Invasion

The trouble with experiencing something life altering, with being caught up in something horrifying and inexplicable, was that, for the most part, the rest of the world simply didn't care. The world kept spinning, people spoke to them as if nothing had changed, and Johannes still needed money, still needed a job. Their very first job interview had gone terribly, and then so did their second and their third, because, frankly, the entire thing felt ridiculous to them. It was as if somebody had pulled at the thread that had held their view of the world together, and it had come apart at the seams just enough that Johannes had gotten a peek at the stuffing inside. They could hardly sleep, barely ate, couldn't focus on their job search or, really, on anything. Over and over, they replayed themself simply turning their back to the woman in the elevator and stalking off when, perhaps, they should have squeezed her for answers like an unripe lemon.

Percival had caught wise about the state they were in fairly quickly, and had consequently attempted to stage an intervention for Johannes that consisted of him sitting them down over dinner and, with the most sympathy, asking them what it was that was weighing on them, but Johannes knew very exactly which parts of the DSM-5 would light up like billboards in his head, were they to explain what exactly it was that they had seen, had punched; and they knew just how little stood between them and involuntary psych hold. Consequently, they told him that the job search was depressing them, and craved, quite violently, their own place and a quiet dinner to themself, as Percival rattled off platitude after platitude about how capable and intelligent Johannes really was and how success was only around the corner.

What was really around the corner for them was another week of sleeping on his seven seater pull-out couch, more days of laying face down attempting to memorize the most common interview questions, of ambling aimlessly through the city whenever they got sick of that, hidden behind sunglasses to try and avoid being recognized by the handful of people who read gossip magazines. Or, worse, by paparazzi. Shamefully, Johannes began to crave the echoing halls of their parents' mansion, started to miss the quiet seclusion, wished, again, for somebody to tell them how to carry themself, which parties to go to, which hands to shake. They needed guidance again, needed to crawl back home on their hands and knees.

When they finally called, late one evening, their phone pressed against their ear as they laid, once again, face down on Percy's beige couch, begging ended up feeling shockingly, shockingly easy. They had an invitation back home before they even knew it, and after that, a long night on their own to feel dirty about it.

Since their last visit, Frank, the gardener, had torn out the rhododendrons lining the white gravel driveway and swapped them out for hydrangeas, a switch so perfect that Johannes, their hands in the pockets of their leather jacket as they stared down at it, could not even make out any disturbed earth around them anymore. As Frank came up to greet them, a look on his face like he had never expected to see them again, Johannes could not help but ask about the flowers, carefully, fearing they'd get the answer that these hydrangeas had, in fact, always been there. They hadn't been.

They ran the usual gamut, then, of getting through to their parents: first past the butler, Stanford, taking their jacket and ushering them in, and then past the family's private assistant, Christine, who quickly and professionally caught them up on the happenstances in the household that transpired while Johannes was gone. For some of it, they had their doubts whether their parents would really have wanted Johannes in the loop, but in a way, this was really Christine's household, and the Brandt's were simply paying her to run it.

"Johnson and his wife have agreed to settle out of court," she told Johannes, opening the door to the sprawling hallway for them as she talked, her ever-present tablet under her arm. "The Johnson's have agreed to stage some reconciliation photos," she said softly, "under the condition that you never speak to them again."

"You want me to play nice with that bastard," Johannes pressed out through a tense smile, "and then keep a lid on it and forget what I saw."

"I know that it's difficult for you," she said, stopping for a moment with her hand on the door to the dining room, "and I agree with you, morally, I really do. But it would be what's best for this family."

Family first. As always. Of course. And the stock price as well, they would bet.

"Darling," their mother stood up to greet them in German, her arms wide open as Johannes entered the enormous, brightly lit dining room. "Come here, let me look at you. Oh, you look terrible, Jan. Do you run around like this? Please, have some shame."

"What do you want to bet that he was photographed like this? How long until this haircut will be all over the magazines?" their father glared up at them from his seat. "Elena, stop fussing over him already, he should know by now how to dress himself."

Johannes' mother stopped tugging at their clothing to smooth it out just long enough to shoot him a sour look. "Will you deny a mother her last little pleasures? He will always be my baby."

"Your baby has an assault charge to his name. Our name."

