Chapter Forty-Two
Jackson
“ G et your hands off me!”
Lucius's hands dig painfully into my shoulder blades as he shoves me down, forcing the air out of my lungs.
“Where's the ring? Where's the bloody ring, Jackson?” Lucius mutters in my ear, but all I can think about is Millie. She's out there. I can hear the faint song of her voice as she distracts the Death Wardens. She's out there, and I'm not doing anything.
Lucius growls and searches my pockets, pulling out the ring.
“We can't leave her. I can't leave her.”
Lucius says nothing, just grabs me by the collar, and a moment later, I feel a pull behind my belly. And then we're in our office at Worship. Lucius pushes me away roughly until I'm half-lying on the settee in the corner of the room. He walks over to his desk and leans on it for support, breathing heavily.
“We need to get this … Chronica. Whatever you call it. We need a plan.”
“But Millie …”
Lucius slams his fist on the wood, making me flinch. Outside, the DJ plays a trembling bass that makes the walls feel like they're pulsating. The shadows have turned the room a deep crimson, making me feel like we're trapped inside a beating heart.
“She gave herself up to give you a chance to finish this. Stop snivelling, and let's get on with it. The quicker you do, the quicker she's free.”
I swallow, nodding thickly. Lucius is staring at me, waiting. I drag myself off the settee and stand up, brushing the hair from my eyes. I need a moment. Just a moment. Millie isn't just a thought in my head; she's the only thing that exists right now, and that's no good for me. No good for her either. I take my fears, lock them away, and then look at Lucius.
“The Chronica's on the statue, but that room is crawling with Death Wardens, and they're still searching for us. Did you take a grenade?”
Lucius dips his head in a 'do I look like an idiot' way, glaring at me. He pulls a grenade from two pockets and one from his coat.
“We could take out half the floor with those.”
“They'll figure out what we're doing? They'll know it's all a distraction?”
I shrug, moving forward to take one out of his hand. “It doesn't matter. I only need a few seconds. I'll be halfway up the statue by then …”
Lucius frowns. “But how …”
“I'm going to break into Death's office.”
“That's not possible. You're not thinking straight.”
I close my eyes. My heart throbs painfully, my mind whirls so fast that I can't keep up. When I open them, Lucius is watching me curiously.
“Do you trust me?” I whisper.
He exhales, groaning deeply as runs his hand over his face. “Yeah … god knows why, but, yeah, I do.”
“I know a way. I'll climb up the statue from his office. I just need a distraction for when I get to the atrium.”
“We won't have a lot of time. Are you sure about this?”
“I know. And I am.”
I throw the grenade in the air. Lucius catches it, glaring at me. Focusing on the plan silences my thoughts, makes things clearer.
“Jackson …” he grumbles.
“You ready?”
“Always … what's the plan?”
I swallow, my mind still with her, and how wrong I feel without her … and this is how I'll feel for the rest of time if I lose her. I shake off the feeling and focus on the small metallic balls sitting in Lucius's hands, waiting.
“You didn't really like your job, did you?”
Everything is a big if. Would such an obvious distraction fool the Death Wardens? Would we get long enough? What if I was wrong? What if the Chronica wasn't in the statue?
And the biggest question of all—can I get into Death's office?
These were the questions I was ignoring as I gripped the ring tight, thinking of Lucius's desk. And a moment later, we're there. With one quick nod, Lucius turns, running deeper into the archives while I make my way down a long onyx corridor splintered with lightning shards of white as the Death realm continues to collapse. Debris floats around, reality itself crumbling. Soon, it will take us all with it. I reach the end and race down a dark staircase leading to the basement. To Death's domain. My feet clang heavily on the gilded steps. The deeper I go, the heavier and mustier the air grows.
At the bottom of the steps, I walk out into the long hallway, darkened with only the faintest glow from the flickering lamplight. Marble statues of the Ghouls, shattered and crumbling, hang from the walls. The hallway is like a snake sliding its way around the underground of the building, and everything down here is so much worse than upstairs, as if the closer we get to Death's office, the closer we get to the end of the universe. The cracks in reality are now entire walls missing, leading to black nothingness. Rubble floats before me, so dense I can barely make my way through. I push past floating chairs and chunks of marble.
I keep light on my toes, running forward. I hear footsteps approaching, an echoing drumbeat through the hallway. The Temple is straight ahead. I move quicker, heading towards one of their great marble pillars.
A couple of Death Wardens storm past, and I slip behind the marble structure, keeping my breathing silent. They look around, their eyes scanning the dark, but between the persistent cracking of walls and the noises from overheard, they miss my hushed breaths.
