by Gina Damico
She put her feet on top of his. “You did the right thing.”
He sighed. “No, I didn’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He leaned forward. “Lex, every single day since I did what I did to them, I have regretted it.”
“What?”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he said, shaking his head. “No matter what they’d done to me, it wasn’t my job to punish them. I should have told someone at school what was going on, gotten them arrested or something. Not killed them.”
He ran a hand through his hair, spraying Lex with water droplets. He’d become solid so gradually, she hadn’t even noticed. “That joy that I initially felt?” he said. “It didn’t last. On the ride to Croak, this bottomless dread sank in that was so dark and excruciating I thought I was going to drop dead myself, fall right off of Mort’s motorcycle. Like I said yesterday out on that lake, it felt like a part of my soul had gone bad, so full of evil that it rotted. And I’ve felt that way ever since, like there’s a gangrenous part of me that no one can see, but I’ll always know it’s there.”
Lex was still rationalizing, as per usual. “Okay. First of all, you were acting in self-defense. And second of all, they were monsters!”
“Self-defense? I shot my father point-blank, execution-style. That’s not self-defense, Lex, and you know it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “I have hated myself for this. No matter what they’d done to me or how much they deserved it, taking people’s lives is wrong. It felt wrong. And I guess I flipped out over all those people you Damned because seeing you repeat that same mistake only reminded me of how horrible my own was.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” she insisted, though the look on his face put doubt in her voice. “And besides, I went after people who were just like your parents—the awful people in the world who deserved to be punished.”
“Lex. Think about it. You Crash in to that crime scene and see a man dead on the ground with five—five—bullet holes in him and a grinning boy standing over him with a gun. What would you do?”
Her breath caught.
“You’d Damn that kid in a second,” he answered for her.
Lex stared at him, numb.
Yes, she thought. I probably would.
“And you wouldn’t even know why he’d done what he’d done. Or that he’d been the innocent one all along until those crucial last moments. Context matters, Lex. That’s why you can’t be judge, jury, and executioner. Humans make mistakes, which is why humans shouldn’t be allowed to make those sorts of calls in the first place. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Lex just stared at the ground, her brain all but fried.
Driggs let the silence happen. He grabbed her hands and squeezed them. They sat, quiet, the sound from the fluorescent lights echoing the tumultuous buzzing in their heads.
Lex spoke first. “No more Damning,” she said quietly. “I promise. Not even in the height of—battle, I guess, or whatever this mess is that I’ve gotten us into. I don’t want to damage the Afterlife any more than I already have, and . . . and you’re right,” she said, relenting. “It’s not my call.”
A small smile crept onto his face. “I’m right?” he said. “Did I hear that correctly? Can I get it in writing?”
She grinned back. “Don’t push it.” She rubbed his knuckles, the skin mottled with what she assumed were more scars. “Have you ever gone looking for them in the Afterlife?”
He visibly shuddered. “No. Hell no.”
She squeezed his hand again without even meaning to. It was the way he looked as if he were dangling off a cliff. She had to hold on to keep him from falling.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I dunno. It’s hard to talk about. And I felt like a hypocrite, with all the shit I gave you. Plus, I wasn’t sure if you’d . . .”
Lex frowned as he trailed off. “What?”
He tensed up. “Be horrified. Never talk to me again.”
Lex nearly laughed in his face. After all the things she’d done, he was worried about her dumping him?
She smooshed his cheeks between her hands. “Here’s the deal, you nutball,” she said. “I love you. I don’t care what you did in the past, because it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you’ll do in the future, because that won’t matter either. Lord knows you’ve given me the same sort of leniency. I’ll always love you. And I’m—”
“Going to fix me,” he said, smirking. “I know. You’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
Lex leaned in further to kiss him. She let go of him for a second, though, to try to move closer—and when she did, he slammed right back into transparency.
“Sorry.” He reddened, then gave her a rueful half smile. “This doesn’t usually happen, I swear.”
Lex tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite make it out of her throat. “It’s getting harder to stay solid when I’m not touching you, isn’t it?”
His jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
A voice reverberated down the hallway—possibly Ferbus, and possibly something about making sure the lovebirds were using protection.
Driggs rolled his eyes. “Well, we should probably go put a stop to that. Plus I don’t want to get eaten by rodents of unusual size, or whatever it is that guards these creepy hallways.”
Lex agreed. They got to their feet and started walking.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said after they’d gone a few paces.
“Thank you for not vomiting in disgust,” he replied. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told besides Mort.”
“So he just showed up, huh? Out of nowhere?”
“As is his way. Guess he used his little radar thingy. Except—” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Except there were no little locator triangles anywhere near where I grew up.”
Lex frowned. That was strange. “And he just—what? Told you to come with him?”
“Yeah. After having a debate with himself about whether or not I was too young. I guess the pro side won out, so I went.”
“And your parents didn’t object,” Lex said, repeating what Driggs had told her when she’d asked if they had a problem with him leaving. They were a little too dead to object.
