Isolation

Traffic roared behind their back, swirling up the stench of gasoline, leather, and fresh bread. Any way Johannes could have spun this, there was only one place left to go. But unfortunately for them, despite the opening hours clearly written on the sign behind the glass door, the place disagreed. Half an hour past ten, and a full hour past official start of business, the door to Ms. Somoza's office was firmly shut.

Handle of their suitcase digging into the palm of their hand and this morning's pit of ragged disappointment deep in their stomach, Johannes leaned their forehead against the cool glass of the front door and heaved a sigh. Of course it couldn't be that easy. Of course. But perhaps at least the hole in their stomach could be filled, preferably with meat and bread.

Never had they spent very much time in parts of the city that featured kebab shops, and even back home, before the big move, they had rarely ever seen one face to face. But they were still a piece of the country they left behind, a part of the daily parlance. And where Johannes had never so much as given it a second thought that they'd never eaten a doner kebab until now, now that they were standing in front of the eatery right next to Ms. Somoza's office, they suddenly thought that an enormous pity. After fumbling their way through an order, they found themself with an absolutely gigantic Styrofoam box, heavy with bread, meat, and salad, practically dripping with sauce and large enough that they had to clench their suitcase beneath their arm and hold it with both hands.

It was terribly delicious.

They were just shoving the last of it into their mouth when a loud bang startled them up off the steps of the corner office. Jan whirled around, a hand to their mouth to wipe off the sticky sauce, to the sight of Ms. Somoza rubbing her shoulder as she all but staggered down the stairs, a sluggish, pissed off look on a face that looked like it couldn't have slept more than three or four hours at best. Her eyes met theirs through the glass, and Johannes involuntarily straightened their back.

At a quarter to eleven, she finally unlocked the door.

"What are you doing here?" She squinted up at them through the chiming of the shop bell, her voice thick with exhaustion. "Is this about the email I sent you?"

"In... a way."

"In what way?"

Johannes cast a shy look over their shoulder. "Could I come in?"

After another moment of groggy squinting, Ms. Somoza rasped a "sure" and stepped aside to let them in. "Sorry about your client," she said as Johannes oriented themself in her office again, surrounded by mountains of paper and technology. "Pity."

Johannes regarded her. She sounded sincere enough, but the platitude still rung hollow. How could a 'sorry' make up for the horror of Ms. Czajkowska's life slipping through their fingers? How could that plaster over the bitter rage, the disappointment, the self hatred of letting it all happen like this?

"Thank you," they said anyways, softly, because none of it was really her fault.

"So what's up?" she asked, leaning heavily against her writing desk. "And what's with the suitcase?" She arched an eyebrow down at it. "I don't take payment like that."

"Ah, no, this isn't a handover. You haven't even told me what you'll charge." Johannes set the heavy thing down between their feet, Styrofoam box awkwardly enough still in their hand. "I may have... Burned some bridges over this entire thing. I'm out of a place to stay, most likely out of a job as well, and left with question over question and essentially no answer. Something is happening to my life, and you seem to be the only person who can make any sense of it at all."

Ms. Somoza heaved a tired sigh. "Right," she rasped, and pushed herself off the edge of her desk to head for a mini fridge in the corner. It lit up the front of what Johannes thought must have been the clothes she slept in as she opened the door, and to their shock, there was no food inside it at all. The entire thing, top to bottom, was full of brightly colored energy drink cans. "So this whole thing ruined your life," she continued as she picked one out. "And now you, what, want answers? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way! If I tell you one thing, it's just gonna lead to another. My advice?" She pulled the tab of her drink. "Pick up the pieces and move on as much as you can."

"I'm not moving on," Johannes said, chafing against her assumption. "If the offer is still on the table, then I would really like that job."

At that, she whipped around to look at them. "What? Seriously? After you saw all of this bullshit first hand?"

Johannes nodded, dead serious, and her eyes lit up. "I want answers," they said. "I want to help. And—well." They dug a nail into their Styrofoam box. "At this point, really, what else am I supposed to do?" Frankly speaking, their life was in pieces.

"Fuck," Ms. Somoza breathed, "you're actually serious. I didn't think I'd ever get a candidate who could actually hack it."

"You're willing to hire me, then?"

"Easy, tiger. Let me run a background check and interview you a little first." She took a large swig of her drink as she rounded her desk and begun to pull her laptop out, and Johannes desperately wished she'd spill one onto the other.

They shifted in place uneasily. "A background check? Is that really necessary?"

It made her snort. "What, you got anything to hide?"

"Well, it just feels rather invasive—"

Both their heads turned as the shop bell rung again. Ms. Somoza's attention turned all on the young man that pushed open the glass door, and Johannes breathed a sigh of relief as quietly as they could.

Johannes lingered as they watched Ms. Somoza yank an empty folder out of a metal cabinet. As negotiations with the customer had gone on, she seemed to have all but forgotten about the threat of the background check.

"I have the job, then?" they tested the waters carefully.

As she stuck all the notes and papers that the customer had left into it, she shot them a warning look up through her lashes. "For now. Consider this a probation period."

Which was further than they'd made it with most of their attempted jobs.

"I'll take it," they smiled.

