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“Are you quite well, Ms. Chen?” Greta said, though her tone suggested she wasn’t overly invested in the answer. “Should I call an ambulance?”

Jack shook his head. “Sorry, dear, when you get to be my age, every little twinge feels like you’re at death’s door.” He paused and glanced at the glass double doors beside him, which led into an office staffed by grim reapers. “Just indigestion, I think.”

Greta gave a sharp blink as the unmarked van drove up and parked near the front of the building. Everyone filed back out of the van again, slamming doors as they did so and dragging Greta’s eyes their way. She gave a tight head tilt goodbye to Jack and strode over to greet the impostor exterminators. For his part, Jack slipped back inside and stood behind a plastic Dracaena by the window. Outside, Carter was using broad gestures, which meant he was trying to make Greta laugh, despite it being a wholly futile and unscientific pursuit. A few minutes later, Greta was leading the others up to the building. Jack shrank harder against the plant as the procession passed. Only Eli, who trailed the others, noticed Jack and offered him a nod as they all disappeared into the stairwell. Jack slipped out from his hiding place and paced the office lobby until the stairwell door creaked open again, this time revealing only Greta. Jack pressed his phone to his ear and pretended to be in the middle of a Very Important Phone Call as Greta swept past, giving him only a quick glance before disappearing back out the front doors. Cut off from the archives, there wouldn’t be much for her to do on-site until later in the day, which meant she was presumably off to do whatever it was a woman like her did in her spare time, like yelling at children or perhaps shaking her head disapprovingly at small puppies.

Jack quickly padded down the stairs and into the cool, sterile cavern of the archives. The others were already at work by the time he got down there, Eli and Greer scanning shelves, Carter rounding up cockroaches and placing them gently into a shoebox with carefully poked holes in the lid. The You Agains had a policy of nonviolent crime, and that covered violence against potential victims of any size, and with any number of legs.

“She gave you the key card?” Jack asked no one in particular as the door swung shut behind him.

Greer popped her head out of a nearby aisle. “I have it.”

“Good. They wouldn’t leave employee info out here where just anyone could access it,” Jack said. “We’ll have to check Section 301 D.”

He led the way to the back of the room and Greer tapped Greta’s key card, a little light beside it flashing green in response. Jack opened the door and ushered the others inside, making his way directly over to the little pile in the corner. He’d already scoured it before, but he’d been looking for information about the Master List then. He likely wouldn’t have noticed if there was anything in there about the higher-ups. The others spread out across the meager shelves scattered around the small room. The box of books felt smaller than it had when Jack had done his first round of rummaging, and the contents all seemed too old to contain anything pertaining to current employees.

A small pamphlet caught his eye from where it lay wedged between two dusty tomes, its glossy finish a starkly modern contrast to the books’ leather bindings. He slid it out.

A Condensed History of S.C.Y.T.H.E. for the Modern Agent

The first incarnation of S.C.Y.T.H.E. was formed in roughly 4000 BCE. Its original name is lost to time, though it is believed to have been called something very different, as acronyms had yet to be invented. The organization began as a community of deeply wise and spiritual people who were charged with the caretaking of souls recently shed from their bodies.

Over the millennia, this community grew and spread to different countries across the world, but it wasn’t until the Black Plague that a collective within the community felt the need to organize on a more formal level. Those who carried out the duties of modern agents donned black cloaks to signify their role in society and were dubbed Reapers because they collected souls in a manner similar to the way a farmer harvests wheat: with care, duty, and sometimes more manure present than one would hope.

By the end of the nineteenth century, S.C.Y.T.H.E. had completed its evolution from loosely connected individuals carrying out the same secret task to the thriving company you know and love today. During this period, S.C.Y.T.H.E. faced backlash for a few small, new-business hiccups in which the mishandling of cases resulted in the production of several hundred ghosts. As a responsible purveyor of afterlife care, S.C.Y.T.H.E. reevaluated its systems and processes, hiring some of the most exciting minds to invent new ways for our employees to best serve their clients, with everything from name badges that grant near invisibility to a color-coded filing system emerging from this era.

Today, agents have shed their tarnished Reaper label and the robes of yore in order to uphold our nationwide company with world-class skill, setting the standard for similar agencies across the planet. You, agent, are an integral cog in this machine we call the circle of life.

Jack had never been a cog before. He’d always been the wheel. But there was someone else setting things spinning now, and he didn’t like it. Add to that the fact that his predecessors apparently got to wear cool robes while he was stuck in an itchy skirt suit and he all but tossed the pamphlet back into the dusty box.

He looked up. The others were mostly standing around now, occasionally poking at a book on a nearby shelf.

“Nothing?” he asked.

Eli shook his head.

“You really think there’s going to be details about current employees in these ancient books?” Greer said, echoing Jack’s own earlier thoughts.

In truth, he knew there wouldn’t be, but he couldn’t think of where else to look. This was the only section everyday agents didn’t have access to, and he couldn’t imagine information about the mysterious higher-ups being kept anywhere his fellow cogs could get at.

Greer cut into his thoughts. “What about the computer?”

“What computer?”

“The one on the standing desk by the front.”

Jack’s mind flashed back to his half-focused interrogation of Greta in the parking lot. He’d asked her questions about everything from previous cases to other branches of S.C.Y.T.H.E. And what was it that she’d kept repeating? She couldn’t help him until she was back in front of the computer. Because all the information was there.

He quirked a smile, catching Greer’s hazel eyes and holding them tenderly with his own gaze. “You’re a genius.”

22

“Well, ‘genius’ may have been overselling it,” Eli said as he tried yet another password on the desktop, the little S.C.Y.T.H.E. logo jiggling like a head shake at their failure.

“What does she like?” Greer asked. “That Greta woman. That might give us something.”

“Sweet of you to think she likes anything,” said Jack. “Besides, this is a company laptop. The company IT department might have set the password.”

“Death1234?” Carter suggested. He held the cockroach-infested shoebox delicately under one arm to prevent its residents from being too heavily jostled.