The world came rushing back in a dizzying, chaotic flood. The howl of the wind, the distant scream of sirens growing ever closer, the cold, rough texture of the rooftop gravel under my knees. Harold Finch was gone, a dark memory swallowed by the concrete abyss. The cold, vengeful presence that had been my constant companion, my internal co-pilot of rage and sorrow, was also gone. The space she had occupied in my chest was now a hollow, echoing void. It didn't hurt. It just felt… empty. Quiet. For the first time in a month, I was completely and utterly alone in my own head.
"Alex! Get up! We have to move, now!" Kevin's voice cut through my daze. He hauled me to my feet, his grip like iron. The two security guards on the other rooftop were still frozen, staring down at the street where their boss had vanished. Their shock was our window.
"The police will be sealing this entire area in minutes," Kevin hissed, pulling me back towards the maintenance catwalk. "We can't be here when they arrive. We don't exist."
His words registered, and my survival instinct, which had been on a brief hiatus, kicked back into overdrive. We scrambled back across the narrow steel bridge, the wind trying its best to throw us into the same void that had claimed Finch. We didn't stop at the rooftop door. Kevin, with the unerring instinct of a professional fugitive, guided us through the building's service corridors, a different route this time, a maze of concrete and humming pipes. He was a ghost in his own right, navigating the unseen arteries of the skyscraper. We emerged from a ventilation access door into a back alley three blocks away, sirens wailing all around us, but no longer directly for us. We blended into the growing morning crowds, just two ordinary guys in hoodies, looking up at the flashing lights with the same feigned curiosity as everyone else.
We walked for what felt like an hour, putting as much distance as possible between us and the scene of the crime, before finally ducking into a classic, greasy-spoon diner that was open twenty-four hours a day. It smelled of old coffee, bacon, and regret—a different, more mundane kind than I was used to. We slid into a worn vinyl booth in the back corner, two refugees seeking sanctuary.
For a long time, we just sat there, the adrenaline slowly draining away, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion in its wake. I stared at the black phone on the table, rereading the final notifications from Eternity, Inc.
Primary Assignment Complete: Spirit's Regret Resolved. Reward Issued: +100 Merit Points. Balance Update: 125 Merit Points. Contract Expiration Timer: Suspended. Congratulations, Agent. You are no longer on probation.
"Suspended," I said quietly, the word feeling strange on my tongue. "Not 'terminated'. Not 'completed'. Suspended."
"You're a permanent employee now," Kevin said, nursing a cup of coffee the waitress had delivered. "You passed the interview. The probation is over. This is your life now."
He didn't say it with malice or pity. He said it as a statement of fact. My thirty-day death sentence had been commuted to a life sentence of supernatural servitude. It was, in its own way, a victory. I wasn't going to die in a week. But I was also never going back to my old life of spreadsheets and student loan anxiety. I looked back on that life now with a strange, wistful nostalgia, like remembering a boring but safe childhood.
"And Jessica?" I asked, touching my chest. The hollowness was still there. "She's… gone?"
"She's been processed," Kevin corrected, using the app's cold, bureaucratic language. "Her regret was resolved. Her anchor to this world was Finch. With him gone, her purpose was fulfilled. She was free to move on. She's probably already standing in line for her turn at reincarnation."
The thought was strangely comforting. Her story, which had been so tragically intertwined with mine, had reached its proper conclusion. She was at peace.
We sat in silence again, the sheer, crushing weight of the last twenty-four hours settling upon us. We had broken into a penthouse, been hunted by a sorcerer, witnessed a suicide, and brought a murderer to a very final form of justice. We had saved my life and freed a tortured soul. It was epic. It was profound. It was world-changing.
And I was starving.
The thought was so abrupt, so mundane, it was almost comical. But it was also the most real thing I had felt all morning. The hollowness in my chest from Jessica's departure was being rapidly replaced by a much more familiar, physical hollowness in my stomach. All the running, all the fear, all the psychic stress… it had burned through every last calorie I had.
The profound, heavy silence was broken by a loud, growling rumble. It was my stomach.
Kevin looked up from his coffee, blinked, and then a slow, tired grin spread across his face. "You know," he said. "After all that… I think I could eat an entire cow."
A wave of hysterical laughter bubbled up inside me. It was the laughter of pure, unadulterated relief. The shift in tone was so sudden, so jarring, it was perfect. The cosmic drama was over. Life, in its most basic, demanding form, was reasserting itself.
"To hell with a cow," I said, grabbing a menu. The plastic felt solid and real in my hands. "I want pancakes. A mountain of them. And bacon. And sausage. And six eggs. And hash browns. And I want to drown it all in maple syrup."
The waitress came over, a weary-looking woman with a seen-it-all expression. "You two decide, or you just gonna stare at the menus all day?"
"He'll have the Grand Slam breakfast, times two," Kevin said, pointing at me. "And I'll have the steak and eggs. And a side of chili cheese fries."
"And a chocolate milkshake," I added. "A large one."
She just nodded, scribbled on her pad, and walked away, completely unfazed. We were just two more hungry guys in a city full of them.
As we waited for our feast, I looked at my strange new partner. He had saved my life multiple times. We had faced down horrors together. And now, we were about to share a ridiculously oversized breakfast. It felt more normal, more real, than anything else that had happened.
"So what now?" I asked, my voice lighter than it had been in a month. "You go back to hunting things that go bump in the night?"
"Probably," he said with a shrug. "And you… you wait for your new bosses to give you your next assignment, I guess. The difference is, next time, you won't be a rookie. And you won't be alone."
The food arrived, a glorious, steaming, artery-clogging mountain of it. And as I dug in, I realized he was right. The probationary period was over. My life as Alex Carter, the terrified conscript, was finished. My new life, as a permanent, full-time agent of Eternity, Inc., with a hundred and twenty-five points in the bank and a monster-hunting partner on speed dial, was just beginning.
And it was beginning with pancakes.