“But why did he take you, when you were two years younger than the normal Junior age?” she asked, something nudging around inside her brain. “Obviously you had the requisite, um, talents—but if you didn’t show up on the locator and you were only fourteen, why did he bother to show up in the first place?”
Driggs shrugged. “I’ve always wondered that myself, but never asked. Never talked about it again. Never even found out who Killed and Culled them.”
Lex looked at him. “You think it was Uncle Mort?”
Driggs stopped cold. He just blinked at her, the answers to so many questions finally clicking into place. “Whoa. I never thought of that.”
“I bet he saw you during his shift, then came back for you later on that night.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Uncle Mort’s got an entire Home Depot’s worth of screws loose. Who knows why he does anything he does?”
“Yeah.” He started to walk again, but his eyes were still blinking, not really focusing on the hallway in front of him. “Who knows.”
***
They needn’t have worried about Ferbus teasing them when they rejoined the group. He’d already moved on to whining.
“You said the escalators and elevators were off-limits to us, right?” he asked Skyla. She had opened another door, beyond which was a metallic spiral staircase so tall they couldn’t see the top. “So that means—”
“Stairs it is,” Skyla said, chipper. “And the floors here are slightly taller than those in normal buildings—”
Ferbus assumed a hyperventilating position, his hands on his knees. “Oh no,” Skyla said, concern splashing across her face. “Is he anemic? Clinically asthmatic?”
“No,” Uncle Mo
rt said, thwacking Ferbus on the head as he started climbing the stairs. “Just lazy.”
“Clinically lazy!” Ferbus wheezed.
They went slowly, at least. Uncle Mort and Skyla were up at the front of the pack, talking in low whispers. Occasionally a giggle would flutter down the staircase. An honest-to-God giggle. From Uncle Mort.
“This is too weird,” Lex said to Driggs, suppressing another gag. “I mean, are they a thing? Have they been going out underneath our noses the whole time?”
Driggs shrugged. “I’ve never heard anything about her before,” he said, then added in a sour voice, “but we all know how good Mort is at keeping secrets.”
“They just seem so . . . close. What was all that business about the pool table?”
“I think the less we know about the pool table, the better.”
“Since it’s not remotely any of your business,” Uncle Mort said from up ahead, “I’m inclined to agree.”
Lex cringed. “How does he do that?”
“Skyla and I,” Uncle Mort said, loud enough for the whole group to hear, “have been friends for many years. Ever since we were Juniors, as you were so cleverly able to discover. Since we’re not able to meet in person very often, we’re enjoying the opportunity to catch up a bit. If that’s all right with you, Your Excellency.”
Lex scrunched up her nose. She wanted to argue, but he was being perfectly reasonable. She hated when he did that.
But there was something niggling inside of her—not jealousy, exactly. She didn’t own Uncle Mort; he was an adult, free to have himself a lady friend if he wanted to. It was just that ever since she’d come to Croak, she’d been the only real family in his life, and they’d grown quite close, and it’s not that she was opposed to sharing him, but—
Okay, it was jealousy.
“How did you get away with it, anyway?” she said even louder than before as they continued up the spiral staircase. She could at least be distracting. That was maybe her best talent of all. “I mean, you guys smashed a jellyfish tank. Isn’t that a felony?”
Uncle Mort and Skyla exchanged irritated yet resigned glances, as they were trapped on a spiral staircase with these kids and the only real way to dodge any questions would involve hurling themselves over the railing. Though judging by Uncle Mort’s face, he was giving it some serious consideration.
“We were acquitted,” he explained, “of all charges.”
“What? How?”
“Because only one of us took the blame.”
“The thing is,” Skyla jumped in, “the mission was a failure. The president considered it an act of terrorism, not a wake-up call. As soon as we four figured out which way the foul winds were blowing, we made a decision: Three of us would apologize for our crimes, citing brainwashing or Amnesia or whatever would get us off the hook, and thus remain in the Grimsphere so that we could continue to secretly take down the system from within.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was thicker. “And the other would confess everything, claim that they worked alone, and get the full brunt of the punishment—which turned out to be exile and a full memory wipe of everything having to do with the Grimsphere’s existence.”
Lex had inched up closer to the front of the pack; she could see that Skyla was struggling not to cry.
“The one whose face was covered in the photo,” Lex said, remembering. “That’s the one who took the fall?”
“Her name was Abby. The brains of the whole organization.” Uncle Mort’s footfall on the stairs seemed to get a little heavier. “Smashing the tank was all her idea. The rest of us were behind it, one hundred percent, but it was her baby. And when it all went bad, she decided that she had to be the one to take the fall.”
Lex considered this. Getting exiled and memory wiped was harrowing, but it sure was preferable to the Hole.
But she didn’t want to think about the Hole again, ever. “Okay, but that still doesn’t explain how you got elected, especially with such damaged reputations.”
“You know the expression ‘keep your friends close and your enemies even closer’?” Uncle Mort said. “Well, the president might as well have it tattooed across her forehead. After we all graduated to the Senior level, split up across the cities, and decided to run for office, she actually encouraged people to vote for us, gave all three of us her full endorsement. She knew we were planning something.”
