Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

behind clouds. The tea plants looked dead in the darkness.
“Near where he was murdered,” she said. “He was … yelling. Trying to
get someone’s attention. He looked so relieved when he knew I’d heard
him.”
If Alan were anything like Wallace, it would have only been temporary.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
He didn’t look back at them. There was a thread he was pulling in his
mind, one that he knew he should leave alone, but it was insistent. He
worried at it as he chose his words carefully. “Was he already dead when the
file came?”
There was a beat of silence. Then, “Yes, Wallace. Of course he was. It
wouldn’t have been sent to us otherwise.”
He nodded tightly, hands gripping the deck railing. “And you … what?
Take it on faith?”
“What are you talking about?” Nelson asked.
He wasn’t sure. He tugged on the thread. “You get sent the files. Our files.
But only after we die.”
“Yes,” Mei said.
“Why couldn’t you get it sooner?” he asked into the night. “What’s
stopping the Manager or whoever from sending it before it happens?”
He knew they were staring at him. He could feel their gazes boring into
his back, but he couldn’t turn around. He was struggling, and he didn’t want
them to see it on his face.
“That’s not how it works,” Mei said slowly. “We can’t … Wallace. There
was nothing that could have been done to save y—him.”
“Right,” Wallace said bitterly. “Because it was his lot in life to die
bleeding out in an alleyway.”
“It’s the way things are,” Nelson said.
“That’s messed up if you ask me.”
“Death is messed up,” Mei said. She moved toward him, the deck
creaking with every step she took. “You won’t hear me trying to argue
otherwise, man. It’s not … there’s an order to things. A process we all have
to go through. Death isn’t something to be interfered with—”
Wallace scoffed. “Order. You’re telling me that man is part of an order.
That man who suffered and no one stopped to help him. That’s what you