Keisha struggled to get up, holding the side of her throbbing head. 

Keisha wildly looked around the dark empty streets, and she panicked. “Ma! Mamma!” she twirled around, frantic as she ran through the streets calling out her mamma’s name.

“Mamma!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Tears welled in her eyes as she clawed at the air, hoping to make the portal reappear again.

Her breathing was raspy. Images of the portal appearing out of nowhere replayed in Keisha’s mind. The captured the look of terror on her mamma’s face getting sucked into the portal. ‘Go to the train station. I have to get help!’ The command came at the forefront of her mind.

She wiped the tears from her face. The square was up ahead and she saw the bright lights of skyscrapers. She saw a police officer sitting inside of the station's security office cubicle.

“Woah, slow down. Why the rush, miss?” An older man said. He leaned from where he sat at the front desk. His thick mousy mustache twitched when he spoke.

Keisha grabbed onto the counter and leaned into the window.

The smell of paper and old coffee mixed in the air, making Keisha’s nose wrinkle.

“P-please, officer, sir…my mamma…she was taken.” Keisha blew out each word with a strangled breath. “We have…we have to go.”

The mousy mustache man got up from his seat. Keisha spied his name tag read, Officer Smiley.

“Taken? Where was this? And did you happen to get a good look at the person?”

Keisha beamed, glad that they were getting somewhere. “Yeah, and they were wearing an all-black cloak and cape, and they dragged her through this portal and poof.” Keisha imitated with her hands in an explosion. “It was gone!”

Officer Smiley’s brow knitted together. He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Eh, one of you types, huh? Kid, you know this place is if you have emergencies, right?”

Keisha frowned. Her hands stopped moving wildly. “W-what? This is an emergency. My mamma was taken through a portal by some creepy person in a cloak!”

Officer Smiley grumbled something she couldn’t make out. A younger officer with short-cropped blonde hair came inside of the cubicle behind him.

He smiled at Keisha. His tag read, Officer Harley.

“What’s all the commotion back here, Jerry? You selling cookies or something, girly?”

Officer Smiley waved his hand and grunted. “Nah. No cookies, Maxwell. Some prank or something. Said her mamma was ‘taken’ through a portal by some cloaked figure.”

Officer Harley’s eyes widened with a smile on his face. He pretended to shake with fear by what his acquaintance was saying.  

“Sounds scary. What’s a kid like you doing watching scary movies like that? It can keep you up at night and make you tell elaborate stories.”

“I’m fourteen, and I’m not playing! She was taken through a tear in the air.”

Officers Smiley and Harley continued to laugh despite Keisha's tone and seriousness in her scrunched brow and trembled words. It wasn’t until they turned her away did she know that no one was going to listen to her. She didn’t know what she would do now.

Keisha’s lip quivered as she walked away from the train station. Her eyes filled with tears. The cool breeze against her cheek chilled her instead of the comfort that it had been prior.

I can’t panic. I have to think of something! What would the Hero Society do?

She blinked back the tears and sniffed. Keisha frantically looked around, seeing several people walk past her, enjoying the festivities, unaware of what she had witnessed.

She needed to find clues first. The officers didn’t believe her because they didn’t see proof—so she would get some.