Page 147 of Grim

The voice cuts through my thoughts. I look up to find Marcus Holt, one of the junior leads, standing beside my desk. He’s holding another manila folder like it’s the Rosetta Stone. He lacks his usual supervisor swagger.

“You’re behind on your quarterly submissions,” he says, his voice pitched carefully neutral. “Pages twenty-two through thirty-seven weren’t included in yesterday’s batch.”

I stare at him. The words register, but don’t connect to anything that feels important. Pages. Numbers. Deadlines. All of it might as well be written in a dead language. Huh. Maybe it is the Rosetta Stone.

Marcus shifts his weight from foot to foot. “The forms need to be completed by the end of business today, or I’ll have to file a deficiency report.”

Still nothing from me. The silence stretches past uncomfortable and straight to excruciating. I watch him struggle with it, watch him try to figure out if I’m being deliberately difficult or if something’s genuinely wrong with me.

“Look,” he says finally, lowering his voice, “I can submit an override form if you’re having difficulty completing the work. Maybe you need a personal leave?”

I blink once. Slowly. That’s all the response he gets.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Right. Well, I’ll give you some more time then. Two business days. That’s the best I can do.”

He walks away quickly, like his mother just used his full name to call him into the house for dinner.

I turn back to my screen. The cursor blinks at me, patient and impatient at the same time. A digital heartbeat in a body that’s forgotten how to live.

When break arrives, I avoid the gathering roomwith all the other clerks and head outside the beige intake wing for a walk.

The same route every day. Down corridor C, past the maze of identical cubicles, where other sad souls shuffle papers and pretend their work matters. Past Reaper Dispatch, where the bulletin board still displays my old assignments like museum pieces. Past Records and Filing, where the sound of stamping and sorting creates a rhythm that might be soothing if you don’t think too hard about what it represents.

I pause at the wall that’s been cracked for as long as anyone can remember. The fissure runs from floor to ceiling, a jagged lightning bolt frozen in concrete.

My eyes trick me into seeing a bolt of pure yellow filling the space, transporting me back to that rooftop with Rue. The way her cheeks glistened in the rain and the moonlight danced over her skin. A rush of exhilaration overtakes me momentarily before it’s replaced by a sharp pain, followed by the sting of nothingness. I try to get her image back into my head, but it retreats as quickly as it arrived.

I stare at the crack in the concrete. Some say it happened during the Mercy Riots, when half the department staged protests over stricter clerical regulations. Others insist it was just the building settling, or maybe Big D had a fit.

Nobody knows, and even fewer care. That’s the theme here—apathy. Nothing gets fixed because fixing implies that something was worth preserving in the first place. When everything is broken, it almost makes it all feel functional.

When the workday ends—marked by a bell that sounds like a death knell—I make my way to my quarters. The walk takes seven minutes if I don’t stop to think about where I’m going. Twelve if I do.

My room is a study in institutional minimalism.Concrete walls painted the color of old bones. A cot with sheets that smell like industrial detergent. A sink with a single cold-water tap. A shelf built into the wall for personal effects storage. I use it to display the only two things of value in this place to me. Rue’s belongings that Asher managed to smuggle back for me. Perhaps he’s not a total nob after all.

I begin and end each day staring at the necklace I gave her and her slippers.

I eye the oversize, rabbit-inspired indoor footwear when I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep often.

Recalling the ridiculous name Rue gave them gets me closer to cracking a smile than anything else nowadays.Hippity-hoppity flippity-floppities.The sound of her voice uttering the words fades slightly each time though, an echo running out of vibration.

I’m sitting on the edge of my cot, staring at the shelf, when I hear footsteps in the hallway. Heavy boots with a slight drag on the left foot. I know that walk.

The door opens without a knock. Asher fills the doorframe. Asher fills most doorframes. His coat is rumpled, his usually perfect hair mussed. He looks like he’s been running, or fighting, or both.

“You look like death,” he says.

I almost smile. Almost. “Fitting.”

He steps inside. Closes the door. “You haven’t checked in for eight days.”

“I don’t have a need to check in anymore.”

“And you’ve moved into this shithole.”

“When’s the last time you minded your own business?”

“Been a couple decades.” He crosses his arms. “Talk to me.”