San Diego, California — Friday, 06:42 A.M.
Two men in Navy uniforms stepped out through the base gates into the thin, lemony edge of morning. The taller one checked his Rolex—the Submariner a gift from one of his many older MILF patrons—and watched the second hand blink past 06:42.
Rush hour. To Jack, that meant peasants flooding toward jobs that sanded their souls for modest wages. Schedules, alarms, obligations—that was the life he'd abandoned with Alaska: his father's boat, cold hands, and nagging about "responsibility" for kids he'd "accidentally created." Since leaving, he'd mostly done whatever he wanted—until Sam, freshman year of college, dragged him into being a "hero" in the Navy.
Now Jack was a medical officer. Sam was the short one who fed an aircraft carrier. Jack sighed at the thought—and then felt better when his thumb found the familiar weight of his phone. He'd been investing like a man possessed since he turned eighteen. Sooner or later, it would all add up to the soft life he deserved.
Gulls strafed the parking lot like lazy fighters. In their NWUs, the two of them looked so mismatched they might have been Photoshopped.
Jack Fritz—icy blue eyes, regulation-neat golden-blond hair—rubbed his sore balls with the absentminded entitlement of a man beyond shame. COVID was still around, and yes, he worked medical on the boat, but the mask stayed in his pocket the instant he cleared the gate. The Rolex flashed whenever a sodium lamp hiccupped. A thin Cuban link sat on his collarbone; a signet ring he'd absolutely bought himself caught the light when he palmed his graphite iPhone. The corner was spidered; the lock-screen widget from Crypto.com glowed smug and blue.
Next to him, Sam Harding—shorter than you expect even after you lower your expectations, pure Samwise energy in government fabric—wore a surgical mask snug to his face. Fogged lenses. A slim silver cross thumped quietly under his T-shirt when he walked. His phone was a scuffed Android plastered with Pokémon, Star Wars, Halo, and LOTR stickers—and a bunny that said you got this bro.
They moved shoulder to shoulder like the setup to a joke: Jack as the jacked varsity nightmare; Sam as the underleveled little brother. Same backpacks, same patches—wildly different vibes.
Jack massaged his crotch with the breezy confidence of the damned. "Jesus. Admiral Marlow is on a streak. Pretty sure she tried to extract my soul through my pelvis. Probably poked holes in the condoms, too. I think she wants a kid—and she probably already has it. Wouldn't be the first time I've knocked someone up."
Sam made a face behind the mask. "Y-you shouldn't say it like that."
"Like what?" Jack's grin did push-ups. "Like facts? Come on, Hobbit. Getting laid is awesome. One day I'm dragging you into civilization and showing you wonders."
"I d-don't know. It sounds scary. And, um, don't ninety-nine percent of women d-die in childbirth? Isn't that like murder?" He winced at his own ignorance and plowed on. "Women are loud. And they look at you funny. And wear cat ears sometimes. I'd r-rather play World of Warcraft. The women there are less scary—even the ones who turn into dragons. W-Wrath Classic pre-patch is soon and we still haven't finished Sunwell on TBC Classic. Could do badges. Maybe fish up stones. M-my Gnome priest Happygirl needs better gear for the transmog competition."
"Hard no." Jack snapped his fingers. "Two hours in the gym, then MMA. We clear the mat like plague angels—men, women, boys, girls, all of 'em. And this time you're pinning Jessica. At some point you need to find the courage to hold a woman down or you'll never take one to bed and make her yours. We're sweating out a month of sea-laziness. Then maybe retail Azeroth if you graduate from pastry."
"You said I was a Costco croissant," Sam muttered.
"Upgrading you, see?" Jack slung an arm around his shoulders, steering him past a bulletin board: HPCON BRAVO — Masks Recommended Indoors. "Listen, Project Ugly Duckling: you're not handsome. That's not me being mean; your Tinder zero-likes is data. Solution? Abs. We carve you to a six-pack, sharpen your jaw, crop the photo at the neck, and boom—hundred matches. Most will be tragic, sure, but a few horny bitches will surface. Add the mask to hide the face; you'll vibe like a mystery Chad."
"I d-don't w-want ladies to be h-hit," Sam said earnestly.
