There were only three things in the world that Vanessa Cross hated more than her office manager, Boss Lang.
1. Waking up early.
2. Raisins masquerading as chocolate chips.
3. Bureaucracy.
And yet, here she was, buried in all three.
"Vanessa Cross!" bellowed a voice across the clattering halls of the Soul Registration Division. "Are you TRYING to get soul-sued?!"
The undead mail cart she'd just collided with creaked in pain as she stumbled upright, a stack of forms exploding like paper shrapnel around her. "That's a thing now? Soul-sued?!"
A pale-faced reaper with half-moon glasses stomped over, waving a scroll. "A Level C soul REFUSED to cross over on your watch!"
Hearing that, Vanessa raised an eyebrow, if she had any in her soul form. "Level C? But that's like—friendly ghost tier!"
"Friendly ghost tier or not, he ghosted us. Pun fully intended. That soul was supposed to be picked up at 2:07 a.m. in the apartment complex behind a 7-Eleven. Instead? He's STILL haunting the vending machine."
Vanessa blinked. "Wait. The guy who choked on a microwave burrito?"
"Yes, the 'Burrito Choker!'" the reaper snapped. "He claims he's not dead!"
Vanessa stared. "He's not dead?"
"Apparently not. According to this—" the reaper flung a death report scroll at her face like a ninja star, "he was supposed to die, but the autopsy report hasn't even hit the human realm yet."
Vanessa unrolled the scroll. The death order was there. Neat ink, fancy stamp, all shiny and gold. The cause: "Internal combustion via questionable beef." She grimaced. "That burrito really was a weapon."
But something felt…off.
"I checked the corpse myself," Vanessa mumbled, squinting at the form. "He looked dead. He even asked if I could grab his WiFi password before we left."
"Wait, you talked to him?"
"Well, yeah," she said defensively. "I asked if he had any last requests. He said to clear his browser history. Standard stuff."
The reaper groaned and yanked off his glasses. "You're not even certified to perform full dialogues with the recently departed!"
"Oh come on! He was polite! No screaming, no spectral leakage, just a man and his regretful snack!" Rolling her eyes as she argued with the reaper.
But the reaper wasn't listening anymore. He was already gone, stomping off to file a 'Mismanaged Soul Recovery Incident' report. Vanessa stared at the form in her hand.
Then she noticed it.
Under the "Filed By" section: not her name. Not her reaper code. Someone else.
Filed by: Reaper ID #211–A, Division: Dusk Files. Name: N. Cross.
She was stunned when she saw the name.
"…Excuse me?" Vanessa whispered.
She hadn't filed this report. And no one else should be using her last name.
---
Back in her shared cubicle wedged between a skeleton named Edgar who exclusively listened to screamo and a banshee with sleep apnea Vanessa tried not to scream herself.
"Okay okay okay," she muttered, tapping the report like it might cough up the answers. "This is bad. Identity theft level bad. Possibly... soul fraud?"
She logged into her FCO terminal, praying to the gods of dial-up that the system didn't crash mid-search again. She typed in the soul's name: Howard Dean. Date of 'death': Five nights ago.
Under 'Filed Death Orders', a list popped up.
There were two.
One from her division, the one she knew she didn't file.
And another… from a restricted department: Division Vanta Black.
Vanessa frowned. She hadn't heard of that one. And she definitely didn't file anything to do with it.
Just then, a skeletal hand plopped onto her desk, rattling slightly. "You look like someone just peed in your soul tea," Edgar commented, sipping his own through an empty jaw.
"Did you know there's a department called 'Vanta Black'?"
Edgar stopped sipping. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me."
The skeleton look around before it leaned in, talking to her in a lower voice. "No one talks about them. Not unless you want your femur misplaced."
"I don't have a femur."
"Exactly." The skeleton, Edgar nodded his skull. The sound of its bones clinking with each other make her winced in pain.
That's when Vanessa knew something was deeply wrong.
---
Later that evening, she snuck into the Soul Filing Vault using a technique she picked up from YouTube's most niche ghost channel: Haunt Hacks with Gregory.
With her hood pulled over her head and a box of ghost donuts as a bribe, she convinced the archivist an elderly librarian wraith named Martha with an eternal cough to let her into the restricted rows.
"I'm not supposed to be here," Vanessa whispered to herself, tiptoeing past shelves of glowing scrolls.
"You're DEFINITELY not," Martha wheezed from her recliner, reading ghost romance novels.
Vanessa scanned through the alphabetized souls until she found it: Dean, Howard.
Inside the case file were TWO forms.
One: signed and stamped by a certified reaper from Division Vanta Black. No name. Just a reaper code: 000-VB. The date matched the original, except time of death was scheduled before the burrito choking.
The second: the one filed under her name.
Someone had backdated the form. And duplicated her ID.
Her blood went cold. Which was ironic, considering she technically wasn't in her fully physical body.
"What the hell is going on…" she muttered.
Suddenly—
SLAM!
A file shelf creaked shut behind her. Her heart jumped. "Who's there?!"
Silence.
Then—
A scroll rolled from the top shelf and bonked her on the head.
"…Rude."
She caught it. It wasn't Dean's.
This one read: Reaper Reassignment Recommendation: Vanessa Cross.
Filed by: Unknown. Approved by: Director of Reaper Management – Umbra.
"Umbra?" she echoed. She didn't know who or what that was.
Vanessa's eyes darted around. If someone was watching her… this was no longer just about a clerical error.
This was sabotage.
---
The next day, she tried to lay low.
Which was difficult, considering she had a ghost sobbing in the office microwave, a banshee cubicle mate moaning opera, and a ghost dog that kept trying to fetch her stapler.
She clutched a mug labeled "I Paused My Reaping For This?" and barely made it halfway through when the intercom clicked on.
"Vanessa Cross. Report to Briefing Room C. Immediately."
Her stomach sank.
---
Inside Briefing Room C sat Mira, her living best friend, somehow roped into the afterlife via astral projection during a tea meditation gone terribly wrong. And Thaddeus, her sardonic reaper trainer who once lit his own robe on fire "for morale."
"Why is Mira here?" Vanessa asked emotionlessly, too stunned to process what the hell going on now.
"I was told there'd be cheesecake," Mira said, confused. "This is not cheesecake."
Thaddeus tossed a folder at Vanessa. "You cracked open a restricted file. That's strike two."
"Two?! What was strike one?!" Vanessa asked in horror with the sudden information dumped on her.
"Sleeping with your eyes open during the Bone Ethics Lecture."
Vanessa gasped. "THAT'S A STRIKE?!"
Thaddeus ignored her. "You've stumbled into something that's been bubbling for centuries. Paperwork inconsistencies, ghost delays, death orders filed on people who aren't even sick. Someone's forging reports. And you? You just lit the match."
Mira blinked. "Can I go back to the cheesecake dimension now?"
Vanessa sat slowly, folder in hand. "Why me?"
Thaddeus hesitated. "Because your name was used."
Vanessa's jaw tightened.
She looked down at the report in her lap.
And whispered, "Who TF files this soul report?"