Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #17

Vanished

by Zoe Storm

Seven months after most of the men on Earth mysteriously vanished, two agents try to find out exactly what happened, and if they can, maybe, reverse it.

 

I sighed as I closed the folder and tossed it to the side, onto a pile of several identical ones, each marked with a name on the front.

“Fuck,” I groaned, taking my glasses off and massaging my forehead. “Fuck, damn, and also shit.”

A steaming mug was set down on the table in front of me. “I take it you found nothing?”

“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, Michael,” I said, grabbing the mug and taking a deep drink, savouring the deep, bitter taste of my favourite blend. “Mmh, this hits the spot,” I added, once I’d gulped down the mouthful of coffee. “And yeah, I didn’t find anything, yet again. These dudes have nothing connecting them with each other. Nothing at all.”

I sighed, and grabbed the folder I’d just discarded. “I mean, look at this,” I complained. “Miles Phillips, a metalworker from Dallas. Unmarried, but living with a girlfriend. Hobbies include running and wakeboarding.” I tossed the folder back on the desk, and grabbed another. “Orik Bell, a trucker from Detroit. Married, two children. Hobbies include… chess and other board games? Huh. Still.” I put the folder aside, and grabbed yet another. “Mitch Lopez. Manages a Starbucks store in Seattle. Gay, living with his husband; he likes gardening.” I grabbed a few more folders. “Rowland Jenkins. Arnie Myers. Timothy Butler,” I recited, dropping each one on the table. “There are some connections between them. You can divide them into broad categories. But overall, these guys have nothing in common with each other.”

“Except that they’re all men,” Michael said.

“Yes, except that they’re all men,” I repeated with yet another sigh. “But we’ve already been over this: while the Vanishing only affected men, that cannot be the sole point of connection.” I smiled. “After all, you’re still here. As are plenty of other dudes.” I took another deep drink from my mug, set it on the table, and leaned back into my chair. “There has to be something we’re missing. Something that connects all of these people, but isn’t just their gender.”

“Maybe they all have some specific marker in their DNA. You know, like, the Y chromosome has the SRY region, maybe it’s something like that?” Michael wondered, leaning against the table.

I picked up my mug again, waved it in his general direction. “Good guess, but no. First of all, it can’t be the Y chromosome, because, well.” I took another drink, and gestured at myself. “Explain me, then. And also, we’ve been running through the medical records of the Vanished, and so far no connection is evident. And we can’t just analyse their DNA, because every single part of their body – including shed hair and stuff like that – disappeared along with them.”

“Like they were never here.”

“Yeah,” I replied, and I looked down at the floor. “Like they were never here,” I mumbled.

There was a moment of silence.

Then I sobbed.

Michael was by my side in a second; he put a hand on my shoulder. “Andrea–”

“I know!” I shouted, my voice choked with sadness. “I know. We don’t have time for this. Every second could be crucial. It’s just…”

I looked up at my colleague, my eyes filled with tears.

“It’s just that I miss him so fucking much, Mike.”

“I know,” he said, hugging me tight. “Richard was a wonderful man, and I miss him too.”

I took in a deep breath, sobbed again, and nodded into Michael’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

He held me for a few minutes, until I’d calmed down, then let go, and wordlessly handed me a tissue; I gratefully took it, and blew my nose.

“Thank you,” I repeated, wiping my eyes dry – I didn’t have to worry about make-up, those days I didn’t wear any: crying was too frequent an occasion. “Come on, let’s get back to work.”

“No,” Michael said, shaking his head and smiling. “You’ve been at it for what, twelve hours now?”

“What time is it?”

“Two thirty AM.”

“Fifteen hours, then,” I answered.

“My point exactly. You’re too tired, and you risk missing some critical information. I’ll keep going, you get some sleep.”

I looked at him for a moment; I wanted to protest, but in the end I knew he was right, so I nodded. Standing up from my chair, I made my way to another office, which had been converted into a make-shift bedroom. It was the only place I ever slept any more: I just couldn’t bear going back home, finding it empty, devoid of life.

