He said 2,000 years. It was the best guess he had, now. He'd managed to roughly round it to 2090-ish, once, basing it on Caesar's well-documented death, but he wasn't sure anymore. You couldn't be sure when time passed the way it did around you. When you'd watched people be born, grow, have children, then wither away into nothingness, when you'd seen entire families blossom and collapse into themselves, forgotten. Centuries passed without comment. Decades blurred. A year was barely worth turning up for. It passed. Everybody died.

For years, that was his only comment on it. Everybody died, except him. It was fun, to start with. He was indestructible. They would kill him, beat him down into dust, and he would rise up out of the river, beyond anyone's control. He was a law unto himself.

He was, so far as he knew, the only one. One man in a world of beasts, of animals. Something higher. He was like Adam in the garden of Eden, steward of the world watching over, the oldest and wisest and best.

The only difference was he was not bound by any law of deities. God did not speak to him. Was there a God, he used to wonder at the start, a pantheon above perhaps, watching and playing meddling little games? Or were those vast heavens above empty, lit only by flickering stars? Which would one day go out, leaving this new Adam staring up at a void, awaiting a summons by whoever had gifted up, awaiting a reply to a question he never asked out loud.

He went East, early into his long pilgrimage of time, and met a supposed Messiah, a teacher, a son of this so-called God he took up with this rabbi out of interest, seeking answers to the questions that plagued him. Seeking truth. Why had he been given this gift? Why did he not age? Why was he immortal? And then, before he could bring the matter up properly, the teacher was betrayed, crucified, and for the first time, Adam became truly angry. Nobody could agree on the historical details afterwards, suicide or righteous fury of God, just that the traitor Judas Iscariot died, and Adam knew he had done the correct thing. He was in the right. There was that business afterwards with the resurrection and the ascension, but Adam was unconvinced. He had seen the teacher die, and the body had been there: there had been no vanishing, no resurgence in water, nothing that would suggest immortality. The teacher had been a disappointment.

Judas Iscariot had not been.

The religion based around that teacher was a pain for Adam in the end, he lost track of how many times he had been put to death 'in Jesus' name'. Jesus would not have condoned that, Adam knew, and was mildly disappointed in human nature. People were so fickle. They were brief, sudden. They tore each other apart like beasts, they squabbled and bickered, and inevitably died.

Everybody died, except him. Adam alone in his personal Eden, becoming lonely, finding the company of idiot beasts unsatisfying. He needed something true, something deeper, needed a person who could be more than an unintelligent pet, could connect.

Like the first Adam too, his Eden was shattered, some two hundred or so years into his reverie. An Eve, of sorts. Love. And then loss.

And then loss, and then loss, and then loss. Every friend he made was there for the briefest hour, and then loss hit all over again, and loss after loss after loss.

Everybody died, and the immortal remained left behind, physically living but inside...inside he was dying over and over. Everybody died. And despite his affliction, he was no exception to that rule.

He travelled, seeking out something new. 'There is nothing new under the sun', he read, and it was true. Everything was a repetition, a new Caesar dying over and over, despite attempts to save him. It didn't matter what Adam did, because everybody died. Therefore, if Adam killed, did it matter? No, because the mortals were dead already. Insects. They may as well never have been born, still blinking afterbirth off their eyes by the time age claimed their sight, then death seized everything and that was that. Killing was like breathing. It was part of life.

He accepted this truth, and decided to seek out his own death, if there was such a thing. Was there?

There was not.

Everything died, except him.

Time passed, as ever, through war after war, the Hundred Years War barely more than a scratch on the surface of Adam's endless time. More time, too much time, and before he knew it, he was in London, 1888, reading of Jack the Ripper with quaint fascination and curiosity.

In one sense, it passed quickly. In another, every second of those 1900 and some years weighed on him. In one sense, he remembered every agonised hour he had been forced to drag himself through against his will. In another, he forgot more than he would ever know, most of the 1700s passing without interest, time ticking by unchecked by Adam's weary eyes. 1888, and the Ripper. 1900 and a new century, another century. 19 centuries, too many centuries. 1914, and World War, the Great War, and truly the destruction was vast in scope. Great War. Adam applauded the mortal capacity for self-annihilation, heedless, needless recklessness. Pathetic. He studied their chaos, and watched them writhe.

1936 and Auschwitz, and Mengele. Adam thought he knew suffering, but he was woefully wrong. Dying without relief, dying constantly, scientifically. Everybody died, including Adam, and he died over and over and over again.

Everybody died.

He was tired. His limbs hung heavy. He called out for relief. 1945, the war ended, barely a war, barely a brawl, taking place on the unaltering clock-face of eternity.

