“Holy shit, holy shit,” Bri babbled, “I’m in RosieRainbow’s room. I’m in her room.”

“Quit busting a nut and focus,” KC snapped, trying to shift his position so that their arms weren’t touching.

It was impossible given the fact that they were bound, back to back, on two of Rose’s uncomfortable dining room chairs that she never used. He tried to shuffle the chair forward a little bit, hissing as the plastic zip tie chafed his wrists.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he barked at one of the masked people digging through Rose’s dresser. “What do you think you’re gonna find in her gitch?”

The person in black ignored him, rummaging and dumping all of the drawers.

KC turned his head as the other person in the room finished ransacking everything and left, in his periphery noticing that Bri was craning his neck.

“Don’t look at her underwear, you fucking creep,” KC snarled. “I should have never let you in here.”

“I’m not a creep!” Bri cried. “This is just really overwhelming, okay?”

“No shit! That means focus instead of drooling over my best friend’s bras like a fucking stalker weirdo!”

“I’m not…ugh, you wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand people that take parasocial relationships to scary levels, trust me. I should have known better than to let you in here but I was being stupid because Rose is fucking trapped—”

“I’m not scary, I never would have come here if this shit wasn’t happening—”

“—nobody fucking taking it seriously—”

“—needs backup and help—”

“—stuck with this asshole—”

“—not a—”

“Boys.” The voice left no room for argument, no room for anything.

It was Agent March, from the phone, that chilling tone having haunted KC’s brain since people in black had flooded the apartment and taken him and Bri down in seconds. She was a severe-looking woman with broad shoulders and a jaw that could cut glass. Her crisp suit looked like it had just been ironed minutes before, and not a hair was out of place in the slicked bun on the top of her head.

“What did you do to the stream?” KC demanded, finding his voice and injecting as much bravado into it as he could muster. He refused to back down to these people. “Is the game still running?”

Agent March slowly removed her sunglasses, revealing piercing grey eyes that focused intensely on Bri, who visibly withered beneath her gaze. “This one first.”

Two black-clad figures rushed in and lifted the kid like he weighed absolutely nothing, unfazed by his kicking and wriggling.

“You can’t fuckin’ do this!” he screamed. “This is illegal! Don’t touch my fuckin’ laptops!”

Agent March didn’t even spare KC a glance before whirling on her heel and following them back out to the hallway.

“You said we weren’t in any trouble,” KC called, struggling to keep his voice level.

She didn’t even hesitate, and the door closed behind her with a dull click.

He closed his eyes, focusing on his breath, his pounding heart, the ringing beginning to rise in his ears.

Not now, not now. Breathe, fucking breathe…

He knew better. Knew that focusing on not being able to breathe would just make the panic rise, make his heart explode, make his…

He forced his eyes to open, darting them around Rose’s ruined room. His gaze fell on a bright rainbow ribbon sticking out of some trashy romance novel they’d thrown from her nightstand.

“One, red,” he said breathlessly, staring at the colours. “Two, orange.”

He swallowed hard, managing to half fill his lungs with air.

“Three. Yellow.”

He fought the urge to close his eyes, staring at the ribbon, each little woven thread making up the rainbow.

“Four, green.”

This time he got a full lungful, taking in a deep breath through his nose, and letting it out through his mouth.

“Five, blue.”

His heartbeat slowed to a settled tha-thump, tha-thump, and by the time he was through indigo and violet—both fucking purple, Rose would say—he was calm enough to close his eyes without pure terror overcoming him.

She would be okay. He just had to stay calm and wait his turn with Agent March, give her whatever it was that she wanted, and hopefully they had the same goal. Hopefully they’d at least let him see Rose. Surely they’d been monitoring her even if they cut the stream.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, pep talking himself. Every once in awhile when he found it hard to stave off the echoes of Rose’s pain and fear, he’d open his eyes and count the rainbow again.

Eventually, Agent March returned, without Bri. KC hadn’t heard anything, but he wasn’t surprised. Rose’s apartment had soundproofing in all of the rooms so she could record wherever she wanted without issue. He couldn’t help but hope the kid was okay, no matter the fact that he wished he’d never let him in the door.

