1986

Torchy Albright stood before the court, and looked to the man on the witness stand. Her mission here was to get this man convicted and put away for life, though if she could swing the death penalty, that would be better. The 26-year-old raven haired woman who was identifiable on sight by dressing in men's suits for court, had already made a name for herself when she graduated law school at the age of 21, as the youngest prosecutor in the history of her hometown; a small place that didn't even register on the map between the state lines for New York and Pennsylvania. Since then she had hit the ground running determined to put the criminal bastards away, and for the most part she had been successful, but always at a price of death threats and attempted assassinations; still, it was her decision and she would stand by it, even if it got her killed.

"Mr. Hawkins, do you know why you're here today?" she asked him.

The 20-something year old man who sat in the court's hot seat kept his gaze down and said, "Yeah, because I killed a man."

An insanity defense had held no water with her, and now she was going to hang this sucker out to dry on his own words.

"Not just any man, isn't that right, Mr. Hawkins? You're here because you chased, hunted down, and beat to death a 56-year-old man named Vincenzo Pellerito, why don't you tell the court why?"

"Because of the little girl," he answered.

"What little girl, Mr. Hawkins? Oh I know…you are referring to 7-year-old Sarah Smith, who was killed in a hit and run earlier this year in your neighborhood, is that correct?"

"Yeah," he said as he picked his head up.

"Yes we're all familiar about the riots that have ensued because of that senseless tragedy," Torchy said as she took a step back towards her table and picked up a sheet of paper that had already been offered into evidence, "However, instead of letting the law deal with the driver who hit her, a one Mr. Norman Finkelstein, you and your…neighbors, decided to take the law into your own hand and quote, 'deal with the Jew ourselves', that is what you told the arresting officers, correct?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"So you admit you're a bigot, Mr. Hawkins?" Torchy asked.

"Your Honor, I object," Mr. Hawkins' defense attorney, a slick lizard in his 30s, said as he started to stand up.

"I'm not finished yet, Mr. Blowitz, sit down and be quiet until I finish my cross," Torchy said.

"Your Honor."

The judge, a gray haired man in his late 50s who had been present for many of these what he called 'circus trials', spoke up and said, "Mr. Blowitz, the prosecution has no grounds upon which to retort as such…I however do, objection overruled and sit down. Proceed, Miss Albright."

Torchy pointed behind her towards the defense table and said, "In spite of your choice of counsel, you admit that you hate Jewish people, because quote 'that Jew thought he could kill a little girl and get away with it', isn't that so?"

"You know that's right," he replied.

"I see, however you also made such a point of telling the police, quote, 'I know a Jew when I see one', is that true also?"

"Yes, so what?"

"So…" Torchy put the exhibit down and pointed out, "It really goes without saying, a name like Vincenzo Pellerito is not a Jewish name, it is an Italian name, and Mr. Pellerito was not a Jew, he was an Italian immigrant. So how can you say you know a Jew when you see one, and still beat an Italian to death claiming it's to deal with the Jews? Or are you saying that they all look alike?" She didn't give him a chance to answer and said, "Why don't we get down to the facts, Mr. Hawkins? You didn't care who you killed that day, you were angry and felt that somebody needed to pay for it so you chose the first person you saw who you did not recognize as being one of your fellow bigoted friends. Isn't that right, Mr. Hawkins?"

Just as the defense attorney got up to object again, the defendant shot up in the witness stand and wrapped his hands around Torchy's throat. The court officer, Marcus von Croy, a thin man in his 30s with black hair on his head and on his face, came up and beat Hawkins in the arm with his nightstick and restrained the defendant. Torchy clutched her throat and choked a couple of times before moving back as the judge banged his gavel and called for order. He declared a recess and told both attorneys to see him in his chambers.

"5 will get you 10 he's going to push for a mistrial, Your Honor," Torchy said as she took off her jacket in the hot office and stood dressed in a white undershirt and skinny black suspenders. Her tall, scrawny body never got her any compliments and to see her dressed for court, people said, was to get some idea of how it would look to see James Dean playing Perry Mason, or rather Hamilton Burger. She had earned quite a reputation for being uncouth and always smelling of a hint of whiskey and a pack of smokes while she was on the job, but every judge who'd ever had her deemed her behavior not bad enough to have her removed or jailed for contempt. But to every other lawyer who worked in the city courthouse, it was just a matter of time before she pushed the wrong judge's button and got him to throw the book at her. Her courtroom antics seemed to be the safest place to put that bet.

