Chapter Two
Jackson
I walk out of my door and into the cavernous cathedral-shaped space that is the heart of Scythe HQ. Everything, including the enormous pillars ahead of me, is made of light-sucking matte black stone. Depictions of Death and his creation of Scythe are carved into walls so high I can barely make out the images. The semi-circle of desks at the back is equally impressive, all decorated in elegant highlights of gold. A team of receptionists dressed in black blazers and severe haircuts are greeting the various visitors and staff with raised eyebrows and tight lips.
Ahead of me and as tall as the building itself, hundreds of feet high, all in black marble, is the statue of Death himself. Each floor of Scythe is effectively just a balcony wrapped around Death's inescapable form. His cloak drapes elegantly around his bony form; his skull face stares down at me. It never fails to send a shiver down me. And a pang of rage.
At the bottom, hanging as high as can be reached by the ladder perched on the side of the statue, are thousands of missing posters. A hundred or more distinct faces, human and animal, all belonging to one entity. All the faces of Death.
Walking closer, I take a deep look into a pair of steel-grey eyes, drawing me forward. Icy fingers seem to drag their nails up my spine. I drag my attention away, shaking my head.
“Still gone, Frank?”
Frank, my favourite security guard, steps down from the ladder to stand by my side, a dozen or so posters still in his hand. His beige uniform strains across his belly, sweat beads on his forehead, and he's panting hard.
“Yup.” His deep voice is gravel in my ear. “We're near three weeks now. Boss's never been gone away this long before. I'm getting a little of the nervous belly about it. Everybody is.” He glances over at me and takes me in from head to toe, narrowing his eyes as he does. “Except you. Nothing fazes you, does it, Jax?”
It sounds like an accusation rather than a compliment.
“He'll come back. He'll be back in his office, scaring the shit out of trainees before you can say M.I.A.” I laugh a little too loud and slap Frank on the back.
He shrugs and starts mumbling to himself. Frank keeps grumbling as he walks away.
Dragging my eyes away from Death and ignoring the gnawing feeling in my gut, I head towards a row of a dozen black and glass lifts and step inside the nearest empty one. It's time for my debrief.
“And this one?”
I sigh, tilting my head slightly to the side. In front of me, a thousand tiny coloured beads hover in the air. They merge and blend, shifting into a new image. The beads assemble into the shape of a tree, a thick brown trunk with deep green leaves hanging from its branches. The same shade as her eyes. I gulp, my concentration gone.
“Jackson?”
Millie.
“Ummm … a tree?”
Thomas chuckles and types rapidly on his laptop from the corner of the room.
I'm squirming in the dentist-style chair, trying to get comfortable, but I'm itching to get out of here. The dark room is stuffy, and I'm fighting a losing battle against my heavy eyelids. Debriefs take hours, but we're on the last portion of the Cognitive and Emotion Equilibrium test—word association. Associating a tree with the word tree is not the response he's after.
“This one?”
The tree shimmers and transforms before my eyes into an old-fashioned-looking camera – the kind a certain girl with a passion for photography might use. It hovers in the air before me.
Millie.
“Photo,” I say a touch too quickly.
Thomas raises an eyebrow at me and goes back to typing. Narrowing my eyes, I try to focus on the hovering image ahead of me and not the memory of flicking through Eva's file, the photos of Millie scorching my fingertips.
“We done yet?” I ask, my frustration building.
“All …” Thomas taps a few keys, and the beads disperse to the ground, jangling against the marble floor. I look down and watch them gather themselves up, roll across the floor and up the wall where they neatly rearrange themselves into the Scythe logo—Death's scythe and his raven. They fall still. “… done.”
The lights turn on in the room, and my chair lifts until I’m sitting up straight. It takes a moment for my eyes and body to adjust to the sudden shift.
Thomas spins his chair, the wheels squeal across the floor, and then he’s sitting beside me.
“OK, Jax. How do you think you did?” He looks at me like this is another part of the test, even though we both know the test is over, that I failed and that my failure will shortly travel up to my Team Leader’s office.
“That was a one hundred, maybe a ninety-nine, but definitely one of my best.”
“You failed. You gotta sixty-two.”
I groan and turn my body so my legs are dangling off the chair and skimming the floor.
“Sixty-two, huh?”
“Yup. You failed.”
“Any chance that could stay between us? I mean, I haven't failed in almost …”
“Twenty years.” He interrupts, twisting to check his screen briefly.
