The apartment block was much the same as Yeung-Sung’s; the same headstone shaped balconies; the same bony outside and banana-wood insides; the same street lamps that burned crimson above them like ritual sconces.

What was not the same was the population. As Sykes and Yeung-Sung made their way into the lobby they had to immediately start wading through coloners to get by. The lobby was absolutely packed with groups and groups. Some PM’s red and blues, some in the formal suits and ties of the Debaters, and some ordinary coloners riled up, caught in the excitement and mess of things. All of them stuffed the room with the sounds and sight and the nervous smell of something big.

Shouldering through, Yeung-Sung tried to keep an eye out for Sykes -who seemed to have no problem manoeuvring the crowd, and pointed towards the reception desk. Where Yeung-Sung was passively ignored, having to flatten himself and squeeze through walls of people, Sykes was actively ignored like he had an aura of something too awful to be near, like a disaster, or a hate word. The black Irishman seemed not to care, maybe even not to notice this. Even as the coloners -rushing to catch up to whatever meeting or event was happening- peered back at him and slipped in whispers among themselves, he did not shift his sight an inch.

After wading through the mass of musk and men, they came at last to the receptionist desk. Like in Yeung-Sung’s building, it was a rounded low-table with all the assorted things of an office. All the screens faced the same, the tablets and the keyboards arranged too and if it wasn’t for the unfamiliar pomegranate-faced Filipino a seated there, he could’ve sworn that it was his own.

The receptionist was face down on his phone, so when Yeung-Sung put a hand out and politely waited right in front of him he didn’t respond. He coughed too, which got him to look, but still he was ignored. I guess he doesn’t get a lot of questions.

He searched back at the crowd for Sykes. The guard doesn’t seem to bothered by the infestation of people in his lobby either. What does he even get paid for- oh, yeah.

“’Ey! Bro, what’chu you tink you doin’?” it was the Filipino.

What the hell managed to get his attention?

Then he saw. Sykes was swinging down, half his body over the end of the counter, picking (upside-down) through the camera screens. He was tapping through the rooms without a care, flipping through so fast that Yeung-Sung doubted whether he could actually tell anything from it. The guard bumbled towards him, skating his chair back.

“Get off that, bro,” he said. “Aww, man, you’re gonna –" He forced Syke’s back, “-get me in a lotta trouble.”

Sykes held his pointing finger up and continued to scroll through the air, giving the guard a ‘What seems to be the problem’ look.

“Hi, we’re-” Yeung-Sung started but the guard cut him off.

“You want something, bro?”

Sykes shifted the odd motion to point at Yeung-Sung. Hunching over the screen, aggressively blocking the camera screens sight, he flipped over to Yeung-Sung.

“Yeah?” His cheeks were a tough, sun-pocked hide.

“We’re…umm, Sykes and I.” He bit back the sudden anxiety. “We’re looking for a friend of ours; Wil. Nerdy, American looking guy.”

“You definitely know him,” Sykes put in. “You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

The guard retracted hesitantly. Within narrow eye sockets he flickered between the two strangers. “You bother me for this? Okay. Well, let me check.”

Already smaller than either of them, tensing his shoulder made him seem even shorter as he scrolled through his central monitor.

“So,” he asked, “why can’t he just message you guys? “

“Because he’s an ass,” Sykes said.

Yeung-Sung sent him a sharp stare. “I have. I’ve been messaging him for the past three days.”

“He’s probably asleep, but this one is very clingy,” Sykes laughed.

The Filipino gave a half-hearted laugh back, but fell back into his wary frown. The guard’s ears, twitched. Yeung-Sung could tell as he watched him browse through his records, that the commotion all around the lobby was bothering him. He was about to ask him about it when he had stopped. He found him.

“There. Floor 2. Room 13,” the guard swung the monitor around. After a second, he pulled it back, saying, “Wait. That’s weird.”

“And there it is…” muttered Sykes.

What? You’re the one telling me Wil is fine. “What is it?” asked Yeung-Sung, trying to get a better look.

The guard looked out behind them, popping his mouth open like a caught catfish. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Yeung-Sung. Just a crowded lobby; Full of chatter, slowly filing out into the dusk. He groaned, feeling it sharp down his throat.

