The Ferryman Institute (20 page)

“Misplaced your proof? How inconvenient. I'm sure it's that, and not that it doesn't actually exist.”

Charlie's options were disappearing at an alarming rate.

There has to be something
, he thought, his brain whining in protest as the overtaxed gears inside were pushed beyond their limits. If it were an assignment, there would have to be a record of it somewhere, probably in the president's office. Even if Javrouche dragged him away, Charlie could request it, bring it to the attention of a Judicator, or really anyone who could put the brakes on this runaway train.

But then he remembered, with a horrifying, dawning clarity,
Melissa's recounting of her conversation with the president's representative:
As far as anyone is concerned, this assignment doesn't exist.

As soon as his brain processed that, one by one, the gears in his head ground to a halt, and his brain, wheezing and smoking, eked out a final prescient remark in its dying moments.

You're fucked, amigo.

Charlie's hand fell to his side, the obstinate swell in his chest blown out like a candle. He tried to maintain a semblance of quiet dignity, but the realization that Javrouche had finally won squeezed out what little he had left.

“I assume I don't need to explain the severity of your actions to you, Mssr. Dawson,” Javrouche said.

Charlie's lips pressed together in a thin line. He knew full well what a charge of treason meant: Purgatory, the highest form of punishment available to the Ferryman Institute, for the longest term possible. It was, in many ways, a fate worse than death.

Charlie stared at the Inspector. “How the hell do you know all this?” he asked, his voice trembling with an alchemic mix of pure astonishment and budding scorn.

“And we're back to this question, I see. It was your phone, Mssr. Dawson.” Charlie's eyes flashed. “A week ago, I met with your manager to discuss another one of your disappearing acts. She lamented the fact that there was no way of knowing where her aloof Ferryman was gallivanting off to. In response, I authorized a Privacy Consultation Override, which, among other things, let us track your every move.”

“No!” Melissa yelled. She'd somehow managed to shake her mouth free from Koroviev's grasp and was currently fighting back his attempts to regain control. “I never gave you permission to do that!”

“Technically, you're correct—you never specifically
asked
me to
bug Mssr. Dawson's phone. However, I felt, given the circumstances and your implied consent, a PCO was in order. And look where we stand now. It appears I was right to trust my instincts.”

“That's horseshit!” Melissa exclaimed. “Any additional security measures have to be approved by the president's office!”

Javrouche looked back at the manager, who was now being held by an additional guard and struggling against both men. His perpetual grin melted away, leaving his eyes to consider her with obvious disdain. “What makes you think they weren't? You should be thrilled, Mme. Johnson, that we've managed to stop your Ferryman from any more illicit activities, yet I'm getting the distinct feeling you're not.”

“Thrilled!? You're arresting my Ferryman without even consulting me! I should have been the first person notified, Inspector! This is fucking absurd!”

“Absurd?” Javrouche turned to face her. “I'd watch your tone, madame—”

But if Melissa cared for what Javrouche thought, she didn't show it. “Fuck you! You can't do this! I
know
you didn't get the president's approval! This is
clearly
a personal vendetta against Charlie. I'm shutting this down right now! This is absolute—”

“I don't care what you think!”

The silence that settled afterward reminded Charlie of the way sound vanished in the wake of thunder. When the Inspector spoke again, his voice had returned to its articulate and regulated self, but a terrible undercurrent of barely controlled fury ran just beneath it. “I. Don't.
Care.
”

Before another word could leave Melissa's lips, the Inspector grabbed a capture rifle from the hands of the nearest guard and put a round straight into her chest. Her body, racked by thousands of volts of electricity, seized and convulsed for five agonizing seconds
before she went limp in Lieutenant Koroviev's hands. Dirkley, who'd practically been a statue up to that point, gasped in horror.

Javrouche flipped the rifle back to the guard he'd poached it from as if he'd just borrowed a broom for a quick sweep.

“Very sorry for that brief interruption,” Javrouche said as he turned back to Charlie. “I believe we left off at the part where we formally take you into custody now.”

“What the hell did you just do?!” Charlie shouted. His attention flicked from his manager back to the Inspector.

“I took care of a distraction,” Javrouche replied.

It wasn't until after the unconscious form of one Melissa Johnson registered in his mind that Charlie realized he'd been pinning some vague hope on her saving his ass. Her knowledge of Institute procedure was first-rate, her negotiating skills excellent, her general approach to life pragmatic (at least, when Charlie hadn't pushed her to the brink of insanity). For all the hell he'd given her, she was unerringly reliable, and he'd believed in her ability to somehow sort this whole mess out. Now, much like his future prospects, she was nothing more than a twitching dead weight in the hands of the enemy.

Charlie took a step forward, which was instantly greeted with the forefront of the detention unit acting in kind. Time to play his last card. “I need to speak with the president. You can come with me, arrest me the second I'm done talking with him if you want. But he can vouch for me. We can get this all straightened out.” There was nothing he could do to keep the desperation out of his voice.

Javrouche merely shook his head. “Request denied.”

“This is your payback, isn't it, Inspector? After all these years, you're finally getting what you wanted. How does it feel? The man
you once considered your idol brought down by your own hands, and for what? Revenge? Damning the Institute because you feel slighted?”

The two men stood only meters apart, yet were separated by the ocean of mistakes in their past. Charlie's words clearly struck a nerve, as undeniable truths long buried often did. The look of effusive superiority that Javrouche had been maintaining with relative ease fell off like a broken mask, revealing a face of pure contempt hiding just behind it.