"It's a metaphor, Pastor." Jack flicked his phone awake, scanned his holdings like a dragon counting eggs, then locked it again—discipline is foreplay. "When this pops, we're doing Dubai, then Monaco. Sunshine, zero tax—whatever. Then we settle someplace warm. Two villas on the same street. Boats, dogs, grills. The whole American Dream. We collect big-breasted, curvy blondes like Pokémon. You'll learn what 'sore in the balls' means and thank me later when we're old dudes on a shared porch scaring off prank-YouTubers."
Sam kicked a pebble, thinking in loot tables. "M-maybe we get a dog like Superman had. N-name him… Passive Income."
Jack barked a laugh. "Now we're talking."
They turned the corner into the lot.
Jack stopped dead.
His very expensive red Lamborghini sat on four pancakes. Across the hood, in fluorescent fury: FUCKING CHEATER—the O filled with glitter, which felt personal.
He inhaled through his nose, slow, storm-calm. "Fucking… bitch."
Sam hovered, small and appalled. "Wh-who—"
"Could be Yoga. Could be ETFs Elena. Could be Jessica with Kettlebell Brother. Definitely not the Admiral; she does legal violence." Jack crouched, tapped a slashed sidewall. The Rolex winked, complicit. "Cool. Guess we Uber."
Sam pointed past the gate. A San Diego MTS bus—blue-and-white, low-floor CNG—pulled in and knelt with a hydraulic sigh. The amber display read: 929 — Downtown. The driver wore his mask like a chin bra. Inside smelled like bleach, warm vinyl, and nine different coffees.
"Th-the bus is right there," Sam said, hopeful. "It's f-faster in traffic sometimes, cheaper, and no weird conversation with an Uber driver."
Jack squinted at the rectangle as if it had personally insulted him. "Absolutely not. I'm not marinating in commuter soup and eau de piss."
"But I like the bus. It's relaxing," Sam said, stubborn now. "I used to take it all the t-time before we met, and you s-said we should save cash for our D-Dubai and Monaco funds. And I w-want to go h-home now."
Jack rubbed his jaw, eyed the glitter O, eyed the bus, eyed Sam's mulish chin. "Why are you like this."
"B-because God said, 'Let there be a boy named Sam,' and here I am," Sam said—his closest approach to a battle cry.
Jack jingled his keys. "You don't even have these, genius. Plan is what—lockpick with your plastic lightsaber?"
"I'd f-figure it out," Sam said, chin up. "L-like Frodo figured out where Mordor was."
Jack stared at him, then threw up his hands. "Fine. Let's go ride the peasant wagon."
They shouldered their packs and angled toward the hissing bus.
Together they jogged the last few steps as the doors accordioned open with a tired hiss. A knot of sailors from another command slid in ahead, flashing IDs like habit, not thought. Sam stepped up next; Jack followed, taller shadow over his shoulder.
The driver didn't so much look at them as past them—skin the color of old breakroom coffee, eyes like burned-out bulbs. A thin man whittled down to "end of shift." Whether anyone paid wasn't his religion anymore.
Jack still did the flourish. He produced the platinum Crypto.com card—logo winking like a dare. "Two."
The reader chirped. Tickets spat. No nod. No "thanks." Just the bus wheezing to itself, that mechanical asthma. Jack turned—and the inside hit him like walking into a hot mouth.
Navy kids in wrinkled NWUs clutching overnight bags, faces split: half post-underway sparkle, half dead-eyed shuffle. Two teenagers in hoodies arguing by Bluetooth—one earbud each, a tired duet. A mother with a red-eyed baby revving toward siren. The back bench hosted a scarecrow of a man gone to sleep inside his own spine; a sickle of dried puke lacquered one sleeve. Across the aisle a construction guy in a jacket with constellations of paint and grit—going to work, not from, the kind of smell you get when laundry is theoretical and bed is a rumor. Patchwork commuters filled the gaps: hairnets and steel-toes, khaki chinos, thrifted floral, a suit that didn't fit its owner or the day.
Only one stretch of multiple seats left: the back row—five across, municipal royalty.
Sam brightened, bobbed his head. "B-back there!"