I wait until their footsteps have long faded before turning around. Everything in the Temple is in the air: chairs, desks, typewriters, scattered pages. No Ghouls and no Carmel. The heart of Scythe is no more, just an echo, a whisper of what it was. Above my head, the grand cathedral ceiling, the imposing glass structure, has shattered. The shards float around me, shimmering like glitter. A thunderstorm of violets and crimson rages above. Flashes of lightning bleach the room of colour, followed by the echoing bellow of thunder. Taking a deep breath, I turn away, continuing my search.
I find what I'd been looking for about half a mile down the hall—the door to Death's office. I swallow down my fears, ignoring the locking of my limbs. How even my body doesn't want to step forward. How my footsteps seem too loud, seem to echo across the cosmos. I walk forward. Existence itself feels like it's watching me through the gaping cracks in the walls, through missing chunks of the ceiling. And as I get closer, I can feel it, like I felt the ravens, like I felt time in the stairwell. It's a tugging sensation. Pulling me closer, moving through me the way my blood pumps through my veins.
I reach the end of the hallway, Death's door in sight and then … it just stops, as if something has ripped away the rest of the hallway and what used to be the glass dome. Wood, glass and stone—all shredded into pieces, hanging limply as the floor below my feet gives way to nothing. To an empty expanse of onyx and violet. More glass shimmers around me, merging with the glow of the stars. The Universe, in all its glory, quivers above and below me. I gulp hard, feeling the icy sensation of oblivion trickling down my spine.
Like before, I don't want to know if I can walk through that door. But now, I have no choice but to find. Death's door hovers a few feet before me. No walls, no floor—I have to jump. Bending my knees, I swear under my breath as the blood crashes through my veins. I'm panting, great gulps of icy air that burns in my lungs. And then I leap. I slam into the door, holding on as the lack of gravity tries to keep me shifting forward. I quickly grip the doorframe, and before I can think about anything else, I put my hand on the gilded handle and pull it down. My body dangles into nothing as I hang off the handle. At first, there's resistance. I stop breathing, and the handle rattles slightly as my hand shudders from the effort to hold on.
There's a click. A sound I'd heard faintly before. One I'd written off before I'd even really allowed myself to process it. But it's not really the door that unlocks. It's me. I feel something inside twist, open up. It’s me accepting a truth I never wanted to know, a reality I never wanted to be a part of. And then I push through the door and throw myself in.
Death's office is still in one piece despite looking like nothing but a door from the outside. The room is more matte blackness, and so is every piece of furniture, every velvet curtain that drapes over arched windows into an abyss. Only books provide any colour, every window-less part of the office is crammed with books from across time. I try to ignore the ones I don't recognise, knowing without knowing that they came from a time not yet passed. The room is enormous, though the base of the statue takes up most of the circular space. I walk forward, glancing up. There's a person-wide gap between the statue and the ceiling, giving me a glimpse upwards into the world above. The statue rises upwards, soaring through floor after floor. The top levels are gone now, just rubble and an imposing chasm into blackness. I can hear screams and yells coming from the atrium. Swallowing hard, I focus. I need to speed up. Behind the statue, pressed against more windows into the universe, sits Death's desk. A replica of War's except for the colour—it's entirely in black.
I think of the last time I was in here. Of Death sitting at that desk, sweat peppering his brow. The quiver in his voice. My own rising rage as he spat out truth after truth that I'd never wanted to know and wanted to face even less.
My heart falters when I see it on his desk—a photo in a frame. This is the first time I've seen it from this angle. I'd only ever seen the back of the frame, never the photo it contained. I move towards it like it's calling to me, like everything else has halted. The world wasn't ending, and it was just me and this moment. I pick up the silver frame and turn it around to stare at the picture. So old, so faded. The air chills and memories turn to senses. A smell, a taste, a sound. I'm not here. I'm somewhere far away and long ago.
I hadn't seen her face in so long.
Shaking my head, I tear myself forcibly back to the present, noticing how my body has frozen, how everything in me has stilled. I focus again on why I am here, on all the people who need me to succeed. Lucius, Thomas, Jeanette, the people of Scythe and a world of mortals descending into misery and chaos. And Millie, above everyone and everything else, I was doing this for her. My fists clench, imagining what could have happened to her after the Death Wardens had dragged her away.
