Ace had completely disappeared, and no one had a clue where he went.
On the first day, not a lot of people noticed. Fenton was worried but just assumed that Ace came home after he fell asleep and left early. Fenton didn't see him all day, and Ace never replied to his text messages. He was afraid that Ace was angry with him or that he was avoiding him.
Levi noticed as well. He was always leering at Ace, his eyes following him across the room. Today his eyes could finally rest since he did not see him anywhere. Levi searched for him all over so he could interrogate him about what happened four days ago.
Ace's father, Tyreceus called him daily to check on him, but Ace never answered. He called Fenton and started to panic when he didn't know where he was either.
By the second day, everyone became worried.
Levi found Fenton in the cafeteria and tried to find out what happened.
"I don't know," Fenton said. "I'm scared. I think Candice did something to him."
Levi sucked in a sharp breath and next went on the hunt for her. He found her, later in the day at one of the gymnasiums, doing warm-ups for practice.
She was stretching on the floor, trying to bend forward her fingertips past her ankles. She looked up when a shadow loomed over her. Levi towered over her, taller and bigger than her, puffing out his chest like an orangutan.
"What did you do with Ace," Levi asked.
Candice sat up and looked up at him. He was trying to be scary, he already was half the time, but Candice wasn't afraid of him. All she saw was a toddler throwing a tantrum.
"I didn't do anything," she insisted. "I have no idea where he is!"
"Don't lie to me, witch," Levi spat.
Candice stood up and snarled. Levi flinched, as she sounded like an animal instead of a woman.
"If I knew where he was, don't you think I would bring him back," she screeched. All the other girls on the team turned to stare at him.
They all stood around them, in a circle, a pride of lionesses ready to attack their prey.
"You need to leave," Candice bellowed. Her words echoed through the gymnasium, and the walls shook, and the windows clattered. All the girls looked at him, with strange, dull looks in their eyes, and after some time Levi realized none of them were blinking.
"Leave," Candice roared. Levi quickly left, not wanting to find out what was going on. He had enough problems to deal with.
He shuddered, disgusted at the thought that anyone would ever want to sleep with or date a monster. Walking through the campus’s large expanse, he didn’t understand how Ace never noticed something was wrong after dating her for so long. After a few short conversations with her, he didn’t want to breathe the same air as her. Levi was still convinced she killed Ace and would make sure to prove it.
On the third day, Ace was gone, his father had already filed a missing person's report and everyone in town knew he had been missing.
The local news showcased his disappearance and people who had never seen or met him swore they saw him at restaurants, or their local bar, or just passing by on the street. These were all dead ends, leaving Tyreceus up at night, unable to sleep, worrying that his son was dead somewhere, or sold by perverts, or whatever worry his mind cooked up.
Levi as well as losing sleep, but he didn't sleep often, to begin with. He was wracked with guilt, and somehow, he had convinced himself that he had something to do with his disappearance.
Fenton was anxious all the time, making him feel nauseous. He was wracked with guilt, after knowing that he would disappear, but forgetting. He told himself that even if he tried, there was probably nothing he could do about it.
He hoped that after searching through the directory, which took them quite a long time, they would get a lead. It was a complete waste of time, and they were now back at step one. Desperate to find their lost teammate, Levi swallowed his pride and tried to talk to his father.
Standing in front of another fountain paid for by another parent of a student that was not adept enough to gain entrance to the school by skill alone, Levi stood outside, mentally counseling himself, and told himself, not to take the bait. When Maximillian picked up, Levi told him everything he knew about Candice.
"I'm only telling you because we're all out of options," he shouted. "Don't think this means I-"
"I don't care how you feel about it, but quite frankly I think you're crazy." Levi gripped his phone and was trying to keep his sanity together.
"Something must be wrong with you. Women eating fingers? Degeneracy is a steep slope."
"I know what I saw," Levi shouted.
"Yes, and it was possibly some deeply hidden sexual fanta-"
"Shut up," Levi hissed. "Shut up, shut up, shut up."
People walking by looked as they passed by him, wondering what he could be so angry about.
"I think you're just under a lot of stress," Maximilian cooed. "You should take a break."
Levi's body shook, his blood pressure shot up, and a loud ringing noise was in his ear. He was about to explode.
"Don't patronize me!"
"I just worry about your mental health, especially with all the stress you’ve been under," his father snickered.
Levi let out an animalistic scream and then promptly smashed his phone to the ground. People watched, they whispered, but Levi didn't care. Never again would he tell his father anything. After telling him the truth, Maximillian didn't care, too preoccupied with tormenting another victim in his orbit. Levi stomped off, willing to do anything to get his mind off the past few days, but that wouldn't happen.
The first thing he saw when he went to the community board was a large poster about Ace's disappearance. He was interviewed by a police officer who was going around asking everyone he knew after lunch. For his team's weekly meeting, it was all anyone could talk about. No matter where Levi went, he could not escape Ace.
Team 57 all debated over where he went, but no one had an idea, not even Candice.
"I think he ran away," Mark said. "He was a weird guy. It makes sense." Amy nodded in agreement.
Levi stood at the front, long giving up talking about anything important.
"What if he was killed," Harmonia shrieked.
"Don't say that," Candice moaned.
Now the conversation had switched to, well people are presumed dead after some time. Once that was all agreed upon, they started debating the various ways he had died. Fenton looked like he was about to have a heart attack and laid his head on the table, wishing he were dead as well.
