Even though I knew I was an immortal, I was also still a regular guy and I needed to keep up with regular guy things. Just because I couldn’t die didn’t mean I couldn’t fail. It also didn’t mean I’d be rich and famous—I needed a job to pay the bills just like everyone else.

I went to college for Criminal Justice and graduated early in three years. After graduation, a rare moment of bravado and patriotism led to me enlisting in the Army so as to use my gift to combat evil. Within a year, I was a proud member of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s 3rd Battalion stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia.

After six years in USASOC, I’d had enough of hunting America’s enemies abroad, and I was honorably discharged. I returned home and, with my schooling and background in Special Operations, I was quickly offered a position with the FBI.

I lasted two years at the Bureau before I decided that it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get behind any of the politics, and those very politics made it nearly impossible for me to do my job with any degree of efficiency. I watched too many innocent people fall victim to red tape and political wheeling and dealing. It was bullshit and I hated every second of it.

That left me with an apartment I couldn’t afford, almost a decade’s worth of special operations combat experience and training, and no job.

I spent a month drinking in my apartment, generally being useless and feeling sorry for myself and the state of the world. It was a joke to me—I was immortal, and I was squandering what was essentially a real-life superpower.

At the end of that shameful month, I decided to walk to the liquor store for another bottle of whiskey—and it was that very walk that changed my life forever. I don’t subscribe to destiny or fate, but it is pretty spooky how the universe occasionally puts you in the right place at the right time.

I didn’t live in a bad neighborhood, but crime inevitably finds its way to even the safest of havens, and my town was no exception.

Near the liquor store where I usually shopped, a place with entrances in the front and rear, I came upon the building from the backside. It was in a relatively upscale shopping center that was well-lit at all hours of the day—not a place you’d expect something to go wrong, so it was the perfect place for something to go wrong.

I heard a yelp from behind a nearby dumpster, and then a hollow metallic clang followed by the scuffling of shoes on gravel. Buzzed as I was, I decided to have a look, just for curiosity’s sake. Maybe it was a raccoon doing something cool that I could film and put on YouTube and then become a millionaire “influencer.”

When I rounded the corner, I saw a man roughly my age standing over a young girl. She couldn’t have been much older than nineteen or twenty. He was furiously rifling through her purse while she sat on the ground, bruised and crying with her shirt torn at the shoulder. Her eyes darted to me and more tears fell as she silently pleaded for my help. I nodded gently and she closed her eyes.

“Give her the purse back and leave, please,” I requested, in a calm, even tone—a tone I’d perfected doing residential sweeps with the flag on my shoulder and scroll on my chest.

The man whirled around on me, a look of surprise and anger on his face.

“Get the fuck out of here, asshole. This is between me and her.”

He went back to searching through her purse.

“Please just give her the purse and leave, man,” I tried to level with him, hoping he’d decide that I was more trouble than I was worth. He just laughed and squared up with me.

Defiance. He was going to push it. No bueno.

“Or what? You’ll—”

I broke his jaw.

I hit him with a heavy right cross that cracked his lower jaw in two or three places. Teeth fell out and hit the pavement. His lights snapped off instantly and he was out cold—I honestly believed he had whiplash or a concussion or both. Either way, I was too buzzed to care.

Ignoring him for the moment, I retrieved the girl’s purse and helped her to her feet.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded and graciously accepted her purse from me.

“Yes. Thank you. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.”

“Do you know this guy?” I asked, motioning to the drooling thug on the ground.

She nodded again, more slowly this time.

“He’s my ex—he’s crazy. He was looking for my phone. I tried to get away, but he hit me and pushed me back here.”

“Don’t worry, everything’s alright now,” I assured her, then pulled out my phone and called the police.

“The police are on their way,” I told her, turning to leave before they showed up and I had to explain my way out of a bad situation. A thirty-year-old, unemployed, half-drunk, ex-Ranger, FBI dropout breaking a man’s jaw in a liquor store parking lot was bound to send up some red flags somewhere. Last thing I wanted was to spend the night in jail.

“Please don’t leave,” she begged, grabbing my arm. “What if he wakes up before they get here?”

Not knowing what to do or say, I simply nodded and took a seat next to her on a nearby parking block. It didn’t take long for the police to arrive. Admittedly, I knew things were about to get interesting, but I had no idea just how interesting my day would end up.

One squad car showed up with two uniformed officers followed by an unmarked cruiser with a female detective who looked to be around my age. I found it strange that a routine assault call would warrant the presence of a detective, but I certainly wasn’t in a position to argue.