"It's very good to see you both," Johannes attempted to interrupt that, stiffly and too loud, already feeling their face freeze into the sort of pleasantly smiling grimace that was going to make their cheeks twinge.

Their mother took their face in both hands, a deep crease of worry between her brows, before she patted their cheek and finally let them take a seat.

"Eat," their father gestured impatiently towards their plate. "Don't let it get cold. What is it that you want, then? I was under the impression that we had an agreement. You be a menace somewhere else, and we don't have to deal with you until you learn your lesson. Did you run out of money?"

"Sebastian," their mother scolded, "do you have to be so cruel about it? Jan called me in tears yesterday," a statement that wasn't true, "about the job market these days. You know just as well how poorly the economy is doing right now."

That, and Johannes had, in fact, run out of money. They began to prod the saddle of venison on their plate and watched its red juices pool, winding their way around warm orange butternut squash cubes and purple umeboshi plums. Somehow, they weren't particularly hungry.

"Is there anything wrong with the food, little sparrow?" their mother asked.

They startled. "Ah! No, of course not, Mama. Well, as she said," they turned to their father, "the job market really hasn't been very kind to me. I've tried my luck with quite a few therapist's offices by now, and I've had plenty of interviews, but it's been months by now and I still haven't been able to land a job where, well..." They gestured. "I wouldn't waste my skills, yes?" Johannes could already feel it seeping into the cracks of their psyche, the way they had to tailor their words exactly to what their parents wanted to hear.

"Well, maybe a therapist's office is the wrong place for you then," their father said thoughtfully, a bite of venison impaled on his fork, though his voice was already kinder. "You're too soft. You won't amount to anything if you just listen to people's complaints all day."

"Why don't you try your luck in research?"

"Research is prestigious. Do that. Or better yet, work for a proper company."

"Right, yes," Johannes agreed despite themself. "A proper company." So long as it paid. "Ah, well, I was actually wondering whether you two... Knew anybody who may be hiring?"

"Oh Jan," their mother scolded them softly, "Surely you have your own contacts. We didn't send you to school for nothing, did we? You went to plenty enough parties to make friends."

Jan flushed pink with embarrassment. "I'm in touch with Percival—"

"Good old Percy," their father exclaimed, gesturing dangerously with a forkful of squash. "He's working for Ben's company now, isn't he? In human resources! Why don't you have him put in a good word for you?"

"I'm not sure he's really been with the company long enough to do that." Johannes scratched the scruff on their chin awkwardly.

"Have us do it then," their mother suggested, more to their father than to them. "Let's have dinner with Ben. It's been a while since we've seen him anyways, don't you think?"

Their father exchanged a long look with her, then stared Johannes down in a way that made their stomach twist with the queasy anticipation of bitterly learned experience.

"Under one condition."

And there it was.

"The haircut suits you," Percival said by way of greeting, a potshot so low that it immediately made Johannes tense with rage as Percy invited himself into their office.

"Thank you," they took it on the nose, smiling a close lipped smile. "How can I help you?"

"Makes you look very professional now, without all the mess and the length," he ignored that. "Very grown up."

There had been made some sort of compromise, somewhere along the chain between the Brandt's inviting over Ben Wolfram, CEO of Wolfram Solutions, one of the biggest information technology corporations of the country, and getting Johannes a job at said company. They had not landed directly in human resources, but instead found themself as a counselor, a mere two doors down from Percy's office. Percival had taken the whole thing rather poorly, with him being hired through what he thought were fair means, and Johannes getting in through connections, and Johannes would have felt much guiltier about that, had he not been getting so profoundly on their nerves lately. As it stood, they more so lamented that they had to share a space with him both at home and on the job, and they spent a good bit of downtime in between clients scrolling apartment listings on their phone, covertly under the table.

Johannes had been set up with a powerfully neutral space for this purpose, and counseling sessions as well they supposed; all whites and beiges with a snake plant in the corner and a painting of the deep blue ocean on the wall, perfectly mirroring the color of the faux leather chairs. Percival invited himself into one of them, folding his hands in his lap and taking on a magnanimous air about him as he declared: "I have a special client for you."

"Really?" They smiled at him pointedly. "Aren't all my clients special?"

