The Immortals

I certainly wasn’t the most popular author in the world, so why they decided to give me of all people their notebook was beyond me. But here I was, with a black, leather-bound book stained with age and dirt, so full of detail and dripping with experiences that it should have been bursting at the seams. The notebook came with a letter and a check for $20,000, a check that did not bounce, much to my surprise. The letter read as follows:

To Mx. Goldsmith,

I have long been a close follower of your work online. I have a great love for your storytelling abilities and I believe there is no one more suited to help us than you. You see, we have a story we wish to tell. This story is of course, fictional, and you may take as much creative liberty as you desire, though we request that you please stay as close to the original as you can.

I look forward to seeing this story published.

Yours,

The Guardians.

I sigh and pull out my laptop starting up a doc as I open the notebook. For $20k, I can hardly refuse, can I?

****************

So I guess I’ll start. It was my idea to get us all together in a nice little club. Well, maybe less a club and more a… secret society, but that’s not the point. My name is… well, it changes every so often, so we tend to call each other by the country or city we live in or hail from. At least, that's what most of us are doing anyway. My name is currently America, though I simply choose to go by D.C. As you may have guessed, I am a guardian. What exactly that is, is hard to explain, so first allow me to explain how it all began.

If you’ve seen movies, you should know being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I have had to avoid the government, no desire to be trapped in some Area 51, thank you very much. At the same time, though I don’t want to be out on the street, so I’ve had to learn quite a few skills to help me blend in and survive. I taught myself how to shoot a gun back during the revolutionary war, and felt the need to refresh that ability anytime another war sprouted up after that. When computers started being invented I learned everything I could about them. To say that I am well off is an understatement, as, through a series of wise investments and schemes, I’ve been able to accumulate a large amount of wealth without anybody being the wiser. But that’s not our story. Our story actually starts a few years ago.

I had just moved back to New York City and had a nice apartment near an airport. I was doing fairly well blending in as a simple uber driver. I usually like mortals, so I had left an open advertisement online for a roommate, and got a response from a young Japanese woman who was moving away from home urgently. She introduced herself as Mei and we got along surprisingly well. We ended up living together for a few months before we realized just how much we had in common.

It was a cool November evening when everything fell into place. “Mei,” I whined, leaning upside down on the couch after I had finished up my work for the day. When she didn’t respond, I sat up and walked over to the kitchen. “Mei?” I called again. She had her headphones on, as per the usual, and was humming to herself while cutting up ingredients for the sushi she was making later tonight. It was cute, and I was stupid, so I walked over and grabbed her sides, shouting to scare her. She screamed and spun around with the knife, slashing at me on pure instinct. I just managed to move back enough that it only hit my shoulder instead of anything important, but there was still a sizable gash in my shoulder, and the blade had jammed itself into bone, that all too familiar warm red liquid seeping down and staining my sleeve as my nerves rapidly sent signals of pain and panic to my brain.

“Oh my god,” Mei covered her mouth in fear. “Oh my god D- I’m so sorry!”

“Hey hey it’s okay,” I said calmly as I pulled the knife out. “It’ll be fine by morning. I’m a freakishly fast healer, remember?” Mei ignored me, which I honestly found very rude, and came back with a first aid kit. “Mei, you really don’t need to I promise I-”

“I know. You’re immortal, but you’re not invincible. You may be able to regenerate, but that doesn’t mean it might not get infected or something, so you still need to be careful.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t told her I was immortal, so I stared dumbfounded at her, wondering what I would have to do. “Mei, how do you know that.”

“Because I’m just like you, dumbass.” She stopped wrapping up the wound and stared at me like I was stupid. “You mean you didn’t know?”

“N- No?!” I stood up, a little bit offended at this. “How the hell would I know!?”

“I told you when we first met!”

“You said you were ‘a lot older than you looked!’”

“What did you want me to say? ‘Hey, I live forever?’ On a public forum?! You know that shit is out there forever! I thought you would have picked up on that, once I learned you were also immortal, all things considering.”

“What?! Did you know before you even replied to my ad? Have people known and just never contacted me?”

“No, I didn’t know until we started living together. There’s something weird about us immortals, things line up, coincidences work in our favor. It’s like we tip the scales of reality, or something is pulling the strings for us. This must have been one of those times. Has no one ever told you that?”

“No, why would I-!” I protested before stopping, in realization. “Wait, there are more of us?”

“The-” She finally stopped, the anger leaving her face as she stared at me “Wait… have you really been alone this whole time? How old are you? Really?”

“Uhhhh like 250? Ish?” I wiggled my hand before tucking my hair behind my ear. “Why?”

“You’ve- H-How have you not met any more of us?”

“I mean I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding,” I shrugged. “But you said there’s more of us? Can you introduce me?”

“What-?”

“I can pay for the trip!”

“Hold on-”

“I’ve never left the country before but I’ve got a fake passport-”

“I-”

“And I probably have an extra one for you if you threw yours away already-”

“Shut UP!” she grabbed my face, squeezing it and forcing me to look her dead in the eyes. “Do you know how dangerous that would be?”

“....how dangerous what would be?”

“Going on a cross-country trip. Having more of us together! We’re bound to get noticed! God, I thought you said you were good at hiding.”

I pulled away from her and frowned, considering this possibility. “I don’t think it’d be that bad,” I pointed out. “Mortals tend to be kinda dense, and honestly, more of us together could help hide us from everyone else. Like if you got hurt by a mortal, I could say I’m taking you to a doctor, and instead, we just drive away until your wound heals.” Mei stared me down, practically daring me to just forget about it and continue living in ignorance. Luckily my time serving under the George Washington left a lasting impression on me, so I wasn’t exactly about to be scared by a tiny Japanese girl. Able to kill me or not, I was going on this trip.

“I hate this.” Mei, who I will from now on be referring to as Tokyo, groaned as she dragged me through the busy airport after having gotten off an arduously long flight. “I just wanted to hide in America for a few decades or so and then go back home.”

“I’ve never been to England,” I said, looking out the windows as Tokyo texted someone on their phone. “Are there any immortals here?”

“Two of them that I know of, but I don’t want to talk to them,” Tokyo answered without looking up from her phone.

“That’s fair. You said someone named Cairo was meeting us here, though?”

“Yeah, he’s got a plane and said he wanted to meet you halfway.”

It was probably right around this time when the large man with dark skin, long brown hair, and a decent amount of stubble leaned over from behind us. “Hello, young ones.” His accent was thick, but it wasn’t an accent I could recognize. It was all honestly more attractive than I cared to admit.

“Ah, Cairo, meet DC. DC, Cairo.” Tokyo introduced us.

He quickly took my hand to shake it. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, I am sorry we failed you.”

“Fai- what?” I blinked, more than a bit, “What do you mean failed?”

“You’ve been alone for at least two centuries, have you not. I usually find and tell people like us they are not alone much sooner. I suppose things didn’t line up this time,” he explains, “It must have been a lonely existence no doubt.”

“Eh, it wasn’t as bad as it seems.” I shrugged, far more curious about him than he was of me. “Tokyo said you guys don’t meet up very often. Why not?”

“Our kind is far more cautious than most. But… I’ve been thinking about fixing that. Perhaps you can assist me.” He smiled mischievously and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Oh, we’re gonna get along great.”