I popped a progesterone capsule into my mouth and swallowed it: it wasn’t the way I usually took the medication, but at that moment I was in dire need of some rest, and its most notable side effect – it was a really good sleep aid when taken orally – came in handy. I laid down in bed, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

Moments later (or what felt like moments to me, at least), someone shook me awake.

“Andrea! Andrea, wake up!” I heard Michael say; I blearily opened an eye, and looked at him. “Wake up!” he repeated.

“What time is it?” I asked. “How long was I asleep?”

“A couple hours,” he replied. “But that doesn’t matter. I think I found something.”

Suddenly I was wide awake: I sprung up to a seated position on the bed. “Show me.”

Michael wordlessly handed me a folder; I took it, flipped it open, and began to read.

“Alright, let’s see. Kevan Jackson, born… Fuck,” I swore. “The kid was just sixteen, Michael. It’s not fair.”

“I know,” he nodded. “Keep going.”

I ran my eyes over the information, mumbling to myself as I read. “Unremarkable childhood… Education… Was in high school at the time of the Vanishing, of course… Football team…” I shook my head. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look at the section about his family,” Michael said.

“Family… Father, Jonathon, aged fifty-two; mother, Tricia, aged fifty-four; brother, Kyle, aged…” My eyebrows rose in surprise. “Aged sixteen. Twins?”

My colleague nodded. “Twins,” he confirmed.

“I take it you’ve looked through Kyle’s file, too? You’ve come to some conclusion by comparing the two.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“I haven’t read Kyle’s file because I can’t read Kyle’s file. We don’t have it,” Michael answered. “I’m sure. I’ve triple-checked.”

I looked at him for a moment, before realising what he was getting at. “You mean…?”

He nodded. “Kyle’s not one of the Vanished. He’s still here.”

-----

I slowed the car to a stop in front of a nondescript house, in a nondescript street, in one of the farthest suburbs of Philadelphia. It had taken us remarkably little time to get here, considering that the world was still reeling in the aftermath of the Vanishing, and air travel had become a significant luxury: we’d commandeered one of the Foundation’s private jets, and by the time we’d landed a car was waiting for us on the tarmac. We didn’t even have to go through security; one of the privileges of being a federal agent. (Or of being able to pass for a federal agent, rather.)

I turned off the engine, and then Michael and I sat in silence, for several long minutes.

“Aren’t we going to go in?” Michael asked, finally.

I took in a deep breath, and then exhaled sharply. “Yeah. Yeah, we are. I just needed a moment.”

This was it. This was our first (and maybe only) lead. The only clue we had, the only hope to find out what had happened seven months earlier, when over three billion men, all over the world, had just… stopped existing. Disappeared. Vanished.

Not to mention the several hundred million people who’d died in the aftermath: passengers in airplanes whose pilots were suddenly gone, or hit by driverless cars, or starved to death when the power grid and supply lines had collapsed – it had taken nearly six weeks for what was left of world governments to restore some semblance of order, which wasn’t nearly fast enough for many.

And now we had the chance to find out what exactly had caused all this. And, maybe, to find a way to reverse it, or at least prevent it from happening ever again. A single chance, most likely. If this didn’t pan out…

“Okay,” I said. “Showtime.”

We got out of the car, crossed the road, and walked up the footpath to the front of the house; the lawn was poorly maintained, I noted, overgrown with weeds and long grass, as if no one had bothered with it for several months. But that was to be expected – many people were still coping with the loss of the Vanishing.

I rang the doorbell, and after a minute or so the door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman, with a bush of grey curls framing her head and deep, brown eyes; her make-up was carefully applied, but she looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in quite a while.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Tricia Jackson?” I asked in return.

“Yes, that’s me,” she nodded. “May I help you?”

“I hope you can,” I said. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Agent Shephard, and my colleague is Agent Villegas. FBI.”

Tricia looked at us in surprise. “FBI? Seriously?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Seriously.”

“What’s this about?”

“May we come in?” Michael asked. “We were hoping we could exchange a few words with you and your son. It concerns the Vanishing.”

