“Is Miss Sanders not here?” Jet asked. The girl who made the best tea and coffee in town, recently known to him as Aubrie, was nowhere to be seen inside the Paracosmic. Instead, a woman with greying hair stood behind the counter, looking as welcoming as an angry stray cat.

“She’s sick,” the woman – the nametag read “Benya” – explained. “You’re the third person to ask.”

“I’m sorry,” Jet apologized, “I’m used to seeing Miss Sanders behind the counter. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss…?”

“Call me Benya, like the tag says,” Benya replied. “What do you want, kid?”

He hesitated. He knew Aubrie was somehow able to make food and drink that were effective against the tiredness of Soporifick. He was fairly certain this only applied to Aubrie. So there wasn’t much reason to place an order, since the drinks would be ineffective. Unless, of course, he was wrong and the magically rejuvenating drinks were thanks to the Paracosmic and not Aubrie… Which seemed unlikely, but possible, nonetheless.

There was certainly no better time to test it than now.

“Iced green tea latte and avocado smash on toast, please. To go.”

“So you’re green tea boy,” Benya mused, as she got his order ready.

“Do staff talk about me?”

“Sanders has mentioned you. You’re one of her regulars,” Benya replied.

“I didn’t realize I came with enough frequency to be talkworthy,” Jet remarked.

“There’s not much else to talk about, kid,” Benya answered. She handed him his order. “Have a nice day,” she said, her voice making no effort to hide how little she meant it. He smiled politely, nonetheless.

“You too.” Unlike her, his voice made the effort.

As he headed out, he tripped over a discarded rucksack he hadn’t seen. He instinctively picked it up and looked around for the owner, wanting to (politely) complain about tripping hazards being left lying around.

But there was no one. Literally no one else there. The café was empty at this time of day. It wasn’t even seven yet.

Then he realized he’d seen this patchwork rucksack before – last evening, on the bus with Aubrie, when they’d conversed properly for the first time, when they had exchanged names and contact details, her rucksack slung over one shoulder as she fished out her phone…

“Isn’t this Miss Sanders?” Jet asked, holding it up to Benya. The woman looked it over, recognizing it as Aubrie’s.

“Huh. She must have left it there…” she muttered, sounding dismissive, but Jet noticed the way the woman paled. She was lying about Aubrie being off sick. He looked at the wall-length mirror, hanging in the Paracosmic.

In the lower left corner, there was a hair-thin crack. Those were said to appear when the Monster in the Mirror grabbed a victim and pulled them through. Aubrie must have been taken from here. She’d been in her uniform when he met her, she must have returned to retrieve her clothes… alone at night, after working hours…

He stamped down any feelings of sadness. Aubrie Sanders would be dead by now.

“Well, I suppose you can hold onto this, until she’s better,” Jet told Benya, handing her the rucksack. Benya continued her uncaring charade.

“Sure, thanks for finding this, I guess,” she said.

“Good day then,” Jet replied, leaving just fast enough that Benya could not bid farewell in return. He quickly sought for a place without crowds and soon walked into a nearby park, where no one else was around.

He leaned against a tree, sliding down until he was crouched at its base, his head in his hands.

Aubrie was probably dead, there was nothing he could do, and anyway, her wandering into Soporifick had nothing to do with him. She wasn’t the first to accidentally end up there, and she wouldn’t be the last.

He ignored the urge to go find her. She was dead. And even if he wanted to retrieve something for her family to mourn – there’d be nothing left. Andahts never left anything behind.

He tried to get a hold of himself and press the thought of her out of his head. He was getting distracted by unnecessary things. Instead of Aubrie, he should keep his mind locked on his deceased mother, the horrid life she’d had, his lonely childhood, the rage and anger both on her and his behalf. When he recalled their suffering, the two of them together, the suffering of others seemed irrelevant. Even Aubrie and her pitiful end was unimportant and incomparable in the face of what he’d been through.

Aubrie Sanders was, at the end of the day, even with her amazing, truly revitalizing beverages and snacks, just another faceless passerby in a crowd of millions, hard to notice and easy to forget. He breathed out deeply and held on tightly to the burning inside him, the rage that had been driving him forward for years, drowning everything else out.