They moved down the aisle. The air wasn't one smell, it was a stack: warm vinyl and industrial bleach; coffee—cheap, burnt, syrupy, floral—at least five brands fighting; teenage sugar-mist perfume that bit the sinuses; an older woman's powdery musk gone stale into something like wet curtains; stale weed braided with stale cologne; under it all the municipal bassline—sweat, piss, food that had resigned from being food and taken a job as atmosphere.
"God damn," Jack muttered, palm to face. "People actually ride this?"
"It's n-normal," Sam said, muffled behind his mask, eyes soft with a nostalgia that made no sense to Jack. "Y-you get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it."
"W-we'll be fine. It's just a short ride."
"Then let it be shorter," Jack grumbled.
They reached the back. Jack didn't negotiate with furniture; he conquered it. Pack down, body sideways, boots up, backpack under his head. Sam took the window, hands folded neat on his straps, looking out like a kid about to love a rollercoaster he's already ridden a thousand times.
"J-Jack," Sam said, anxious on reflex, "don't put your f-feet on the seats. It's b-bad manners and the driver'll get mad."
Jack closed one eye. "Driver's not in this dimension, man. He sold his soul three routes ago."
"Still," Sam murmured, "we should be… g-good."
"I am being good." Jack sank lower. "This is me protecting my mental health."
The bus coughed to motion, kneeling feature rising with a hydraulic groan. Morning light slid over faces that told the hour better than watches: the just-woke, the never-slept, the already-done. Jack let his gaze skip and hated what it found—lives lived in shifts and plastic seats. He'd built his whole gospel to never be trapped in this smell, this tired, this schedule. For a flicker he saw it anyway: his coins red, his luck gone, his future wearing paint-stained canvas and standing under the same light every morning until the bones quit. His stomach gave a small, private shiver.
To add distance, he thumbed his phone awake. The Crypto.com widget bloomed. He pulled down to refresh, listening for fortune like gamblers listen for wheels.
Total value: $948,something. Almost there. Almost different air.
His private liturgy, listed the way he liked it:
Bitcoin (BTC) — half the pile. King. Anchor.
XRP — a quarter; court drama as investment thesis.
ETH and XLM (Stellar) — split the rest; ETH half-staked, XLM wherever the yields tasted sweet.
DOGE — culture tax.
A junk drawer of small caps—scratch tickets with logos.
USDC dozing in Earn. Passive income—the phrase like a hammock swung across his brain.
He tilted the screen, silly as if light could feed numbers. "Come on," he whispered. "Tiny pump, daddy."
He could see the ghost zero at the right edge, waiting to be born. A million wasn't real rich, not the kind that bent the world, but it was the line where you picked your days instead of being handed them. Ten million bent air. One would do—for now. Villas, boat, optional alarms, the dumb-named dog, Sam telling him to knock it off and him not knocking it off.
He'd already skimmed his trophies—Lambo, furniture that judged you, knives too proud for dishwashers—but the pot would set both of them. Him. Sam. A future you could nap in.
"Yeah," he breathed, watching a green candle wink. "Yeah, yeah."
Up front, the baby hiccuped, reconsidered life, and screamed. The construction guy scratched, exhaled, and dozed sitting up. Mid-bus, Bluetooth boys escalated a playlist war to constitutional crisis. A sailor yawned the kind of yawn that lifts your whole skull and puts it back on crooked.
Sam fogged his glasses and wiped them with his sleeve, content as a pond. Jack let his head settle on the pack, lying there like a nobleman among peasants while a private, mean little fear counted the ways he might one day belong here.
"No," he told the ceiling, as if the universe lived up there. "I'm already close. I'm not one of them. Come on, crypto. Make me rich."
Stops stacked; people poured in and slid out. The bus stayed full, like a lung that never quite exhaled. Some riders had slept and looked almost fresh. Others wore the sallow, angry faces of people who hated the day for arriving on time. A few slept sitting up—night-shift ghosts, breathing like they were borrowing air.
Then a louder stop—near the campus. Five women hopped aboard in a gust of perfume and iced coffee clink. College cheer jackets and duffels; ponytails and velvet scrunchies; all of them at least eighteen, all of them glowing with that synchronized confidence you can hear from across a field. Popular-girl energy radiated like heat mirage.
Jack caught a single glance and labeled them—unfair, automatic. Princesses. Entitlement in mascara. He looked away, but their laughter—bright, practiced—rolled down the aisle like marbles.
