Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(55)

Finally, he found a voice to speak. “I’m not Slayd Bridger,” he said. It felt like a betrayal of everything to speak those words.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, I am Slayd Bridger now . . . but before, my name was Greyson Tolliver.”

She played with her tablet, digging through screens and menus and files. “There’s no record of a name change here.”

“You need to talk to your supervisor. Someone who knows.”

“My supervisors have the same information I do.” She looked at him, this time with suspicion.

“I’m . . . I’m working undercover,” he told her. “I was working with Agent Traxler—someone has got to know! There has to be a record somewhere!”

And she laughed at him. She actually laughed at him.

“Oh, please! We have plenty of our own agents. We have no need to go ‘undercover,’ and even if we did, we wouldn’t engage an unsavory to do so—especially one with your history.”

“I made that history up!”

Now Agent Kreel’s face became hard: the kind of face she must have used on her toughest cases. “Now look here, I will not be made the butt of some unsavory’s joke! You’re all alike! You think that just because the rest of us chose a life of purpose and service to the world, we’re worthy of your ridicule! I’m sure you’ll be laughing about this with your cronies when you leave here, and I don’t appreciate it!”

Greyson opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. He opened it again. But try as he might, nothing came out, because there wasn’t a single thing he could say that would convince her. ?And he realized there never would be. There was no record of what he had been asked to do, because he was never directly “asked” to do it. He wasn’t actually working for the AI. Just as Agent Traxler had told him on that first day, he was a private citizen acting on his own free will, because only as a private citizen could he walk the fine line between the scythedom and the Thunderhead. . . .

. . . Which meant now that Agent Traxler had been gleaned, there was no one, no one who knew what he was doing. Greyson’s cover was so deep it had swallowed him whole—and not even the Thunderhead could pull him out.

“So, are we done with this little game?” Agent Kreel asked. “Can we get on with your weekly review?”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine,” he said, and began talking about his week, leaving out all the things he would have told Agent Traxler, and he spoke no more of his mission.

Greyson Tolliver was dead now. Worse than dead—because as far as the world was concerned, Greyson Tolliver had never existed.

? ? ?

Brahms!

If Rowan hadn’t already felt responsible for his father’s gleaning, now he felt doubly so. This was the wage of temperance—this was the reward for staying his hand and allowing Brahms to live. He should have ended the horrid little man as he had all the others who didn’t deserve to be scythes—but he chose to give him a chance. What a fool Rowan was to think a man like that might rise to the occasion.

When he left Xenocrates at the baths that night, Rowan stalked the streets of Fulcrum City with no destination, but an undying urge to move. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to outrun his anger, or catch up with it. Perhaps both. It raced before him, it pursued him, and it wouldn’t let him be.

The next day, he resolved to go home. His old home. The one he had left nearly two years ago to become a scythe’s apprentice. Perhaps, he thought, it would give him a sense of closure.

Once he reached his neighborhood, he kept a close eye out for anyone who might be watching—but there was no one monitoring his approach. Nothing but the Thunderhead’s ever-alert cameras. Perhaps the scythedom thought that if he hadn’t attended his father’s funeral, there was no chance he’d show up here. Or maybe it was just as Xenocrates had said—he was only a second priority now.

He approached the front door, but at the last moment couldn’t even bring himself to knock. Never before had he felt like such a coward. He could fearlessly face men and woman trained to end life—but facing his family in the wake of his father’s gleaning was more than he could bear.

He called his mother when his publicar was a safe distance away.

“Rowan? Rowan, where have you been? Where are you? We’ve been so worried!”

It was everything he expected his mother to say. He didn’t answer her questions.

“I heard about Dad,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. . . .”

“It was terrible, Rowan. The scythe sat down at our piano. He played. He made us all listen.”

Rowan grimaced. He knew Brahms’s gleaning ritual. He couldn’t imagine his family having to endure it.

“We told him you had been a scythe’s apprentice. Even though you hadn’t been chosen, we thought that it might change his mind, but it didn’t.”

He didn’t tell her that it was his fault. He wanted to confess it to her, but he knew it would only confuse her, and make her ask more questions he couldn’t answer. Or maybe he was just being a coward again.

“How is everyone handling it?”

“We’re holding up,” his mother said. “We have immunity again, so at least it’s a little consolation. I’m sorry you weren’t here. If you were, Scythe Brahms would have granted you immunity, too.”