Still, they fussed. Although they may have walked in into her office willingly, now that they had actually met a customer and heard his horror story, they were feeling somewhat... Nervous about it. "Ah, but just one question?"Johannes wagered, trying and failing to sound casual.

Ms. Somoza did not seem to notice. "Shoot."

"When somebody like this comes in and starts to speak erratically about strange smells and creaking floorboards, that doesn't make you nervous at all?"

Ms. Somoza shrugged. "Eh. I get plenty of weird people."

"Weird, perhaps, but that wasn't exactly what I was—I mean, previous experiences considered, you aren't at all worried that the monster they'd like you to chase after is real?"

Ms. Somoza snorted. "Nah. The worst it'll make me do is prepare myself better. But this time? C'mon. Ghosts aren't real."

That made them stare at her, aghast. "You don't believe in ghosts? In your profession?"

But all she did was throw her head back in a short sharp laugh. Leaving, once again, yet another question unanswered.

"Now! What name is it gonna be on the dotted line?"

At that they stiffened, all ghosts immediately forgotten. While she didn't seem the type to read tabloid magazines, she certainly was the type to dig up family trees and entire autopsy reports based on nothing but a name. And if Johannes had one thing, it was something to hide.

"Jan," they smiled stiffly, hoping that there wouldn't actually be a dotted line for quite some time. "My name is Jan."

At that, Ms. Somoza reached out for a handshake. "Marion," she said, and they marveled at how, despite all her bite and bravado, her hand felt tiny in theirs.

"This happens a lot," Marion told them over her shoulder as she hopped across the gap between train and station platform, her backpack hanging loosely by her side. "Ninety percent of all cases, the people showing up at my shop aren't there on their own business. It's damn hard to look for help once you're in the thick of it!"

Despite being a small business owner—or perhaps a private eye, Johannes hadn't quite decided on what to call her yet, in absence of the knowledge of what a 'reality fixer' or a 'techno witch' even did—Marion did not own a car. She navigated the public transport system like a fish in the water, trailing Johannes behind her as she ducked and weaved through the invisible net of trains, busses, and ferries that spanned the city they both called home.

"And I figure not everyone knows where to seek said help," Johannes agreed halfheartedly, feeling their head swim. "Or believes that a techno witch is the correct address?"

Marion huffed. "My advertising group is just too small. I run a couple of ads on occult forums, the rest is word of mouth. Not like I'm gonna rent out a billboard!"

Johannes was certain that that was not the entire crux of the issue, but decided not to unnecessarily strain a brand new work relationship.

The young man with the ghost story had certainly been just about the right age group to surf the internet, and looked about the part to be perusing outdated website types about the occult, but Johannes wasn't very sure how many more there were of him in this world. The last time they had used a forum, they had been a teenager pretending to be a wolf.

In any case, the address that he had given them led to a sleepy side alley, all fire escapes and laundry lines. His address was on the second floor, he had said, the first door to the right. Marion and Johannes took the second one, ringing the worn down doorbell of a Mrs. Rivers.

Mrs. Rivers lived          alone. This hadn't always been the case. It used to be that she had a husband, then two children, and then a gaggle of grandchildren, all different heights and ages and beautiful colorful personalities. Then the grandchildren grew up, and one child moved away, the other staying until his very untimely passing of a tumor of the brain. Her husband and her had grieved and grieved, far away from children and grandchildren then, until her husband had grieved himself to death and all he had left her with was his name. So Mrs. Rivers lived          alone.

She went to church a lot those days. Prayed a lot, her old, spotted hands folded by her chest as she fell into conversation with God, the only one who could know her pain. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and though he gave her many wonderful friends, milling together at baking sales and food drives, at art galleries and painting classes, he never quite took away the pain.

Mr. Rivers had never been able to make it in the corporate world, stuck, all his life, in lowly positions underneath men whiter than him and much less kind. Mrs. Rivers herself had never worked a day in her life, busy as she was with rearing children and grandchildren, though Mr. Rivers had always been of the opinion that that, too, had been a full time job. It left her as poor as a church mouse in her old age, though, and as her retirement funds shrank with the march of the years, Mrs. Rivers had to start doing the math.

In the end, she had to leave the house that her and her family had lived in, had grown up and laughed in, and to say his farewells, her landlord of sixty years had given her the warmest, sincerest hug. Richer though, it had made her none.

She moved, then, into Baker Street, a small side street off a long avenue of huddled houses, and as she begun to need help, her joints aching and her eyesight not what it used to be, she          did it alone.

Rarely did Mrs. Rivers receive guests that she did not expect, and most of the people ringing for her attention were either door to door salesmen selling something she couldn't afford, or evangelists selling something she didn't want. But somehow, she felt compelled today, and so thought to herself, what about it, perhaps she could use some company, unpleasant company included.

It gave her quite the pause when the two people on the other side of the door were holding neither clipboards nor suitcases, and were really quite out of place in her little black neighborhood to boot. The woman, one step in front of her coworker, appeared to be Mexican, which wasn't that much of an unusual sight. It was the man behind her, large and white and very blond, that set her nerves on edge. Mrs. Rivers pressed a hand to her chest as she took them in, looking both young creatures up and down, doing her best to appear outwardly calm. "Yes?" she asked. "What can I do for you?"

