Cleaner-Lower cruised around in the dark, minding its own business. The two men sat near a window with a glowing machine. The pattern it made was like a slithering snake. It was exceptionally red and a net was preventing anything too large from touching its fiery rods. “Doesn’t look like anything’s gonna happen,” said Amare.

“It was probably because we were extremely cold.”

“Does hypothermia cause hallucinations?”

“I don’t know, but I would guess it had something to do with it.”

Vick’s eyes darted around the labyrinth, he thought he could faintly see pictures of fantastical beings when he connected the dots. Creatures beyond their observable space, waiting to be discovered. “Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“Sure.”

Vick poured two glasses of crimson, bubbling and reflecting the stars from space. He turned around to see Amare reaching towards the stars. He rushed to see what he was looking at, spilling the drinks he held with each step, but he only saw the slash of the sword that the stars made with their hazy aura. “What do you see?” he said eagerly.

“It’s her,” Amare cried and with those words tears swept down his cheeks. “It’s her.” He went closer to the window, stretched his arms out toward it like he was reaching for his own life. “Dorothy!” he screamed.

Vick had never seen anything like it. A man reaching and crying for nothing. It was too superstitious. Coming up here had to be messing with their minds, and he wanted to descend back to Rorohiko but the look upon Amare’s face stopped him. It was filled with despair and comfort. Grief and joy. A perplexing arrangement of opposites, like yin and yang. He thought he was becoming lightheaded as he started to lose his vision, it looked like he could see through Amare. Cleaner-Lower drove over the spill and began emitting light. Sharper and sharper, it went by his feet, blinding him. When the light made way, Amare had vanished. He dropped the glasses and heard nothing but the rotating clinks and ringing of propellers in his ears. He had to be imagining it. He stared at where Amare had stood, expecting his vision to clear up so he could see him again. Yet, nothing changed. He looked at his hand and started counting: one, two, three, four, five. Then, backwards: five, four, three, two, one. He was not dreaming. “Amare,” he yelled and the sound echoed throughout the plane. He stood where he had stood, and looked out the same window. Nothing. The fiery rods were not fiery anymore, only gray. He took out his phone and scrolled until he tapped on ‘Amare’ in his contacts. Three rings, nothing. After the fourth, it went to voicemail. He texted him, it went through but no response. “I’m taking us down,” he said as if he were talking to Amare. “I’m seeing things.” He directed the plane back to Rorohiko, and as it was descending, he stared at where Amare had vanished. He didn’t come back, not even when the gyroplane touched Rorohiko’s roof. He looked around the bright plane, but he was nowhere to be found.

He strode on and on, through the blue corridors. The lights beamed down on him, penetrating every fibre of his being. He could not believe Amare was gone, not until he had checked every corner of Rorohiko. The sign hung on the ceiling: ‘Wizard Rooms.’ He walked down the hall, past his office, around two corners where he finally reached his destination. The door was open. “Amare,” he cried as he entered. Empty. His blue bed lay at the opposite end of where his computer stood, below his white mat lied as it had always. He found his phone on his desk in front of the monitor. He exited and crossed paths with Oseye, who upon witnessing his sunken eyes, asked: “are you all right?” Vick’s only response was a terrible look into her eyes, and at once he continued his search. Behind the next door he was greeted by a familiar green and gold. No sign of life. “Is something wrong?” she asked from behind him.

“Where’s Amare?”

“I’m not sure.”

He opened the drawer from his desk and took out a card. “Is Control open?”

“No,” she said at the door. “It will be in the morning.”

“When?” he said and began walking through the halls as she followed.

“At four. What’s going on?”

“Amare’s gone. He disappeared.”

“What? When did that happen?”

“Right now. I’m calling an emergency.”

“We can prepare a search party.”

“No, Oseye. He’s gone, he vanished in front of me. Disappeared out of thin air. How are we supposed to search for that?”

“In front of you? What do you mean?”

“Remember the Everguardians? How they disappeared overnight?”

“I remember. Is it happening once more? Did Amare fly at night again?”

“Yes,” he said and halted. “And so did I. He vanished in front of me. I swear, Oseye, that’s what happened.” He did not want to travel to the point his mind pulled him: to Control. Not to report another incident of a sudden disappearance. He lifted the glass and it rotated around its hinge. Under it, he swiped his card. The sliding doors turned on into a tint of ruby and opened. The interior was basked in red, like a darkroom. Oseye went straight to the computer with a command-line interface and entered a code. Amare’s status changed to report as ‘missing.’ “Control should be alerted,” she said. “We should begin our search.”

“Yes, put on your uniform. We’re searching all of Rorohiko.”

They opened their lockers presenting them with their suits and went into their changing rooms. She put on her blue uniform and tightened the white belt around her hips, and a symbol of a staff struck upon her heart. Vick dressed into his green attire, loose from the parts on his limbs, and with the symbol of an open book. “How high were you?” she asked.