"How can my client be expected to get a fair trial after that little display?" Mr. Blowitz asked.

"When you were coaching your client on what to say you should've told him to keep his temper under control," Torchy told him.

"Shut up both of you," the judge said, and he told them, "The longer a verdict is delayed in this case the closer the whole city comes to being set on fire. I am not declaring a mistrial, but if either of you this late in the game decides to pop in a surprise witness I'm finding you both in contempt. This is currently your case, Mr. Blowitz, I advise you to rest it quickly."

"Yes, Your Honor," he replied.

On their way back to the courtroom, Torchy murmured to him, "Look on the bright side, Blowitz, either way this case is a win/win."

"How do you figure that?" he asked.

"Either your client goes to jail for the rest of his miserable life, or he gets acquitted and some good Samaritan civilian does what the court can't and shoots him in the head as soon as he's off the courthouse steps."

Mr. Blowitz stopped in his tracks and asked her, "Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise, you heard the judge, this city's about to get torn apart, people want somebody to pay and regardless of what the court does, somebody is going to hold your client accountable."

"Go to hell, Albright," he said.

Torchy turned around and walked backwards as she talked to him and said, "I thought you people didn't believe in hell."

"Ohhh," he said mockingly, "You mean us Jews?"

"I mean you defense lizards," Torchy told him, "If you did you'd know you were damned upon passing your bar exam."

"Oh? You really think your kind is only after the truth?"

"Why don't you chew on that the next time you ask your client if he's guilty before making up a story of innocence for him?" Torchy remarked.

"Another guilty verdict, no surprise there," Torchy said when she and von Croy were off duty and downing a few shots of whiskey at the local bar.

"You keep that up and one of these days the son of a bitch on the stand is going to murder you," he told her.

"Now why would that happen when I've got you there to protect me?" Torchy laughed, "Remember the last murder trial when the defense jerked me into the men's bathroom and we got in a fight because I said I wouldn't make a deal? And in comes you to save the day, I could've told you not to bother, I'm pretty sure by the time we got done I had most of his brains laying on the floor somewhere."

"That may be true," he replied, "But it was my testimony that saved your ass when the judge found out."

"And I am very grateful for that," she said as she downed another shot, "But one of these days somebody's going to catch you at the wrong time and we're going to see you spinning some poor son of a bitch over your head and then body slamming him." She laughed and then stopped and said, "Hey!"

"What?"

"I knew I'd recognized you from somewhere before," Torchy told him.

"What do you mean?" von Croy asked.

"I knew the day you walked in for the job that I'd seen you somewhere before, it just hit me where," Torchy said, "You used to be a wrestler, I remember now, 'Live from the arena, Mark Von Croy, the Rabid Austrian!'" Torchy fell back against her booth laughing, "I remember you in the ring, wearing those tall black boots and that tiny little black…no on second thought I don't want to remember that."

Von Croy seemed unfazed by this revelation though he did comment sarcastically, "I'm glad you find it so amusing."

"Hey, I remember you were a good fighter, why'd you quit?" Torchy asked.

"That's going to call for another bottle to explain," he told her.

"Not tonight," Torchy said, "I've got to start on a new trial tomorrow, and it's not going to do me any favors with the judge if I walk in hung over, though if I could puke on the defense for once I could die a happy person."

"What's this one?" he asked.

"Get this," Torchy said over a bite of her dinner, "This guy killed his whole family, wife, three little kids, and his lawyer is still saying not guilty…the headshrinkers got a term for it, they call it familicide, the killing of your family."

"It's not the killings that bother me," von Croy told her, "Just the reasoning behind them."

"You and me both, Hydrophobia," Torchy said as she lifted her glass, "If you're going to kill somebody, especially brutally, then you better have a damn good reason for it."

Though it was usually the defense who took advantage of a defendant's right to a fair and speedy trial, Torchy pushed it towards her own advantage and very early into the trial she got what she wanted; the testimony of everybody who knew the defendant, one Brian Losh, a 40-year-old man who looked about as friendly as a rattlesnake, proved so damning that his lawyer felt they had no choice but to put him on the stand to speak for himself.

"Mr. Losh, your lawyer would have us believe that you're not at fault for killing your family, why in your opinion as his client and the receptacle of his justifying mumbo jumbo do you think that is?"

"Your Honor, I object," the hotshot defense attorney, James Wales, who had a reputation in the courthouse of a tough opponent, said as he stood up.

"I'll rephrase," Torchy said, "Mr. Losh, all evidence that police found during their investigation points only towards you as being the person who murdered your whole family, so if you didn't do it, who did?"

