“What a shitter” Timothy growled. “Sargent, will I at least get off till the afternoon? I shouldn’t even be here for the next ten hours.”

“No Mr. Evans! Don’t ask me again. There is enough work to do as it is. I don’t need you slacking off. Especially since you reported all of this.” the Sargent responded.

He had been livid when he received the call last night, that there was going to be a major narcotics deal happening. And all that had been because Timothy had overheard a man on his phone outside the bus.

Any other commanding officer on duty would have adored him for finding that information. Sadly, it has been Sargent Rivera’s shift and while he cared about almost all police work deeply, he hated anything that involved narcotics. His stance on the matter was that if you are stupid enough to blow your brains out with anything else than a gun it was your choice to do so if you wished. God forbid, you start talking about drug-related violence, Sargent Rivera’s shouts would be heard throughout the entire precinct.

“However, you can head to the station and go home after you have done the most important filing. I wanna have everything you saw written down once I get back there. If you get done by breakfast you can take a break till your shift begins.” came the surprisingly cordial command from Rivera.

Maybe he is actually thankful for once, what an enigma that man Timothy thought on his way towards his car. He got inside and left for the station.

------------

Grumbling Max exited the train. He looked at his phone one last time in an annoyed manner. Damn it. Nik said he was going to have his phone fixed six days ago. It is not so hard to put the sim card into another phone.

Max hurried over the station platform so he would not get wet, towards the station house. I mean we should have food at home but if we don’t I really don’t wanna go out into the rain again. Guess I will trust him.

He put his ticket into the electric payment and scanning system and moved through the gate. He moved into the middle of the room and took a few deep breaths, he had been away from the city air for too long.

His parent’s house with whom he had been staying for the last week or so was nice, but he enjoyed living in a city so much more. What fun is a huge garden if there is no one around to party or play with. His parents had been pushing him to stay with them for as long as online lectures were ongoing. He had felt cramped the entire time he was at home. It was kind of counterintuitive but Max felt freedom in the city he could only dream of in his rural origin.

His parents were great and all, but they were only two people. His siblings both having moved out once they went to uni too.

Excited to be around at least some other people again he walked through the rest of the station and exited towards his dorm. For a moment Max deliberated whether he should check out the sirens he heard around a corner, but quickly decided against that as the rain started to pelt on his coat.

---------------------

“Mommy, I want some more cereal! Pleeeaaasseee!”, Vera’s daughter exclaimed for the fourth time. Initially, Vera had enjoyed Emily’s - her daughter - insistence on not drowning the elephants in her bowl. Completely forgetting that Emily usually ate a bowl of cereal larger than the elephant's bowl. Vera expected her daughter to only eat a single bowl as always. Emily had also insisted on eating with the elephants and kept talking in a friendly manner with the bowl.

Briefly debating whether she had enough time to clean the mess she had made in the kitchen this morning. She really didn’t feel like it, but she technically had time until Emily finished, so she set out to accomplish the task her husband would usually handle.

“Mommy, I love you!” Emily blurted out all of a sudden while trying to imitate the puppy stare she had seen on tv last night.

“You know that daddy is picking you up from the kindergarten today, I have told you before. You will see your friend tomorrow just as you saw her yesterday, and you already have a playdate on the weekend.” Vera said with a big grin on her face. Her daughter was just as predictable as most six-year-olds were.

“But mommy I didn’t want anything.” Emily insisted. Yes sure, my little angel not trying to manipulate me to get more playtime with her friends, I doubt it.

“Alright, I believe you! Now, did you pack your backpack already? Are you sure you have everything you need? We have no time to turn around for any doll combs or extra dresses.” Vera said. She herself had checked earlier to make sure her daughter wouldn’t take too long today. The most essential toys had been accounted for. The cars she liked playing with once the dolls got boring were on top since Emily had played with them in the morning. Seems like the cars are really growing on her Vera thought with a smile on her face.

She needed to be early at work, having changed shifts just for today with a coworker. Fewer headwounds to treat caused by drunken people and more wounds to treat caused by car crashes and other mundane activities. It had its ups and downs.

