September 5, evening

 

A man was sitting on a leather couch, motionless. Just staring through the lines of codes on a laptop screen on his knees. The living room was sparse and clean. It flirted with frippery, bookshelves, and expensive paintings. In the background, a muted TV occupied half a wall, showing another urgent news piece.

The man didn't seem to notice it, or a German Shepard beside watching him sadly from a rag.

"Dad?"

"...hm?"

The head with a third of its hair grey turned after a slight pause. Bob Branson's eyes were a bit aloof, not yet returning from a distant place away from the ladder from where the voice had come from.

"What is it, Dan?"

"Are you ok?"

A heedless question from a teenage boy who wasn't 'ok' himself. Daniel looked distracted, conflicted. Today, he'd confessed to a girl he liked and was answered "Yes!". They agreed on a first date. An hour later, he learned his sister disappeared into a blue. Now his mind was in the shambles of pink and black.

The boy's father nodded silently, pondering. Dan had about as many Korean features as him, the fact very liked by the boy's grandfather.

"Nine years ago, remember, Dan? Alice was lying in a hospital, no one knowing a clue what's wrong with her, while we were lying to you, to ourselves that everything is going to be fine. It didn't quite get there. My little girl had a heart attack half a year later. Was dead for seven minutes."

"I was there at that time... watching." Like how he was watching now far, far away. "Eyes remember, they're still itching. Seven minutes. Then the machine caught the pulse. A week later she looked as healthy as any other kid, no brain damage, not immunity system attacking her own organs. A month later she was discharged, still diagnoseless. A miracle happened."

Silence lingered. Not knowing where to look, he stared at the laptop. Bob blinked, returning from his memories, noticed his gaze.

"Just some gibberish. Easier to rewrite than make it work. Anyway," the man closed the laptop and tapped his smartphone, "Your mother sent me a message just now. Their tech team or something dabbed into Alice's phone. Usually, when you push the 'send' button, it saves the copy into the memory too. They've found it."

A moment later, Daniel was reading the lost message.

"Leave max bat barley"

"There is no danger to life, cannot talk, supernatural situation, unwilling." Bob translated immediately. "Let's guess the context."

His son nervously nodded and coughed dryly.

"Well, I watched it on youtube... many times. She started to write in a hurry..."

"Because she knew she will disappear in the next few seconds."

"Sis must've been pointing at it."

"Our Alice is very single-minded, never trying to predict the future."

"Yeah, sis lives in present. Didn't dissapiaries were all talking about random things anyway?"

"Random? Or there is some sense, not to them, us, but to the abductor?"

Suddenly, Daniel frowned,

"Why supernatural though?"

On which Bob countered,

"Any mentioning of superheroes, remember?  The code for aliens is 'green'."

The son and the father exchanged ideas for a long while, reforming from their pathetic selves.

 

---

 

"Yes. Thank you, Bob. I will be home in an hour or so."

Emilia Branson ended the call and stared through the window at the dark city. The cabinet she was standing in wasn't hers. It was very classic, with lots of wood furniture. The lair of a high-profile bureaucrat. Which was the police commissioner of the Greyston department, to be precise.

"Emilia."

The woman didn't answer, waiting for the commissioner to send away his vice and close the door.

"Congratulations being elect."

When his tone changed to crony but started the talk horrendously improperly, she twitched. That was all.

"Jason is not a bad mayor for calm times... we won't sail with such a luxury anymore. The people would have questions no one has answers for. Even if the man won't resign, no chance he will stand against you in the elections next year. Many would say it, me? I'm just forestalling... congratulations. With little Alice missing you'll get every sympathizer voice in the city."

"Shut up, Daniel."

The man did exactly as being told. He walked by, slapped her on the shoulder, opened a cupboard with a key, rummaged out a small bottle and a pair of refined glasses.

"Your treasured Macallan?"

"If not now, then when?" The commissioner answered with a question. He filled the glasses to halves and passed one to Emilia, then stood by.

A minute, two wore off as they were staring at the Greystone. Their city. Responsibility. The commissioner Daniel Mccann hated to express his condolences, while Emilia hated to listen to them. Especially any condolences connected to her daughter.

"No one died?" She asked in a bleak tone.

"Not as a result of this... episode." Daniel clarified what the woman knew already. "Not directly. Whatever took them, they extracted the victims very carefully. There is also a paper here," the man nodded at the table, "claiming the city's air contains traces of some sedative gas. Allegedly, a factory malfunctioned."

"Bullshit."

"Bullshit. But it wraps the fact we don't have an ongoing mass panic on the streets right now quite nicely."

A few more minutes passed.

"Alice sent me a message, Daniel. Bob agrees, she believed it wasn't an elaborate mass murder."

"Emilia..."

They were friends for a long time. Not just as individuals, as families too. Bransons' second son had the same name as the city's commissioner for a reason, after all. Mccann could be a brutish, unrestrained man with a limited number of persons, and Emilia was one of them. That is why he also had to be honest in need.

"We saw by know multiple people trying to inform the surroundings of something before being winded away. Voices were muted, lips blurred, written messages turned into scribbles. It, they, whatever, don't want us to know."

"How many used coded messages, Daniel? Not even Morse, but unique?"

The man quieted down thoughtfully.

"...it might work. Without having studied their lives in detail. Continue. What else did little Alice say?"

"Nothing much."

Emilia touched the window and smiled weakly.

"Maybe we can have a bit of hope that lightning strikes twice."