Tricia’s eyes turned hard. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

I blinked in surprise, as did Mike. “But–”

“Seven months ago, I lost both my son and my husband,” she cut him off. “Since then, every day has been a struggle. For me, and for Kyle. At first I was hopeful, but now… Now I’m just trying to forget.” She paused. “I don’t need the reminder. Have a nice afternoon.”

She started to shut the door, but I grabbed it and stuck my foot into it to prevent it from closing fully. “Wait,” I said. “Wait, please.”

“Remove your foot, please,” Tricia said.

“Please,” I repeated.

Tricia must have felt something in my voice, because she looked into my eyes, studying me carefully.

“I lost my husband, too,” I said. “And I miss him every day. But…” I paused, and sighed. “We think we’ve found something. The fact that one of your sons is among the Vanished, while the other – his twin – isn’t… It’s the only lead we have. And, just maybe, we’ll be able to find a way to bring him… to bring them back. Or, at least, an explanation. Why this happened.”

Tricia kept looking at me.

“Please. One hour, maybe two. That’s all I ask.”

There was a long moment of silence, then Tricia sighed. “Okay,” she said. “One hour, maybe two. Then you get the hell out of my house, and never come back again.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

I stepped back, letting go of the door, and she opened it wide, inviting us in with a gesture. “Kyle!” she called out. “There’s someone here who wants to speak with us!”

As we stepped through the door into the living room, it was like setting foot into a mausoleum: the house was eerily quiet, the silence broken only by our breathing and the subdued footsteps of someone walking on the floor above us. The TV was off, and above it, on a shelf, almost a dozen pictures had been arranged, all of them depicting a normal family: Tricia and her husband, as well as Kyle and Kevan, captured in various moments of their lives – they were posing for the camera in some of the photos, but there were also shots caught from the sidelines of a football game, showing Kyle and Kevan on the field, side by side. And now, two of these people had Vanished, and this family’s happiness with them.

It’s not fair, I thought.

I turned around as I heard someone come down the stairs. I recognised Kyle immediately: he looked much like he did in the most recent pictures – curly brown hair and soulful brown eyes – except that he, like Tricia, was clearly very tired, with deep circles under his eyes.

“Yes?” he asked, looking between me and Michael.

“Kyle, these two are from the FBI,” Tricia said. “They wanted to ask us some questions.”

Kyle’s eyes widened as I offered him a hand to shake. “Agent Shepard, nice to meet you,” I said. “Why don’t we take a seat?” He nodded, and we sat down on the two couches in the living room.

“So, what is this about?” Kyle asked. “Why did you want to talk to us?”

I took a deep breath. “It concerns the Vanishing,” I said.

Kyle’s expression blanked. “Oh,” he said.

“Yes, ‘oh,’” I said, with a nod. “You see, we’re trying to understand exactly what happened seven months ago. Our agency has put all its resources towards this project, right from the start. We’ve pored through endless amounts of information, and finally we found something.” I pointed to him. “You.”

“Me?”

I nodded again. “We’ve been trying to find a connection between the Vanished,” I explained. “But there’s just too much. We can draw parallels between some of them, but not all of them. So we’re taking another approach. We’re trying to find where there isn’t a connection.”

“I don’t understand,” Kyle said with a frown.

“You and your brother,” I said. “Same class, from kindergarten to high school. Same sports. Same hobbies. Same age, same genes. You’re identical twins, but… you just can’t be identical.” I looked deep into his eyes. “There has to be something that makes the two of you different. Because otherwise, why didn’t you Vanish, too, along with him? Or, on the other hand, why isn’t he still here?” I paused. “You’re not the same. I just have to understand how.”

Kyle stared back at me for a long time, studying me carefully. It was probably less than half a minute before he spoke, but it felt like hours.

“I can’t help you,” he said, finally.

I blinked. “Are you sure? Can’t you think of anything?”

He held my gaze for a moment, then looked away. “No. There’s nothing I can think of.”

My eyes narrowed. There was clearly something he was hiding. “Kyle–”

“You heard him,” Tricia said. “He has nothing more to tell you.”