"Yes, yes, sure." He waved his ringed and manicured hand impatiently, as manicured as their own was now. "But I need you to tread very carefully with this one. She's in the middle of a severe mental breakdown, and her entire department has apparently been talking about nothing else. Her boss even called me up in a tizzy. This needs to be handled, and gracefully, or it's going to ruffle a lot of feathers. Oh, did you take your piercings out as well? No way, can I see? Turn your head."

"I will not," Johannes gritted out, "but thank you, Percy . And I handle all my clients gracefully, so there really isn't any need to worry."

He hummed, short and appraising, and pushed his thumbs together in his lap. "Well, then, I will forward you the email she sent me. Have a good one, Jan. Does your mother still call you that too, by the way?"

Johannes simply put their head in their hand and stared him down, smiled him down, until he—very quickly, they might add—seemed to remember which bear it was that he was poking, and vacated their office.

The email arrived in their inbox a mere two minutes later, but Johannes was in no state to read it yet. They took ten minutes to smooth down their hackles again, fetching themself a hot cup of coffee from the machine in the kitchen, before they sat down to read.

Dear Mr. Caradoc,

this is me emailing you so you have this in writing, just like you asked me to. I'm nervous to leave a paper trail, for obvious reasons, but I also trust that you aren't going to use this against me. On the other hand, I am grimly excited. Like this, nobody will be able to say that I didn't ask for help before it was too late, least of all you.

Which brings me to my point: please, for the love of God, help me. I've tried everything by now, dentists, doctors, family, friends, nobody can help me. They are all itching to send me to a therapist, or better yet a closed institution, and as fast as possible too. But I am telling you right now, if you call the police on me for a wellness check and I am locked away, my blood is on your hands.

With that out of the way: Here is what you didn't want to hear from me the other day at the coffee machine, properly and in writing.

It all started early one morning. I usually wake up around five these days, but I remember it being even earlier that day, I think around 3am or 4am. Did you know that we feel pain stronger at night than during the day? I looked it up. It peaks exactly at 3am. But even without looking that up, I could've told you, because the pain I felt that morning was something I'm never going to forget.

Have you ever gotten a root canal, Mr. Caradoc?

I did, two years ago. It was my lower molar, the first on the right side. I can still see the filling, I think, when I pull my lips back—well, I could, anyways. My dentist did a pretty good job all around, not just with the actual procedure, but also in explaining to me how it works. When a tooth is infected or inflamed down to the pulp, the very inside underneath enamel and dentin, what they will do is, they will bore a hole in the respective decaying tooth, and then hollow it out completely, removing everything within it that's alive, and then fill it with something dead and inert, with rubber and cement. And although it is a dead man walking from then on, surrounding tissue is able to keep such a tooth alive, as my dentist told me, almost indefinitely. He did an excellent job hollowing me out, but it was a bad day to find out that I don't properly respond to the anesthetic he used.

It was that same pain that I felt again that morning, at 3 or 4 in the pain hour, and that was what I was looking for in the mirror as I was standing there in the dim grey light and pulling my mouth open with a finger. A sign that my root canal had to be redone.

But what I saw instead was, and I know how difficult this is to believe: a tiny, tiny dark door, hollow, maybe more of an archway, smaller than the pin of a needle, carved right into the enamel of my tooth.

The first thing I did was of course to call my mom up in a panic. She had to spend twenty minutes calming me down before I'd stopped crying for long enough to take a picture of it, and then when I did and sent it to her, I could immediately hear the pity in her voice. She told me that it was a very normal thing to have nightmares like this during pregnancy, and that she had gone through the exact same thing when she was pregnant with me. I have to admit that I got very angry at her for it. I know what a nightmare is, I am not a child. I was wide awake. People all around me have taken on this patronizing air towards me ever since I've started showing, as if carrying a baby somehow negates everything I have accomplished and everything I am, and has turned me into some fragile stupid thing.

I hung up on her. I'm not proud of it. We haven't been on the best of terms anyways, and I'm sure this didn't make it better.

Four hours later, I stood on my dentist's doormat, practically banging at the door to be let in. I was overjoyed when he opened my mouth to inspect the molar and immediately agreed to give me a filling, but it only struck me why he'd told me to take the day off as I was inspecting the molar in the rear view mirror of my car, and all he had done was to fill in the archway, leaving the intricate carvings around it alone. And they were intricate now: It was as if somebody was miming pillars around the hole in my tooth. I stormed back into his office in distress, and found myself set up with a blanket and some hot tea in the waiting room as one of the dentist's assistants patted my knee, instead of just filling the damn structure in.

