Rook

  Chapter Eleven – No Hero Stunts, We Go Smart

  In the unlikely event of a regional outage, MetroRun couriers are advised to return to a safe location and suspend deliveries until normal service resumes.

  — MetroRun Operations Handbook, Section 4.3 “Service Disruptions”

  By the time Rook turned onto his block, his legs felt like they were about to give way beneath him. The adrenaline coursing through his veins for most of the trip had provided a temporary respite, but he was feeling it now.

  His apartment building came into view and, for half a second, relief hit him so hard it felt like dizziness.

  A group of tenants had gathered out front under the shallow awning, pressed tight to stay out of the worst of the downpour. Water ran off the edge in steady streams, splashing the sidewalk like a leaking gutter in a bad mood.

  Mrs. Delaney was planted like a statue with her cane, chin lifted. Rico stood with his arms folded, chewing the inside of his cheek. Keisha had her phone in her hand like it might suddenly remember how to be a phone. Darnell held a flashlight under his chin that made him look like he was telling a dramatic campfire story.

  Rook rolled up and put a foot down, tires hissing on the wet pavement.

  Darnell’s face snapped toward him. “There he is.”

  Keisha exhaled. “Oh my God. You’re alive.”

  “Unfortunately,” Rook said. “I was hoping the apocalypse would excuse my student loans.”

  Rico pointed down the street. “You see the lights go out by blocks? That’s not normal.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Mrs. Delaney cut in. “That’s coordinated.”

  A thunderclap rolled somewhere not that far off, rattling the metal awning. A couple of them flinched on instinct.

  Darnell shook his head. “Nah. It’s a cyber thing. Like a hack. I mean our phones just… died. I just took mine off the charger!”

  Keisha looked at Rook. “You were out there. What’d it look like?”

  Rook nudged his bike closer to the wall, keeping his voice low. “It looked like everyone realized at the same time that ‘temporary’ is a lie people tell themselves to breathe.”

  Rico snorted. “Way to amplify the mystique.”

  “We’re Detroit,” Rook said. “We’re professionally stubborn.”

  Mrs. Delaney’s eyes narrowed. “You got food? Water? Anything?”

  “Got me,” Rook said. “And a bike that’s suddenly on a strict leg-powered diet.”

  Darnell looked at the bike, then back at Rook. “You good though? No injuries?”

  “Yeah, I’m good, man,” Rook said. He nodded toward the stairwell. “I’m going to check on Tasha and Malik. Make sure they’re okay.”

  Keisha’s expression softened. “Go. We’ll keep watch.”

  “Shout if you guys need anything,” Rook said, then rolled his bike inside, water dripping off him in a trail that the building would definitely judge later.

  Mrs. Ortiz was in the lobby like she’d been stationed there by the building itself. She sat on her usual folding chair like a sentinel, notebook on her knees, pen poised. The lobby windows rattled occasionally when gusts hit.

  Her eyes snapped to Rook the second he pushed through the door.

  “Mijo. Thank God,” she said. “Where have you been? I heard those booms and then the lights went… weird. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Rook said. He tried for a grin and didn’t quite land it. “Just got rained on, yelled at, and spiritually violated.”

  Mrs. Ortiz made a small sound like she didn’t appreciate the joke but was relieved anyway. “You always make jokes when you’re scared.”

  Rook’s smile fell. “What’s going on?”

  She tilted her head toward the stairwell. “Tasha left earlier. She said she was going to check something, get supplies, I don’t know. Malik’s home. I checked on him earlier, but he’s worried.”

  Rook’s stomach tightened. “Any idea where she went?”

  Mrs. Ortiz shook her head, lips pressed tight. “No. I don’t know. Somewhere she thought was quick, somewhere she thought was safe. That’s the problem, mijo. In a day like this, ‘quick’ turns into hours.”

  Rook’s pulse spiked. “Okay,” he said, already turning toward the stairs. “I’m gonna go check on him right now.”

  He lifted his bike and started double-stepping up the stairs.

  The third floor smelled like boiled noodles and candle wax. Half the tenants on the floor had their doors cracked, ears turned outward. Someone had set a candle on the landing in an old spaghetti sauce jar. Shadow shapes jumped on the walls.

  Rook leaned his bike against the wall just outside the Johnson’s door, then gave a rhythmic knock.

  Locks rattled. The chain slid back. Malik’s face peered through the crack, eyes too wide in the dim.