I check my phone. I have three minutes to climb into the atrium. Composed of marble, Death's statue is too smooth to climb easily, but the crumbling of reality meant the statue was falling apart, providing plenty of fissures in the smooth stone. I circle the base, searching for the best spot to start. Groaning as my fingers curl into a coarse cavity, I pull myself up off the ground and climb up the statue. Above my head, what feels like miles and miles above, the dark effigy of Death rises into the collapsing floors of Scythe, right into a horror show I never thought I'd experience again. A nightmare of guns, fire and violence that tears at my nerves, makes my teeth clench. But this was it. This was my one chance to make every wrong right.
One minute.
I'm hanging from the statue, my arms burning, my fingers slippery with blood from where the rough surface had ripped off my skin. I'm panting hard, the sweat dripping down my face and into my eyes, making it difficult to see. Clinging to the rough surface where a chunk of Death's cloak has shattered to the ground, I wait. I'm at eye level with the atrium floor, and so far, no one in the disarray has noticed me. The swirling smoke, flashing white cracks and pained screams are distracting the Death Wardens well enough. A group of frightened-looking people in suits keeping low try to make a run for the exit, hoping to take the door outside. When they're close, the Death Wardens appear, firing weapons, and I hear screams.
Ten seconds. It's showtime.
I close my eyes and stare up at my goal. Just another innocuous piece of statue, hidden in plain sight for all of Scythe to see. Where else would Death keep a device that contained a copy of one of his greatest powers?
The same place where he kept the real power.
Death's statue featured him wearing a tiny scythe pin, too small to be a real part of the design. I’d wondered for years why it wasn’t in proportion with the rest of the enormous figure. It's black like the rest of the statue, but look hard, and you can see the material is slightly different. It's not marble but some kind of metal. I didn't know how it worked, but I knew that was it. I just knew.
Three. Two. One. BOOM.
The roar cuts through the din of the room, and the force of the grenades erupting in the archive wing shakes the ground. Red and gold flames flash through the doorway, licking from the ground to the ceiling. Ash and chemicals burn the back of my throat. The heat smashes into me like a wave crashing against the shore. The Death Wardens all freeze. They leave, the leader instructing one to stay behind and guard the group of prisoners huddled in the back. I curse but leap up, finding another hole in the statue and scuttling up that black structure as fast as my body can carry me. I search out hole after hole, vaulting to cover the distance, ignoring the roaring of my pulse, the burning of my limbs and the scolding heat in my palms.
I jump up as high as I can, my fingers seeking rough points in the smooth marble to grip. As I make my way up to the pin, I can see shining in the light, a little different from the flat gleam of the marble. Through the smoke, through the chaos, I see them. Standing still, staring right at me. A Death Warden has spotted me.
“Hey!” He fires his weapon.
As marble crashes over my head, I duck. Glancing up, I see the pin is still clinging on. I keep climbing, grateful for the unevenness in the marble that makes up the fabric of Death's cloak. The Death Warden fires again, and I can hear him mumble into his radio.
I'm out of time.
He shoots again, and this time, he hits a spot just below the pin. It's right above my head, and as the marble crumbles onto me, I slip. I fall for what seems forever—time seems to still as I plummet to the ground. I hit an assortment of tables, which crumble under me. Pain shoots through my back. I'm coughing, the wind knocked out of my lungs, but then I see it, a little away from me. The pin flickering in the light of the flames. I scramble towards it, ignoring the sounds of stamping feet and yelling as they approach.
My hands reach for the pin. I pluck it from the ground, slipping it into my rolled-up sleeve. Someone presses a heavy boot into my spine. The same foot then kicks me hard in the ribs, spinning me over until I'm on my back. I grunt from the impact, jagged pain shooting up my torso.
When I look up, through a haze of smoke and dust, I see the Death Wardens gathered around. Behind them, the flames from the lingering explosion reflect in the slick blackness of their armour. I hear a grunt and see two Wardens half-carrying, half-dragging Lucius into the room. He looks dazed and dusty and is wearing a nasty red gash on his head. Lucius meets my eye, his face grim.
The Death Warden drags me up by my arms until I'm weakly standing on my feet.
Behind him, more heavy footsteps as the Death Wardens bring in more prisoners. I look up, and then there she is, Millie, followed closely by Jeanette. Millie's eyes meet mine, and I feel like I can finally breathe. She's here, and whatever they do to me, I'm not afraid anymore. He punches me in the stomach, and I hear her cry out. I double over, coughing and spluttering onto the ground.
More footsteps come forward, quieter, slower.
“Always so theatrical, Jackson.”
I can't look up because I recognise that voice. And looking up will make it true.
The Death Warden yanks me up, so I'm standing straight, forced to watch as he slowly approaches. His smile is sly, but his face is waxy and tight.
“Thomas. What have you done?”