Terminal (Terminal trilogy #1)

1: Off day

There's this really silly idea I keep hearing people spout that everyone is like a closed book, and that you got to make friends to really know all their secrets-

And god, is that some bullshit. I don't have a single goddamn friend, and people are sitting me down and telling me their life stories left and right. I don't know what it is about me- I pride myself on looking far from approachable. Just a few months ago my boss got a new secretary, and by the end of the first week she had blabbed to me everything I needed to know about her life- how she sold her soul to save her brother's life, how she was one of triplets in a family of ten. I just sat there frowning, and the only thing I can think I might've done wrong in that scenario was give the impression that I was sympathizing.

Really I was more upset that my boss had hired another secretary. That was my job. And what sort of accountant needs two secretaries? Scratch that- what sort of accountant needed one?

Kelly Galloway Campbell, bless his parents, was a weird guy. I guess I liked him enough, but he always struck me as a certified bastard, the kind of guy you'd want to get drunk with but would regret later. Long time off the warfronts, getting a little grey, and with very little tolerance for my shit.

I sat on his desk most days. As I was doing now.

"Are you planning on spending the rest of today staring off into space, Mannie? If so, I might as well give your work to Christina," My boss said. For certain obvious reasons, we called him Kell. He made us call him Kell, really.

"She couldn't handle it," I said.

"She's not capable of delivering a letter? I had no idea." Kell turned to Christina, who had a small desk in his office. "Christina, is this true?"

"I wish you two would stop talking about me like I wasn't here," she said, sighing.

"Mannie, do your work. It's barely even a job, god knows we don't pay you for it," Kell said softly. He always got soft around me and that bugged my nerves like crazy. Treating me like some kind of child.

"Fine.," I grumbled to the best of my ability, "Hand it over." Without looking back at him, I reached my hand out behind me.

Kell gently placed a sticky note in the palm of my hand. I read it over- really, it was only two lines of information. A room number and a signature from Kell.

My job was the same every day. Pick up a human from the lower levels, bring them to another room. Sometimes I brought them up to Earth. I had been doing this for five years. There was a certain sense of repetition to my life, the same minutes in the same uniform. The same ceaseless war, and eternal stalemate for nothing more particular than everyone's lives.

God, Hell wasn't what one'd hope it'd be. I guess there were literal demons hanging around, and we were having a war against actual angels- but if you weren't a soldier, or someone worth anything, you basically spent your days outside of the sun and living off bland government rations.

I stuffed the sticky note into my pocket and jumped off Kell's desk. I glanced back behind me, and Kell gave a tiny wave, watching me out of the corner of his eye. Busy on the computer, no doubt doing some important Few stuff.

Kell's office of accounting was located in a small hallway in one of the levels of Hell. As what I could only assume started as a joke, the place was dubbed 'Greed'- all the levels were named after sins. Most people preferred to just call them by numerical values, so Greed was just 'Level Five'. I was not one of those people. Places named after sins added just a little bit of personality to what was otherwise a series of barren and structurally unsound tunnels.