“Sir? I'm here for my assignment.”
“You're early.” Morrith's pen kept moving. “By eleven minutes.”
“I wanted to be prepared.”
“Uh-huh. By prepared, do you mean vibrating with enthusiasm?”
Oh no, was he vibrating? He was.
He couldn’t stop.
Morrith finally looked up. He had the eyes of someone who had seen empires rise and fall and had been forced to file the paperwork.
Greg longed to be that experienced one day.
“First solo,” Morrith said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You nervous?”
“No, sir.” Greg paused. “A little, sir. Mostly excited.”
Morrith stared at him for a long moment. Then he pointed at the clipboard Greg was carrying.
“You'll find a new file in there,” he said. “The target's name is Dustin. He's male. Twenty-six years old. The window is three minutes, fifty seconds. It should be an easy job. Good luck, kid.”
Greg looked at his clipboard with a rush of pride. “Thank you, sir. I won't let you down.”
Morrith was already focusing backon his paperwork. “Just bring me clean documentation and don't make me answer questions from Oversight. That's all I ask.”
Greg nodded. Should he say something? About what this meant to him, about how he understood the weight of this responsibility, about how he'd spent decades preparing for this moment.
“You're still in my doorway,” Morrith said.
“Right. Sorry. Thank you.”
Greg turned and walked away, eager to get started.
His first assignment.
He was going to do thisperfectly.
CHAPTER 2
The edge was two steps away. Dustin tookone.
Below him, the valley stretched out like an open hand. Two thousand feet of nothing between him and the ground. Most people looked at a drop like that and felt fear.
Dustin didn’t feel fear.
Ironically, he felt grounded.
Standing at the edge of the platform, he ran his gear check one more time. Harness: secure. Chute: packed and verified. Helmet: on and strapped. GoPro: blinking. Altimeter: set.
“Sixty seconds!” someone called from behind him.
He didn't turn. He knew the production crew was back there. Cameras, lighting rigs, a dozen people in headsets running around with clipboards. Apex Energy was filming this jump for their summer campaign, which meant everything had to be perfect. The angles, the timing, the branding.