Sam's shoulders went up to his ears. He pivoted to the window so hard the glass got most of his face. His fingers worried the straps of his backpack, little rhythmic flutters. Women—especially loud ones—scrambled his wiring.
Footsteps and chatter approached. The pack fanned out on instinct, a flock in formation. Front and center: the smallest of them, platinum-blonde bun, blue eyes sharp as ice chips, captain's jacket. She stopped at the back row—Jack's row—hands on hips, chin up in the way of people used to winning small wars with posture.
"Hey," she said, voice sweet as a knife. "Gentleman move. We need seats."
Bubble gum popped behind her. Another girl—taller, tan, with glitter nails—folded her arms in synchronized judgment. "Coach says save our knees. We're not standing for your manspread."
"Seats aren't your property," a third chimed, already half-smiling for the victory she expected.
Jack opened one eye. He let the beat hang. The part of him that enjoyed poking at anthills warmed up its wrists.
Across the glass, Sam was already moving. He slid out of the bench as if greased, small apology in motion. "I-it's o-okay," he mumbled, bowing his head, ducking past them like a shadow. "I can s-stand."
"Sam." Jack didn't mean to sound betrayed. It came out anyway.
Sam didn't turn. "I-it's fine," he said, which always meant I'm scared, don't make a scene.
The captain's eyes snapped back to Jack. Her gaze said move the way a referee's whistle ends arguments.
Jack swung his feet down. He didn't stand up fast. He stood the way a tide comes in—slow enough to make a point. For a beat he looked at them—really looked: clean ponytails, perfect liner, tournament jackets, the curated perfume cloud that shouted we never ride this bus. Some part of him—the part that had been adored since prom—wanted to smirk and knock them down a rung. Another part, older and uglier, saw the floor fall away beneath his portfolio and imagined himself riding this bus forever.
He chose neither. He smiled without warmth. "Enjoy my throne," he said, stepping sideways. "Try not to drown in the smell."
They hesitated a fraction—intimidation is a language, and he was fluent—then surged past with victory-smiles and weapons-grade side-eye. Someone whispered, breathless, "He's huge." Another: "Okay, scary." Their perfume eddied as they dropped into the back row, their chatter bright and brittle as glass.
Jack pushed into the aisle after Sam, shouldering through the perfume front like weather. The standing zone near the center pole took them—two uniforms among many.
Sam shrank an inch. "G-girls are… s-scary," he admitted to the floor. "They look at me like I'm… wrong. And s-some are loud."
"Don't be a baby," Jack said, fond and cruel. "Confidence is just lying with posture."
Jack dipped his head, voice low. "You can't do that, Sam. You train the world to step on you."
"I l-like cooking," Sam said, hugging his backpack tighter. "It m-makes people happy. You should t-try it."
"Being nice to you used up my daily ration."
Behind them, the cheer squad giggled. Jack bared his teeth in an almost-smile that wasn't, then turned away. The bus's window-scape changed: base fence, frontage road, the city shaking itself awake.
Somewhere behind, sirens began—thin, far. Phones rose like black flowers. The driver stared straight ahead, hands at ten and two like a photo in a manual.
"Probably a Prius rebellion," Jack said. Reflex made him check the phone again. "ETH just kissed thirty-eight hundred. Daddy eats."
Sam brightened a little. "W-when we're rich, can we get a garden? And chickens? And, um, maybe bring the admiral a fruit basket? To say thank you?"
"Sure, Frodo. We'll get you a garden, chickens, a compost throne. Save the world on Tuesdays."
The sirens sharpened. The light at the T flipped yellow, then red. The bus slowed.
From the right—out of a smear of sun and speed—a pickup came in nose-down, fishtailing, demon-loud. It tore the corner in a screaming drift, cops strung behind like tin cans on a wedding car.
People gasped. The driver's thousand-yard stare flickered into something like present, then collapsed back into shock. The truck jumped the median.
For one long click of the universe, physics inhaled.
There was a breath in the bus—the microsecond before impact when the world forgets to move.
Sam moved.
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 tearing metal, carved a ragged mouth in the bus, and kept coming. A white wall of grille and speed filled Jack's vision and then everything shipped sideways—air into floor, floor 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. Ocean noise filled Jack's head. His fingers wouldn't listen. His lungs tasted like copper.