“Your turn,” she said, and KC moved with the suited people as they lifted his bound arms up and over the high-backed chair and set him on his feet.

“You don’t have to manhandle me, I’ll go wherever you want,” he assured his captors.

They ignored his words, half-carrying him by the biceps into the dining room. He sat down hard on one of the uncomfortable oak chairs, and though he was glad that they hadn’t had his wrists around the high back, he had to lean forward so he wasn’t squashing his arms behind him.

Agent March sat across from him, her spine ramrod straight. She had no computer, recording device, or notepad of any kind. She simply stared at him.

“I guess you’re not with the government, are you?” KC finally broke the silence, unable to stand it anymore.

“We’re not with any organization you would have heard of,” she replied. “After scrubbing everyone’s entire history that has been involved in the last forty-eight hours, I am reasonably certain that nobody, not even Ms. Smith, was aware of what would happen when she booted up that game.”

He waited for her to continue, battling severe impatience when she didn’t. “Was that a question?”

“Can you confirm that Ms. Smith came across the game disc the way she said she did?”

KC sighed. “No. I wasn’t here. Everything happened as it did in your…scrubbing. She told the story of how she got it and I had no idea she even had it. My annoyance at not being in on the trick was real.”

“Except it’s not a trick.”

“Clearly.” He gritted his teeth. “Can you just…can you tell me if she’s okay? I will give you whatever you need, whatever I can do to help. I just want her to be safe.”

Agent March stared him down for another long moment, her expression stern and unreadable. “She is alive and safe.”

KC sagged. This also told him that they still could see her, that they’d left the game on. That there was still a link open, if that was how it worked.

Hope. There was hope.

“When you came here to investigate, what did you do?” she asked.

He scrubbed his hand against the side of his face. “I looked for her, and when I couldn’t find her, I hopped on her machine. I tried to access menus and stuff in the game, and nothing worked. I thought it was a video feed, but I looked at the back end and the contents of the disk and it’s got all the guts of a game.” He took a deep breath. “She asked me at one point to turn off her computer but…I couldn’t do it. I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t know what it would have done but I didn’t want to lose her.” He couldn’t help but glare at the stoic woman across from him. “I didn’t want to lose contact with her, either.”

“We’re working on establishing contact without the entire world being privy to what is going on,” she fired back in a clipped tone that insinuated she was throwing accusations right back. “We need to be in contact with her too.”

“To help her? Or because you need something?” He didn’t trust these people as far as he could throw them. “The fact that you didn’t ask nicely makes me think you know what’s going on here. Maybe even have dealt with something like this before.”

If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. “You’re more astute than your friend.”

“He is not my friend.”

“Does his obsession with Ms. Smith make you uncomfortable?”

“Of course it does,” he scoffed. “I bet you know just how deep it goes, too, having access to all of his shit. Has he been stalking her?”

“Not in any sense that would constitute arresting him.”

“That’s not exactly comforting.” KC took in a sharp breath through his nose. “Bri doesn’t matter, though. What matters is where we’re going from here. I told you I want to help as long as it has Rose’s best interests in mind, so what happens now? I don’t know what information I could possibly have that could help you unless you tell me what you’re after. Even then…” He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air, because he was at a loss. There was nothing he could really offer these people.

“Mister Bell has been detained until it is safe to release him. He can’t be trusted not to leak information.” She paused, as if waiting for him to interject, but he forced himself to stay silent and stoic, not giving her anything. “I wouldn’t trust releasing you. But I do think you could be valuable to this operation, given your emotional ties to Ms. Smith. If you are willing to operate under my orders completely.”

The little RosieRainbow sitting on KC’s shoulder wanted to give Agent March the finger and flip the table in her face. He managed to squash the urge, because he knew the only way back to her was to behave—not to mention his hands were still bound behind his back.

“I wasn’t joking when I said I will do whatever you want,” he finally said. “But does this mean that our goals align? Whatever operation I’m helping you with, we’ll be bringing Rose back safely?”

“The operation is to do everything we can to bring Ms. Smith back safely,” Agent March said. “Once she finds the other person we need to retrieve.”