“Kyle, please,” I said.

Kyle kept looking away, without speaking.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Tricia said. “Get out of my house.”

I sighed. “Kyle, I know you probably feel guilty. After all, like I said, you’re still here, while your brother and father are not. And I know how you feel. I lost my husband, and there hasn't been a single day since then that I haven’t felt guilty about the fact that he was taken, while I was not.”

“…What do you mean?” Kyle asked, puzzled. “You couldn’t have been taken. After all, the Vanished are all men, and you’re not a man.”

There are lots of people who would readily call me one, though, I thought. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I just said, “No matter. What could matter is you telling us here and now how you and your brother were different.”

We locked eyes, and looked at each other for a long time, without speaking.

Then I sighed, and stood up from the couch. “Okay then. Sorry for bothering you. Thank you for your time.”

Followed by Michael, I walked to the front door.

“I’m a girl.”

I froze. I turned around to look at Kyle. “Come again?” I asked.

“I’m a girl,” Kyle repeated. “I’m transgender. Kevan was not. That’s what’s different.”

“Kyle…” Tricia said, looking at him – at her.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Kyle said. “I know that… I know that I’m breaking your heart. I…” she looked down at the floor, took a deep breath, and choked down a sob. “Kevan knew. We were about to tell you. You and Dad. But then… But then… And then I couldn’t find the courage. Not any more.” She wiped the tears away from her eyes. “But if this fact can be useful, if they can use it to bring Kevan and Dad back…”

For a moment, the room was quiet: Kyle was looking down at the floor, and Tricia was looking at her; Michael and I, meanwhile, were silently looking on.

“I knew,” Tricia said, finally.

Kyle’s head snapped upwards. “You… You knew?” she asked, bewildered. “But… how?”

Tricia smiled, a sad smile. “I’m your Mom. I figured it out years ago. Dad knew, too. We decided to wait until you came out on your own.” She sighed. “And I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself, for not asking you right after the Vanishing. For letting you keep this all inside. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Mom…” Kyle said; a moment later, she started sobbing in earnest, and her mother stood up from her seat and moved over to her, to console her.

Meanwhile, I was just staring at her, my mind running.

Two people, absolutely identical in everything, the only difference was that one was a man and the other a woman. No, I realised, shaking my head: Kyle hadn’t started transitioning yet – as much as I hated to even think those words, physically she was still a man. The only true difference was…

Was…

That she was trans.

While her brother was cis.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said. “I think you’ve just given me the critical piece of the puzzle, the one I was missing.”

Kyle and Tricia looked up at me. “You mean… you can bring Kevan and Dad back?” Kyle asked, hope clearly showing in his eyes.

“I don’t know for sure yet,” I replied. “But we just might. Thank you.” I turned to Michael. “Let’s go, Mike, we got work to do.”

He nodded, and followed me as I rushed out of the house, towards the car.

-----

“See, the thing is,” I said as we looked upon the mountains of folders piled up in the new office we’d been assigned (we sorely needed the space, and our bosses had readily agreed to provide it), “that we’ve been so focused on trying to find what linked the Vanished together, that we hadn’t thought to look into what linked the men who were left behind together.”

Michael looked sceptically at me. “We did do that. Or, rather, the other division did. But they didn’t find anything in common between them.”

“That’s because they didn’t know what to look at. I took the liberty of reviewing all the files we had looked through before – well, not all of them, we have literally millions after all, I only looked at a few hundred – and found that all the Vanished were cis; and, critically, none of the Vanished weren’t cis.”

I looked at Michael expectantly, but he just shook his head. “There are cis men among those who were left behind.”

“That’s why I also took the liberty of dividing these here files in two piles,” I said, and pointed at one of them. “This one is men who were left behind who aren’t cis. And this one,” I pointed at another, much smaller pile,” is all the men who were left behind who are cis.”

Michael looked at me sceptically once more, but nodded. “Alright, let’s get to work. What are we looking for?”