Nothing and no one else mattered outside of finding his father. Any other thoughts and feelings were distractions, permissible but to be subdued. Even bereavement over another person, someone that had been the only slither of light in his dark world, was to be made small and insignificant.

He found himself sending her a text anyway.

[to Tea Goddess]: Was just at the Paracosmic, someone called Benya said you were sick. I hope you feel better soon.

Despite himself, a small part of him, a part buried deep down and left to rot for years, still hoped for that slither of light.

— 📀 —

He arrived at Eyes For Hire, Finn Elender’s private investigation agency, after school. The heaviness of Soporifick was still hanging over him, clinging to the corners of his eyes, the back of his head, the base of his neck.

As Jet had suspected, it was not the Paracosmic that had possessed the reviving qualities, but Aubrie’s own skill. Unfortunate as that had turned out to be, what with her being lost in Soporifick. Presumably dead.

Finn, someone who only needed very few hours’ sleep at night, and thereby seemed almost entirely unaffected by Soporifick, was all bright and perky at his desk, playing with some puzzle toy. He smiled enthusiastically when he saw Jet step in.

“How’s my little p-eye assistant?” he asked, setting the toy aside and folding his arms.

“I don’t want to talk,” Jet flatly answered, taking a sip of his coffee, ignoring how it couldn’t wash away Soporifick’s tiredness, instead clashing with it in the most revolting way. He chucked the mail onto Finn’s desk. “Just bills. Nothing of interest. I’m going to head into Soporifick, see if I can solve a few cases the police are stuck on.”

“Kid, you’re supposed to be my investigating assistant,” Finn pointed out. “Shouldn’t you wait until I’ve had my say?”

Jet paused, then frowned at him.

“In case you forgot, this is a front, Elender,” Jet reminded him. “You’re not paying me, so I’m not going to run around looking for lost cats or proof of infidelity.”

“Feh,” was all Finn had to say, taking the mail into his hands, rifling through them. “Anything from the man upstairs?” he asked, pointing up as if Mr. Lark were a god.

“Nothing new. Partners and associates are all behaving themselves since what happened to Callow. He still wants us to find the Red Gent, but I think we’ll get faster results waiting for Ridgeway to get back to us. Oh, and you’re on standby.”

“Again? Why is he only ever sending you into Soporifick?” Finn complained. “Between the two of us, I’m the short sleeper and you really seem to struggle with Soporifick’s side-effects. I should be the one going into Soporifick for odd jobs.”

“Aren’t you a detective? Figure it out,” Jet reprimanded him. Finn laughed as if they were merely bantering, but he could see the resentment in Finn’s eyes. Jet didn’t care. He walked over to the mirror in Finn’s office, taking the gasmask out of his satchel. He looked back at Finn. “Don’t follow me. Between the two of us, I’m the better fighter and I’m not gonna rescue if you run into Work-Weaver again.”

“That was one time!” Finn protested, as Jet fixed the gasmask onto his face and stepped through the mirror, into Soporifick.

With Finn’s grating voice gone, he took out his hit list. Some of Mr Lark’s associates wanted secrets about various people found out and one of the higher-ranking partners wanted someone untraceably killed.

Having to solo such lists was not unusual. Although Finn was technically his partner, unlike him, Finn had to hold down a full-time job. He needed to maintain financial independence, which meant he had to actually do work as a private investigator.

As a result, Finn could only take part in bigger operations, ones that occurred outside of working hours. During working hours, Jet was expected to complete the “minor tasks”, as Mr Lark called them. Usually, it would take him a few days to complete a list, since there were only so many hours in a day and he often had to travel across the city to find his targets.

Today, he intended on completing the list in one night, even with all his targets scattered across every corner of the sprawling city. He needed to. Aubrie was still taking up too much space in his mind, so he desperately needed the tasks to make him forget her.

She was dead and even with him now being in Soporifick, he wasn’t going to go looking for her. Because there would be nothing to find. He might turn into another Glitched Lover if he obsessively sought someone that could no longer be found.

Pocketing the list, Jet got to work and did not spare Aubrie another thought.