“Well? Is he there?” he demanded.

“Uh, yes. But on the camera, it’s day.”

Sykes tugged Yeung-Sung’s sleeve. “Time to go, “he said, nodding goodbye to the guard. “You were right.”

Immediately after he started dragging Yeung-Sung up the staircase, it made his body squirm. They plummeted towards Wil’s room, but Yeung-Sung’s steps didn’t feel like his own. The events of that night blossomed over top his senses. His breath stifled by recycled breaths; his wrist screaming at being restrained; the thick clumps of coloners that Sykes bowled him through parting like grass.

Please stop.

Before they reached the door of 13, Sykes released Yeung-Sung, letting him sink to his knees, body deflated, mind shrinking back through time. He watched -but did not really see- Sykes shift his footing, putting his inhumanely strong shoulder forward and run the apartment door straight through.

“Wilhelm?” Sykes shouted. “Wilhelm, where are you?”

Yeung-Sung’s head drooped, and his vision of Sykes stomping all around the room, tossing everything in his path, became increasingly sideways. He felt his stomach shove. He knew he should be concerned but could not force himself to move. Everything was drifting away, he was able to feel his hold on himself be gutted out. Sykes was angry. Sykes was shouting. Sykes was coming closer.

“Get up-gettup-gerrup!”

He was being slapped, a fish-handed slap, yet it took several seconds of watching his own pain before Yeung-Sung accessed his senses again, and awoke.

“He’s gone. Wake up, ya bollocks, Wil’s not here.”

Yeung-Sung pushed away and stood up without help, keeping his arms up as a warning. He took a step and teetered, but it felt better than being forced to stay up in place. He shut his eyes and it felt good. Yet he wrenched them apart again and said, “Are you sure?”

Sykes grunted up at him, on his knees below. “What kind of question is that? I looked inside his apartment. In his bathroom, in his closet, under his poxy bed. He’s. Not. Here.”

“Alright,” Yeung-Sung nodded. He took a wistful step, steadying himself against the door frame. “So where could he be?”

“I don’t know why you’re suddenly so calm”

A grin barely held onto Yeung-Sung’s face. “Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions.” He surveyed the inside, through the familiar blurry red gradient of the streetlight outside.

“There’s got to be an explanation. Let’s search the place for clues.”

Sykes stood up. He threw down his shoulders with a stern breath. “You’re right.”

The room was, as they had often joked about, a dilapidated mess. Tee shirts, ridiculous ones of all kinds of gaudy colours were laid out like paving stones between the bed and the closet, socks scrunched up over them like leaves on a path. Yeung-Sung stepped over them while Sykes rooted through them, turning them over for any hidden goodies. Setup just like his own room, there was a skinny, sleek work desk by the window. Drink bottles and all snack wrappers fountained from it like a popcorn maker. Some Yeung-Sung recognized from the vending machines, some from the outside world.

He bent over to pick up the chair, then considered its position. Tossed aside? A sign of struggle? Sighing, he gazed out the window. If we knew what we were looking for, we probably could’ve seen the chair when we came in. Was he locked inside?

He righted the chair, turning it over in the off chance there was something scrawled on it, or maybe a note stuck to the underside. “Any theories yet?” he asked.

The Irishman shook his head, throwing the remainder of the clothes into one pile then walking towards the bed. The single white duvet was pristinely made. Sykes raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think he’s the type of guy to keep such immaculate care of his bed.”

Staring at a plush pillow. “I’d believe it,” Yeung-Sung said. He frowned, turning his back on Sykes. “At this point.”

“Ahh, what are supposed to do? I can’t distinguish whether all this is slobbery or signs of struggle,” Sykes groaned. “Do you have any, like, motives, any perps who might do this? I know he has some history with the Champs.”

Feeling flushed after all the tight spaces Yeung-Sung wanted some air, so he ran his fingers along the screen window for the tiny indented hinges. “If I had to guess, I’ve a feeling it’s those Debaters. They’ve been way too active lately” Yeung-Sung said. “I had a small chat with one in my store today, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sykes walked up to him, and his face reflected his curiosity.