I sighed. “I really, really, really hate to be doing this, but we’re going to look for evidence that these men aren’t cis, actually. So we’ll divide this pile into two: those for which we can find such evidence, and those for which we can’t.”

“Okay,” Mike said, and grabbed a file.

Three days later, the desk which I’d helpfully labelled ‘absolutely, clearly, undoubtedly cis’ was still empty, with zero folders lying on it; the pile on the other desk – ‘got something gender going on’ – just kept growing, and Michael finally admitted defeat.

“You okay?” I asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He nodded, and rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just…”

He turned to face me.

“I’d been thinking about stuff before the Vanishing, you know. I was thinking that maybe I wasn’t a hundred percent the man I always thought I was? I didn’t know for sure, because I sure as hell am not a woman, but…” He sighed. “And then everything went to shit, and I just stopped thinking about it, pushed it all in the back of my mind. This is a hell of a way to have my egg cracked.”

He extended a hand towards me.

“Hi, my name is Michael, and I’m pretty sure I’m some flavour of non-binary. Still he and him pronouns, though, for the moment.”

I shook his hand and nodded. “A pleasure to meet you again, Mike. You’ll have all the time in the world to think about this, I promise. Right now, we have work to do.”

-----

Once we’d determined what exactly had happened, finding out how was remarkably easy. As it turned out, the Vanishing hadn’t happened exactly at the same time all over the world; rather, it had seemed to be delayed, radiating away from a central point. The timing was nowhere precise enough to narrow the location down beyond city-level, but still, it had been known for quite a while that it, whatever it had been, had happened in Edinburgh, Scotland. Starting from that, we made a list of Edinburghers, narrowing them down one by one, based on several bullet points: a ‘feminist’; involved enough in rad-fem politics to be able to form an opinion on what kind of people were responsible for the ills of the world; and rich enough to have access to the resources to do something about that.

In the end, only one name was left, and she was the person whose door Michael and I kicked in, accompanied by a crack team of heavily armed agents. We found her still in bed – it was the middle of the night, after all – and she blinked blearily up at us when we pointed our flashlights in her face.

“Wh– what?” she said, pulling herself up to a seated position. “What is–”

I slapped her square across the face, throwing her back down into bed.

“Andrea!” Michael said, but I just glared at him.

“You. Get up,” I said, grabbing the red-haired woman and pulling her bodily out of bed. “What did you do?”

“Wh… what do you mean? What’s all this?” she demanded.

I barely held myself back from slapping her again, and instead pointed a finger right at her face. “Listen to me, lady, and listen carefully,” I hissed. “We know you had something to do with the Vanishing. We know you did something that caused it. So I’m going to ask you one more time: what did you do?”

“I didn’t–”

“Do not even fucking try to deny it,” I said. “I’m going to ask you one last time, and then I’m going to start breaking fingers. What. Did. You. Do?”

I punched the wall on the last syllable for emphasis, making the woman jump; she looked at me in the eye for a moment, and then looked away. “It’s in the basement,” she said.

I nodded. “Show us.”

With her leading the way, we made our way down the stairs, past a secret door hidden behind a bookcase and locked biometrically, and deeper into the bowels of the castle, in a room which was clearly brand new, recently cut out of the rock upon which Edinburgh sat. There was a pentagram painted in red on the floor with a circular mirror sitting in the middle of it, long-extinguished candles at the points, and several objects scattered around.

“I left it as it was on that day,” the woman said. “I haven’t touched it since then.”

“Alright,” I said, and turned around to face her. “You’ve shown us where, and from the looks of this room, I understand how. But you still haven’t answered the most important question: what did you do?”

She hesitated. “I… I’ve been talking. Online. With people. Together, we came to the conclusion that the world would be better off if we just… got rid of someone. We did our research, found out exactly how to do it, and… did it.”

Michael and I both stared directly at her. “So you just decided to kill all cis men? Just like that?” he asked.

“No, you don’t understand,” the woman said, shaking her head frantically. “It all went wrong! We… We wanted to remove all trans women! We didn’t mean to…”

She broke down into sobs.

