Ellen's Arc

Chapter 40 of 45

The coins were gone, but the salt beds still worked. Ellen loaded the wide, low wagon at dusk and rode it out herself. She had nothing left to trade, so she meant to beg credit at the camp past the flats. The frame skimmed the salt where hooves would sink. Brennan watched the crater and never turned his head. Halfway across, the horses stopped. A man stood on the salt ahead, blocking the only clear line. His helmet caught the starlight. Din Djarin had found her second door. "You keep crossing here," he said. "Food comes from the far side. So I waited here." He had tracked the pattern of her need, the way he tracked everyone. His rifle stayed low, but ready. "The puck says Ella and crew. I bring you in. That closes it." Ellen did not reach for a weapon. She had none that could beat him. "You want credits," she said. "I have no coins. But I know a man who trades in worse than money." She thought of the marker she had given long ago, the blood oath owed by a quiet man in a black suit. She had never meant to spend it here. "There's a marker on my life. A favor with no limit. I can call it in. He'll pay you more than any bounty to let me pass." Din Djarin was silent. Then a third figure walked out of the dark salt, blue-skinned, glowing at the eyes, unbothered by the cold. Ellen's stomach dropped. She knew this one only from a name Vincent had spoken once, a man who saw every road at once. "There is no marker to call," Dr. Manhattan said, flat and certain. "The man who holds it dies in nine days, on a different world, over a different woman. He will never reach you. I have already seen it." His white eyes fixed on Ellen. "I ran every path from your choices. Each one ends with your women dead. I came to end you first, to spare the longer harm." Ellen stood between two hunters and no coins and no favor left. She did the only thing she had left. She told the truth. "Then you've seen wrong," she said. "Because you're both here fighting over one starving woman. That's a road nobody planned." Din Djarin looked at the glowing god, then at Ellen. He lowered his rifle an inch. "He wants you dead. I want you alive, for credits. Can't be both." He stepped aside from the wagon path. "Not tonight. I don't hand a live puck to a killer." Ellen snapped the reins. The wagon lurched past both of them across the salt. Behind her, Dr. Manhattan did not move to stop her. He simply watched, as if noting a path he had missed. She reached the camp with no coins, but she reached it alive, and now she knew a god had marked her dead.