Agents of DEATH

Chapter 2 - Letters Are Gonna Fall From The Sky

Nico tries to bring up the subject of the Agency several more times while we’re out, but I shut him down with my silence each time. At one point, he says, “Dude, this isn’t helping. You wanna figure yourself out? You gotta talk about it.” When I don’t respond, he slams his hands on the steering wheel, sounding the horn. “Did that wake you up enough to talk?”

“You did that on purpose.”

“Yeah,” Nico says, grinning crazily, “but this is an accident.” He disengages the parking brake and takes his feet away from the pedals, causing the car to start rolling backwards, very slowly downhill.

“Dude! What the f-”

Nico presses his foot to the brake before pulling the parking brake back into place. “I’m just sayin’, would you rather give or receive death?”

“You never said that,” I say, still panting from fear, “or anything even remotely like that.”

“Now I did,” Nico says. “Seriously, which one sounds more appealing?”

I frown at the footwell. “To be honest…”

“You’re hopeless sometimes,” Nico grunts as he reverses the car. “You really are.”

“Thanks. That’s a real help.”

“Zach, nobody should want to die,” Nico says. “Vinnie’s always talkin’ about how the worst part of training is the second-year suicide roleplay. Nobody wants to play the suicidal one, or the agent tryin’ to talk them down.”

I snort. For a group dealing in Death - literally - the Agency is determined to only ensure it comes to those who either don’t want it, don’t need it, or both.

“I mean, if you think about it,” I say, “why the hell would live people want to go to a place like Hades anyway?” It’s true - Hades is really no place for the living. The atmosphere is toxic, there’s very little light, and it stinks even through the gas masks they made Nico and I wear when we visited on a field trip back in eighth grade.

Nico frowns as he steers the car back onto the road. “That’s why the Agency is so exclusive, man. Not everyone is fit for duty there.”

“And I’m pretty sure I count as ‘not everyone,’” I say.

“If you do, then so do I,” Nico counters. “And you know how much I wanna join, so…”

“Again, thanks a million,” I mutter.

Nico gives up again - for now. He tries again a couple more times before he drops me off at my house, but is still unsuccessful.

At home, I hole up in my room with the blinds down and angled against the sunlight. Nico would probably argue that this is another sign that I’m very suitable for the Agency, that I’m practicing for when I’d be in Hades, where all the DEATH buildings are windowless for the protection of the live humans who work and/or train there.

Nope. I just happen to prefer being in the dark where nobody can see me. Especially not my family, who keeps wondering (out loud) what went wrong with me, why I don’t have their sense of duty to the Agency. It’s actually almost amusing to see Dad, especially, blaming himself for me being a dud. I’m like, “Hey, it’s not your fault. You just raised me. What I am is a boy not worthy of DEATH, and it’s my own damn fault for bein’ wired differently from the rest of you.”

Okay, I’ve never actually said that to Dad’s face. But sometimes, I wonder why I haven’t. I mean, it’s the truth. At least, it’s the truth as I see it.

I actually fall asleep for a while, not waking up until a few hours after I come home. I’d probably stay asleep longer if not for the racket going on outside. It sounds like a bunch of helicopters flying low, followed by an even unholier noise that makes me think of papers being crumpled up by a big paper-crumpling machine. All I can do is roll over on my bed, jamming the pillow around my ears in a somewhat futile effort to block out the noise.