It was the young woman who spoke up first. "Hi," she said, "Mrs. Rivers? This is gonna sound crazy either way I put it. Can we come in?" She was about of average size, with a head full of unruly curls that Mrs. Rivers would have liked to take some shea butter to, a tomboyish disposition, and a look on her face so serious that it made Mrs. Rivers take a step back.

"Crazy? Well, how crazy could it be? You two aren't debt collectors, are you now?"

"Ah, no, ma'am," the young man quickly spoke up, in a voice both higher and softer than she would have expected from somebody who very nearly had to duck to fit through the door, willowy as he was. He looked much more the part of a debt collector than his more likeable-looking colleague, his hair neatly cropped in a salesman-do the likes of which one generally only saw near city center. "We're here on account of, ah... Strange noises? Your neighbor called us in, he was quite worried."

"Well, my neighbor?" She eyed them both suspiciously. "Which one will that be, Mr. Gerret or Mr. Jones?"

"Neither," the young woman said, with a dark furrow to her brows. "Carter. The one right next door."

"Oh," Mrs. Rivers exclaimed, leaning out of her dinky wooden doorway to peer at his door to the left. "Well... He's a nice young man, he is. But really—oh, what did you say you two were here for?"

"Strange noises. Ma'am," the woman said, tacking the honorary title on like she was copying the habit off her companion and had never thought to be polite to an old lady before.

Strange noises Mrs. Rivers thought that only she could hear.

She bid them in.

"Can I fetch you two some tea?" she asked, in the hopes that it would distract her guests from their immediate self-imposed task of looking her poor little apartment up and down.

With an impolite wrinkle of the nose, the young woman, always in front of her companion and seemingly the leader of the bunch, fixed her sickly-green eyes on her. "We don't have time for—"

"Tea would be wonderful," the young man interrupted her, visibly drawing her ire, but none of that was Mrs. Rivers' issue. She just hummed as she made her careful way to the kitchen to make some tea. She had barely turned her back when she was already hearing them whisper agitatedly among themselves, so she called over her shoulder "please, sit down", interrupting it, much to her satisfaction.

"Tell me, then, dears," she said, casual as she could, setting up her kettle to boil. "What kind of a job is that, that pays one to check on an old woman like this?"

There was a moment of silence that gave her pause, but before she could think too much of it, the young woman said "Home inspectors. Weird noises like this could be nothing, or they could be a pipe waiting to burst."

"Burst?" she gasped, nearly dropping her tea bags. "I don't have to leave this apartment, do I?"

"Maybe," the young woman said grimly, and Mrs. Rivers leaned heavily into the doorway of her kitchen to stare at her.

"Does my landlord know all this? Will he pay for a hotel, has he said? And my belongings, what will happen to them?"

"We really aren't at that point yet," the young man lifted a hand soothingly. "We haven't even looked at anything yet. Ah, we'd hate to upset you further, ma'am," and indeed she was feeling her heart pound, "would it be possible for us to speak to the other occupant of this apartment?"

"Other occupant?" Mrs. Rivers asked. "Young man, I live alone."

He blinked his pale blue eyes, then let them run all over her poor apartment again in visible confusion. "You do?"

"Well, yes, I do. Does this one room apartment look like I can fit a whole second other person in here?"

"One?" the woman asked, and both her and her companion looked past Mrs. Rivers to her assortment of doors; bathroom, kitchen,          bedroom.

"Yes," she asserted strongly, "one," and watched the two strange creatures exchange a glance that made her blood run hot, the sort of look that said 'oh, this poor senile old thing'.

"No offense at all," the young man attempted to soothe her once again. "May I...?" he asked, reaching for one of the trinkets she did not remember on the shelf next to her couch, a small picture frame.

Behind Mrs. Rivers, the water boiler gave a click and ceased its noise.

And in the silence, she felt mighty silly.

"Please," she assuaged, and turned to take care of the tea instead.

As she set it down onto the table in front of them, she could nearly read the conclusion out of her two guests' faces, both of them staring up at her in deep concern.

"You might want to rent a hotel for a while," the woman said. "or stay with a friend if you can. We don't think this place is safe."

"A gas leak, or black mold," the young man said, holding the eye contact much longer than Mrs. Rivers felt was right. "We will take care of it, but please, do take care of yourself."

On the way back to Marion's office, her and Johannes rode in silence. Sitting side by side, Marion with her backpack in her lap drumming her fingers on the fabric in impatience, and Johannes with their hands folded, they mumly watched the streets go by.

"So do you think—"

"This one's the real deal, yeah."

"How do you know when something is real?"

"You just get a feeling for it."

"...I see."

The minute they were through the door, she threw herself into her work again. Johannes watched over her shoulder as she booted up her dinged up laptop, pulling out several notes and folders from the large metal cabinets—none of them labeled in words, Johannes realized.

"You can't help me with this part," Marion waved them away, the next cabinet handle already in hand. "Go get something to eat, or whatever."

"What?" they asked. "Why can't I help?"

"You don't know what you're looking for. Just let me do it."

"...Now, correct me if I'm wrong," they stepped around to face her, "but wouldn't that be something that you could be training me in?"

Marion nearly took a step back, but stopped herself short, gritting her teeth up at them instead. "This whole thing is too big. Where the hell would I even start?"

