The Ferryman Institute (50 page)

Javrouche wasted no time getting to his feet, Charlie sprawled out before him like a red carpet. If before Alice had had a suspicion that the Inspector was being cautious because of the rifle, his eyes clearly stated that was no longer the case. He worked his jaw methodically, a proud prizefighter awaiting the bell to signal the final round. Or maybe it was just repairing itself. Alice couldn't really tell with these weirdos.

Focus
, she thought, reminding herself just where she was. She inhaled again, propping the rifle up, but the end of the barrel traced a stumbling path in the air, a drunken bumblebee trying to find its way home. There was a vague commotion behind her, but she ignored it.

Javrouche, however, did not.

With a look composed of equal parts disdain and resignation, the Inspector bolted for the door Alice and Begemot had entered from, taking off at a rather impressive pace. Alice straightened in surprise for a moment before instinct took back over, her body naturally tracking him from behind the sight as he sprinted across
the room. Her finger slipped back in front of the trigger, teasing it, waiting. Javrouche reached the door and turned.

The adrenaline pulsed to the very tips of her fingers, then seemed to evaporate, a surreal sense of calm taking control in its absence. The helter-skelter pattern of her rifle ceased, giving way to a compact figure eight. She closed her left eye and watched as the world quietly drew to a standstill. She stared into the face of the man who had tried to kill her several times over. Her index finger twitched over the trigger.

Now
, her brain shouted.
Now!

She couldn't do it.

Time resumed its normal flow, and two men rushed past her, chasing after the fleeing Inspector. “That's your man!” Charon shouted after them. “I want him brought
down
!” Alice stayed standing, letting the rifle down slowly. Then, without consciously realizing it, she quietly sat on the floor.

Moments ago, she'd had every intention of shooting Javrouche. On evidence, the bastard deserved it. And yet she saw the look on his face—the last one before he made his final escape, for what must have been only an instant in the real world—and recognized it immediately.

It was the same awful, pathetic look she had seen staring back at her in the mirror of Cartwright's apartment seconds after she'd accidentally slit her wrist.

Translated, it read:
My God, what have I done?

Once she saw that look, she knew, for good or ill, that she wouldn't be able to pull the trigger. She had discovered a small piece of herself reflected in Javrouche's expression, and suddenly, Alice had found herself pitying him. Maybe they weren't as different as she'd believed—two wayward souls who, in their own time, had seen the error of their ways. Maybe there was hope for him
yet, like there had been for her. If ever there was a person who'd come to believe in redemption, it was Alice. And so, with her mind unable to decide which choice was the right one, she'd let the Inspector go. She simply couldn't bring herself to judge him.

With Javrouche gone, a few of the remaining huddled Council members hurried to their desks, typing feverishly. They spoke in hushed tones to each other, and though Alice couldn't quite make out the words, their sense of urgency was obvious. Freya joined Cartwright and the other woman next to Melissa, the two wearing notably grim expressions as they crouched over her. Alice made a note of it, her brain taking stock in a way that made her feel like she wasn't even there. Just a casual observer, watching it all on TV from somewhere far away, wondering when the next commercial was so she could go pee.

“Don't bother,” Charlie said to Cartwright as his small group tried to revive Melissa. He'd gotten himself standing again but certainly looked worse for wear. A messy blotch of blood was smeared across the lower half of his face, a
welcome back to mortality
gift from his swollen and slightly crooked nose. When Cartwright turned, his expression one of plain anger at Charlie's words, the Ferryman flipped him a key with a note attached.

“It says I'm to be her Ferryman when she dies. She's still alive, but she's only got another hour if the ETD is anything to go by. I would just do your best to make her comfortable.” He shook his head dismally. “She walked into the room knowing she was going to die. She kept it a secret from us the whole damn time. With giving me the presidency, with everything . . .” His voice trailed off.

As Charlie moved gingerly over to Alice, Cartwright read the note. His expression changed before her eyes, his jaw slightly agape. “Good heavens. I had no idea . . . ,” he whispered.

“That makes at least two of us.” Charlie pointed in the direction that the Inspector had fled toward. “Who were those guys chasing after Javrouche?”

“They would be Charon's retinue,” Freya replied. Though she was speaking to Charlie, Freya's eyes remained fixed on Melissa as she gently stroked the injured woman's hair. “We all have an Institute member or two at our disposal. For example, Koroviev has been working with Virgil for quite some time. It's a . . . convenient way for us to circumvent the issue of directly interfering with the Institute's affairs. Unfortunately, they're not always free and available when we need them—they have positions of their own to hold. Luckily for us, it seems Charon was able to get in touch with his during your scuffle.”

Charlie put his fingers to his nose, but instantly recoiled in pain from the contact. “I'm getting the sense that there are a lot of things I still don't know the truth about around here.”

“Perhaps,” Cartwright replied. “Whilst we're on the topic of the truth behind matters, however did you know that Javrouche's gun was empty?”

“I've been wondering the same thing myself,” the dark-haired woman added. “With all due respect, that seemed like quite the gamble.” She removed her hand from Melissa's right shoulder, and Alice could see quite clearly that it was covered in blood.

“I didn't. It was only a theory. It only occurred to me after reading Melissa's note, which I didn't see until she'd been shot and my hand happened to land on the key. Right before she was shot, she told me that we weren't listed—me and Alice—and to be brave. It didn't make any sense to me at the time, but after reading the note, it felt like that's what she was driving at. If Javrouche was going to kill Alice, there would be another Ferryman here, or at the least, we would know about it on some level. So I
started thinking, what if his pistol was the same gun from back at the Tick Tock Diner? If it hadn't been reloaded since then, that meant six rounds had already been fired. Just now, Melissa was seven and I was eight. I don't know much about guns, but that's an old-looking one. I thought eight shots might be the most it could hold.”

