Chapter 6
Two days later, Greg sat at his desk, staring at the open file, watching the words blur together.
Dustin. Male. Twenty-six. Status: Pending.
Greg had never seen a file stay open this long. Collections happened in minutes. You showed up, you waited for the death, you guided the soul through, you filed the paperwork.
It was supposed to be clean, sacred and simple.
So far, nothing about this had been simple.
“You're still here?”
Greg looked up. A fellow reaper, Valerie, was passing his cubicle with a stack of folders. She didn't stop walking.
“Still working on that first assignment,” he said.
“Yikes.” She was already gone.
Greg looked back at the file.
Status: Pending.
Morrith's words kept echoing in his head. Sometimes death needs a little help. That's what we're here for.
But that wasn't what they were here for. That wasn't what Greg had trained for. Reapers didn't cause death. They honored it. They witnessed it. They shepherded souls through the most profound transition of existence with compassion and dignity.
Never before had someone told him he’d have to cut parachute lines.
Greg pressed his palms against his eyes.
He'd spent the last two days researching.
Dustin had social media accounts full of videos and photos and comments from thousands of strangers who watched him throw himself off things.
Greg had watched all of it. Every jump. Every interview.
Every behind-the-scenes clip where Dustin laughed at danger and flirted with the camera and never once looked like someone who was afraid to die.
He'd also found older videos. Videos that showed someone else alongside Dustin. A twin brother named Tyler who shared Dustin’s smile as well as his recklessness.
Tyler's file had been closed three years ago. Greg had checked.
“You're still thinking about it.”
Greg startled. Morrith was standing at the entrance to his cubicle, coffee in hand, expression unreadable.
“I'm trying to figure out the right approach,” Greg said.
“The right approach is completion.” Morrith took a sip of his coffee. “I don't care how it happens. I care that it happens.”
“But what if—”
“Greg.” Morrith's voice was tired. “I vouched for you. I told the department you were ready for fieldwork. Every day that file stays open, we run the risk of Oversight taking a closer look at this department, and trust me, nobody wants that.”
“I understand, sir.”
Morrith shot him a long look. “Your target is jumping again tomorrow. Somewhere in Nevada.”
Greg's stomach dropped. “How do you know that?”
“It's my job to know. It's your job to finish this. Don't make me reassign it to someone who will.”
Morrith walked away.
Greg sat very still for a long moment.
Then he pulled up Dustin's location.
Nevada was hot.
Greg crouched behind a rock formation about fifty yards from Dustin's truck and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was doing.
Only a short while ago he'd been a promising new field reaper with a sacred calling and a carefully rehearsed speech about the beauty of transition.
Now he was hiding behind a boulder in the desert, sweating through his button-down, waiting for a human to stop paying attention to his gear so Greg could sabotage it.
This was not in the training manual.
He adjusted his glasses and peered around the edge of the rock. Dustin was there, alone, laying out his equipment on a tarp beside his truck. There wasn’t any crew this time, and no cameras except for a drone case he hadn't opened yet. Just a man, his rig, and eight hundred feet of cliff.
Greg had gotten here first—which hadn’t been easy.
When he couldn’t teleport himself to a human target, he needed to use a door as his anchor point, and so he’d emerged from a maintenance shed about a quarter mile away.
And then he’d had to hike through the scrub brush to find a hiding spot before Dustin arrived. His shoes were not meant for hiking.
Nothing about him was meant for hiking.
He watched as Dustin finished laying out his gear and stepped back to survey it. Next, Dustin turned and walked away from the truck, shielding his eyes against the sun, scanning the desert. Was he looking for his landing point?
Whatever he was doing, this was Greg’s chance.
He moved.
He tried to stay low, which was difficult because he'd never had to stay low before. Invisibility had always handled the stealth portion of reaper work. Now he was scuttling across open desert like some kind of crab in formal wear, praying Dustin didn't turn around.
He reached the truck and knelt beside the tarp. His hands were shaking as he pulled out the small blade from his pocket.
He carried it to cut souls free from bodies that clung too hard.
Not for this.