It took her another 3 bowl refills to satiate Emily’s hunger but the happy smile on her daughter’s face, caused by not drowning the elephants made it worth it. Vera was pretty happy with herself as well, managing to clean most of the kitchen.

“Emily, can you show mommy how fast you can tie your shoes, or do you wanna wear your velcro boots? Just remember, today is good weather.” the mother asked smiling at her contemplating daughter.

“I wanna wear my lace-ups, today mommy, please!” The girl said almost pouting.

“Alright, get on with it then.” Vera responded while walking out of the door to drive the car out of the garage.

With the car in reverse, she backed up slowly, leaving the garage again. Leaving her car she found the door closed again. Irritated she looked around until she saw her daughter running behind one of the neighbor’s cats. The cat she was currently following was particularly odd. She seemed to like being chased or maybe she just liked Emily.

The drive to the kindergarten went by fast as Vera and Emily talked about how the girl and her friends were going to dress up their dolls today.

-------------

Growling Max paced through his dorm room, trying to reach Niks phone for what felt like the tenth time. His roommate was not to be found or reached.

Right now Max was equally pissed and worried. Only the fact that their door was not destroyed gave him some sense so assurance that Nik was alright.

The food in their fridge was spoiled. Almost all of it. That was a sign that Nik hadn’t been here in at least some time. However, what really ground his gears was that Niks phone obviously had to work again.

On the table next to Niks’s sleeping couch was a box with a phone chipset, a blow drier, and some tools. So why isn’t he picking up his phone? It was not as though Max really needed anything from Nik, he was just mad at the fact that he had to throw food away and go out again to get some more. He should probably also clean the entire fridge while he was at it.

While cleaning out the fridge and subsequently cleaning it he debated calling Niks parents several times but ended up scrapping that idea. He was not going to get involved in their family situation, messed up as it seemed to be.

He did decide on calling several of their friends to see if they knew anything about his roommates’ whereabouts.

After he was done with both cleaning and calling a couple of his friends, his anger subsided and was completely replaced by worry. One of the guys he played board games with semi-regularly had said that Nik didn’t meet up with him and a couple of friends for a scheduled poker evening.

He had considered what do to several times and was still inconclusive.

He resolved to call Niks parents but after some contact searching in his phone found out he did not have their number. Secretly happy about the fact he asked in one of their common chat groups about what to do.

He was gonna visit a police station before getting groceries.

--------------

“Hello, I am Officer Evans, how may I help you.” a friendly-looking police officer greeted him.

“Hey, uhm hello. So uhm I guess I want to ahh… report a missing person. I have never done anything like this before so I don’t really know what to say. So basically he is lives with me in my dorm and nobody has seen him in like a week. He also doesn’t answer his phone. Hmm what else …” Max told the officer jittery.

“Wow wow, calm down there buddy. Let’s go sit down at my desk and I will just ask you a bunch of questions. Is that alright with you? Can I get you a water or tea?” the officer replied in a calm tone.

“Yes sure, and I don’t need anything, thank you though.”

Once they said down the officer apparently named Evens, indicated by his previous introduction and the name plaque on his desk, picked up a pencil and a form with too many boxes.

“Alright, let’s start over, you said your dormmate is missing. For how long has he been missing?”

Max could only say that it has been about a week. The following questions Nik answered as accurately as he could though he himself had been pulled a blank on more than a few questions. The fact that it seemed that Nik seemed to have left all of a sudden gave a small pause to the officers questioning.

The policeman also asked him whether he had been in contact with Niks parents, upon denying that he got slightly annoyed but they continued nonetheless. He also assured Max that they would try to do that.

All in all, Max spent over 30 minutes at the station and was surprised at how fast that went by.

The officer left him with the information that he or a colleague of his would drop by in the afternoon if there weren’t able to contact the parents, to check out the flat just to be sure and that he should not clean more than he had already. That gave Max the impression that the cop was pretty sure that Nik was with his parents, a fact Max doubted.