He'd arrived in front of Alice now and offered her his hand. She gazed up at him. “So,” she said benignly, “you decided that when I had the barrel of a gun against my head was the ideal time to play Dirty Harry?”

He shrugged. “Do you want me to ask you if you feel lucky?”

“No,” she said as he helped her to her feet. “The answer to both questions is no.”

“Really?” he asked. “I'm having a hard time thinking of another person who's gotten out of so many tight situations in such a small window of time.”

“Ha-ha—you're not funny.”

Without warning, Charlie's eyes rolled to the back of his head. His body lurched forward, collapsing in a heap.

“
Charlie!”
she screamed as she threw herself on the floor next to him. She put her fingers to his neck. There was a pulse, but it felt weak. Someone else was soon kneeling across from her, and she was relieved to see it was Cartwright.

“I–I don't know what happened,” she stammered. “We were talking, he seemed fine, and . . . and . . .”

She felt his hand on her arm, and he shushed her. “It's all right, my dear, it's all right. His body is in a weakened state—it's simply not used to being mortal. Excess levels of fatigue are normal after such a process. I'm sure that, in concert with his loss of blood, just proved to be a little too much for him.”

As if to confirm Cartwright's point, no sooner had he finished
speaking than Charlie began to softly whimper. The two looked down to see him crying quietly to himself.

“Oh my God, Charlie.” She squeezed his hand. “We're getting help for you right now. How badly does it hurt?”

Charlie draped his arm over his eyes so they couldn't see his face. His quiet whimpers moved on to a rolling sob. After a few false starts, he finally managed to speak. “It's not that,” he said, voice hitching. “It's just been so long since I've felt anything . . . the pain . . . just feels so damn good. And that's just such a stupid, shitty thing to say, but fuck me, I missed it so much.”

And that was when he completely lost it.

Alice was momentarily taken aback. There was something about watching a grown man weep uncontrollably that she found inescapably heart-wrenching. However, she didn't have the faintest idea what to do. How the heck was she supposed to comfort someone who'd lived the life Charlie Dawson had? With a look of mild panic on her face, she turned to Cartwright, only to find him looking thoroughly amused. He patted her arm twice, then stood up.

“
Omnia vincit amor
,” he said in perfect Latin before he quietly and slowly walked away. The rest of the room watched from afar, seemingly content to let them have their moment.

She turned her attention back to Charlie, who lay on the ground, his chest heaving with every racking sob that worked its way out. She let her hand drift over to his face, her fingers delicately stroking his head. “Shhhh,” she whispered. “Being alive is a beautiful thing, isn't it?”

It was, wasn't it? She'd come to realize that, somewhere along the way. Sure, it had taken an unbelievable amount of luck for her to get there—the cascading set of circumstances that had led her to this point were brain-melting, to put it kindly—but she'd gotten
there in the end. Life had shown her that it still possessed the capacity to surprise her, and that made all the difference. This was her fresh beginning.

For Alice, that was enough.

Alice would always remember that moment, even years and years on. The words left her mouth, and Charlie, still covering his eyes, coughed a half sob, half laugh. She felt his hand tighten, pulling her slightly closer. Then he began to vigorously nod his head.

And that was when, without rhyme or reason, Alice somehow knew everything was going to be okay.

C
harlie had a headache. It had been a long, long time since he'd been able to say that, and frankly, there was still a sick part of him that enjoyed it. He knew that would wear off soon enough, but for the time being, he welcomed it. He did, however, miss being able to breathe out of his currently swollen nose.

He stood up behind his desk and winced at the lancing pain in his leg. With a slight limp, he began to wander slowly around the room. The space was smaller than he'd expected—he'd envisioned something more Oval Office when in reality it was more modest middle manager. To be fair, he got to keep his other office as well, so square footage wasn't an issue, but still—it was the principle of the thing. A large, if plain, brown desk was positioned in front of the entrance, two comfortable blue chairs facing it. The walls were painted a very pale yellow, a subtle shade without being drab. Several bookcases occupied space along both the back and side walls of the room, but the walls were otherwise bare.

For all Charlie's gripes, however, the presidential office did have one thing that made up for all of its other failings, and then some: a window. To be more specific, it was a massive skylight
that took up at least half of the ceiling, placed just where his eyes gravitated to when he settled into his high-backed leather chair. Beyond it was a view of outer space, and from what he understood, it always would be—a perpetual window out across the universe.

He adored it.

As Charlie stood beneath a drifting galaxy, he came to realize that it was the first time he'd really had a chance to study his new office.
Melissa's office.
His brain made the connection automatically, despite his best efforts to keep that gritty reality locked away in some unreachable recess of his mind. She was gone. In one sense, the day-to-day management Charlie had found himself suddenly thrown into was a welcome problem, seeing as it was the perfect distraction from his thoughts. Now, idle for the first time in hours, he felt the memories he'd tried to avoid come rushing back in a torrent.

THEY'D MADE MELISSA
comfortable in a spare room adjacent to the one Alice woke up in—a random tidbit Charlie learned after the fact. It was an all-too-familiar scene for Charlie, and to see someone he considered a friend be the center of it was heartbreaking. While it was true that she would have been transferring out anyway, given that she'd voluntarily passed on the presidency to Charlie, from what he'd heard, the presidential transition usually took upward of several weeks. Now, however, her departure time had been greatly accelerated.