It was just supposed to be a simple mission.

Get in, take down the grunts, neutralize the target, hand the scumbags over to the cops, and get out. Easy. Jason had done missions like that more times than he could count, and he didn't expect this time to be any different. He had no reason to think any different. No reason to think it’d be the end of him, for real this time.

But you can’t always get what you want, right?

He was close. He was so damn close. He couldn’t have been more than a few yards from the window, his partner in justice right behind him. It was going well. Until he heard a massive noise, and saw the of glimpse light, and felt the floor give out under him. Within milliseconds, his vision blacked out and he went limp, falling all the way down to the ground floor and landing on a pile of rubble with a loud thud.

When he came to, it was to the smell of burning metal and smoke in his lungs and the feeling of being crushed, nearly flattened under hundreds of pounds of concrete and bricks.

The next thing he noticed was the pain. Searing, burning, fainting pain. His head throbbed, his ears rung, his lungs ached, but, most of all, his leg blazed with pure pain, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since he died the first time. He felt every single ridge of whatever had impaled him against his raw flesh, could feel hot blood soaking through his suit leg and dripping down the pole beneath him.

He was too scared to open his eyes yet. Too scared to have what he already knew confirmed. He was impaled, probably on a piece of rebar, under the collapsed building, and the chances of getting out alive were slim to none.

He was better off keeping his eyes closed. Better off in a world where he was still on an easy mission, and he was perfectly fine.

It was a comforting thought, even as he saw light through his closed eyelids and felt touch on his wounded leg.