“Exactly.” I shrug and send him a winning smile, not because I think it will change his mind but because it's not in my nature to give up without a fight. Thomas shakes his head, pushing his strawberry-blonde hair away from his face.
“If it'd been any longer, I may have needed to refer you, anyway. No fails can be just as concerning as too many, more so in my experience.”
Exhaling heavily, I get off the chair, adjusting my clothes as I avoid his penetrating stare. I know what he's saying, and I know the truth in it, but I don't want to hear it.
When you fail, it means your shift has affected you. Your emotions and your mind have not returned to an even state. Too emotional too frequently, and they worry you'll start being unable to perform, that you'll let souls who need to pass over live. That you won't follow Death's plan.
If you never fail, though, that means you're switching off to do what you're doing. People who've grown cold, to whom death is no longer meaningful. Then maybe you'll start taking the lives of others just because you can. People who weren't supposed to pass over yet.
I'm a million miles away from that, but I can't pretend to say that after a hundred years, a part of me hasn't numbed to it. I like to pretend it's because I believe so much in what I do, but that's not entirely true.
“Come on, mate. You know the grief I'm going to get from Jeanette? I'm good.” I tug on my collar, meeting Thomas's eye, but he just shoots me a shark-tooth grin. He's one of my oldest friends and knows me too well to believe the crap that just came out of my mouth. “I just need a break. How about me, you and Lucian hit the bar? We have some drinks, talk to some pretty girls …”
“Absolutely, but I'm reporting it,” he murmurs. “Nice try.”
He turns back around, typing rapidly. I walk up across the room until I'm standing behind him. Most of Scythe looks modern, all shimmering glass and slick-lined furniture. When Death created it, he designed it to shift with the times, to adjust to the places we saw in the mortal realm. But not Thomas's office. It still looks like something from a 1950s monster movie—all cobwebs, dusty shelves, beakers, and brass instruments.
“What are you cooking up this time?”
Thomas became a reaper a few decades before me, but he didn't stay on the ground long. Some people don't. Death doesn't always select those he thinks will make good reapers; he selects them for their talents, like Thomas's understanding of the human mind.
He twists on his chair, smirking up at me. He picks up a vial filled with sand—it shimmers like pink glitter in the shadowy space.
“A little while ago, before he took his extended holiday … Death asked me to look into dreams, you know, prepare people for passing over with a few nice, pleasant dreams leading up to the big shiny door day. Check this out. He got some of his brother's sand.”
“That's Hypnos's sand?” I say in surprise. You can go into people's dreams?” Death has more siblings than there are days in the year, and each one, like him, personifies something essential to reality as we know it. Hypnos handles sleep and dreams.
“Yes. The Dream realm and Death realm sit pretty much side by side. With this, it's as easy to pass through as walking through a waterfall, and then you can just …”
He turns back around swiftly.
“Stop trying to distract me.” He mumbles into the keyboard and presses down dramatically on the return key. I hear that familiar swoosh, and I groan. “It won't work. The report's gone.”
“Dammit. You're a terrible friend.”
“Actually, I'm a great friend. I'm saving you from yourself.”
Gathering myself, I slap Thomas on the shoulder and head to the door. As my hand grips the handle, I hear the squeak of the chair. When I twist, I see Thomas looking at me. His lip quirked curiously.
“It was the girl, wasn't it? I saw her file.”
I feel my body stiffen, my throat tighten, and I focus on straightening my coat and keeping my face neutral.
“Does it matter?” I say finally, “She's just a girl. Another mortal. I'll forget her face by tomorrow.”
“There are some girls, and then there are some girls. And they will always matter. From the moment you meet them, they never stop mattering. They get under your skin, bury their way into your life, your future and from that moment on, everything you are belongs to them. Even you can't be immune to that, Jax, however much you try.” His face is unusually shadowed and heavy. He scratches his chin, and then the lazy smile returns.
I exhale dramatically, leaning against the door frame.
“Well, thanks for the therapy, doc. You win. I'm seeing Jeanette now, OK?”
“Good boy. You're her favourite, you know? You're everyone's favourite. You'll be fine.”
He twists back around, facing his laptop and beakers, and experiments once again.
“Arsehole.”
He flips me the finger, and I laugh as I leave.
Stepping out of the door, my grin fades as I close the door behind me. With a defeated exhale, I head to the lifts, preparing myself for what's to come.