"Your Honor!"

"The police were wrong," the man said, "It happens all the time."

"The evidence isn't wrong, we have your gun, your prints on the gun and the bullets in the gun, a nitrate test proved gun powder etched into your hands only hours after your whole family was shot to death," Torchy said.

"It wasn't me!" he told her.

Torchy had spent some time talking to one of the psychiatrists who had examined the defendant. He had told her that men of this sort almost always inevitably broke down and confessed to killing their families and told everyone why they had to do it, that's what she was pushing for now. Torchy knew what the general consensus of prosecuting attorneys was; win the case no matter what, even if it meant putting innocent people in jail. Well, that wasn't how she worked, and she thanked God for the progress that criminal sciences had come that they could compare fingerprints and get them off the damnedest places now, though she knew the blood work could still use some improvement, but for the time being she worked with what she had and she never bothered trying a case that she wasn't fully convinced the defendant was guilty. It made her widely unpopular with people who thought she had ulterior motives for not trying certain cases, but she always stood her ground on the issue.

"You lost your job, your wife was dissatisfied with you, your kids resented you, who else had motive to kill them?" she asked.

"It's not true," he said.

Torchy turned and pointed back to her table and said as she went over to it, "The People offer into evidence this item marked Exhibit H, a letter written by Mrs. Losh to her…"

Torchy heard people in the gallery gasping and two women screamed, she turned around just in time to hear a gunshot and saw that it had come from a weapon the defendant had drawn out of his jacket. Quicker than the human eye could plainly see, Torchy thrust her right hand into the left side of her jacket and also drew out a gun and returned fire; her shot didn't miss, but right before it hit Brian Losh in the head, he got off another round and it shot Torchy right in the heart and she went down.

It took a very short amount of time for the paramedics to arrive but by the time they did, the courtroom floor was already covered in a large amount of Torchy Albright's blood. They got her loaded up on a gurney and rushed out to the ambulance, but one of the paramedics also called for Marcus von Croy, the bailiff who had been the first one at her side when she went down, to come with them since they needed as many details about exactly what had happened as he could offer if they were going to save her life. They got loaded up in the ambulance and it sped off for the hospital. Right after takeoff, von Croy shook his head and told the paramedic in the back of the ambulance with he and the critically injured woman, "She doesn't have a chance."

The paramedic nodded and started disconnecting the tubes that had been hooked up to Torchy to keep her alive; the blood IV came out, the heart monitor was turned off, miraculously Torchy held on through the 20 minute ride and died just as the ambulance pulled up to the hospital. The men got out and unloaded the gurney and took their time wheeling the dead woman into the St. Darien Hospital far out of the way for anyone of the general public to stumble upon.

"DOA," the first paramedic announced as they came in, "Torchy Albright, Deputy District Attorney, one gunshot wound to the chest."

"We'll get a room ready," the nurse at the front register said as she pushed a button behind her desk, "In the meantime get her ready, wheel her into the lab, somebody get every personal item off of her."

"That's you, Evan," the paramedic told von Croy.

He kept his mouth shut but stuck his hands through every pocket on Torchy's clothes and collected her wallet, her ID, every scrap of paper that meant anything and could mean nothing and placed them all in a metal bowl on a tray by the gurney.

"No jewelry," he announced, "No surprise."

A nurse came to individually bag up all of the slain woman's belongings piece by piece, just like exhibits in a trial, she noted ironically. Two orderlies came and wheeled Torchy down the hall and into a room where a woman doctor cut off her clothes and had one orderly lift her into a large sink built into the wall that was the size of a horse trough. The taps were turned on and the attorney's body was scrubbed and cleaned of every drop of blood. After which, she was put on a large metal counter, promptly dried off, dressed in a white cotton gown and put on a fresh gurney and wheeled back into the hall and down to a private room where she was placed in a bed and left alone in the dark.

Torchy woke up with a massive headache and no clue where she was. The room was dark but there were people standing around her, they looked like doctors.

"What's going on?" she asked drowsily, "Where am I?"

"Don't get excited, Miss Albright," one doctor told her, "You're at St. Darien's Hospital."

"Who?"

"It's a long story."

"This ain't the county hospital," Torchy said as she tiredly buried her face in her hands, "What happened?"

"You were shot during your trial today," he answered.

"How bad is it?" Torchy asked.

"That depends on you," he said.

It was then that Torchy was putting two and two together. She put her hands down and looked down at herself; she remembered being shot in the chest, she pulled down the collar on her gown, there was no wound from the bullet. She looked back up at the doctors and said, "Somebody better tell me what the hell is going on, and fast."