Adam went to America, after that. There, he could use Auschwitz for sympathy, bandy the name around and earn immediate respect and sympathy. Or he could put it behind him and forget it ever happened, forget why his hands shook uncontrollably and why he couldn't sleep at night, why he saw Mengele in every face and Nazi uniforms at every corner. Why he had nightmares. Why his mind was a ruin. Auschwitz had brought him low, and while he used it to get himself a place and a start in the New World, he would never mention it again.

Soon, he would never be able to. He would be too young for such horrors. People would say 'thank God you weren't around then', giving thanks to a creator who Adam disputed, for a reason that was unfounded, for a reason that was wholly incorrect. He steeled his mind, and partitioned off the memories of Mengele hacking away at him, set them apart from who he was now. Emotions were put aside. He wasn't just another number anymore. He was allowed to be Adam again, cold, merciless, distant. Never again would he involve himself in such petty mortal situations. Never.

Forty years passed by while Adam was getting himself together again, recuperating from the shock to his system. When it pleased him to, he killed people, for no real reason. Did he need a reason? Sometimes it was boredom, sometimes one of the gnats looked at him the wrong way and had to be squashed, sometimes it was to make a living. Adam was something of an expert in the fine arts of homicide, and when he was short on cash, which wasn't often - he had extensive savings going back before there was a banking system - when he needed immediate money in the short term, he would conduct a few gigs on the side.

He heard Mengele had been confirmed dead, and for the first time in many years, he dreamt of Auschwitz. Waking up covered in sweat, trembling, he poured himself a drink and tried to repair the damage done by one newspaper article, an article that unpicked decades worth of hard work. Decades of rising above such puerile things as pain and - what were they calling it now? - post-traumatic stress disorder. He didn't- he wasn't- he was better than that, that was all Adam knew. He was better than them.

Somewhere, inside, he was disappointed. Mengele had died without Adam getting revenge. Mengele had drowned. Mengele was dead.

Everybody died, everybody and everything.

And Adam lived on.

There were few things he liked in this world, but his motorbike was one. He felt almost at peace with it; he adored the roar of the engine, the sheer power behind it. Out of all the technological developments he had seen come to pass, this was his favourite, far more comforting than the illogical layout of a car. Cars. Give them a few more years, and Adam might even become interested.

Like everything, though, life had to find a way to destroy even his bike. Some children in a car, a hit-and-run accident sending Adam flying and leaving him a bloodied, broken mess. As he flitted in and out of consciousness, he saw with a choking sob what had become of his bike, the tangled wreckage strewn across the street behind him. The one thing he had valued. He had got attached, even if it was only an object, perhaps because it was an object. Because objects lived on, they didn't have the same ephemeral lifespan. Objects had no pulse, no sentience, no heartbeat, no life. But like everything else, they died just the same. Everything died, in the end.

Only Adam, agonising pain coursing through him, flesh seared away, lying motionless in the back of an ambulance, only Adam lived on. He knew fatal wounds well enough to know he was going to die. Sooner the better. He could swim away, onwards, maybe find the driver and get- find the driver and- he was struggling to think clearly. Everything…blurrrrrrrrrred.

"Kill me," he begged a nurse, through cracked, straining lips "I'm immortal…" As he told his story, confessed the truth about his nature, he saw...recognition? Belief. This woman, whom he had never met before, knew his story. Knew his story how? What about it did she know?

She knew immortality was possible.

She'd seen it before.

And as Adam swam to the shore later, he realised something he'd always wanted to, he realised that he was not alone, he researched and learned and evolved. Finding the nurse was one step, getting her to talk another, and one even Adam failed at, underestimating her feelings about this secret, and he watched the nurse slit her own throat out of loyalty to this other, mysterious, intriguing immortal, killed herself to escape Adam. He felt nothing. It was a waste, but that was all it was to him. It meant he had to do all the hard work by himself without so much as a jumping-off point.

He found a name: Henry Morgan. It struck something, something in his head, a barely remembered memory. It was something akin to, no, exactly like, the name of the doctor investigating on the Ripper cases. A common name but coincidences were something, as a 2,000 year old immortal, you learned to shun. Henry Morgan, Doctor Henry Morgan. How far did the records on him go back? Where was he now? Adam was intrigued. At long last he had found something of interest, at last he had found someone else like him. Who might be able to help with the dilemma. The dilemma of life.

He was not alone. Oh yes, everything died, everything except himself.

Himself, and whoever the hell Henry Morgan was.

And now he had a purpose again. Achieving death was one side of the coin, finding Doctor Morgan the other. Cogs were turning in Adam's head.

Now, even if they couldn't die, he would not be alone when the void came calling. There would be two of them, staring up into God's silent absence, as all the stars flickered out and the universe came to a close. Two of them. Were there more?

Did it matter?

He wasn't alone.

That was the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, the whole and all of it. He wasn't alone and that meant everything.

Henry Morgan.

They were going to be such good friends.