But he was here now and he had a job to do. The chute’s lines lay before him, neatly coiled. Strong and clean and well-maintained. Dustin took care of his gear. Greg had watched enough of his videos to know that. You can be stupid about a lot of things, but never be stupid about your rig.
Tyler had said that. In one of the old videos.
Greg's hands shook harder.
He couldn’t think about this. If he thought too much, he’d never do it.
Morrith said fix it. Morrith said make sure the next one sticks.
Greg positioned the blade against the lines.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
He made the cuts. Small cuts, just deep enough to weaken, not enough to show.
When he finished, he felt sick.
But he didn’t have time to wallow in that feeling.
Dustin was walking back toward the truck.
Greg's entire being clenched. He couldn't retreat the way he came—Dustin would see him. The truck was right there but he couldn't hide under it, Dustin would notice. The rock formation was fifty yards away across open ground.
He spotted a cluster of scrub brush about fifteen feet to his left. Not great cover, but better than nothing.
He ran.
Or, to be more specific, he scrambled, hunched over, shoes sliding on loose dirt. He threw himself behind the brush and pressed flat against the ground, heart pounding.
Dustin’s footsteps were getting closer.
Through the gaps in the brush, Greg watched Dustin return to his gear. He knelt down and ran his hands over everything one more time. A final check.
Please don't notice. Please don't notice. Please don't—
Dustin's hands paused on the lines.
Greg stopped breathing.
For a long, terrible moment, Dustin just held them. Frowning slightly as he ran his fingers along the cords.
Then he shrugged, set them down and stood up.
He started packing the rig.
Greg exhaled so hard he nearly coughed.
The jump happened twenty minutes later.
Greg watched from behind his pathetic scrub brush as Dustin made the climb. The cliff wasn't as high as the last one. This would be a quick jump, only a handful of seconds of freefall before deployment.
Before deployment would fail.
Greg wondered what was going on in Dustin’s head.
Did he have any idea that he was about to die? Did he reckon with that possibility on any jump?
Don't think about it. Just watch. Just wait. Do your job.
Dustin jumped.
The freefall was short. Greg counted the seconds, each one stretching into eternity. One. Two. Three.
Dustin reached for the pilot chute.
The canopy deployed.
Greg held his breath.
For a moment, everything looked normal. The parachute caught air, Dustin's descent slowed, and—
The lines snapped.
The canopy tore away, a useless tangle of fabric spinning off into the wind, and Dustin dropped like a stone.
Greg's whole body went cold.
He’d done his research.
At eight hundred feet, there was no reserve. No backup plan. No second chance. BASE jumpers knew this. They accepted it every time they stepped off an edge. If the main failed, you died.
The main had failed.
Dustin was going to die.
But this was what Greg had wanted, wasn’t it? This was the assignment. This was—
He was running before he finished the thought. Sprinting across the open desert toward the landing zone, not caring if anyone saw him, not caring about anything except—
Except what? What was he going to do? Catch the mortal?
Dustin hit the ground.
The sound was—
Greg would never forget that sound.
He stopped running. His legs wouldn't work anymore. He stood there in the middle of the Nevada desert, fifty yards from the impact site, and waited for the soul to rise.
That was how it worked. The body died, the soul emerged, the reaper guided it through. Greg had seen it dozens of times during his internship. He knew what came next.
He waited.
Nothing.
He waited longer.
Still nothing.
And then Dustin moved.
Greg's vision tunneled. That wasn't possible. It wasn’t. He'd fallen eight hundred feet without a parachute. He'd hit the ground at terminal velocity. No human body could survive that.
Apparently Dustin had not received the memo.
He sat up.
He looked down at himself, patted his chest, his legs, moved his arms. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking.
But he was alive.
He was alive.
Greg didn't wait to see more. While Dustin was still staring at his own hands like they belonged to a stranger, Greg turned and ran.
Back toward the maintenance shed. Back toward the door that would take him to HQ.
His dress shoes slipped on the dirt and rocks but he didn't slow down, didn't look back, didn't breathe until he was through the door and standing in the fluorescent hum of the office.
He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping.
He'd just tried to kill someone.
And it hadn't worked.
Greg wasn’t sure which of those things was worse.