I went home. What else was I supposed to do?

The next day, the pillars had been carved.

It went on like this. First there came windows, rows upon rows of them, with ledges and flourishes. Then, the next tooth showed a hole. Then the next. Archways started to grow steps to lead up to them. Windows became larger, more opulent. And the pain—I never saw the actual carving happen, not even once, but I felt it. I felt every single chip, every last line in them.

I saw dentist after dentist, convinced family to look into my mouth, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, even my boss, but there was always that same goddamned look of pity. The woman is going crazy, their faces seemed to scream, as they even stopped being able to see holes at all. But I am not crazy. This is not phantom pain. I know what is happening to me, and I need it to stop. I am being made a home for something, and I want it out.

My parents have asked me to move back in with them. I will be packing my bags next week, but I'm afraid that they aren't planning to help me with the pregnancy. If my suspicions are true, these bags will be on the floor of a mental hospital very soon.

I am asking you for your help because you have always been on my side, even back when I was fighting for accommodations for my morning sickness. I don't know who else is left to ask. I also don't know what I expect you to do about this anymore, but I need it to be something.

My jaw has started hurting.

Please.

Yours,

Kalinka Czajkowska

Having finished reading, Johannes sat back in their chair and pushed up their glasses to rub the bridge of their nose, trying to stave off an encroaching headache. How were they supposed to be a therapist, a grounding rock for their patients, if they now questioned their own reality at each and every delusion? How could they help this woman if they found themself wondering whether she had not also, just like them, been violently unraveled at the seams in a way that was all too real? What if she would show them her teeth, and they would see what she sees?What if this was going to be the final nail in the coffin that is threatening to bury their own sanity six feet underground? Perhaps Johannes was the one who needed a cushy stay at a hospital for a while to cope with it all.

But they couldn't tell Percival to send her to see somebody else. Not on their pride.

She was in their office just half an hour later.

Ms. Czajkowska was a very professional woman, with brown hair caught in a neatly slicked down updo and a smoothly ironed white blazer on her small, deeply pregnant frame. It was only the smeared eyeliner around her eyes that betrayed that anything could possibly be wrong, and even then, she was still trying to neaten it up, fussing at it with a finger as she took a seat in one of the blue leather chairs.

It took everything within Johannes not to stare at her mouth as she introduced herself, fearing it would feed her delusion, or their own, or, worse yet, that she'd read that same look of pity on their face again that she had been confronted with over and over in her distress.

"Mr. Caradoc has caught me up on your issue," Johannes told her gently, "you don't need to explain it all to me again. Would you mind if I asked you some follow up questions, though?"

"I need the only thing out of your mouth be a request to see mine," she said, her voice thick with the apparent strain not to cry as she pressed a hand to her smarting jaw. "I cannot believe that I'm even in this office right now."

"I will of course take a look," Johannes reassured her, "after I understand your situation a bit better. I would really like to help you, Ms. Czajkowska. I'm not here to tell you that you're crazy." And still, they tried their best not to let their eyes glide down.

"Stop staring me in the eyes like that, then," she huffed, hers cold and wide, and Johannes cringed. "Look at my mouth. What are you afraid of?"

"I am not afraid."

"You're frozen stiff with fear! What, are you scared that the crazy woman is going to assault you? Here!" She jumped out of her chair, brought a hand down flat onto their desk and pointed wildly at her mouth as she leaned over. "Look at me! Just fucking look at me already and say the same thing to me that all the others say!"

Their eyes glided down. And of course Johannes was afraid. Of course they feared that it wasn't just her, that they were crazy too. And as their eyes met her teeth, Johannes went very, very pale.

There, in the rows of her teeth, top and bottom both, was carved a tiny, sprawling, intricate city, the likes of which they'd seen before only in National Geographic magazines, hewn into caves or rock faces. It seemed that, for whatever it was that was colonizing Ms. Czajkowska, she was now nothing more than an inanimate mountainside.

"Oh no," they breathed.

Her face fell. "You can see it?" For a moment, her shoulders rose, her face suspended in the limbo between anticipation, relief, and fear.

"I can."

"Oh, thank God." She let herself fall backwards into her chair, losing all her bravado and put-togetherness as she started to sob into her hands.

