"Heyyy...Heyy sleepy head...wake up." A voice blasted through Jace's right ear as he felt someone hold his shoulder and shake him as if to wake him up.
'Ahhhh....what the hell...I am having a really bad headache' Jace thought as he tried to open his eyes. The last thing he could remember was being wrapped in that tape and looking at Ronan through the window.
'What's going on...who the heck is annoying me the moment I step into the future.' Jace thought as the voice still continued to disturb him. Will all of this Jace couldn't maintain his balance and fell down on one knee. He raised a hand toward the incoming sound and said "Just stop talking for a second here." The voice instantly stopped but the surround loud beeps and bizzare music in the distance fell on Jace's ears.
Jace opened his eyes which were kindly blurry at first but later regained full vision. The first thing Jace felt was extreme weakness and then the feeling of being constricted but he expected this since he knew he would be losing all this powers and that he would wake up in someone else's body...someone who was related to the Warren Clan bloodline.
Jace looked to the side and saw a 17 year old black kid wearing a sleeveless tshirt with 'New York Yankees' written on it standing beside him.
"Hey Jace, you all right bro?" the kid said as he extended his hand towards Jace with a worried look on his face.
"I am fine...thank you for asking." Jace said in a formal tone and held the teenager's hand to get back up.
"Huh? what happened to your vocab man...You sound like Father David...haha" the kid said.
"Jace, Dan...what are you guys stopping in the middle of rush hour for? This is the last place for tonight...Let's wrap it up quick." A woman's voice echoed from inside a pickup truck parked beside the 2 kids. Jace looked around and he couldn't understand anything...the world looked way different to him...The mansions were nowhere to be seen and there were tall buildings made of glass.
He was currently standing between two such big buildings and in front of him was a door which was wide open. Jace didn't know what was on the other side of the door but he could see flashing lights and hear music.
"Jace...you there buddy? Let's wrap this up as Carol said" Dan said as he picked up a beer keg and kept it onto the back of the pickup truck. Jace who still felt a little disoriented was trying to understand everything.
'What this carriage? and where is the animal that will pull it? The world doesn't look even remotely similar like it did. How much did the world change in 50 years? No...this doesn't look like 50years to me...its more than that...way more.' Jace thought as he stared at the keg in front of him.
Then suddenly Dan picked up the keg in front of Jace and loaded it onto the pickup truck. "I don't know what's gotten into you bro. Go sit in the back and take a nap if it makes you feel better." Dan then signaled Jace to sit at the back of the pickup truck which was half full with metal beer kegs and a few plastic bags with something inside. Although Jace couldn't see what was inside but he confidently say that it smelled good.
"Carol, its all loaded up...lets go back now." Dan said as he signaled the confused Jace to hurry up.
Jace quickly got onto the back of the truck and Dan sat in the front with Carol. Jace couldn't see Carol's face from the small glass window but he could see here blond shoulder length hair and the green jacket that she was wearing. She seemed to be around her mid thirties.
'I should use the time I am getting now to get a grasp of the world I would be living in. Listening to the kid named Dan's words, it seems the vocabulary has changed quite a bit. I don't know if I'd appreaciate this change or not' Jace thought as took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. As soon as his eyes closed, Jace expected to open his eyes directly in the spirit room but instead it was total darkness with just a white sphere shining in front of him.
'Looks like this kid hasn't even activated his spirit room yet which means he doesn't know that he is a Reaper. It makes sense he is doing such a mundane work.' Jace thought as got his face closer to the shining sphere and squinted his eyes.
As he got closer, he could see multiple small bubbles like inside the big sphere and it had moving pictures of the current teenager Jace that he had woken up into. 'It seems like these are the kid's memories...that will make it a lot easier for me to understand what the world is right now and what kind of a life this kid as lived.' Jace thought as he extended his arm and touched the big sphere causing all the memories of this kid to merge with Jace's.
'Urghhh...the headache again' Jace winced as years of memories started pouring into his mind. Among these memories, they was no knowledge about the kid's parents. Who his parents were? what happened to them and why and how he landed in the orphanage. His experience of living in the orphanage was pretty good. Carol and the orphange head were the only two employees at the orphanage but since it was a part of a Catholic church, the priest Father David and the nuns would take care of the orphange most of the time.
As he continued to look into the memories, Jace came to know that he along with Carol and Dan come to the city every Friday and Saturday night, to collect empty beer kegs from the clubs and Casinos and then drop them back to the brewery in Jace's small town.