  “Rook!” Malik said, voice already wobbly. “What’s happening out there?”

  “Grid picked a bad time to audition for a horror movie,” Rook said. “You gonna let me in or do I have to stand here and look mysterious in the doorway?”

  The door opened fully.

  The apartment beyond looked mostly normal if you ignored the candles and the anxious note taped to the fridge.

  MALIK —

  GOING OUT FOR CASH / WATER / BATTERIES.

  LOCK THE DOOR. DON’T OPEN IT FOR ANYONE BUT ME OR ROOK.

  CALL IF ANYTHING IS WEIRD.

  LOVE YOU.

  — MA

  The last line had been underlined twice.

  “How long?” Rook asked.

  Malik closed the door and threw the locks like he was trying to weld them shut.

  “She left when the lights did that… half-off thing the first time,” he said. “Before everything died. She said she was going to beat the crowds.”

  “How many hours?” Rook pressed.

  Malik swallowed.

  “Like… I don’t know. Like right before the storm started.”

  “Have you heard from her since?” Rook asked, already knowing the answer.

  “My phone rang once,” Malik said. “Then it glitched and now it won’t do anything. I thought the tower was just being a jerk. Then…” He gestured vaguely at the candles, the window, the whole situation.

  A fresh burst of rain hammered the glass, and the building gave a small, tired creak in response.

  “She said she’d be right back,” he added, as if that should count more than anything.

  “She usually is,” Rook said.

  The words didn’t do much.

  Malik’s hands twisted in the hem of his shirt.

  “I waited like she told me,” he said. “I didn’t go anywhere. I did the lock thing. I checked the peephole. Mrs. Ortiz yelled through the door once. But Ma’s not back and it’s been hours. If she slipped or got stuck or something and nobody knows, she’s just… she’s just out there.”

  The thought hit him mid-sentence and shattered his voice.

  Rook felt his own chest tighten.

  The smart part of him lined up arguments for staying put. Streets were chaos. No communication. Panicked drivers, frayed tempers, pointless risk. Add heavy rain and gusts that could knock you sideways into someone’s bumper, and the ladder to “we leave and it gets worse” got real steep.

  The part that remembered being a kid left too long in an empty apartment did not care.

  “You eat anything?” he asked, because you didn’t make decisions on a stomach full of adrenaline and worry.

  Malik pointed at a bowl on the table with a half-congealed slick of noodles at the bottom.

  “Tried,” he said. “Tasted like wet cardboard and anxiety.”

  “Michelin-star combo,” Rook said. “Okay. Here’s the deal.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat on it backwards.

  “We’ve got two emergencies,” he said. “One: the whole-city weirdness. Two: your mom. We can’t fix the first. We might be able to not screw up the second. Which means we have to be deliberate, not dumb.”

  “You’re about to tell me not to go outside,” Malik said flatly.

  “I was,” Rook said. “But I’m not, because I’ve met your mother, and I enjoy breathing. She told you: lock the doors and don’t let anybody in except me or her. But she didn’t account for her needing help.”

  “So we go,” Malik said instantly.

  “So we go smart,” Rook said, holding up a hand. “We’re not wandering around hoping the universe throws her at us. We hit the places she’d actually go. In a small circle. Together. If it looks bad, we bail. No hero stunts. I say turn back, we turn back. Non-negotiable.”

  Malik’s nod was too fast, too eager.

  “Where first?” he asked.

  “Where would she actually hit?” Rook prompted. “In what order?”

  Malik didn’t have to think long.

  “Corner store,” he said. “She hates it but it’s closest. Then the gas station on the next block in case they still take cards. Then the little ATM in front of the check-cashing place. Maybe the bus stop if she decided to go farther. She said if everything went to shit she’d try to get to Auntie Nala’s but that’s across town and the buses—”

  He cut himself off as the reality of “across town” in a storm, with no grid, landed.

  “Store, gas, ATM, bus stop,” Rook said. “That’s our loop. We ask people. We don’t split up. We don’t keep going just to feel like we’re doing something. Deal?”

  “What if…” Malik started, then swallowed. “What if we don’t find her?”

  “Then we come back here and we know that much,” Rook said. “We’ll be tired and pissed, not missing.”

  It sounded thin. It was still the only answer he had.

  Malik nodded again, smaller this time.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Rook cinched the straps on his backpack while Malik paced around the kitchen, shoving a flashlight and a half-crushed granola bar into his hoodie pocket like that counted as a plan.