Johannes took their box of tissues out of the compartment in their desk, pulling one out and handing it to her. But although Ms. Czajkowska took it gratefully, it took her another minute before she could catch herself enough to use it. They couldn't imagine what she was going through right now, barely even able to wrap their head around the fact that it was happening at all. And why on Earth was nobody else able to see it? Better yet: why was Johannes? It made them queasy to their stomach, the thought that, what happened to them in the elevator, no, maybe even what happened on that set of stairs, late that night at the gay bar, might have been what was predisposing them to this now. That there was something going on in this world that one could be caught up in once, and that would then never let them go again. So then, even if Johannes would finally be able to help Ms. Czajkowska, would she ever be free?

"Let's think about this, then," they said softly, as it was starting to look as if she might be receptive to speaking again. "Nobody else can see what you and I can see. But your dentist was able to give you a filling, no?"

"Barely." She shook her head, her voice thick with tears. "Just the once, and even then he couldn't see all of it."

"Have you seen him again since then? About the other holes?"

"He's refused!" She laughed. "Said I'm just imagining things! Can you believe that?"

"Let me give him a call. I will vouch for you."

"You will?"

They took out their notepad, pushed both pen and paper towards her. "Give me his name and number, I'll do it straight away."

She shook her head. "He's on break right now, it's 2pm."

"Later, then."

Ms. Czajkowska reached for the pen, then, sniffling, and scribbled down a name and a number, neat and small on the dotted lines. She looked much younger, then, and Johannes realized that she couldn't be much older than twenty five—they'd been dazzled by the straightness of her back and the sternness of her face, but there was a lack of lines to her skin that spoke of a very young, very steep career, of a woman landing herself in a high pressure environment just barely out of university.

And what they also noticed was that she wasn't cradling her stomach. Admittedly, Johannes hadn't met very many pregnant women, but the few that they had met had always had the same tic—a hand on their stomach, even when they weren't showing yet, or even an arm, a protective barrier between the baby and the world, a supportive grasp. Ms. Czajkowska was doing nothing of the sort. It was as if she moved around her stomach like an encumbering obstacle, a thing to be carried around and avoided.

Johannes took pen and paper back from her.

"Can I... Ask you something?" they said, somehow fully out of their element as a professional now. It was only natural to ask more questions as a therapist, leading questions, even, but it no longer felt appropriate. Their client wasn't sick, not in the way that they thought she would be.

"Yes?" She sniffled, and took out another tissue from the box, studying their face with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.

"Which trimester are you in?"

She winced. And really, that was all the answer that Johannes needed.

"The second."

"What are your feelings on it?"

Ms. Czajkowska hunched in her chair, cradling her arms in front of her chest. "My feelings? Are they relevant?"

"No," Johannes shook their head. "No, of course not. I was just wondering whether you'd like to talk about it, considering that you are already here."

She huffed a laugh. "Very perceptive, but maybe not all that tactful. I'd rather not talk about it, honestly. I have enough on my plate right now as it is."

"I'm sure that you do." Johannes gave her a crooked smile, feeling bad for asking. "Let me give your dentist a call. And anyone else you want, really. Whatever you need. Here, please take my card."

Ms. Czajkowska turned it in her hands, hesitant as she ran a finger over one of the smooth cardboard edges. "Will you take one last look?" she asked. "Just to tell me that it's really there?"

Two days later, Johannes was packing up to leave the office, their phone already in their black messenger bag, when the screen lit up.

Ms.Czajkowska had sent them an email with no subject.The only thing she'd written in the body of it wasa single sentence:

'He didn't see it.'

Johannes hurried to message her back, but to no reply. When they arrived at her department, she was already gone.

They went home that night with a heavy head, thoughts wrapped all around her like spider webs. Percival had already gone home an hour earlier, and so they didn't need to come up with an excuse not to carpool, could sit alone with their thoughts on the now-familiar subway. And as they laid down on Percy's stupid beige pull-out couch that night they saw her teeth, only her teeth, and the way that the flashlight of their phone had reflected off their enamel, had lit up the doors and windows of this impossibly tiny city, and how, as far as Johannes could tell, there was nothing inside.

Ms. Czajkowska was being made a home for something. Over and over, it echoed in their head. She was being made a home, but nothing was there.