"Very well," the doctor said professionally, "You're dead."

"What?" Torchy asked.

"To be more precise, you died when you were brought in this afternoon," he told her, "You see, Miss Albright, you are one of a chosen few who will not die, just as ourselves. You are what is known in the world as an Immortal."

"Pal, I'm not known for my sense of humor and I don't specialize in gags, so you better tell me what's really going on."

"I just did…all Immortals come into this world as pre-Immortals, and pre-Immortals grow up, and old, and can get injured and sick, just like mortals, but when a pre-Immortal dies a violent death, it awakes their Immortality, suddenly you don't get sick anymore, any wounds you get heal themselves automatically, that's why you don't have a hole in your chest right now. That sensation that's pulsing through your skull right now, that is what's called a Quickening, you will feel that whenever another Immortal is around, and likewise other Immortals will feel yours when you are nearby. It's a built in warning system so you know when they're coming. Unfortunately with this Immortal life comes an even more severe constant struggle for survival. The only way an Immortal can die is if their head is severed from their body, and that is exactly what Immortals do, they engage in battles and kill each other."

"How come?" Torchy asked.

"Because all Immortals are immediately dropkicked into something called The Game, it states that eventually only two Immortals will remain, and whoever is left standing will receive the Prize, but what it is, nobody knows, but most Immortals are willing to kill one another for a chance at it," the doctor said, "Then there are others such as ourselves who believe the Game is a sham and that Immortals shouldn't have to spend every waking minute in fear for their lives."

"But mortals don't know about Immortals?" Torchy asked.

"Most don't though a few do, they're the ones that know to keep their mouths shut," the doctor explained, "If the public were to find out about our existence, we'd all be hunted down, so it's vital for everybody's survival that they don't know about us, and it's not going to be easy faking being mortal, either way you choose to go about it."

"What do you mean either way?" Torchy asked.

She felt another sensation in her head and the door opened and von Croy stepped into the room.

"Von Croy, you're one of them too?" she asked.

"Oh yes, he's been one of us for a long time," the doctor said, "One thing you'll quickly learn is that every few years, you must assume a new identity to keep suspicion from arousing in people." He nodded towards von Croy and told her, "His real name, so far as we know," he laughed, "Is Evan Caspari. You see, Miss Albright, in places of high risk it is especially crucial that we have an informant to put the call in when a pre-Immortal is fatally injured. We come in, rush them out, bring them out here where everybody knows everybody else, and then decide from there what needs to be done."

"What do you mean?" Torchy asked.

"You were shot in the chest in the middle of a crowded courtroom, everybody saw you go down, but you were still alive when they saw you loaded up into the ambulance," the doctor explained, "Right now nobody knows anything, and you have two choices of what to do from here. Either we announce that you have died, and you move on to another town, another state, and start again under a new name…or we make a public announcement that you are in a very delicate surgery, and everything stays quiet for a few weeks while you make a slow recovery back to your health. And you never let anybody see that you have no scar, the inquiries that would follow would give you away. Of course we're well aware that this is not an easy decision to make either way, so take all the time you need to come to it. In the meantime you can consider yourself our guest; we're all Immortals here so feel free to talk to anyone about any questions you might have."

"How many of you are there here?" Torchy asked.

"A staff of 30 doctors and nurses, as far as the public is concerned anyway, you can just think of us as consultants, right now we have about eight other new Immortals here so you're in good company. So as not to be overwhelming, we meet with them one by one and explain things to them, as time passes we'll be encouraging for a group meeting so everybody can get acquainted and better understand what is going on. Right now the main thing is for everybody to understand that you have no enemies here. The one place that Immortals are always safe from other Immortals is holy ground, they can't fight there, and this hospital was converted over from a church. It was founded by a man named Darien Westmore 20 years ago, who decided new Immortals needed a sanctuary of their own until they learned what they needed to about their new lives."

"And where is he?" Torchy asked.

"He died three years ago," the doctor answered.

"Didn't do him a lot of good," she said.

The doctor left her alone, and once he was gone she turned to the man she had known as Marcus von Croy and said, "You little bastard, you knew this was going to happen and you never said anything?"

"You wouldn't have believed it," he answered.

"So…how long have you been an Immortal?" Torchy asked.

"Longer than you can imagine," he said.

"Has it been worth it?" she asked.

"It sure as hell beats the alternative," was his only response.