"Well, how about with today? I saw what you saw. I saw that there was very clearly somebody living with the old woman, somebody she seemingly couldn't even think about. A ghost?"

Marion held their gaze unceasingly.

"Go on," Johannes pressed, leaned closer. "At least give me a chance to understand."

She tensed up, and, belatedly, they realized that they had been looming, and that her back was now pressed up against the wall.

"If you think I'm scared of you," she hissed, "then you are dead wrong."

Johannes shied back, nearly tripping over their own feet in a bid to give her more space. "I wasn't trying to—all I am looking for is answers!"

"Well, you're not gonna scare them out of me!" she snapped. "Fuck right off with that shit!"

"I didn't mean—"

"Fuck off!" she barked. "Just get your fucking lunch already and get the hell out of my shop!!"

Johannes was out in a blink, not having to be told twice.

Invariably, they had fucked this up. They had done what they hadn't meant to do this entire time and lorded their physicality over somebody they could likely lift over their head without so much as breaking a sweat. They had pressed her too hard, had not paid enough attention. Had spoken up too much during their first visit with a client, had not let her exert her seniority, had worn the wrong outfit for the job, not offered to carry her bag for her, had not been exactly on time, had likely done a thousand other tiny things that had pissed their new boss off that they didn't know about, had been too unaware, too socially stupid to notice. It was always the same old game.

Johannes huddled up on the steps of a fountain with a box of lo mein, wishing, not for the first time, that they could be anything else but the species with the most complex social structures of the animal kingdom. Perhaps they could have been an ant instead. At least as an ant, they would have been born with a clear idea of what to do.

Only when her shoes stepped into view right in front of them did Johannes startle up, to the sight of Marion standing over them, arms crossed over her chest.

"You need to explain," she said. "What the hell was that?"

"How did you find me?"

"It's literally my job to find people," Marion rolled her eyes. "And it's not that hard when you're barely 500 meters away from my shop."

"Right," they drew their shoulders up. "That would make sense."

Marion tapped her foot. "Well? Start talking."

Johannes swallowed around a lump in their throat. "I'm—I'm very sorry. I really didn't mean to corner you like that. It's a poor habit in the first place, but especially when applied to somebody who has done nothing wrong."

"That's a habit? Between that and your punch first, ask questions later shit with the mirror, are you sure you're not a damn bruiser instead of a therapist?"

They scratched their face, their eyes down on her feet. "I'm not much of a therapist at all, no. More of a loser with a short fuse playing pretend at being one."

She huffed. But nothing followed, and when Johannes risked a look up at her, she was rubbing her arm.

"...Noodles?" Johannes asked her, offering her the second box.

Something odd drew her brows into a furrow. "Did you buy that for me?"

They shrugged, small. "You didn't ask, but I figured you might be hungry too."

Marion hesitated. Then, she took the box.

Quietly, they sat and ate, her on the metal railing around the fountain, and Johannes down on the steps, to nothing but the sound of rushing water.

"Just help me find out more about Mrs. Rivers for now," Marion said, emptying the contents of her backpack out onto the office desk. "I don't know how to explain any of this shit to you, but I guess I'll figure it out as we go."

"You took this?" Johannes asked, picking, out of the clutter, the small picture frame that they had seen at Mrs. Rivers' apartment.

"It's just borrowed," she huffed, and took it out of their hand. "We need this. It's for her own good."

"No, I'm glad that you took it," they shook their head. "Please don't get me wrong."

"Oh," she said, dumbfounded.

"I mean, it's odd, isn't it?" Johannes took it back from her gently, and turned the photo inside it back and forth in the light. "Who would frame a photo of an empty chair?"

She laid a finger on the top of the frame. "Look closer."

"Closer?" Johannes lifted the photo up to the light, held it closer, concentrated, tried—"What am I looking for?"

"Just look."

And really, there was something. Some shape, an oddness, a gap, but as they were just about to catch it, it already slipped away again. Laying the picture frame down onto the desk, Johannes pushed up their glasses to pinch the bridge of their nose, feeling an encroaching headache.

"Did you see?" she asked expectantly.

"No," they said. "No, I'm afraid not. I thought I might, but it's as if... Well, it hurts to look at, doesn't it?"

"And out of the corner of your eye?" She held it up.

Johannes whipped their head around, startled. But the moment that they looked at it straight on, what, or perhaps who they thought they had seen, was already gone again. Carefully, they turned their head back, and, sure enough.

"Whoever this is," Marion said with a grim satisfaction, "this is where it starts."

When Marion had worked on Ms. Czajkowska's case for them, they had been like a cat on hot bricks waiting for an answer. On the other side of the issue, it turned out, things weren't all that different.

Marion sent them all across the city, scraping things together from the city's birth register, and the newspaper archive. She shook down social media and web archives they'd never heard of before for anything she could find, then moved on to more illicit sources, always turning her screen away as Johannes tried to get a look.

And at night, they lay awake in the small hotel room that they could afford without a salary, hoping against hope that they'd be fast enough this time. That whoever was haunting Mrs. Rivers wasn't going to hurt her. That she would be alright.

It was a tax return, then, that Marion slapped down onto the table in front of them, in between paper cups full of hot coffee, and dry little croissants. "Check this."