It was midnight when Johannes shot up from their makeshift bed, blind without their glasses and their newly short, thin hair sticking up to all sides, only one thought in their mind: She was being made a home for something that she did not want. Her teeth. Her family. Her stomach. What Ms. Czajkowska wanted, perhaps even what she desperately needed was an abortion.

It lit up in their mind like a glowing exit sign, like a target at the shooting range, like a bright red punching bag that said apply force here.

They sat awake, and they turned this back and forth in their mind, and it struck them—her and them were going through much the same things. If Johannes was marked, if their client was marked, if they both shared an understanding that nobody else could share, not the dentist, not Percival, not anybody else, then what Ms. Czajkowska was going through and what Johannes had gone through, on the fire escape, in the elevator, had to be inexplicably linked. It had to be similar in a way that hadn't been apparent to Johannes until that very moment, staring out at the blurry shapes of Percy's living room in the dark.

When Johannes had been trapped in that elevator, they had freshly lost their direction in life. They had been turned around in an unfamiliar environment, bereaved of life plans that had always felt so certain, alienated from their own until then so iron-clad self image. And so the elevator had responded, had thrown them around, had trapped them in a directionless, wrong-directioned loop over and over, had shown them their mirror image and asked: is this really you anymore?

And it hadn't stopped until Johannes had fought themself and won. They knew exactly what had to be done.

They took their motorcycle to work that morning, least of all because Percy had already left. They threw their leather jacket and gloves into their locker, slung the lanyard with their ID card around their neck, and hurried down the carpeted corridors of Wolfram Solutions, past the water coolers, past their office—

Percival stopped them in their tracks, putting himself right in their path.

"A great job, that you did with Katrina Tchaikovsky," he sneered.

"Czajkowska. What is your issue this time?"

"My issue—" He jutted his chin up at Johannes. With both of them standing like this, Percy was half a head shorter, the black hair he gelled to a shine coming just about to the tip of their nose. "My issue is that I asked you to handle it, and you plunged her deeper into it. She was in the office rambling this morning. There are email chains about it! Her team's slack channel is exploding!"

Johannes went still. "She was in the office?"

"Security had to remove her. I made the call, Jan, and that is entirely and completely your doing."

"You called for a wellness check for her." It was a statement. Not a question.

"I had to," Percy all but spits. "Don't you dare!" Johannes' hand stopped just short of fisting itself into the front of his ironed white business shirt, trembling with rage, blocked just so by Percival's raised index finger. "Don't you dare. I should get you fired for this."

Johannes clenched their hand to a fist, white knuckled as they felt their familiar smile involuntarily creep onto their face. "Do you have any," they asked, soft, strained, "any idea what you did?"

Percival went pale. "I did this to protect people, Jan. Stop letting your idealism blind you to what the world is really like. Her coworkers were scared of her. She's unwell. And you were feeding her delusions just to be nice."

Except that they weren't delusions. Except that Johannes wasn't just being nice. Their mouth opened, then closed. What were they going to tell Percy? That they had seen the holes too? He wouldn't hesitate.

"I'd like to be alone," they told him quietly instead, and pushed past him to unlock their office door. He didn't stop them.

Johannes wondered at the drinks that they'd shared with Percy, all those evenings of just the two of them, watching movies, doing homework, or just talking. They wondered which one it was, that he'd changed too much, or that they hadn't at all. They were stubborn. Johannes had always known this about themself. And they held on firmly to their convictions, firmer than anybody they knew, firmer sometimes than others perhaps wanted them to.

It saw them left on their own more often than not.

Johannes dug through their bag. They pulled out their wallet, and with it the small card holder, embossed with the logo of their father's company, Brandt Chemical Corporation, the 'BCC' punched into the silver metal in sharp, angled letters.

Marion Somoza Fuente. Reality fixer, techno witch.

She picked up the phone with a gruff "Yes?"

"Johannes Brandt. Ah—we met in an elevator?"

"Elevator? How the fuck did you get this number?"

"You tried to... Hire me?"

"Oh! It's you!!" They snorted at the excitement in her voice. Strange, that wasn't at all how they expected her to react. "Did you change your mind?"

"Well, not exactly. But—I could really use your help with something, Ms. Somoza."

