The Eternal Solutions building looked like any other corporate tower on Fifth Avenue. Glass and steel, forty floors of boring beige offices where people pretended to sell life insurance.
Only the top ten floors knew what we really did.
I rode the express elevator to the thirty-eighth floor, my hospital scrubs earning weird looks from the few night-shift employees still around. Didn't matter. By tomorrow morning, everyone would know about my screw-up anyway.
The elevator dinged softly. Marcus Void's office took up half the floor—all black marble and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park. The man himself sat behind a desk that probably cost more than most people's cars.
"Raven." He didn't look up from his computer screen. "Please, sit."
I stayed standing. "Sir, about the Morrison assignment—"
"Sit." His voice carried that edge that made smart people shut up and do what they were told.
I sat.
Marcus finally looked at me. He appeared maybe forty-five, but I knew he'd been around way longer than my three centuries. Black hair, black eyes that sometimes flashed red when he was pissed. Tonight, they just looked tired.
"Tell me what happened."
"I don't know." The words came out rougher than I meant. "Everything was normal. Standard collection protocol. Then I touched Morrison's wrist and..."
"And?"
"Pain. In my chest. Like something was fighting back."
Marcus leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked softly. "Fighting back. Interesting choice of words."
"That's what it felt like."
"And Morrison?"
"Alive. Getting better, actually. His vitals improved after I... after I couldn't complete the collection."
"Hmm." Marcus opened a drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder. "Tell me, Raven, how long have you worked for this company?"
"Three hundred years. You know that."
"And in those three hundred years, how many assignments have you failed?"
My jaw clenched. "None."
"None. Zero. Perfect record." He flipped open the folder. "Until tonight."
Inside were photos. Harold Morrison in his hospital bed. Timestamp showed earlier this evening—after I'd left. He was sitting up, talking to nurses, looking better than he had in weeks.
"Explain this," Marcus said.
"I can't."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Can't. I've never experienced anything like this before." I leaned forward. "Sir, maybe I should take some time off. See a company medic, figure out what's wrong—"
"What's wrong," Marcus interrupted, "is that you've developed feelings."
The words hit me like a slap. "That's impossible."
"Is it? You've been CEO for three years now. Youngest in company history. Maybe the pressure got to you. Maybe you started thinking too much about the humans instead of just doing your job."
"That's not—"
"Or maybe," he continued, his eyes flashing red for just a second, "you've been compromised."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. In our world, being "compromised" was worse than failing an assignment. It meant you couldn't be trusted. It meant demotion.
Or worse.
"Sir, I haven't been compromised. This was just a malfunction. Equipment failure, maybe, or—"
"Raven." Marcus's voice went soft. Dangerous soft. "I'm going to give you a chance to redeem yourself."
He reached into another drawer and pulled out a red folder. Red meant high priority. Red meant don't fuck this up.
"Seventy-two hours," he said, sliding the folder across his desk. "Complete this assignment successfully, and we'll forget tonight ever happened. Fail..."
He didn't need to finish that sentence.
I picked up the folder. My hands weren't shaking anymore, but my chest felt tight. "What's the assignment?"
"Open it."
I flipped open the red cover. The first thing I saw was a photo paperclipped to the inside. A man in his late twenties, mixed-race features, kind brown eyes. He was wearing a white doctor's coat and smiling at whoever was taking the picture.
The moment I looked at his face, that same sharp pain shot through my chest.
My heart started beating again.
"Problem?" Marcus asked.
I tried to keep my voice steady. "No, sir."
But my hands were definitely shaking now. I looked down at the file details:
TARGET: Dr. Alexander Chen
AGE: 29
OCCUPATION: Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Mount Sinai Hospital
SCHEDULED DEPARTURE: 72 hours from assignment time
COLLECTION METHOD: Natural causes - cardiac arrest during surgery
PRIORITY LEVEL: Maximum
Wait. Mount Sinai. That was where I'd just been. Where Harold Morrison was recovering in room 314.
"Dr. Chen," I said slowly. "He's the cardiologist who was treating Morrison."
"Is he now?" Marcus smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "What a fascinating coincidence."
It wasn't a coincidence. Nothing in our business ever was.