"She's claiming a dependent here," they blinked as Johannes pulled her laptop close. "This was only two months ago."

"Three options," Marion counted off on her fingers. "Moved out, died, or—"

"Disappeared?" Johannes bent over the tax return, reading the line with the dependant again and again. "Is this how ghosts happen, then?"

"Ghosts still aren't real," she rolled her eyes. "Grab the obituaries, I'm going back into Facebook. Let's rule out dying and moving first. Which is gonna be a cake walk, now that we finally have a name."

"But do you think that this is who is haunting her?"

She sighed, looking about ready to give up on correcting them. "Who else is it gonna be?"

"I'm not sure. Do these sorts of things usually affect multiple people?"

Marion shook her head. "Two people cases are already rare."

Johannes considered this, humming in thought as they handed her back her laptop. "Well, if it's family, then at least Mrs. Rivers is in much less danger, no? At least the ghost is not a stranger."

But she just huffed. "Yeah, right. Not like anyone's ever been hurt by a family member."

"Ah," Johannes said, feeling a deep pit in their stomach. "That's true."

Marion hesitated, then finally took back her laptop. "Let's get back to business." No time for emotion, then. Which was fair enough, really. After all, Johannes was still on probation.

And it was going to be a long night.

They pored over obituaries, Facebook pages, year books, nothing. Wherever they looked, there was not a single trace of Colin Rivers.

In the end, Johannes fell asleep, their head on the makeshift table. And they dreamed of teeth.

"How have you been?"

"As good as can be expected under the circumstances," Mrs. Rivers inclined her head. Though Johannes was tempted to reach out and put a hand on her arm, Mrs. Rivers kept her hands in her lap, tucked firmly into herself at her friend's dinner table. "You said you had more questions to me about my apartment? I have to be honest, I don't know what else I can tell you about it."

"We still have a few things we don't understand," Marion said, grim. "For starters: How long have you been living alone in there?"

"Why, about three years now. Do you think that the problems have been going on for that long?" she asked, reaching for her sunflower-yellow headwrap as if to steady it, even as it didn't move an inch.

Johannes and Marion exchanged a glance.

"You've been living there for three years, ma'am?" they asked. "And you have been living there alone the whole time? Is that right?"

"Yes, yes. Nobody else breathed in whatever it is that I've been breathing. Dears, will you at least let me in on your suspicions? My doctor has been itching to treat me, but she can't do nothing for me when I don't know what it is."

"Three years," Marion repeated. "Your landlord told us that you were living with a dependent until two months ago."

Mrs. Rivers blinked in confusion, just as her friend sat forward abruptly in her chair. "That crook. Has he been getting tax benefits out of you, Evie?"

"But what sorts of tax benefits would those be?" Mrs. Rivers pressed a hand to her chest. "I don't understand."

Johannes cast a glance at Marion, urgently needing some guidance through this; but if she had her thoughts, she let none of them show, focused, instead, completely on the task at hand. "You don't know anything about this? The name Colin doesn't tell you anything?"

"Young lady," Mrs. Rivers huffed, "are you accusing me of something?"

"No," Marion said, and her tone was brisk and even. "We're not the cops. All I want to know is what's the truth and what's a lie." She weaved her fingers together hard on the table, her knuckles paling white. "And what you might've forgotten."

"This is about your memory," Johannes tried to jump in gently. "Not about catching you in anything. We have to know how bad it is."

"But her memory is fine," Mrs. Rivers' friend shook her head. "Isn't it, Evie? Since you've gotten here, I haven't noticed a single odd thing about you. You're as sharp as a tack."

"Nothing odd?" Marion pressed. "Nothing else you could be forgetting?"

"No, no, nothing. And I'm afraid that the last Colin I knew was my grade school teacher, who must have died over twenty years ago now."

Johannes tried to tug on a strand of their hair, a nervous habit—but came up empty, their hair too short. "Any... Noises?" they wagered, trying and failing to ignore the discomfort.

"The noises?" Mrs. Rivers asked, her brows drawn up. "Why would there be noises? You told me that what I was hearing was the pipes in my walls were about ready to burst. Why would I still be hearing that here?"

In agreement, her friend shook her head.

"...Right," Marion said, and grabbed her bag as she stood up from her chair. "Right. Excuse us."

"Thank you for indulging us," Johannes added hurriedly. "We will keep you up to date."

"Not an issue," Mrs. Rivers said, looking more confused than anything.

"It didn't follow her here," was the first thing Marion said as Johannes stepped out behind her into the hallway.

"Apparently so," Johannes agreed, baffled. "And her neighbor heard it last time, so you'd think that her friend would hear it too, no?"

"That's the working theory, at least."

"Do you think... perhaps the move might have gotten her out of it?"

She shook her head as she walked, a brisk pace. "You don't just shake a corruption off. Especially not when there are still items that are affected."

"The picture frame?"

She nodded, too deep in thought to look at them. "I just don't fucking get it. It's like she's not even a victim at all."

Abruptly, she stopped short.

Johannes nearly stepped on her foot with it, catching themself frantically. "What?" they asked. "What happened?"

"Oh my God." Marion turned to them, her eyes wide and green. "She's not the victim."

She bolted.

