Chapter 10
Greg was supposed to be in Morrith's office.
He was not in Morrith's office.
His case might be reassigned.
He could feel another message arriving on his clipboard. He didn’t look.
Instead he approached the door to Dustin’s room and raised his hand to knock.
Then he hesitated.
What if Dustin was still sleeping? Humans needed sleep. A lot of it, apparently—six to eight hours per night, according to his research. It was barely past dawn. Dustin had been through a traumatic experience recently. He probably needed rest.
It would be rude to wake him.
Greg lowered his hand.
He could just... check. Make sure Dustin was okay. A quick look, nothing more. If Dustin was asleep, Greg would leave and come back later. If he was awake, Greg would knock. Like a normal person.
Did normal people phase through walls to check if someone's sleeping?
Probably not.
Greg did it anyway.
The wall offered no resistance. One moment he was outside, the next he was standing in a dim motel room that smelled like stale coffee and something vaguely floral.
Dustin was asleep.
He was sprawled across the bed on his stomach, face half-buried in the pillow, one arm hanging off the edge of the mattress. The sheets were tangled around his waist. He wasn't wearing a shirt.
Greg’s thoughts ground to a halt.
Dustin wasn’t wearing a shirt. And his back… His back was…
There was ink sprawling across his skin, trailing down his arms.
Tattoos.
Greg’s eyes were drawn to the image of a bird that graced his shoulder, wings spread as if about to take flight, shaded in blue.
Below that, lines that might have been wind or clouds wrapped around his arm, while the other arm, currently dangling off the bed, was decorated in geometric shapes.
Greg couldn’t stop staring.
Humans did this: marked themselves, carried images in their skin for the rest of their lives, however short those lives might be. Greg understood tattoos as a concept, as a cultural concept.
He hadn't understood that it could look like this. That someone could turn their body into something you couldn't stop staring at.
Dustin shifted in his sleep. Murmured something. His shoulder blade moved, and the bird seemed to flex with it.
Greg's chest felt strange. Tight.
No, he had to shake himself out of his stupor.
Desperate for distraction, Greg looked around the room.
The room was small, containing only a bed, a nightstand, a TV mounted on the wall, and a chair with clothes draped over it. But in the corner, next to Dustin's duffel bag, Greg spotted his gear.
He moved toward it without thinking. The rig was laid out carefully. Harness. Container. Pilot chute.
And there were the snapped lines.
Greg set his clipboard down on the chair and knelt beside the gear.
He'd done this. He'd taken his blade and he'd cut these lines and he'd watched Dustin fall eight hundred feet and hit the ground and—
And nothing. Dustin had walked away. Like the fall hadn't happened.
Greg ran his fingers along the evidence of his crime, almost hoping to find some trace of magic, something that would explain…
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Greg's head snapped up.
Dustin was awake. Sitting up in bed, sheets pooled around his waist, staring at Greg with an expression that was rapidly shifting from confusion to something much darker.
“I—” Greg's voice stuck in his throat. “I was just—”
“Touching my gear.” Dustin's voice was flat.
“I can explain—”
“Hands off my stuff.” Dustin was out of the bed now, moving toward him. He'd pulled on jeans at some point—or maybe he'd slept in them—but his chest was still bare, and Greg could see the tension coiling through his shoulders. He could also see a set of numbers, inked just above his heart.
How many tattoos did Dustin have?
No, that was not what Greg should be thinking about right now.
Dustin stopped three feet away. His eyes dropped to Greg's hands, still frozen on the damaged cords. “How did you get in here? The door was locked.”
Greg couldn't answer. His throat had closed completely.
“Do you realize how creepy you’re being? How insane this is?”
“I wasn't—I didn't—”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Dustin’s voice turned sharp. “You’re the reason I fell.”
“I—”
“You cut my lines.” Dustin's hands had curled into fists at his sides. “Didn't you? You cut my fucking lines and you came here to—what? Check your work? Finish the job?”
“No!” Greg scrambled to his feet, backing away. “I wasn't trying to—I just wanted to understand—”
“Understand what? Why I didn't die when you tried to kill me?”
“Yes! I mean—no! I mean—” Greg's back hit the wall. Dustin was still advancing. “You weren't supposed to survive. The fall should have killed you. Nothing should have saved you from that. I needed to know why—”
“So you admit it.” Dustin sounded dangerous. “You admit you cut my lines.”
Greg opened his mouth.
He couldn’t lie.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Something shattered in Dustin's expression.
“Un-fucking-believable,” he said. “We sat in that diner last night and you ate a fucking burger and I wiped ketchup off your face and the whole time—the whole time—” Dustin shook his head. “Were you trying to think of a better way to kill me?”
“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't want to—Morrith said I had to fix it—the file was still open and I—”
Dustin took a step forward.
Greg ran.
He didn't decide to. His body simply moved, acting on survival instinct he didn't know he had, carrying him toward the door, away from the look on Dustin's face.
“Don't you fucking run from me!” Dustin was behind him, barefoot, shirtless, chasing him across the asphalt.
Greg's lungs began burning almost immediately. The morning air was cold and sharp and he was not built for running.
Unlike Dustin, who was right on his heels.
Greg forced himself to look forward.
The wall of a building loomed ahead. Greg didn't stop, couldn't stop— he ran straight through it.
One second he was in the parking lot, the next he was inside some kind of storage room, surrounded by cleaning supplies and spare linens.
He barely caught himself before crashing into a shelf.
Outside, he heard Dustin skid to a stop.
“What the…”
A long silence.
Then the sound of hands slapping against concrete.
“I saw you,” Dustin's voice came through the wall, muffled but audible. “I fucking saw you. You went right through. You…”
Another silence. Longer this time.
Greg closed his eyes.
He'd escaped. He was safe.
And he'd left behind his clipboard.
Oh no!
He'd left it in the room when he’d fled.
His company-issued documentation device. His connection to headquarters. His everything.
Gone.
Greg slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.
Outside, he heard Dustin walk away.