"D—don't worry, L–Lieutenant Jack," Sam whispered from far away. "I'll… p-protect you."
Jack found enough will to lift a hand and set it on Sam's head, a clumsy benediction. "Yeah… thanks, Hobbit," he rasped. "You did good."
Sam went still under his palm—so still the morning got louder.
Jack blinked grit away. The bus lurched in his periphery, nearly cut in half. Passengers spilled out—the cheer-captain and her friends stumbling, alive, everyone alive—cops swarming the far lane as the pickup fishtailed once and kept going, sirens snapping at its tail like dogs that wouldn't catch.
Only them. The two idiots who'd been 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 it said about him; he liked even less that it was true.
His phone lay an arm's length away, the spidered screen still lit, portfolio mid-refresh. He dragged his hand toward it. Fingers scraped pavement, came up short. 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 those nights watching candles like weather. Not even a taste of the win. A hot, stupid ache bloomed that wasn't in his body. Not just for him—for the picture he'd been carrying like a charm: a backyard, a grill, a dog with a dumb name, Sam laughing over pancakes, no alarms, no watches, no watch bills—done.
He dragged again. The phone didn't get closer.
Jack let his hand fall. The sirens swelled. Someone shouted "Don't move," and he wasn't planning to.
He turned his head. Sam's face was inches away, slack now, glasses gone, lashes dusted with safety glass like frost. 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 to a tunnel with memory on its walls: the first day in lecture, the stupid hoodie and the mean jokes; the basement door and dry-concrete smell; the crack in his chest when he saw the bed on the floor and the careful lavender bag; controllers clicking at 2 A.M.; Sam's catastrophic pancakes; the spatula salute; movie marathons with subtitles because Sam liked reading along; the night they said Navy because heroes were safer at sea; the first time Sam called him "Lieutenant" like it meant more than rank.
One last clip, quiet and gold: their couch, popcorn bowl, 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 the glow on his friend's face.
Sorry, buddy, Jack thought, and the words fit the room where breath was running out. I couldn't protect you after all.
He closed his eyes and let the sirens roll up like end credits on a life that had almost figured itself out.
The dark folded over him like a blanket that finally stopped 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 in baby hands.
Something floated out that might have been divine, if the divine wore diapers. Tiny, fluffy, mismatched wings. A body of white fuzz and indecision. A toddler's giggle trying to sound like thunder.
"Behold!" it squeaked, then immediately coughed on the word. "A-ahem—b-behold, m-mortal hero!"
If Jack had a forehead, he'd have frowned. 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 saved—so many! The f-five girls on the bus! And, um—also that f-family of five on the sidewalk!" The baby wings fluttered, shedding imaginary glitter. "Because your, er, 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. Ghosts don't get that option.
"And also," the creature said, nodding earnestly, "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!"
So we're saints because we died politely, Jack thought.
The baby god drew itself up, aiming for ancient gravity and hitting preschool graduation. "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!"
Wow, Jack mouthed internally.
"Oh! And your crypto account!" BabyGod chirped, 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 screamed on the inside. My crypto? That's my afterlife fund, you winged potato!
The creature beamed, convinced it was delivering joy. "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?"
If he had shoulders, he'd have shrugged. He managed a spectral twitch that, in a living body, would have been an aneurysm.
"Now," the little god said, trying for wise and nearly tripping over its own tongue, "for y-your noble deeds, I g-gift you the Core of Light!"
A pudgy hand thrust out. A glowing sphere floated up, pulsing softly—a heartbeat inside a heartbeat. "It will h-help you h-heal, and be nice, and, um, do good things, like… m-maybe recycling?"
The ball drifted, touched Jack's chest that wasn't a chest, and soaked in like warm milk.
The god flapped happily. "G-good luck, my heroes! G-go forth and make the world a b-better place for all your f-fellow species of mankind! Bye-bye!"
With a last clumsy wave, it blew into confetti-light.
Jack's world turned white. He wasn't a man anymore—just a spark, drifting in an ocean of brightness. Next to him floated another spark, warm and bumbling and familiar.
He didn't have lungs, but the thought came out anyway.
"Sam? That you, buddy?"
The other light pulsed twice—almost a stutter, almost a laugh.
And that was where the ridiculous miracle began.