The entire meeting had nothing to do with meeting their goals by the end of the year. The moment Levi said the words "Even though Ace isn't here-" no one paid any more attention to the words he said after that.
He waited for time to pass, and once their time slot was over, he barked at everyone to leave. The ordeal was draining, and the more time passed, the more he missed Ace. For a solid week, Ace's disappearance was all anyone would talk about.
After that, people who didn't know him simply forgot. Why waste energy on some poor boy that was probably killed and buried, maybe thrown at the bottom of a lake by now? Tyreceus took a leave of absence from work to find his son, but after an entire month, no one was willing to keep looking for him.
Ace wasn't a small little girl, who might have been easily lured away by some imaginary stranger with a windowless van. The police had very little to go on after interviewing everyone he knew, and it was hard to trace Ace's movements. Ace teleported wherever he wanted, but he was limited to only moving to places he had been before or places he had seen pictures of. That was a large range of places to track someone's movements, so no one was even sure who the last person who he spoke to was.
Tyreceus was desperate to find his son.
After arguing with the police, begging Maximillian for help, and searching on his own almost across town, Tyreceus decided to ask for some help from a higher power.
He opened his closet and took out his sword. He unsheathed it from its scabbard, and it was old, rusty, and faded.
It's been so long since I've used it, I need to fix it, he thought.
Tyreceus went to the kitchen and held his arm over the sink. Using the rusty sword, Tyreceus cut the back of his arm. All the blood seeped into the sword. It glowed a bright red, and his bloodshot upwards to the hilt, wrapping around and filling into the crevices of it.
The sword now looked as if it was just made, heat emanating from it like a sauna. Tyreceus stared at it, but everything was silent.
Is he angry at me, Tyreceus wondered.
Suddenly Tyreceus was angry. Angry with himself for never noticing something was wrong with his child. Angry that everyone except him and Fenton had given up on searching for him. Angry that no one cared about him, or assumed that he was a bad parent because he was young, and his child simply left.
"Hello Tyreceus," the sword grumbled. "What have I missed?"
Tyreceus shuddered and reminded himself that the sword was cursed. That it would amplify his anger and turn him slowly into a monster. He had used the sword for so long, that slowly he began to change. Thankfully the only thing that happened was his ears changed shape, and his incisors grew slightly bigger, and people chalked up the changes to him simply being a foreigner.
"My son is missing, Unas," Tyreceus said. "Help me find him." The sword was silent for quite some time. He was not unwilling to help, he was shocked.
"Your son is mine as well," Unas said. "I will kill those that have taken him."
"Why does everyone think he is dead or kidnapped?"
"He would not have left and said nothing," Unas declared. "Therefore, he must be dead. Let us kill those who have wronged us."
Tyreceus could no longer ignore the truth. "I have failed mother," Tyreceus whispered. "I have broken my promise to protect him."
Unas genuinely was in pain. He could only empathize with a very short range of emotions: anger, hatred, hunger, revenge, and fatigue. He understood what it was like to have someone take your child. He tried to console Tyreceus in the best way he could.
"He may still breathe and walk upon the living," Unas grumbled. "Let me help you."
"Call for Invictus," Tyreceus commanded. “I cannot sense him anywhere; I cannot see him anywhere."
Unas was quiet again, this time concentrating. "He is not here," Unas grunted.
"That's impossible," Tyreceus replied. "You and Invictus are brothers, you should be able to find him anywhere."
"I do not lie, son of Prima," snarled Unas. "You are the one who is a born liar."
Tyreceus put Unas back into his scabbard, fighting the urge to chuck it out on the 6th floor.
He was desperate and decided to use his last course of action. He returned to the closet in his room and moved the false panel. Immediately he knew someone had been through his things. The box was not closed properly, and some of the things were shifted around.
His panic reached its apex once he could not find the watch.
"Someone took the Infinite Watch," Tyreceus said aloud to himself.
He looked around the room, checking every part, even though he knew where he had left it. He never took it out because he feared the watch more than death itself.
After turning his room upside down and looking for his watch, Tyreceus sat on the bed and started to cry. "I cannot find him," Tyreceus despaired. "Not now, not in the past or the future."
"I am sorry. I cannot sense the watch either. They are gone."
Tyreceus cleaned up his room, trying to find something else to focus on. He would find little things throughout his day to try and get his mind off his son's absence. He would go for a jog, drink, eat, smoke, watch television, scream, read, write, and then once he had exhausted all activities he could think of, he simply cried.
He took a bath and sat in the tub for almost an hour and a half, pretending that the world had stopped, that everything would be fine. At one point he started to lie to himself in many strange ways.
Ace never existed this entire time, he told himself. Why else would someone refuse to help me look for him?
The sad truth was that empathy could only be given for so long, and it was harder to continue to aid others in their grief than to continue with your own life.
Tyreceus put on a shirt and boxers and watched TV while he heard Unas’s mumbling in the background. He was silent, rarely speaking when they first met, but after a while, Unas felt the need to chastise Tyreceus for every aspect of his life, like the angry old man Unas was.
Instead, he was much kinder today, trying to cheer Tyreceus up, but it didn't work. Instead, Tyreceus started to cry again once Unas said his son's name, and he decided it was time to move on. He went to bed and started making a mental list of who to call for the funeral.
