Prologue: That Alarm, Keening
…
The sound that tore through the Reaper Dispatch Society was so awful Ronald Knox thought it would make his glasses shatter.
"Holy wow, what the hell is that?!" he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears. All around him others were doing the same, abandoning reports, spilling teacups, dropping papers and clutching their Deathscythes to the sides of their skulls—a Reaper never gave up a hold on their scythe, after all. A couple desks on, Eric Slingby, his arms crossed smugly behind his head, also crossed his ankles—with equal smugness—over his desk.
"Someone big's gonna die," he noted, glancing up at one of the speakers where the awful, shrieking alarm was coming from. Several desks to Knox's right, Alan Humphries' head whipped up.
"Eric!" he snapped, more annoyed than mad; he also had his hands clasped over his ears, though it clearly did none of them any good. Slingby snorted and folded his arms instead across his chest.
"What's the point in pretending otherwise?" he drawled over the shrieking of the siren. He wiggled his standard-issue black-gloved fingers at the speaker. "Even the freshmeat'll figure it out soon enough." He picked up his Deathscythe—a saw, Knox liked him (he was a partier) but a saw, come on, how unoriginal could you get—and waved it around a bit. Probably trying to look intimidating or something.
"That's nice, and what the hell's it supposed ta mean?!" Knox whined. "My hearin's gonna get fried and you know the brass are too cheap to pay for a doc to look at 'em."
Humphries frowned—probably thinking that Knox was not alive and doctors wouldn't do him any good—but Slingby smirked.
"Means we're to stand down. Like I already said, someone big's gonna get it, and they don't trust us little worker-ants to handle it right. We aren't even allowed to look at our Lists in case we do something to screw it up." Knox's eyebrows pulled low over his yellow-green eyes.
"That's bloody stupid. For the first time in my life, I actually wanna look at my List." The only thing that could get him to do overtime was when he wasn't allowed to be doing it. Slingby snorted—it sounded something like approval—and went back to leaning in his chair.
"Let the brass handle this one, kid," he advised. Humphries glanced up at him—he'd already returned to his paperwork—approvingly; Knox puffed his cheeks out like a petulant child.
"So what the hell's 'big' mean? Like, someone they actually think might pass a Cinematic Record check?" he guessed. A female Reaper with cropped black hair and freckles sauntered past with a snort. Before he could retort to her smug smuginess—arrogant little Irish banshee—his senior was already speaking again.
"Nah. But someone important. 'Important', capital 'I'." Knox rolled his eye at Slingby's particularly unhelpful response.
"Someone whose death carries with it many stakes and consequences," Humphries offered from the other side of their cluster of desks. Slingby and Knox's expressions of surprise were nearly identical. "Someone who, for whatever reason, will create complications and difficulties for the RDS. The alarm is the notice that we need to stand down, to avoid a delicate situation. That's why we aren't allowed to look at our Lists—to ensure we stay out of what's going to happen." He blushed at his own flagrant rule-breaking and ducked his head back towards his papers. Knox knew he wouldn't get another word out of him—he spun around to Slingby, but Slingby had been entirely preoccupied with that rather impressive breach of character.
"What he said," he finished with a shrug. He climbed to his feet, citing something along the lines of needing coffee or he'd start reaping other Reaper, and sauntered away from his desk, saw Deathscythe in hand. Judging by the expression on Humphries' face as he did so, Knox assumed this was not something he was actually allowed to be doing.
He threw himself back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head and at his ankles and very smug, and let out an annoyed tcheh. Somewhere along the line he'd managed to not notice the alarm anymore, but then any time he even approached thoughts of it, fieldwork, or the List, it would suddenly be there again in full force, like a dagger to the ear canal. The paperwork he was supposed to be doing was completely fine, though.
Only a bureaucracy could come up with a trick so very evil.
"Why is it I only get saddled with the obnoxious jobs and none of the interesting ones?!" he demanded to anyone who was listening through the background shriek. He continued to sulk into his chair for a while and refused to touch any of his reports. On the principle of the thing.
…
William T. Spears knocked and waited for his summons before flinging the door open and rushing into the room.
"Madam, it can't—" he started, a sheaf of paper in his hand. He stopped short and stared in wordless shock at the head of the Reaper Dispatch Society. Magnolia Rosenthal adjusted her spectacles.
"It is precisely as it appears to be, Mr. Spears," she said, gesturing to the grand List lying open on her desk. It was not the List, the original and absolute, but it was one of the oldest and finest copies, infallible, impeccable, and in the form of a leather-bound book about the size of a sleeping child.
Spears said nothing. Just stared. How this could possibly happen, how it could possibly allow this to happen… He realized at that moment that it would not allow this to happen. Madam Rosenthal nodded.
"You understand the situation, Mr. Spears," she said, brushing reddish hair back over her shoulder. "As you are the highest-ranking Dispatcher familiar with this situation, you and you alone will be charged with the collection of this soul. By any means necessary, Mr. Spears. There are many powers who would like to keep us from doing our job, but his name is on the list. It is already written. He will die—and I want to see his soul where it belongs. Here," she added with an intensity that seemed to shake the room.
Spears used his Deathscythe to adjust his own glasses before bowing low.
"Of course, Madam. I will fulfill my duty impeccably."
How, he wasn't totally sure. And he certainly hated to cross paths with vermin. But the idea of a challenge was… electrifying, if not positive.
He marched out of Madam Rosenthal's office after politely excusing himself and quietly shutting the door before dashing through the halls in a way that sent papers flying but not a single hair out of place.
…
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It… liiiiives! I actually wrote this chapter several days ago; far be it from me to delay in the posting of a thing, but here we go. This story will be many chapters. We'll see how many of them I actually get to before I run out of steam. (Your support keeps me going, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests!)
As Shuofthewind is both my lovely beta and one of my closest friends, I thought it'd be fun to throw in a cameo of one of her characters in here because there were a bunch of shinigami running around anyway. But apparently my original reference (that her snort had an Irish accent) was a little too implausible for her, and so the final wording was hers, not mine. (hahahaha P.S. SHU I KNOW SNORTS CAN'T HAVE IRISH ACCENTS THAT WAS THE JOKE) Of course of course, a thousand thank yous to her for her patience and willingness to work with an idiot like me. Ilu.
My eternal thanks to all who have read this!