.