“Don’t go up there, it’s not safe.”

“Where should I look for him then?”

“Check the gyroplanes. Cover the roof for me then travel westward, I’ll go east.”

He went through empty halls where behind each door was someone asleep. Resting while they could, while he was on a mission to find his friend. His attention solely focused on his legs journeying to the cafeteria. Seated in the corner, he caught eye of an anxious boy he had seen in his class. “What are you doing here so late at night?” he asked when he approached him.

“So—sorry, Mister Vick. I was just ha—having a snack.” He had eaten half a granola bar and was watching a video on his tablet.

“What’s your name?”

“Will—Willard.”

He leaned on the table. “Have you seen a man in white?” he said. “With a symbol of a staff on his uniform?”

“A wizard?” asked Willard.

“Yes, a wizard.”

“No. Sorry, Mister Vick.”

He chuckled at the foolish attempt to find any clues by needlessly worrying his student. “No worries, Willard. Have a nice night.”

He was about to leave when Willard said: “Mister Vick, is something wrong?”

He simply smiled to not worry his student.

“You have the opposite eyebrows of Roy,” he continued. “Yours are slanted upward from the middle which makes you look sad.”

Vick stood there, speechless, staring directly into Willard’s eyes as his smile disappeared.

“Oh,” gasped Willard and broke eye contact. “I’m so—sorry, Mister Vick. I shouldn’t have said that. Your eyebrows look good. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“You’re right, Willard,” he said calmly. “There is something wrong.” He cleared his throat. “I think I’ve lost my friend.”

“Lost your friend? Is that who you’re looking for?”

“Yes.”

“I can ask my friends to look for him, too.”

“You’d really do that?”

“Most of them are sleeping right now, but I can ask Gus. He’s awake.”

“Tell them if they see a wizard in white, come to the Wizard Rooms. I’ll be in W-zero-one. Oh, and my friend’s name is Amare.”

Having entrusted his students with the search, he made his way towards the hospital. Baffled at how quick the circumstances had changed. “Vanished? Doesn’t sound like a hallucination if Amare is really gone,” she said when he told her about what happened.

“I can’t believe it.”

“How did you feel up there?”

“Cold, and scared.”

“Did you see anything?”

“The stars with their aura, Amare reached out for them.”

“Aura? What kind of aura?”

“A faint glowing aura, coming from the dots.”

“Did you have a headache?”

“No, I—” he paused. “I did. I couldn’t sleep because of it. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, it may have been a visual hallucination induced by a migraine.”

“Oh,” he said relieved. “Is Amare still here?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Did you check his dorm?”

“I did, he wasn’t there. I alerted Control as well.”

“Well, go and find him. Come back here if you’re feeling unwell.”

Vick did not sleep that night. He tried to search every corner, looping in circles, not knowing if he was going to a new place each time. Through the halls of the chiefs, towards the rooms established for citizens, and into the reserves he had exclusive access to. Losing his mind. It really had vanished out of thin air. The gyroplane, along with Dorothy and the rest, must have gone the way Amare did. If nothing was wrong with him, then there must be something wrong with the world. Something they did not comprehend. Every turn he made, he expected Amare to show up. The same way he had vanished, he would reappear. But, time after time, it proved him wrong. He was mistaken. Amare might be gone from Rorohiko for good, just as the others were. He might never see him again, and these feelings were finally settling in. “The despair,” he thought. “Oh, the despair. Was this the feeling struck upon your face in the gyroplane? The same feeling during lunch in the cafeteria? Do the stars cause me to feel what you felt?” On a bench, in front of the Great Technological Statue that raised towards the ceiling in neon blue, he took rest for the couple minutes his body allowed. Slowly, more and more people walked upon the mezzanine and the lights within Rorohiko turned from a pale blue to a ruddy yellow, signaling to everyone that it was time to awake from their slumber. The Great Technological Statue was a hybrid of animals and machines. The head of a lizard, the body of a tiger, the tail of a fish, one wing of a bat and one wing of a bird. All layered with a coat of armor. Equipped on the wings were propellers like the ones found on a gyroplane. Its wings had their own hands, lifting the roof with all their force. The lizard head looked at him with its sharp eyes. Its pupils uncannily made the pattern of aura from the stars. The statue always looked ugly to Vick. A horrid creature situated at the center of Rorohiko. He wanted to topple over the fifteen-meter goliath. Didn’t like the way it peered into him with those triangular eyes. As Rorohiko grew busy, he stomped towards the place he did not want to venture to. To the place he had to report of Amare—whatever it was that happened to him. And so, his feet were plunged in front of the ‘Control’ carved into the wall. With a hurling sigh expunging every molecule of carbon-dioxide from his lungs, he threw himself forward and was greeted by another blue, cold, and callous room.