"Immortals?"
Orion snorted through his nose and sneered, "Pure fantasy."
Mena stood beside him with a glass of red wine, elegantly uncorking the bottle as she glanced up at him. "All right, I know you're a conservative. A stubborn one, at that."
"Anyway, I don't believe people in the past could possibly have achieved immortality." Orion accepted the wine Mena handed him, his stance unchanged. "All that so-called theology should have been abolished long ago. Keep those sheltered scientists staring at occult research around the clock, and they'll go mad sooner or later."
"They're actually researching immortality. I say they'd be better off researching how to reduce difficult births and ensure every newborn makes it into the world."
"Humans are already creatures that defy nature. God opened a door for us, so of course he closed a window. The genetic lock sets our lifespan. That's why we have the concept of passing things down, and why everyone treasures their time."
"If humans could live forever, sooner or later our civilization and our world would be destroyed."
Mena drank her wine, tuning him out with practiced ease.
"Ah, the view out here is lovely."
They were on the upper deck of an enormous cruise ship anchored in the Pacific Ocean, with land a few dozen miles away.
Dusk was approaching. The sun sank in the west, and the sea met the sky at the horizon.
In the distance, a pod of orcas was playing, tossing a sea turtle into the air.
"You're not listening to my ideas at all," Orion complained.
Mena turned to him with a smile. "Fine, there are no immortals in this world except No. 13. Since you insist on that view, why don't you tell me why he killed No. 13? And what did the immortal's words