"Wait!" Johannes called after her. "Where are we going?!"

"Back to the apartment!" she barked back. "Right now!!"

"Get the doors," she snapped, before she'd even turned the key. "Do you remember checking them all?"

"Yes, yes," Johannes pushed the front door open. "Of course I do. Bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom, we checked them all."

Marion whipped around to hold her fingers up to them. "There's four."

And really, there, in the tiny hallway leading out of the living room, were four doors.

"Four of them," Johannes whispered. Then, louder: "There's four. You know that, I know that. This is how it works, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed, wild-eyed. "We caught on. Something's up!"

"Bathroom," Johannes counted off, tearing the door open. "Kitchen. Bed-"

"That's not right," she snapped. "Do it again."

Johannes shut them all, then went again: "Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen—what on Earth?"

"Again," Marion urged. "Bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and then what?"

"Bathroom, kitchen, bedroom." Their heart hammered. "That's the end. No. Bathroom—"

"Fuck this," Marion kicked out against the wall with a hard hollow thud. "I hate this part!"

Ms. Czajkowska's teeth flashed in front of their eyes again. Their hollowed out cavities, their intricate archways, and then, again, what they were only seeing in their nightmares: Her bones, her x-ray, her face as she hoped and pleaded for help, and got none.

Johannes picked a random door and kicked.

Sharp wood splintered, flying in all directions as Marion yelped, their foot straight past her as it went through the thin width of the door like it was cardboard.

And behind it, a bedroom.

They nearly knocked each other over as they rushed in through the open door, shoulder to arm to the sight of—of everything, and also nothing. A bed pressed itself against the left hand wall, surrounded by posters with art prints. A closet to the right, a writing desk in the middle, and not a single human trace of Colin.

Johannes rushed for the closet first thing, tearing it open as Marion threw back sheets and pillows on the bed. They tore out t-shirts and sneakers, but nobody, nothing was hiding. As Marion threw herself to her knees to check underneath the bed, Johannes emptied a backpack out onto the floor—"Marion!" they called, and pressed a small, silver laptop into her arms. As she retreated back onto the bed with it, they went through the writing desk—and when they turned around, Marion had already flipped the laptop around and was holding a screwdriver.

"Is that what you're carrying?" Johannes asked. "...Are you going to get into his computer like this? Is it that easy??"

"Don't ask questions that you don't want the answer to," she grumbled, pulling the hard drive out of the chassis.

"I wouldn't worry," Johannes muttered to themself, "given how I don't believe that you've answered a single one of my questions so far."

Marion slotted the drive into a device, opened her laptop, stuck the cable in, all with harsh, practiced movements. Johannes sat down on the bed next to her, leaning over her small screen as she, yes, simply accessed Colin's hard drive just like that. "Oh, I don't like that at all."

"I do," she said, and begun to dig through the folders. "Help me look for diaries. Passwords, browser files, anything."

It made their head spin. "You do that," they jumped off the bed, eager to pace to the other side again. "I will keep looking for a physical diary."

"How old are you?" she huffed. "Kids don't keep diaries anymore. That shit is all electronic now."

"Thirty two," they huffed, "I am not that old."

"Wait, really?" For a moment, her eyes flicked up to them. "You look twenty five at best."

Johannes blinked at her, unsure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. And then her attention was already gone again.

They found school notes, a planner, post it notes. All very useful, likely, in Marion's hands; the way that she'd set them on Colin's trace like a guided blood hound had been nothing short of bizarre. If Johannes had known how much could be deduced about a person from the smallest things, they would've lived their life very differently up to this point, they were sure.

"What do we do, exactly, when we find evidence of where he went?" they asked, leafing through a planner that was out of date by a year.

"Usually, I'd want to take them back to the office as fast as possible," she replied, hunched over her screen. "But we've wasted way too much time already. You remember that little gadget I used to get us out of the elevator?"

"The don't worry about it," Johannes cocked their head, and Marion startled into a snort.

"That one." She fished it out of her backpack, then showed it to Johannes, flipping it between her fingers. And, Johannes couldn't lie, that made them feel better.

They were just about to turn back to their work and go through a stack of post it notes, when Marion exclaimed: "Holy shit!"

They were by her side again in the blink of an eye.

"Look at this," she breathed, and turned the screen of her laptop so Johannes could see. "This is a file with Skype chat logs. Going back years."

"And this is saved on the hard drive?" Johannes leaned in, baffled and terrified all at once. "Just like that? I thought Skype was online?"

"You only send the message once," she snorted. "Of course it's saved offline."

Johannes sat back on their hands, watching as she opened a program, typed a few lines of what looked like code, and then let the whole thing run.

"How long have you been doing this?" they asked carefully.

"Is this a way to ask me about my age?" she smiled, crooked and stressed. "Twenty six."

"Oh," they said, and left the pause there to hang just a moment too long. Marion shied, avoiding their eyes quickly to duck back over her screen. They would have thought that she was older.

"Can you get me a coffee?" Marion asked. "I'm getting the fucking jitters."

"I can't help you with this anyways," Johannes agreed, and welcomed the excuse to give her some space in the awkwardness. And themself a moment to breathe, their heart still pounding in their chest as they leaned heavily against the kitchen wall, forehead to plaster and two fingers to their pulse. It was going to work out this time, they tried to tell themself. This time, it was going to work out.