Her office was located on the corner of a busy intersection, tucked into a mixed-use residential building, a kebab shop to the left of it and a cobbler to the right. Johannes had taken off sick, forced to message each of their clients individually that they wouldn't be able to help them today, and was now fidgeting with the keys to their motorbike, antsy with guilt.

It helped a lot, the way her eyes lit up as she all but dragged them through the door.

After sitting them down at the large office desk that dominated the space, she had them recounting everything that had happened, first in their own words and then in the form of showing her Ms. Czajkowska's email on their work phone. As they went on, the excited bend to her shoulders made room for a grimness that was almost intimidating, paired with the strange yellow tint to her really very green eyes. It was those same eyes that she fixed them with as she asked Johannes: "How far are you willing to go for this?"

"I've already gone far out of my way."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Yeah, you seriously have. What's in it for you?"

"She asked me to help her. And I made a promise to her that I would."

She tilted her head at that, dark brown curls sliding over her shoulder, and appraised Johannes, as intense and unblinking as a cat inspecting a bug for edibility.

Johannes held her gaze and didn't squirm.

"Huh," she said. And, nodding to herself, reached underneath her desk to pull out a beaten-looking, clunky old laptop, which she sat down next to the keyboard of what Johannes had thought would be the computer to use. Their eyes stuck to a small crack in the corner of its chassis as Ms. Somoza began to hack away at her keyboard, turning the screen so Johannes definitely wouldn't be able to see.

Uneasily, they asked: "What exactly is it that you do here?"

Without looking up from her screen, she pointed towards one of the bead-curtained windows, which met the door to the office space on either side. "You saw the sign outside."

"There... Isn't one?"

"Exactly. Just don't fucking worry about it."

Johannes stared at her. "Well—with all due respect, don't you think that it might be a good idea to let me in on more than that if you are so eager to hire me?"

"I thought you were a psychologist."

"Just because I am that now doesn't mean that I'm not interested!"

"You told me no twice," she said flatly, then cast a glance over her screen at them. "Are you sure you're not just trying to pry?"

"Wh—" Johannes sputtered. "Well, maybe so! But I feel like I have a right to know what I am getting myself into here."

Ms. Somoza snorted dryly. "As if you don't already know. You saw her teeth, didn't you?"

"Reality fixer and techno witch," Johannes burst out. "They are on your card. Reality fixer, fine, I can make sense of, assuming that reality can simply be—" They gestured wildly. "Fixed! And techno witch might be an unconventional way of putting it, but I can clearly see that you are doing some sort of," they waved their hand at her beaten up laptop, "things with computers. But what on Earth do those two things have in common with each other? Why both?"

Instead of answering, Ms. Somoza turned her laptop screen around, to the sight of Ms. Czajkowska's smiling face, the arm of an older gentleman slung around her shoulder whose nose looked eerily similar to hers. "This your client?"

Johannes gaped, leaning over clutter on the desk to see better. "That isn't Facebook."

"Never said it was."

Satisfied, she whirled her laptop back around to face her again.

It was clear to Johannes that, whatever it was that she was doing, it was at the very least in some sort of legal grey area, if not even further in the shadows. They rubbed their thumb over one of their keys in their lap, keyring-bow-shoulder-biting-tip-biting-shoulder-bow-keyring, over and over as the gears in their head turned. Ms. Somoza was the only one they could talk to about this. They knew this. Ms. Czajkowska had proven this, extensively. And whatever Ms. Somoza did here, she had been doing it for long enough that she had business cards and an entire office for it, so it followed that she had at least some sort of idea what she was doing. A much better one, really, than Johannes, who felt like they were attempting to doggy paddle their way through the Atlantic.

"Fine, then."

"Hm?" She looked up from her screen.

"Fine. I don't care about the legality of what you're doing, so long as we can save my client's life."

Ms. Somoza's face lit up. "That's the spirit!"

"I need you to find her. How much am I going to owe you, by the way?"

She waved it away. "Let's talk about that later. And finding her is exactly what I'm working on right now. This is going to take a while, though."

"Can I do anything?"

She shook her head. "Go home. I'll call you when I need you."

"You're sure?"

"It's not gonna happen any faster with you sitting here."

Johannes sighed. No, they supposed not. They were anything but a hacker, and they were probably just serving as a distraction. Still, they hesitated.

"Before I leave, could I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"How do you do it?"