On his way back to his room Max remembered to go shopping, but only bought essentials for the next couple of days. As he got home, he sat down fairly exhausted and almost fell asleep on the chair right then and there. Through a vast effort of will, he managed to keep himself awake and actually get some stuff done. He had returned to town to hang out with people primarily but he still had to study.

I really should have decided on another degree. Math was literally the most stupid idea. It was super fun in high school but now they are overdoing it. He sighed and tried to refocus on the piece of paper in front of him. It was only his third semester of uni and he had already lost any hope of ever finishing. And he wasn’t even half bad.

As time went on not much changed to the piece of paper in front of Max. That was while he had initially planned on getting much done he had taken a short break to look at his phone. Right now he was playing a stupid app he had seen in a commercial.

Disrupted by a knock on his door he went up to his door to check out what was happening. He didn’t expect any of his friends to visit, so maybe Nik had come back.

“Ohh, good afternoon Officer. Uhm I am sorry, I forgot your name.” Max spoke confused. He had all but forgotten that the officer had informed him about his possible stopping by.

“Afternoon, it is no trouble, Mr. Banner. My name is Timothy Evans. May I come in?” the tired-looking policeman said. Upon which he was invited in.

After offering the policeman a seat they both sat down, the officer with a large bag on his lap.

“Alright, so let’s cut straight to why I am here. You were right to inform us of your friend’s absence. We were able to get into contact with his family though that proved to be somewhat difficult. His parents confirmed that they had not heard from him in the last ten days which did not seem to be a huge concern. After some more talking and questions, they to became rather worried as that kind of behavior seems to be rather untypical of him.”

“Yeah, Nik can usually be relied upon rather well. He actually picks me up when I am wasted, even way past his bedtime. It is quite uncommon to not be able to reach him.” Max responded.

“His parents have been telling a similar story. This is why I brought this pack with me. Sadly our whole forensics team is currently occupied with a different investigation, so I will try to get some information about what could have happened here. Do not be alarmed, we are currently not assuming this to be a kidnapping, kids with troubled parent-child relations sometimes run away. It is the more likely option out of the two. This is one of the things I am here to discuss with you. Would it be alright if we were to talk while I do some potential evidence preservation?” the officer asked.

With the most important details discussed the officer went and grabbed a camera, and started taking pictures. Irritatedly he cleaned his lens a couple of times and took some more pictures. Frowning he took his phone out of his pockets and started taking pictures. Frowning even more after a couple of shots.

“What’s the matter?” Max asked confused.

“Both the DSLRs and my phone’s images are slightly washed out and sometimes have I guess interference patterns in the image. I will just proceed as it is now, but maybe you could take some as well and send them to the station later?” the grim-looking man said.

“Sure I will get right on to it.” the younger man responded and started taking pictures.

“Well, this is odd. The same thing is happening to me. I really don’t know enough about physics, but I am pretty sure my high school physics class actually demonstrated something similar when there was a strong oscillating field around.”

“Well look at you mister smarty pants.” an irritated voice spoke back, “let’s just get this over with, I have had a way too long day and just wanna go home and sleep.”

Trying to lighten the mood Max tried starting up a conversation after a couple of minutes.

“You know, this is not that different from how they make it look in the movies. All the forensics stuff I mean.”

“Yeah, forensics is most often fairly well depicted in moves. Well for the most part. Have you ever seen any of the movies where they have a super pixelated image and someone says can you enhance it? Man, those are just super annoying.”

That is good so he likes talking about his job, I guess I can work with that Max thought, irritated by a slight pressure building in his head.

“They mess me up bad too. I actually had a seminar last semester as part of my minor. I didn’t pay that much attention but that part specifically was quite interesting.”

And so they continued their conversations ideally while officer Evans took pictures of almost everything in the room and collected some “samples” that he most likely assumed to be Niks to be able to confirm his identity through DNA tests if anything would pop up. His fingerprints were apparently already available as he had flown a couple of times.

“So I have to ask you, did you drug me? I am getting a really weird feeling.” Officer Evans said. Just before he heard a thump and spotted Max lying on the floor. Max was not conscious anymore, neither to hear the policeman ask nor to witness how the policeman called for an ambulance.