Skyla grinned. “The woman isn’t completely stupid.”
“The problem is that the Grimsphere’s opinion is split,” Uncle Mort said. He was talking to Lex as an adult now; she liked when he did that. “There are some who have remained loyal to us mayors, who believe what we’re saying and agree that something needs to change. But they do so quietly, without attracting the wrath of people on the other side—like Norwood and Heloise and the president, who are more concerned with preserving their way of life than salvaging the life that comes after. But we happen to think our cause is important—because, you know, it’s saving the goddamn Afterlife and all—and so, yes, we are willing to take some drastic measures to accomplish our goal. And the president knows it.”
“Hang on,” said Driggs, who’d joined Lex up in the front and was trying to follow this just as intently as she was. “So the president knows we’re trying to destroy the portal?”
“Oh, definitely,” said Skyla. “She knows full well what we’re trying to do. She might even have told Norwood.”
“You sort of left that part out before,” Driggs said.
“But what they don’t know is how many allies we have around the Grimsphere, internationally. They don’t know the full scope of our plan. And they don’t know that in less than twenty-four hours, Knell will no longer be president.”
The Juniors gaped at one another. “I thought you said we weren’t going to kill the president!” Lex screeched.
Uncle Mort and Skyla rolled their eyes. “We’re not going to kill the president,” he said. “We’re just going to overthrow her.”
“But . . . won’t a lack of leadership cause even more problems?”
“Oh, there won’t be a lack,” Uncle Mort said as they reached a landing. “The Grimsphere government works a little differently than the American government. We don’t have vice presidents, but there’s still a line of succession. If the president becomes incapacitated or is rendered unable to fulfill the duties of the office, the presidency automatically goes to the runner-up candidate in the most recent presidential election.”
“And who is that?”
But he wasn’t listening to her. He was looking at the door they’d stopped at, and so was Skyla.
“Here’s our next stop,” she said, entering the code into the keypad. The light switched from red to green. “And where we part ways.”
“Oh, good,” said Elysia as the Juniors filed into the hallway behind Skyla. “So this is where we’re going to die.”
Lex could tell that Uncle Mort had no intention of answering her question. But as she followed the other Juniors inside, she kept her eyes on him, especially since he had such a funny look on his face. He was avoiding her gaze, even giving Pandora a smirk as she passed him, but Lex had seen that look many times before. The one that meant he was holding in a really, really big secret.
But his being next in line for the presidency may have been his biggest one yet.
10
Elysia worriedly grabbed Lex as they made their way down the long green hallway. Two doors were at the end of it—one labeled HUB, the other blank. “What are we supposed to do now?” Elysia asked. “Do you think they’ve found the unconscious guards yet?”
Skyla laughed. “Oh, hell no. When they find the guards and realize you’re loose in the building, you’ll know it.”
Elysia squeezed Lex’s arm tighter. “Yeah. The bullet through my heart will probably be a pretty good clue.”
“Here we are!” Skyla said, gesturing to a brightened wall. “Front row seats!”
As the Juniors got closer, they
saw that the right-hand wall up ahead wasn’t a wall at all. It was a piece of rectangular glass that stretched about nine feet wide. The Juniors ran up to look through it, then ducked down.
“There are people down there!” Lex hissed. “They saw us! They looked right at us! They—why are you not panicking?” she asked as Skyla leaned over Lex’s crouched form and peered through the glass.
“It’s a one-way mirror,” Skyla explained. “They can’t see us, but we can see them.”
“Oh.”
Feeling dumb, Lex stood back up and looked through the glass at the hub below. Spread out across a space the size of a hockey arena was a sea of activity not unlike the one found on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In one section, Ether Traffic Controllers sat at their Smacks and typed, but these people were nothing like the relatively quiet and studious employees in Croak and DeMyse; every one of the Necropolitan Etceteras was shouting instructions—at each other, at Field Grims about to go out on their shifts, and at the director, or the man Lex assumed to be the director. He was leaning against the front of his desk atop a raised platform, his arms crossed as he surveyed the action below. Flat screens on the walls displayed a list of constantly updating times, like an airport departures board—probably those of the Field Grims out on their shifts. Wires from the Smacks connected to a jellyfish tank that took up a floor-to-ceiling section of the wall; the tank was at least triple the size of those in Croak and DeMyse. Combined.
Another area of the cavernous room was clearly the Field, where the Grims scythed in and out to their targets—but unlike the literal Field found in Croak, it was a maze of cubicles. Lex watched as pairs of Grims found their way into empty stalls, picked up phones to confirm their departures with the Etceteras, then swiped their scythes through the air and disappeared into the ether.
A glass room shrouded in spiderwebs had to be the Lair, and yet another space was reserved for the tunnels, of which there were several; and therefore, no single line of Grims waited to make their deposits. Each team returning from a shift simply chose one of the many available circles set into the wall, opened the little door, and sent the Vessels on their way to the Afterlife, the entrance to which was conspicuously missing.