They were near-shivering with nerves as they sat down next to Marion again, holding a cup of coffee into her deeply focused field of view. Wordlessly, she took it, and Johannes watched as she scrolled.

Isaac: Hey, Col.

Colin: Hi, Isaac.

Colin: The math homework again?

Isaac: You know me! Be a bro?

Colin: ...yeah, whatever.

Colin: Just don't make it so obvious this time.

Colin: Hey, Ovid.

Colin: Did you finish those slides yet?

Ovid: Oh man, so sorry.

Ovid: Huge family emergency.

Ovid: I don't know if I can get them done until next week.

Ovid: Sorry, man :(

Ovid: Could you do them?

Colin: Hey, Anne?

Colin: Can I ask you something?

Anne: Oh, Colin, you know I like you, but I have a boyfriend :'/

Colin: Oh, fuck.

Colin: No, not like that.

Colin: Wow, that was awkward.

Colin: Forget it, sorry I asked.

Zahara: Collie!

Zahara: How you doing?

Zahara: How's your grandma?

Colin: Hey Z :)

Colin: Same old, same old.

Colin: Her knees've been giving out, so I'm really getting my workout in.

Colin: What's up with you?

Zahara: You first :P

Zahara: You only answered one out of two.

Anne: Were you going to ask me something else weird??

Colin: No!

Colin: Maybe?

Colin: I don't know.

Anne: ?

Colin: ...Do you ever feel like you're just kind of...

Colin: Trapped in your life?

Anne: ...sometimes.

Anne: You should probably talk to a therapist about that, though.

Colin. ...right.

Isaac: And can I get English too?

Zahara: I've been doing good.

Zahara: Worried about you, though.

Zahara: We miss you at DnD.

Colin: Oh, haha.

Colin: Yeah, sorry about that.

Colin: I've just been really busy.

Zahara: It's a lot right now, huh?

Colin: ...Guess so, yeah.

Anne: Or maybe a diary?

Anne: I just can't do the whole emotional labor thing right now, sorry.

Ovid: Heyyy.

Ovid: You're not gonna tell the teacher though, or anything.

Ovid: Right?

Ovid: We totally did equal parts.

Ovid: C'mon, be a bro.

Colin: Hey, Zahara?

Zahara: What's up?

Colin: Can I tell you something?

Zahara: Sure, always.

Colin: I think I'm gonna die in here.

Johannes put their finger to their mouth, worrying a knuckle with their teeth. Carefully, they cast a glance towards Marion, but Marion was stone faced.

Zahara: ...you mean that?

Colin: Yeah.

Colin: I think so, yeah.

Colin: I just... I don't know, Z. I feel like I'm suffocating.

Colin: And I never wanna complain too loud, because you know, I could have it so much worse.

Colin: I love my grandma, and I've got the chance to go to school, and I'm super lucky, but -

Zahara: But?

Colin: It's all just way too much.

Colin: I wake up and think about doing yet another day, and I just feel like I'm gonna cry.

Colin: I feel like I'm living somebody else's life.

Colin: I can't look myself in the face in the mirror, because that just ain't me.

Colin: When other people talk to me, it's like I can see myself through their eyes, and it's all so wrong.

Colin: Like I can see them pressing me into all these tiny shapes.

Colin: The expressions on their faces when I say something they don't like, or that's not nice to hear, and I'm being pressed into another shape again.

Colin: And I just feel like I need to keep going, because so many people are gonna hate me if I stop.

Zahara: Oh, Colin :(

Zahara: You know, I don't think you get how hard it is to be a girl in this world.

Zahara: Trust me, you don't want that.

Zahara: ...Colin?

It was the last message, all the way at the bottom of the log, and that was it.

Johannes pushed up their glasses to wipe at their eyes, startling as Marion all but jumped off the bed, pushing her computer into their lap. "Where are you going?"

Halfway out the door, she turned to them just briefly, holding up a hand for them to wait—her eyes bloodshot and wet in an expression of such pain that it left Johannes behind dumbfounded as she stormed out of the room.

They should have followed her, had the urge to; but not only was she a stranger, she was also one of the oddest, most closed off ones they had ever met, and something told Johannes that, if they followed to check on her, she'd slam one of the few doors into their face.

And they would have given her any time in the world to calm down, had they not felt keenly that they were on a fast-approaching deadline.

Heart in their throat, they ran their thumb over the edge of her laptop, worn and scratched. She had dodged the question of how long she had been doing this, and in retrospect, it felt only natural. How could words do the experience of doing this sort of thing alone any justice? It seemed that there was always somebody's life on the line, and as Johannes picked the small green device up off Colin's bed where Marion had left it, feeling the victim's doom clock ticking down, they wondered just how close to death they had been. Perhaps still were. It seemed that, in some strange way they could not wrap their head around, Johannes was now marked. It followed them around.

Their thumb found a small switch at the side of the device, and Johannes took a heart and pushed it.

With a soft glow, the device came to life, LEDs running up and down its sides. On its backside was an inlaid metal coil, perfectly round, and to the small side, a charging port that may as well have been in a phone.

"Marion?" they called.

To no answer.

