I woke to buzzing. It wasn’t the buzzing of insects or flies, but something more regular, continuous. The room I was in was dark, but moonlight offered vague outlines and silvery impressions of what existed within it. The window to my side revealed the night sky I had yearned for only moments ago. Was it only moments ago? Or lifetimes? I didn’t know.

As my eyes adjusted to the little light, I saw that the moonlight wasn’t the only source of light. There were little boxes with glass windows on either side of my bed. Letters and numbers formed of light shone from them, constantly changing.

“You’re awake,” a woman said. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”

She craned over me, and I saw her face. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp, but artfully, a few dark locks carefully framing her face. There was something in her hand, a tiny metal cylinder. A sharp white light shined from the cylinder, right into my eye.

“Good pupillary reflexes,” she commented. She pressed a button, and the bed started to move and change shape. It stopped when I was sitting, my legs hanging freely in the air. She tapped my knee with a small hammer, and I felt the twinge of a muscle respond. “Reflexes seem good as well. How are you feeling?”

She seemed to be a physician of some sort. Some women I knew from my old life sometimes medicine and healing, but their skill was limited to lessening pain, aiding in sleep, and delivering babies. A pair of spectacles hung from her neck, and she put them on to look at a file at the side of my bed, jotting down notes as she poked and prodded at various parts of my body.

“I’m Doctor Rossi,” she said. “I’ll be in charge of your care for the time you spend here.”

“Here?” I asked.

“Your soul’s just been placed into a new body. The adjustment isn’t always smooth,” she said. “Hence, we have the Leviotte Institute. We make sure that you’re in good physical condition before letting you start your job.”

“I’ve never seen a place like this,” I said. “Are we still in England?”

She didn’t speak with the polished language of the upper classes, nor the more casual drawl of the common folk. Perhaps we were in some part of the country I’d never been to.

“No,” she said. “We are not in England, Sir Ward. The year is not 1450. We’re in the year 2021. The Leviotte Institute is in America, a former colony of England.”

“America?”

I’d never heard of such a place, and the year…. The year was two thousand and twenty one.

“Where was I for the last five hundred years?”

“The people who employ us,” Dr. Rossi said, with a sigh. “They are not as clear with the concept of time as we are. For them, a century is just a second. You were deposited into a soul at a time when a hunter was most necessary. It might be difficult to adjust to the way the world has changed at first, but it’s not impossible.”

“Are you like me too?”

“You mean, have I made a deal with them?” she asked. She nodded. “A similar deal, I suppose. You’re going to need your rest for the next few days. You might be weaker than you’re used to.”

I was used to being weaker than I was used to. In my previous life, my worst enemy wasn’t the one who charged at me on a war horse or shot an arrow from afar. It was age. It was my own body, slowing and breaking down. It was wounds refusing to heal quickly, old injuries coming back to life in my joints as more than memories.

I looked down at my arms. In one, there was a thin tube feeding fluid into my veins. The liver spots and scars were gone. My skin was tight and brown. I was young again.

“Could I have a mirror?” I asked. Dr. Rossi pressed another button on the bed, and it turned to the other side of the room. I saw myself in a floor-length mirror. I was no longer Sir Ward, to be sure. A pale young man stared blankly at his reflection. His dark hair was long and unkempt, as was his beard. I’m dressed in a loose paper gown, my feet bare.

“Your new name is Ravi Bajpai,” Dr. Rossi said.

“Ravi Bajpai,” I sounded it out, the letters strange on my tongue.

“Ravi’s memories will trickle back as time passes,” she said. “It will help get you accustomed to your new life.”

“There was another soul in this body, before me?” I asked. “What happened to him?”

“Ravi was destined to die. So he did.”

It was cruel, the way she said it. I nodded in understanding. People always died. I had died as well.

“It is the ones who go against their destiny that are the problem,” Dr. Rossi continued. “Do you remember the conditions of your deal?”

“Yes. I’m to catch those evading death.”

Dr. Rossi slid her spectacles off. “Not just catch, Mr. Bajpai. Catch and kill.”