“It was strange. He didn’t seem to be one. No shirt or tie, no asking hypothetical questions about politics. None of that. He was buying stuff for a party, beer and stuff.” His fingers caught a crack. “Ah, got one,” he said excitedly, pushing purposely to instigate the windows mechanism. “Honestly, I thought he was a Duner.”

“We can’t just start incriminating…” Sykes poked him from behind. “Wait! Pull that back!”

Yeung-Sung scrambled to the bottom an released the screen back. As the panel started to slide, he saw it. Grabbing the window, he crept closer. “Hand prints!”

Sykes bounced with excitement. “They’re his, they must be.”

He tried to smudge one of the prints. “What are you doing? That’s our only clue! Wait…”

The print remained. Creeping his hand around, Yeung-Sung rubbed the edge of a thumb mark slightly. He turned to Sykes with awe. “They’re made from the outside.”

“Why was Wil outside the window?” Sykes thought out loud. “Unless he -No, you don’t think he was going to jump?”

Ignoring Sykes’s shock, Yeung-Sung stuck his head out and examined the clue. How in the hell would you even make prints like that? You couldn’t. Not from the inside.

“Man, are you crazy?”

“We’re only on the second floor. The most that would happen is I’d break a leg. The most.”

“That’s not something you’re worried about?”

Searching for another print, Yeung-Sung spotted something he never noticed before. A thin ledge ran from the point of the window, growing thicker closer to the ends. There’s no way. At the very end was a pocket of space, and lying there was a colony phone.

Yeung-Sung flipped back inside, nearly head-butting Sykes. He surged with energy now. Not jittery, caffeine-like energy but the purposeful, limit-breaking kind. “It’s his phone. There’s a balcony there. Tiny, like a celery stalk of a platform, but at the end…it’s Wil’s phone!”

“How did he- Yeung-Sung, you’re not going out there, man”

He hopped out, gripping the edge of the floor with both hands. His legs were bent, his hips out into the air for balance. His compressed toes quivered as he bent towards the phone, carefully not to fall off the grey lip.

Yeung-Sung was back inside before he knew it.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Sykes said. The Irishman backed away to give him space.

“I know,” Yeung-Seung said, unsteady again, “But…look.”

Twirling the thin brick in his hands, he pressed in on every button and scanned his fingerprint. “Either it’s off, or only Wil himself can open it,” Yeung-Sung admitted.

He closed the window over behind himself and the two sat on the bed, thinking.

I really thought we had it. He shook his head. But why was it out there in the first place? It had to be a signal.

Sykes got up, rummaging around in his jeans. “I’ve got it,” he said. “Phones light up when you get a new notification, right? I’ll just send Wil a message!”

“That’s brilliant! It won’t open them, though” Yeung-Sung said, staring at the phone as if it was his missing friend.

“Still, it might tell us who had been in contact with him -especially right before he was kidnapped, if that’s case.” Wasting no time, Sykes stroked out a word and sent it. “Well?”

Whiteness pulsed out of his hand.

Yeung-Sung leaped on top of the bad, ruining the perfect folds of the duvet. “I’ve never been so happy to see a notification,” he said with a crack in his voice.

[1 new message from ]

[2 new messages from ]

[WARNING: Your queue is inactive due to a lack of resources]

Yeung-Sung tried unlocking it again, but the phone only vibrated a refusal and went dark. He sank into the messy blankets. “That…didn’t tell us much.”

Sykes stood next to him, scratching his chin in thought. “Can I have that for a moment?”

Shoving a tear aside, Yeung-Sung forced himself up and dropped the phone into his waiting arms. He watched the Irishman send another message and tilt Wil’s phone to every angle as if it would show him a secret message. The light faded again. Yeung-Sung clutched his chest, moving to the back of the room. I can’t keep hoping for something magical to happen.

As he neared the door of Wil’s of apartment, the sound of people chattering became apparent. Stalking up to it, he pressed his ear against the red wood.

(Conversation relating to the riots – something along the lines of

“Is this really the end?”

“What, you scared of him?”

“If we don’t demand changes, he won’t budge.”

Knock on the door.

“Anyone who isn’t with is only going to get us killed by GLI)

“Ernie!” Sykes exclaimed. “He’s part of the Champs!”

“Sykes, we’d better leave.”