“Few people know this, but we’re born crackless, until our first hearty gale of laughter splits apart the glutes.”
After he left, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I was a little afraid of what I might dream, but I was pretty tired.
I was just drifting off when I heard the door open and the heavy tread of boots on the wooden floor. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know who it was.
“Hi, Sam,” I said.
He hovered near the door.
“You can come in,” I said.
He walked slowly to the chair beside the bed. Sat. Looked at me.
“I guess you got me on that chopper in the nick of time,” I said.
“Thankfully, yes. The doctor expects a full recovery.”
“Did you hear what Abigail Smith expects?”
He answered slowly, choosing his words carefully.
“Not what either of us expected, of course. But I think it’s an intriguing proposition.”
“I’d have to trust her.”
He nodded. “Do you?”
I thought about it. “Oh, heck, Sam, I guess if I gave up on that I might as well stay dead.”
“Nueve will fight for his position. And it’s quite difficult to fire an Operative Nine. It’s considered a lifetime appointment.” “It’s weird,” I said. “Until all this happened, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, but it sure wasn’t being a Superseding Protocol Agent.”
“Becoming one might be your only way to ensure SOFIA is never reborn.”
“You gotta become a devil to fight him?”
He looked at me with those dark, hound-dog eyes, so homely and also so sad.
“Somehow I don’t think that will ever happen with you, Alfred.” He changed the subject. “She’s asked to see you.”
“Ashley.”
“Yes.”
“Should I?”
“It was the worst kind of blackmail, Alfred. Nueve used her to monitor you after your escape from Camp Echo, used her feelings for him. She never wished any harm to come to you.”
“She should have told me the truth.”
“We avoid truths that terrify us.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell me about SOFIA?”
He looked away. I looked at his hands, at the missing fingers.
“You never told Vosch anything, did you?” I asked. “Even when he chopped off your fingers, you didn’t tell.”
He cleared his throat. “When I left the Company, I abandoned the oath that bound me to insert the SD 1031. I took a new vow, a vow to protect and guard you against all enemies. I will never break that promise, Alfred. But now we are back to trust, aren’t we?”
I didn’t give him a direct answer. That’s an Op Nine quality. I said, “I’ll need a trainer.”
He nodded. “Most definitely.”
“Someone who knows the ropes. Someone who’s been there. Someone who can show me the way between doing the-thing-that-must-be-done and doing the right thing.”
“A narrow path full of pitfalls and hazards.”
“Because the right thing still matters.”
“The right thing will always matter.”
I thought about it. I thought about what he said and what I said and what had happened and what might happen. I thought about the golden door and the smell of my mother’s hair and the empty sockets where my father’s eyes had been and even ol’ Mr. Weasel, licking my blood from his fingertips. Life shouldn’t be what happens while you’re running from your own shadow. Maybe that’s why the angel pulled me back: I didn’t want to die because I loved the world so bad my death was the only way to save it. I wanted to die for the same reason I struck the deal with Nueve in Knoxville: I thought it was the only way to hide from the shadow with my name on it. The problem was you can’t run from it and you can’t hide from it, so what are you supposed to do about it?
I didn’t know, but I thought I knew how to start. I patted his knee with the hand I cut open to heal Jourdain, to heal Ashley, to heal him.
“I forgive you, Sam,” I said.
“And that matters most of all,” he said.