The uniforms went to retrieve the unconscious man, while the detective pulled me aside.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jack Fox.”

“I’m Detective Alexandria Sheffield.”

And that was when I met my best friend and partner in anti-crime.

Over the next few minutes, I explained to her what happened. I told her the whole truth: that I was walking up to buy more whiskey, saw the girl being attacked, and intervened. After that, she disappeared for a few minutes with my IDs and when she came back she was wearing a look that was either good news or terrible news.

“I ran your background,” she said plainly.

“Okay,” I said, not understanding where she was headed. I assumed she was planning to frisk me since she’d taken my concealed pistol license as well as my driver’s license. I hadn’t brought my weapon that night, as I had been drinking and that was a one-way ticket to Badnewsville. Surprisingly, I was wrong—she didn’t even acknowledge it.

“Seven years in the Army, six as a Ranger with Special Operations. Two years in the FBI. And a degree in Criminal Justice?”

I shrugged.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked with a laugh.

“Jack Fox,” I joked, tapping my name on the IDs she still held.

She laughed again. I hadn’t noticed until now, but she was a very beautiful woman.

“Alright, Jack Fox. Listen, I was on my way home when I picked up this call—I work downtown at the DPD but they’re short-staffed here tonight and I was nearby. You’re free to go; we’ve got your info if we have more questions.”

“But?” I prodded, knowing a “but” would surely follow a statement like that, especially since she hadn’t yet given back my IDs.

“But how about I buy you that drink you never got, and you can tell me what an ex-Fed is doing saving girls from their asshole ex-boyfriends.”

I shrugged again.

“Alright. But I hate bars.”

***

We ended up at Chili’s. Not even kidding.

One drink turned into three and I learned as much about Alex as she did about me. We had a lot in common and I liked her a lot. Turns out, we knew many of the same people. Went to the same school, even.

Also turns out that she was gay.

This made a lot of sense. She was so far out of my league that she was in an entirely different league all together.

After that night, Alex and I became fast friends. She got me a job in the armory downstairs at the DPD and I didn’t mind it at all. I gladly wrenched on weaponry for the department’s officers as well as their SWAT teams. It wasn’t glorious, but it paid my bills and I enjoyed what I did.

Life was great for a while until one day when I’d had a few too many beverages and accidentally revealed to Alex that I was immortal.

It went about as well as you’d think. She laughed at me hysterically for five full minutes while I stood there embarrassed. Serious, snorting, crying, near-hyperventilating belly laughs. I took another sip of my whiskey and decided that I might as well go all-in—I was going to prove it to her whether she liked it or not.

I always carried a less-than-legal fixed-blade knife in a horizontal sheath across the back of my belt, so I drew it and brought it to bear.

“Jack, what are you doing?” she asked slowly and cautiously, all traces of laughter rapidly fading away to be replaced by shock.

“Watch.”

Almost exactly like the scene in Terminator 2, I slid the blade across my forearm. Blood welled up and dripped onto my kitchen floor. Alex gasped and clasped a hand to her mouth. She shot to her feet.

“Wait,” I commanded, opening the gash wider as more blood spilled out.

“Jack, are you fucking crazy?”

“Yes. Now shut up and watch, woman.”

As she watched in shocked silence, the flow of blood rapidly ceased, the edges of the wound knitted together and, eventually, the wound sealed completely. Within minutes, all that remained was a scar. I cleaned away the drying blood and showed her the results.

“Holy fucking shit,” was all she could manage.

Then I told her everything.

***

Over the next couple of months, Alex and I came up with the crazy idea that maybe we could be the solution for all the cases that go unresolved due to political bullshit, intimidation, bribery, corruption, or any other reason why murderers and rapists legally walk free. These repeat-offenders would hit the streets after getting away with the worst imaginable crimes, and they’d go right back to doing what they do best—safe in the knowledge that they were above the law. After seeing this happen too many times, we couldn’t take it anymore, and decided it was up to us to do something about it, for better or worse.

With Alex’s laser-quick brain and unobstructed access to all case files and evidence coupled with my combat training and noteworthy resistance to death, we were unstoppable. Our first time hunting down one of these psychopaths, we were both terrified—not that we’d be hurt or killed, but afraid that we’d be discovered and imprisoned for the rest of our lives. However, after the operation went off without a hitch, we realized we might just be on to something. Alex conveniently found a way to assign herself to the resulting investigation—and has done so for nearly every case since without issue.

We have been doing this for two years, and we’ve never come close to being discovered. It was the perfect anti-crime and we were the perfect people for the job.

Next Chapter: Chapter Four