CHAPTER 4

Fina had been missing for two weeks before anyone filed a report.

To Ryan HeelRiven, it was a strangely long time. Sure, she wasn’t nearly as important as he was. Who else in this world would be? But he checked the news nearly every day in the first week for some hint that someone was looking for her.

But all was silent.

It had been raining nonstop for days on end. Finding a burial site for Fina on sloppy mud was hard enough.

Then it became cold. The weather outside, despite being the middle of June, had slowly but subtly dripped down in temperature. First it began as a slow cold front.

The promises of sunny, hot weather cooled as the temperature dropped into the sixties, then forties, until the end of the second week when it struggled to reach even fifty degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the afternoon.

Ryan watched the falling rain outside. The raindrops were frosty and cold. Soon, it began to snow. 

“Mr. HeelRiven?” Arnold said.

Ryan turned around. “What is it?”

“We are having trouble with the international report,” Arnold said. “There seems to be a communication problem.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, glaring.

“We can’t reach a signal outside of the city,” he said.

“Is it a bandwidth problem? Tell those idiots I’ll pay whatever they want to increase it, just get it done,” Ryan said. He had enough problems on his plate already. Another few thousand dollars to increase his bandwidth wouldn’t be a problem for him.

“You don’t understand sir,” Arnold said. He pulled out his phone.

The local news read:

“International Communication Down!”

“Local Parents Cannot Contact their Children Overseas”

“Social Media Outside Country Has Completely Silenced”

He couldn’t believe what he was reading. He had to confirm this himself.

He dashed over to his computer and went online to check the news articles from international news sites, but they had all shut down or simply didn’t exist anymore.

Server Not Found.

The Page You are Looking for Does Not Exist

404 Error

Ryan spent the next few hours browsing online social media. Everyone in the country was erupting into hysteria online.

“What the hell is happening?” One user said. “I’m terrified. My boyfriend is overseas, he has a heart condition. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive!”

“All users on foreign bandwidths are down,” another said. “This is too quiet. What the **** is happening?”

The Prime Minister, who had been overseas, was miraculously able to be contacted about the increasing disconnect He was preemptively rushed over to the next flight back home.

However, his plane never landed.  And every attempt to contact him, or anyone outside the bounds of the sea that surrounded their country were met with no response.

It was hard to describe the silent terror that went through the nation that day. Online reactions were dead silent for a long time. A trickle of responses came in.

“This is it…”

“….”

“I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” 

 It was like a dark haze was tightening in on them, swallowing their world whole.

The company, that evening, held a press conference in order to explain that they would move their efforts to provide basic services for their district.

Ryan would admit it if it didn’t make him look bad, but something about the pale, scarred expressions of the crowd of reporters hanging on his every word made him feel more important than ever before.

This incident, good or bad, had made him effectively the most powerful man in the current world. He wondered how far he could push this?

But there was something in the back of his mind that told him that everything was not what it was supposed to be. His thoughts, disturbing as they were, lead him to think about that woman. Fina.

Oh, Fina.

Why hadn’t anyone at work asked about Fina? She was a pretty woman, if a little plain. It wasn’t long ago that he looked back at the security tapes from the week before she met her untimely end.

Her coworkers, Dee and Mia, were not very good friends. Sure, they signed the papers to keep quiet through their sobs, asking for Fina, but other than they were terrible.

Before Fina’s death, all three women would laugh and smile together. Fina would join in their conversations, but then as soon as she left the room, their attitudes changed drastically.

One time, after Fina left the room, it was like a switch had flipped. They bent over and laughed very hard.

“How can she be so stupid?” Dee said.

“Did you see that? She was trying so hard to be liked, it’s so pathetic.” Mia said.

“Yeah, I know.” Dee said. “You know her fiancé? He constantly cheats on her but she doesn’t even have the guts to leave him.”

“Aww, poor thing!” Mia smiled sarcastically.

They stopped, blinked and shook their heads as if out of some stupor.

Dee looked around the room, confused. Mia seemed a little scared.