“You’ll get no sympathy from me, lady,” I said flatly. “Though I do have to admit you got it mostly right. You see, I dabble a bit in the occult myself, so I can recognise what you were trying to do. But you messed it up big time. Didn’t read the fine print, which is fucking important when opening a portal to the Eldritch Beyond.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, you see. The opposite of trans is cis, and the opposite of women is men.” I pointed at the mirror lying at the centre of the pentagram. “What the hell do you think a mirror does?”

Her eyes widened as she realised the truth. “But then…”

I nodded. “Yes. The summoning went without a hitch, and the Vanishing is the direct result of your actions.”

“Oh, God,” she mumbled.

“There is most definitely a god involved, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the one you’re thinking of,” I said, smiling bitterly. “And now I’m going to reverse this.”

She looked at me in surprise. “What?” she said.

“I did tell you I dabble in the occult too, didn’t I? Well then.” I turned to Michael and the other agents, and nodded to them. “Keep her out of the way while I work.”

They pulled the woman off to the side of the room, while I knelt down and inspected the pentagram. I scoffed: amateur work. It was a wonder it had worked at all, and that they had managed to keep It contained – though it was for the best, otherwise everyone on Earth would’ve suffered the consequences. I pulled out a pen knife, slashed my thumb open, and began writing in blood on the floor, adding glyphs, modifying the ones which were already there. I worked for at least an hour, until I was finally satisfied. “Done,” I said, rising to my feet. “Now all that’s left is to open the portal.”

“Oh, I really don’t know how to thank you,” the woman said. “I was afraid… I thought the world would never go back to the way it was. I’m so thankful that you know how to fix this.”

“I’m not going to fix it. Weren’t you listening?” I said, turning back towards her. “I said I’m going to reverse it.”

“…Isn’t that the same thing?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. Fixing means undoing. Reversing… Well, a price must be paid. I’m going to turn things around: I’ll bring back the Vanished, but someone else must vanish in turn.”

She blinked. “You mean…?”

I ignored her as I began the ritual: I spoke the unspeakable words which would connect our world to the Eldritch Beyond and call It through. Everything around us started to shake, to vibrate, and I felt myself become fuzzy, indistinct, as the barriers between dimensions became permeable. The centre of the pentagram, above the mirror, turned into a swirling mass of something, and I carefully avoided looking directly at it, knowing Michael and the other agents knew to do the same.

“No! Please!” the woman shouted.

I paused, and turned to look at her again: she was staring into the void, and was clearly incredibly scared by what she saw in it.

“A price must be paid,” I said, in a flat, measured voice which nevertheless resounded like a drum all through the room.

“Stop it! I beg you!”

“I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.”

“But I didn’t mean to!”

“I don’t care.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but didn’t have time to speak before she vanished.

-----

I felt my husband stir in bed beside me, and I turned around to face him. “Good morning,” I said with a smile.

“Good morning,” he replied, smiling back. “Did you sleep well?”

“Better than I have in months. I’m so happy you’re back, Rick.”

“And I’m happy to be back,” he said, shuffling forward and embracing me. “You know, it’s weird but I don’t remember anything. Not one thing. The months I was gone? Completely missing.”

“It’s probably better that way,” I said. “They weren’t pleasant. And we still have work to do.”

He nodded. The world was still recovering after the Return, as the opposite of the Vanishing had come to be known: while the Vanished had reappeared, in the exact same spot from which they’d left, everything that had been caused by them disappearing wasn’t undone – everyone who’d died as a consequence of the Vanishing was still dead. Not to mention that a new world order had been put into place after the cis men had disappeared, and some people were markedly unhappy at the thought of having to return to the previous status quo: revolutions and civil wars were blazing through several countries, and probably would for a while still.

It would take quite a while for things to settle down.

But for the moment, I was just happy I had my husband back.

“Come on,” I said, rolling over in bed and pulling him along until he was lying on top of me. “I think we have some time before we have to get up and go to work.”

 

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story. If you want to read more of my writing, check out my Patreon and my Scribblehub page!

— Zoe Storm

Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #17

Follow to catch Bad Blood on November 28th

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