Torchy left her room and wandered the hospital to see the place and the people. There were large windowed mirrors that looked into other rooms where other new Immortals were being dealt with by the staff; and every one of them looked as confused as she was, some even worse. At every turning corner in every corridor there was a nurse or a doctor nearby who just smiled at her, offering nothing but Torchy guessed they were just waiting for her to start asking questions. The hospital, she found, also had a chapel, a sanctuary within a sanctuary for the religiously inclined, she thought.

After wandering the hospital for about an hour, Torchy tracked down the doctor she'd first spoken to and told him her decision. If she died now, then there was going to be a lot of trouble in the community; it was important that the public know she was still alive. She had a reputation and every criminal in the tri-county area knew what it was and knew she had everything needed to back it up. If she couldn't die then it meant she could go right back to work and next time she wouldn't have to worry about some nut smuggling a gun into the courtroom. So the hospital released an official statement that Torchy Albright, Deputy District Attorney, had come out of an extensive surgery and would remain in intensive care for an undetermined amount of time, but was expected to recover.

The weeks passed slowly; Torchy went stir crazy in her room and so wandered the hospital several times a day. The hospital was far enough out of the way that they seldom had to worry about anybody coming out there who had no business there; so it was safe for her to wander around the hospital grounds as well when she felt a need to. Within time she came to get acquainted with the other new Immortals; one was a young woman who died in a car crash, there was a man who slipped and fell off the scaffolding at a construction site, two college girls who had been hit by a drunk driver who jumped the curb, and an older man who had been electrocuted on a job for the power company. Torchy thought the whole thing was like a damn AA meeting or psycho group therapy, everybody sitting in a chair in a circle around the room and everybody talked about who they were and how they died and what they planned to do next.

When the doctors finally said enough time had passed that Torchy could leave the hospital and go back home and resume her old routine, she couldn't get out of there fast enough. Over the month she'd been collecting mail at the hospital from fellow lawyers and a few judges who wished her well and hoped hers was a speedy recovery. Oh if only they knew, she had thought to herself countless times. She was officially released at night when there were less chances of anybody seeing her as she left, but as she walked out into the night, she felt another Immortal nearby and saw someone up ahead. Between the lights from the hospital and the light from the full moon out that night, she was able to make out who it was; she walked up to him and said, "Hey von Croy, or whoever the hell you are."

He stopped and turned on his heel and asked her, "What do you want?"

"The doctors were telling me if I'm going to stay alive in this game, I need a teacher, somebody who can train me how to fight."

"So what's that got to do with me?" he asked.

Torchy went up to him, got in his face and said, "So you, you little son of a bitch, you're going to train me, you knew what I was going to become, so you're going to be the one who makes me."

"Why should I?" he wanted to know.

"Because I just remembered something about your past as a wrestler," Torchy told him, "I remember now you didn't quit, you were thrown out of the federation after that last fight. Something went wrong and the ring collapsed, when they pulled you two out of there your competitor was dead and his blood was everywhere…they tried shutting it up but the word got out…he didn't die in the collapse, he died because you sank your teeth into his neck and ripped his throat out and took bites out of him. If that's the kind of murderous bastard you are then you are going to train me."

She had said her piece and waited for his response, but she stayed in his face, silently egging him on to say or do something. He looked at her for a minute before a small, sinister smirk formed on his face and he said, "This should be interesting."

The day after returning home, Torchy returned to her workplace and announced that she was leaving office. The judge who had presided at the Losh trial was there to see her off and followed her in as she packed up her belongings, and going through every drawer in her desk and through several of the large volumes of law books on her shelves, collected a total of 21 handguns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition still in the boxes. Noting the confused look on the judge's face, Torchy shrugged and said simply, "I may be a lot of things, Judge, but stupid ain't one of them. I've always known what the risks are in this life and I've planned accordingly. But I can't do it anymore, I already had my chest perforated into Swiss cheese once, I'm not eager to try it again."

"If you're not going to work in the D.A.'s office anymore, what're you going to do?" he asked inquisitively, "That's all you've ever done."

"I know," Torchy said, "But getting shot made me realize there's a lot more out there that I want to do with my life, and I think that now is the best time to start."

Why not? She thought to herself as she cleared out her office, she couldn't get any older and she was never going to die, why not start now? She stopped at a window in the corridor and looked down to the man standing down in the street waiting for her. Life as she knew it was over, and she didn't have any clue what the hell was going to happen next, but she decided she might as well start now and find out. Hell, now that she was Immortal she felt it was safe to ask, what's the worst that could happen?