“You really can't handle the fact that you're finally being punished, can you? I'm simply doing my job, Mssr. Dawson. I wish I could say the same for you.”

Charlie could feel the last tenuous grip on his composure slipping, each one of Javrouche's digs having pushed it further away, until finally he was lost, screaming at the top of his lungs. “You want to know something, Javrouche?! I saved that girl today, and in two hundred and fifty years, it stands as one of the proudest things I've ever done! I saved her
life
! And if I have to be punished for that, then so fucking be it! But you can't take that away from me! No one can take that away from me!”

There was silence. And into that silence, painted on the face of Inspector Javrouche, bloomed one of the most horrible, shit-eating smirks Charlie had ever seen.

“Au contraire, Mssr. Dawson. You're right—as much as I'd like to, I cannot go back in time and change what you've done. But I can change the result. Just think . . . you can spend every moment of your sentence knowing that I'll have stopped at absolutely
nothing
to ensure that the Institute's secrecy is preserved. If that means the death of Alice Spiegel, then
c'est la vie
. At least then you, too, can finally feel what it's like to have something you tried to save slip away.”

Charlie reached into his pocket and fished out his phone, the instrument of his downfall, and hurled it at Javrouche's simpering face. It whizzed through the air, spinning end over end like a touchscreen-enabled shuriken. Javrouche simply twisted his shoulders and the phone sailed past.

“I thought I asked you to take care of that phone,” Javrouche said. He spoke with the unhurried cadence of a museum tour guide. “Maybe you'll learn to follow directions better in Purgatory. Now then: Koroviev, if you'll do me the honor, please arrest Mssr. Dawson.”

The perimeter of armed guards began to move in; the lieutenant, after carefully laying down Melissa, leading the way. Two of them crouched down and took aim with their capture rifles.

So this was the end. Charlie could see it all—his impending arrest, being hauled before a Judicator, subsequently convicted, and finally thrown into Purgatory indefinitely. There he would rot, not physically but mentally. Javrouche would see to that. What a shitty way to go.

A flurry of movement raced toward him, but Charlie ignored it. He wanted his last free moments to be focused only on the Inspector.

At least, that was the plan, until a pair of hands hit Charlie hard in the chest.

The force knocked him off balance, causing him to stumble backward. Charlie lost his footing and landed on his back with a dull thump. The stark white walls of the connecting passageway—the one he'd used to return from Alice Spiegel's bedroom—greeted him as Charlie found himself staring at the ceiling. He quickly sat up.

There, standing above him, was Dirkley.

Given Dirkley's general demeanor, it wasn't hard to see him
going relatively unnoticed by the rest of the assemblage. In the ensuing commotion, he'd managed to rush over and shove Charlie back into the passageway. With an awkward wriggle, Dirkley removed Charlie's key from the Ferryman Door, briefly holding it with an air of reverence. Charlie could see the guards racing toward them. Javrouche's voice rang out in the background with righteous fury.

A smile crossed Dirkley's face. He met Charlie's dumbfounded eyes, then slammed the door shut in Charlie's face.

A moment of blank incomprehension slowly gave way to realization. Without his key, Charlie wouldn't be able to enter the Ferryman Institute again. However, the passageway to an assignment—in this case, from the Institute to Alice's bedroom—stayed open only as long as the Ferryman Key happened to be at the end of it. Now that the door on the Institute end had been closed with the opening key on the other side, the passage had essentially been sealed shut. No one would be able to chase him using it. But Dirkley . . .

Charlie couldn't remember how long he yelled at the door. He banged and screamed at it, pounding away with an animalistic determination. At some point, tears began to roll down his cheeks, striking the floor with as much usefulness as his fists. Finally, he gave up and let himself fall onto his back against the ground. The white floor of the passageway was solid, and had he been able to feel it, Charlie imagined, it would have been very cold. He closed his eyes, and tried to remember what cold felt like.

He couldn't.

Obviously there had been a mistake. What else could it be? Just a small mix-up, a failure to communicate. Charlie would serve his punishment, but they'd clear everything else up for sure. All he had to do was leave, contact the Institute, arrange for a pickup, and
sort out this mess. In due time, he could have his career back, his perfect record, his admiration. In the long run, it would probably only cost him Alice Spiegel's life.

He didn't know how long he lay there. Eventually, Charlie picked himself up and began walking, shakily at first but with increasing determination, toward the door at the other side of the hall.

Fuck it. He was going to save the girl.

I
'm crazy. I've gone crazy.

Alice lay facedown on her bed. She'd spent the past thirty minutes considering every conceivable possibility and the one she kept returning to was insanity.

Men didn't magically show up out of thin air and talk about your dead mother, even if what they said made you all teary-eyed and nostalgic and sad and oddly . . . No, she didn't even want to think about that part. There were only two possibilities: it was a dream—
It has to have been a dream!
—or she was officially crazy. Maybe she was crazy
and
dreaming? That was a new and exciting possibility to consider, actually.

She lifted her head up slightly and looked at the palm of her hand. The spent bullet casing flashed in the light of her room. Next to it, slightly dull by comparison, was a fired nine-millimeter bullet.

Alice pressed her face back down into the bedspread.
I really, really should have just pulled the trigger the first time
, she thought.

The sound of a door opening immediately caught her attention. Her throat nearly closed when she realized that she hadn't cleaned up her room at all since the incident—her gun was still
out, the room reeked of gunpowder, and the crumpled suicide note lay casually on her desk. If her dad walked in the room right then, she was, in a word, fucked.