“Why did we—”

“Forget it, just forget it,” Dee said. “She wasn’t here.”

Dee turned over, like she was about to cry. She mumbled something about what she had said, and why would she say something like that. Dee patted her back and they walked out of the room, silent.

Ryan HeelRiven, for the first time in his life, felt like something was wrong with what he just saw. It felt as if he was seeing a conversation perfectly scripted. Their bodies were angled so that he would get a good look at their faces. They were turned towards the camera. They wore the nastiest smiles on their faces. It was almost as if they had been possessed by some force.

When they were talking with Fina they seemed so genuine. Then again, that’s how most people were. They hid their true selves from others. But something told him that what he saw was not natural.

He really couldn’t put his finger on it.

David sat in his apartment, the heater he had recently put away in anticipation for summer was back out, warming his feet. It was early morning in late June, and the rain was turning to sleet. He looked out the window. The sun had yet to rise. On the ground floor, tenants struggled to shovel away the ice and snow that had accumulated overnight. The ground was so cold last night that it couldn’t melt and instead iced over.

David turned on the weather forecast. The weatherman, clearly out of his element reasoned that the cold front that was supposed to pass by briefly was staying until further notice.

He also advised to stay within the county, as communication was down throughout the borders. Residents in coastal areas have gone silent, and cars going into the city limits of those areas have not returned.

David called Fina’s phone again. Her inbox was full.

David looked over to the corner of the room where Fina’s belongings were packed. When she didn’t return home that evening, he assumed she went back to her mother’s house. So, he took the liberty of helping her pack instead.

Only, she never came back.

Maybe all the emotion rushed to her and she packed up. She could’ve gone home, told her mother what had happened, and then her mother blocked him from her cell phone. He would understand that.

But she wasn’t like that at all. She was cold and logical, even when she pretended not to be. She would smile that fake smile of hers, but it was never to hurt him. She did it because she sincerely wanted him to feel comfortable. They were engaged in name only. Forced to buy a house together, made to live as roommates and nothing more.

It crushed him that she would let him go like that. She didn’t know it, but it crushed his heart. That’s why he turned to Elaine.

As soon as she moved out, he was going to leave the country with Elaine and start fresh. He would sell the apartment.

Only, it wasn’t so simple.

It began when he woke up early at Elaine’s apartment. It was the day after he dumped Fina. He felt a little guilty, but he was with the woman who saved his life now. He wouldn’t let himself feel guilty because he would be a good man from now on.

They were going to go overseas to their new apartment tomorrow. By the time he woke up, Elaine was already in her chair, putting on her clothes.

“We should stay in bed,” he said. “I want to lay down with you.”

“I have to go out today,” she smiled. “Don’t forget to pack. Our flight leaves tomorrow.”

David laid back down and stared up at the ceiling. The way he ended things with Fina felt right at the time. He explained the situation. She took it well. There was no drama whatsoever.

 But why did it feel like this would be the last time they would ever talk together? He couldn’t shake this feeling, even as he got dressed. He kept staring at his phone. The screen was dark.

He reached for his phone.

There were no messages. Fina never contacted him unless there was a plumbing emergency or household duty anyway. He chalked it up at the time as being a byproduct of her cold personality.

As always, Elaine made him breakfast. She greeted him with a smile and a kiss on the cheek.

This is what life should be, he thought. When we get married, she will be my wife. And our children won’t have to fear that their parents don’t love each other, like mine.

David’s life had been so lonely. All he wanted was the comfort of a wife, a small cozy house surrounded by nature, and two kids who looked like them running around happy and free.

Fina’s small smile appeared in his head as he turned to the image of the wife in his mind. He shook his head, trying to get it out of his thoughts and gulped down the orange juice in front of him.

He wouldn’t wake up until much later that afternoon. The last thing he remembered was lying down with a headache while Elaine ran to the pharmacy to get him some pain killers.

He got up groggily off the couch in Elaine’s living room.

“Elaine?” he said.

He walked around the room in a haze and into the bedroom. Her suitcase was gone.