Swallowing hard, they grabbed the thing that Marion had slotted Colin's hard drive into, unplugged the cable, and pressed it against the green device.

Behind them, the mattress shifted downwards under a sudden weight.

Stumbling off the bed in a shock, they vaulted across the room, back hitting the closet doors, then—then stilled.

The sheets were bulging up, like something, like someone had always lain there under the blankets.

And the figure did not move.

With clammy hands, Johannes approached it. They gripped the blanket, their vision narrowing, and pulled, tearing it off to reveal: a face.

Her cropped curls laid tangled against the sheets, her cheeks and eyes sunken, her brown skin like ash. Her lashes did not flutter, her mouth did not move, though, as Johannes brought two fingers to the side of her neck, her heart beat weakly against their skin.

"Oh God," Johannes breathed, and fumbled for their phone. And as they dialed for help, their hand against this stranger's cold cheek, what they said to the operator was not what they wanted to say. What they wanted to say was this: Her doom clock was minutes to midnight now, and it was all their fault.

And as they hung up, on the promise of an ambulance, they whispered to her: "I'm so sorry." And she did not move.

They found Marion in the bathroom, hunched in on herself in the tub. She startled up at them, wide-eyed, her face streaked in tears, even her bangs hanging wet. Johannes wanted so badly to ask, but what they said was: "I called for an ambulance."

She wiped hard at her face, stepping out and past them, pushing Johannes to the side. "Then we need to get the fuck out of here."

"We do? Why?"

"Think about how this looks" she said, her hand on the doorway to Colin's room. "Two strangers talk an old lady into living with a friend, then break into her apartment? We don't have creds of any kind. Come on," she sniffled angrily, "let's go."

She didn't so much as look at them the entire way back. And Johannes sunk into their guilt.

"Let's hash out your payment," was the first thing she said to them, batting folders away roughly to clear her desk. "You still owe me for the Czajkowska job, which was roughly the same length as this. My hourly rate is forty bucks. I was thinking twenty five as a start for you, and don't fucking complain to me about the difference, I need to keep the lights on." Grabbing a pen and a notebook, she jotted out the numbers, hunching over it as Johannes leaned their hip against the side of her desk. "This whole thing took us twelve days. We did overtime a lot, I recorded—"

"Can we talk?"

She looked up at them, tensing like a cornered animal. "Why?"

"I—we just had a horrible day," Johannes said, hoarse with the attempt not to cry. "We found the victim, but it doesn't feel like we won. I told you that I wanted to help, this isn't something that I would ever do for the money. I'm still shaking, and frankly, you don't seem very calm yourself! So—"

"What is there even to fucking talk about?" she snapped. "What the hell do you want, a hug? A heart to heart??"

"I just want to know," Johannes gritted out around a wave of anger, "do you ever save people? Could we have saved her?"

"Who, Mrs. Rivers?"

"No," Johannes shook their head. "No, Colin."

Marion's cried-red eyes went wide. "Her?" It was as if all of her rage had been turned off like a light. And then she doubled over in a sob, down from the deepest pit of her chest, hunching around a ragged sound, and when Johannes couldn't help themself anymore and pulled her close, she collapsed into their weight.

She fisted her hands into their shirt, pressing wet patterns into Johannes' chest, and shook. And, their arms around her shoulders, Johannes couldn't help but recognize that grief. Couldn't help but slot it all together: Her defensiveness, her guardedness. The carefully feminine way she dressed, always pink or tailored or frilly in some way, like a reminder to the world. Her hoarse voice, always in a higher register than what sounded comfortable, the slant of her shoulders, the sturdiness of her small frame.

"You're family," they whispered, an old term for an even older concept, for community, for a kinship that Marion and them shared. "You're trans too, aren't you? You didn't lose a customer today. You lost a sister."

And all Marion could do was nod, too choked up to speak.

"Me too," Johannes confessed. "You and me both."

She clung to them all the tighter, and Johannes to her, until it finally wrung the grief out of them too, and they cried onto the top of her head, very, very quietly.

"Twenty five is fine," Johannes whispered, then, when they'd finally both cried themself out. "I'm just not sure if I can keep paying the hotel room from that."

She made a questioning noise, and Johannes flustered, pulling her a little closer. "Ah, I don't... Exactly have a place to stay right now."

"You're homeless?" she sniffled in a broken voice. "You wanna move in?"

"Right," Johannes laughed. "That would be a solution, wouldn't it?"

But she shook her head. "No, I mean that." Marion pried her face away from them, wet and sad. "You have the job. I've got a spare room upstairs. You want to move in?"

"Oh," they said, feeling a life preserver swim towards them in the open sea. A dangerous life preserver to grab, quite a stupid one even—was it a good idea to depend on their boss for housing like this? What did upstairs even look like? What could it even be like, to live with somebody so bizarre, so coiled up and angry, with somebody whose life consisted of nothing but horror and grief and a constant race against the clock?

But then there they were, their life still in tatters, their parents on the verge of disowning them for good, with no money, no friends, no prospects, and no answers, with nothing on their mind than this strange and twisting abyss that had been pulling them in, further and further down.

And this, then, finally, was a choice.

Marion knitted her brows up at them, looking two seconds away from regret, so Johannes gripped her arms and said: "Okay."