When he had exhausted all his tears, time began to move again. Eternity stood unmoved. "I normally don't take orders from humans. But the Boss wants to humor you."

"Why didn't you pull her out?" He asked after a moment's pause.

"The paramedics did that themselves. Can't you see that she is dead?" Eternity retorted.

"But, like, why not pull their souls aside and talk to them like you did to me?" he rephrased.

"Because humans have free choice, but even those choices have consequences. Normally a choice like this would be final--Bing! Bang! Boom! Dead! Gone to your afterlife!--but I think making you atone for your choice will be sufficient reason to resurrect you." Eternity shrugged and transformed into a different person with each exclamation.

"Do you mind?" he asked Eternity angrily.

"Would it really help?" Eternity asked back, and looked Ethan dead in the eyes. For the first time, Ethan realised that Eternity's eyes were the only aspect which didn't change when she transformed.

"So...resurrect," he said with a grimace. Eternity smiled.

"Yes, indeed. You're obviously dead right now, but I'm going to give you another chance. Actually, as many as it takes for you to make this all right. You'll have to make up for each person you killed."

His head spun to consider this. "You mean I'm going to have to live a million lives just to fulfill some stupid bargain that the universe stuffed me into?"

"Maybe you'll be lucky and knock them all out in one. Or maybe you will repeat this cycle for a thousand years to come. That would certainly be fun for me to create new identities every time. Who knows? Maybe you'll find love, companionship, happiness. But I will always be watching you, punishing you."

"But why?"

"Maybe I just want to punish people who can only fight for so long without help," said Eternity with a withering glance. "Put it this way: you'll help a lot more people if you're living with this over your head."

Ethan stomped his foot and the ground shot up sparks. "That makes no sense."

Eternity flicked her wrist and transformed once more into a handsome boy with brown hair and those same eyes. The boy was tall and Ethan felt, for the first time, like he knew what Eternity was up to. "That's not fair. You can't turn me into boy band USA!"

As he protested, Eternity raised her hands and made a pushing motion. Suddenly Ethan felt himself falling forward and he moaned, "No, no, no, no, NO!" And just as suddenly as he was sent away, he was back on the ground. Except this was not Aspen, Colorado. He had absolutely no idea where he was.

POP! Eternity was next to him in and instant. "So, Daniel. Your first mission is in there. Try not to mess up." POP! She was gone.

"Hey!" He shouted. "What am I supposed to do?" People all around him shared quizzical looks and he groaned. "Where am I even looking?" He was on a main street with few buildings. It seemed to be early morning in whatever town it was, and the aroma of coffee tickled his nose. He followed the scent to a bookstore.

"Mona's," he read, pointing to the sign. My luck's just run out.

He was dead wrong, of course.