Ms. Somoza knitted her brows. "Do what?"

"Staying... Sane, I suppose." Johannes pulled up their shoulders. "In the face of all of this."

She huffed a laugh. "Who the hell said that I'm sane?"

Johannes pulled a pained face, unsure what to say to that. "I mean—do you have some sort of support in this? Do you have friends or family you can speak to? Or a therapist?"

Her eyes turned unreadable, and for a moment, both of them were silent.

"...Go home."

"Right." Self-consciously, they ran a hand over their short blond hair. "My apologies."

"Whatever." Softer, still gravelly, she added: "Pity about the hair, by the way. I liked it long."

Their eyes flicked up to hers. "You did?"

"Yeah. Why'd you cut it? For the job?"

"Of sorts." They sighed. "I was forced to ask my parents for some help with employment, and in return, they asked me to cut it." They didn't quite know why they were opening up to her like this. Maybe it was just because she asked, and no one else had.

"They made you cut it? Like, as a condition?"

"As a condition, yes."

"That's fucked."

Johannes found themself blinking at her in shock. "I mean, is it? They were doing me a favor after all."

"It's fucked! Cutting someone's hair against their will doesn't count as a physical injury by law for nothing."

"Right," Johannes said, ruminating over the feelings of hurt and violation that had been welling up in them each time they couldn't feel their hair in their neck anymore. Hm.

Having taken off sick for the day, Johannes went home.

She sent them update after update over the next few days, so many that Johannes couldn't help but wonder at her hourly wages. Ms. Czajkowska's parents lived in the upper east side of the city. They were strict. She'd gone to school at St. Margaret's, was still in touch with old friends from there. Had an ex-boyfriend who wasn't in the picture, fresh enough that the child could have been his. And each time, Ms. Somoza sent along a list of all mental hospitals and mental health wards, narrowing it down further and further, one by one.

And Johannes went back to work, felt buoyed, felt like she was throwing them a life vest as they were paddling the Atlantic. And although they wished that they could do more until she would finally find the place that Ms. Czajkowska was being held in, at least they were no longer doing it alone.

Until one morning, on a Saturday, four days into her search, Ms. Somoza sent them an obituary. And with it, the assessment of a coroner, a document that she really wasn't supposed to have—reading, as the cause of death, a disease of the bones, a rapid-onset hollowing. She was dead. It was finally real.

Johannes put aside their breakfast, walked into the dining room, and held out their phone screen to Percival, the obituary pulled up.

Irritated, he squinted at it, a piece of soft-boiled egg on his spoon. "What are you—oh. Is this our Czajkowska?"

"It is indeed."

He looked up at Johannes. "What's with that look on your face? You aren't blaming me for that, are you?"

"She died—" They couldn't tell him, not without outing themself, not even if they were slowly simmering with rage. "She died in custody, Percival. In the place that you put her in."

"So I'm not even Percy anymore, am I, Jan? I'm Percival now?"

Johannes felt their jaw clench. "Is this really the moment you want to pick for that?"

He dropped his spoon onto his plate and threw his hands up. "Well, what do you want me to say? This is a tragedy! But there's nothing about being sent to a mental hospital that would..." He gestured to Johannes' phone.

"She needed medical care," they gritted out. "Not to be declared insane."

"A rotten tooth has never killed someone," Percival all but spat. "You just feel like shit because you failed her, and you're looking for the next best donkey to pin the tail on so you don't have to pin it on yourself."

Their fuse burnt out. Johannes grabbed him. His eyes widened, and he flailed as Johannes picked him out of his chair, lifting poor average-sized Percival into the air. "Stop, I swear to—" They threw him bodily against the cabinet, watched the air knock out of him as he yelped, as the dishes inside it rattled, and then again as Johannes brought their fist to his stomach, soft organs to hard bone, his sternum to their knuckles and his fear to their white-hot rage. Percival retched as he went down, clutching his stomach, a hand up to try and defend from Johannes, and they very much fucking felt like kicking him while he was down, and so they did, and the wheeze and the whimper he did was almost, almost enough to make up for it all.

Johannes stood over him, panting as Percival hid his face.

Shit. No way would he let them live here with him for even a moment longer. And even if he would, they wouldn't be able to bear it.

Johannes stormed back into the living room and tore their suitcase out from under the couch.