Bluestone Ridge was a small town located in a valley. The Bluestone brewery provided livelihood to many of the residents and for every empty keg they bring back to the brewery, Carol would get paid and the earnings would then trickle down to Dan and Jace. Many other kids from the orphange had also taken such odd jobs in and around the town under supervision of the adults. As Jace continued to look into these memories, he realized something. The ritual peromed by Caleb was supposed to take him 60 years into the future but it ended up taking him 600+ years into the future. The current world was scientifically advanced and no one knew about Reapers as far as Jace could see in the kid's memories and what he knew about the outside world through TV and the internet.
'Caleb had already told me that the ritual wasn't something he had done before or even seen anyone do it. It was something he read in the record kept by his clan. I don't even know if Caleb and my other subordinates are even alive It has been more than 600 years now. Ronan and the others must have also become a relic of the past' Jace thought as he finished reading all of the kid's memores.
"Get up sleepy head" a sound rang through Jace's head as he opened his eyes. It was Dan who was standing outside the truck. As Jace looked around, he saw that he was in the middle of a big factory. The factory buildings around him were really tall and wide and red in color. There were multiple fermantation tanks as well. The strong smell of beer assaulted Jace's nose as he took in a deep breath.
'The factory really is big. Maybe they don't just supply locally but also have a big distribution network.' Jace thought as he looked around. The kid that lived in this time for the past years never thought about such things as he wasn't much of a dreamer. He had aimed to study as much as he could and then become a teacher at a nearby college so that he could volunteer at the orphanage.
'Heh...the world really lost a good child because of me' Jace chuckled as he shook his head.
"Bro...we at the brewery now. Let's go and dump all these kegs in the warehouse." Dan said as he signaled Jace to pass one of the kegs to him.
"Just in time Carol...I was about to call you." A white man in his 50's with a grey beard wearing red checks shirt and jeans walked out of the warehouse. This man was Mike Buckley, one of the managers whose job was to take care of the warehouse.
"Mike, I didn't know you would be working late today. And what's the rush?" Carol asked as she shook Mike's hand.
"Got a big order...Need to clean and refill the kegs you brought tonight as well. I have a long night ahead of me. I won't mind a good company though." Mike said with a sly smile but it didn't last long because Carol pulled back her hand from the handshake as she said "I have some work at the City Hall early tomorrow...maybe some other time."
Mike didn't say anything and just looked at Jace and Dan and shouted "Do I need to invite you princesses to do what you do every week?"
Seeing Mike's mood suddenly turn Sour, Dan leaned close to Jace's ear and whispered "Its the 20th time he has gotten shot down by Carol like this...remind me to tell everyone tomorrow at breakfast."
Jace couldn't help but smile as he looked at the red faced Mike walk back to the brewery in a huffed mood and Carol followed behind him to his office. Jace followed Dan's queue and the two of them started bringing in the kegs and placed them on racks. The inside of the wareshouse was brightly lit even in the middle of the night and there were still a few workers in there. They looked at Dan and Jace to just acknowledge their existence and went back to working.
As Jace and Dan walked out to bring in more kegs, Jace stopped Dan and asked "The people working inside the warehouse, they don't seem American. I understand a few but none of them are american."
Dan looked back at the entrance of the warehouse and said "Yess...the a few years ago there was a new investor and he is European...he brought in many workers. The town folks did make some noise at the start but he assured them that these people will only be doing the manual labor and all the middle and upper management jobs will go to the locals. He also donated a lot to the current Mayor and our church. So practically no one has any problem with these people and they might not be super friendly but they are quiet and don't cause any trouble."
"That sounds too good to be true" Jace said as he rubbed his nose and picked up two more kegs and started walking towards the warehouse.
"Since when did you become so pessimestic Jace...heh never thought my homie whose practically a saint would say this." Dan said as he nudged Jace with his shoulder.
The two of them continued to unload the kegs into the warehouse and by the time they finished, Carol had also returned.
"This weekend we have a good haul" Carol said as he was counting the cash in her hands. She pulled out 4 50$ bills and handed 100$ each to Dan and Jace and shoved the rest of the money in her pocket
"Let's go...I need some sleep" she said as she massaged her eyes and signaled us to get in the pickup. Just like before, Jace sat in the back. As the pickup started to leave, Jace's expression changed as he starred at the entrance of the warehouse and murmured
"Such thick smell of blood...exactly what are they brewing?"
***
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