"Sir, if Dr. Chen was involved with the Morrison situation, maybe we should investigate further before—"
"Seventy-two hours, Raven. Starting now." Marcus glanced at his watch. "It's currently 1:15 AM. That gives you until 1:15 AM Thursday morning."
I stared at Alex Chen's photo. Something about his face made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with pain. He looked... kind. Like someone who actually gave a shit about saving lives instead of ending them.
"Why the rush?" I asked. "Usually high-priority targets get a week minimum for planning."
"Dr. Chen has become a problem."
"What kind of problem?"
Marcus leaned forward, his fingers steepled. "The kind that interferes with natural order. The kind that saves people who are supposed to die."
My blood went cold. "He's been preventing collections?"
"Seventeen confirmed cases in the past six months. Patients who should have died on his operating table, walking out of the hospital instead." Marcus's eyes flashed red again. "Someone has been very busy playing God."
I looked down at Alex's photo again. My heart was still doing that weird beating thing. "How is that possible? Humans can't interfere with scheduled departures."
"Most humans can't." Marcus stood up and walked to the window. "Dr. Chen appears to be... special."
"Special how?"
"That's not your concern. Your concern is completing this assignment and proving you're still capable of doing your job."
I closed the folder, but kept seeing Alex's face in my mind. "And if I can't?"
Marcus turned around. For just a moment, his human mask slipped. I saw something ancient and hungry underneath.
"Then you'll discover exactly what happens to death gods who forget their purpose."
The threat hung in the air between us. I'd heard stories about agents who'd been "retired" over the years. None of them had good endings.
"I understand," I said.
"Good." Marcus returned to his desk. "Dr. Chen will be performing a triple bypass surgery Thursday morning. Perfect opportunity for a tragic accident. Heart attack, brought on by the stress of losing a patient."
"How do you know he'll lose a patient?"
Marcus smiled that cold smile again. "Because you're going to make sure of it."
My stomach dropped. "Sir?"
"The patient Dr. Chen will be operating on is already on our collection list. Eliminate the patient first, then Dr. Chen. Two birds, one stone. Very efficient."
This was getting worse by the minute. "You want me to kill a patient to traumatize the doctor?"
"I want you to do your job. Both of them." Marcus sat down and opened his laptop. "The patient is Maria Santos, age fifty-three. Scheduled departure Thursday at 8:47 AM. Dr. Chen's surgery is scheduled for 8:30 AM."
"That's cutting it close."
"Timing is everything in our business. You should know that by now."
I stood up, the red folder clutched in my hands. "I'll need access to the hospital. Medical records, surgery schedules..."
"Already arranged. You'll be working as a surgical nurse. Credentials are in the folder."
Of course they were. Marcus thought of everything.
"One more thing," he said as I reached the door. "If you experience any more... malfunctions... during this assignment, call me immediately. Don't try to handle it yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"And Raven? Seventy-two hours means seventy-two hours. Not seventy-three. Not seventy-two hours and one minute. Understand?"
"Understood."
I walked out of his office feeling like I'd just signed my own death warrant. Two kills in three days, with whatever was wrong with me getting worse by the hour.
The elevator ride down felt endless. I opened the folder again and stared at Alex Chen's photo. Just looking at him made my chest tight, but not in a bad way. More like... anticipation? Hope?
That was dangerous thinking.
I was a death god. I didn't feel hope. I didn't feel anything.
But then why was my heart still beating?
The elevator dinged at the parking garage. I walked to my car—a black BMW that blended in with every other luxury vehicle in Manhattan. Started the engine and sat there for a minute, staring at Alex's photo under the dome light.
Marcus was right about one thing. I was compromised.
The question was: compromised by what?
I drove home through empty streets, my mind racing. Seventy-two hours to figure out what was wrong with me and complete two high-priority assassinations. No pressure at all.
But as I pulled into my building's garage, one thought kept nagging at me:
If Alex Chen had been saving people from my collection list for six months, why hadn't the company acted sooner? Why wait until now, until after my Morrison failure, to make him a target?
Unless...
Unless my failure wasn't a failure at all. Maybe it was connected to Alex somehow. Maybe he was the reason I couldn't touch Harold Morrison without feeling like my chest was going to explode.
I turned off the engine and grabbed the red folder. Seventy-two hours to kill a man who might be the only person who could explain what was happening to me.
This job kept getting better and better.