Chapter 3
“What the actual fuck,” Jason gasped as he bolted upright in bed. The same bed. The bed of the safehouse he woke up in the last two days. That couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have been real and yet here was Jason listening to the same damn argument in the hall between the neighbors. He snarled and ripped his alarm clock from his bedstand to throw at the wall. It wasn’t mature, but it did make the fighting quieter. Sometimes people just needed a little incentive to be their better selves.
Was that what this was? Was this Jason’s brain trying to convince him to be a better version of himself? A dream? Was he having visions? Fuck visions, was he having some kind of seizure? He hadn’t heard of anything like this happening to someone before, but he drove a motorcycle and was a vigilante. Jason wasn’t sure this living thing was worth doing twice, but he wasn’t trying to put himself back in the ground just because his brain decided to malfunction. Something affecting his brain was something that was going end up with him dead.
After a moment, it clicked. Of fucking course. The goddamn magician.
Jason seethed for a moment and then ripped the blankets off to get ready for the day. He’d been through it twice before, but that just meant that he could optimize a little. He could skip the newspaper stand. He’d place himself so that he’d be right in the magician’s path when he tried to get away. It’d mean coming in at a worse angle, but… Well, letting this guy get away clearly hadn’t worked out for him before. It’d left him free to do… whatever the hell this was to Jason, and this needed to stop. Jason had better things to do than to keep reliving this day over again.
It went smoother than he thought, honestly. The magician’s idiots still fell to bullets, so it wasn’t like they were learning. Jason nearly had the magician himself before the guy bolted through a door and locked it. Jason was prepared to pick it when he realized that the archer and the guy with the arm were about to arrive. He spun to get into place and lined up his shot, knowing he couldn’t risk those two on his case if he was going to get the magician and have a conversation with him. He frowned, the gun lowering a little automatically. It was just the archer and he was… waving at Jason?
Oh fuck, where was-
BANG.