  Rook spotted a family photo of Tasha and Malik on the fridge, held up by a magnet. They were both dressed nicely, smiling, looking so happy. He carefully plucked the photo from the magnet, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket. Then, he turned to look at Malik.

  “Keys?” Rook asked.

  Malik patted his pockets, nodded once, and opened the door. They stepped into the hallway and shut it behind them.

  As they walked down the stairs into the lobby, Mrs. Ortiz noticed them.

  “You guys going out to look for her?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Rook responded. “Store, gas station, ATM, bus stop. All places that make sense.”

  “You sure?” she asked, looking past him at Malik.

  “He’s sure that’s where she’d go,” Rook said. “We stay tight, we stay local. I’m not dragging him across town. He’ll rat me out if I try.”

  “That’s right,” Malik muttered.

  Mrs. Ortiz pressed her finger to her lips.

  “You come back if it smells wrong,” she said. “If there’s a crowd, you go around or you go home. People are jumpy. Jumpy people with no power are how headlines happen.”

  “We’re both allergic to headlines,” Rook said.

  She flipped a page in her notebook and wrote something down.

  “Names?” she asked, looking at Malik, even though she already knew.

  He sighed and recited. “Malik Johnson, 3B. Rook Vega, 3C.”

  “Route?” she pressed.

  “Store, gas station, ATM, bus stop,” Rook said. “Clockwise. No detours.”

  She wrote that too.

  “If she comes back while you’re gone, I’ll let her know that you both were worried and went to search for her,” she said. “If you’re not back by full dark—”

  “We will be,” Rook said.

  “And if you’re not,” she went on over him, “I will assume you got stupid and went farther and then I will be in a mood when you crawl back tomorrow. Clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Malik said.

  She nodded once.

  “Go, then,” she said. “Before I talk myself into tying you to the radiator.”

  Rook and Malik stepped out onto the sidewalk. Rain sliding off the awning and wind pushing it sideways so it still found their faces.

  Malik surveyed the block, taking in his new surroundings. Vernor looked stripped down to its bones: dead streetlights, cars abandoned at dumb angles, people moving in tight little knots with flashlights like they were sharing oxygen. There was no music, no TV bleed, nothing. Just voices, distant arguing, a dog barking too long, and somewhere far off, a single boom that made his stomach drop.

  “Alright,” Rook said. “Stay close.”

  The corner store’s front was lit by the last of the daylight and a few battery lanterns on the counter inside.

  Charcoal letters had been hastily painted on the glass:

  NO POWER

  CASH ONLY

  1 CASE WATER PER PERSON

  NO EXCEPTIONS

  A line stretched down the block, snaking around trash cans and double-parked cars. People clutched empty tote bags, reusable grocery sacks, crates. Some held hoods over their heads that the wind kept trying to peel back.

  Rook and Malik walked along the sidewalk, hugging the building.

  “See her?” Rook asked quietly.

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  Malik scanned the line. Tall guy with a Lions jersey, no. Elderly woman with a cane, no. Mom wrangling two little kids, no. A couple in work uniforms still half on, no.

  He shook his head.

  A rumor rippled down the line like a breeze.

  “They’re out of ice.”

  “No, just small bags.”

  “They’re closing altogether.”

  A man with a red bandana wrapped around his forehead turned halfway and glared.

  “They close that door before I get in there, I swear to God,” he said to no one in particular. “They got a generator in the back, I seen it. They’re holding out.”

  A woman a few spots behind him snorted.

  “You gonna electricity-shame the bodega now?” she said. “What, you think their secret backup is just for your beer?”

  “Everybody calm down,” someone closer to the front called. “They’re letting folks in five at a time. Just be patient.”

  Rook didn’t see Malik’s mom anywhere near the front, or lurking with the groups on the curb, or down at the end arguing about line-cutting.

  He took out the photo of Tasha from his pocket and started making his way to the very end of the line. Malik stayed close on his heels.

  He held it up to the first person, a guy clutching an empty tote.

  “Hey. You seen her tonight?”

  The guy glanced, shook his head. “Nope.”

  Rook tried the next. An older woman with a headscarf. “Ma’am? Please.”

  She leaned in, frowned like she wanted to help, then sighed. “I’m sorry, baby. I haven’t.”

  A few more. Same answer. No. Haven’t seen her. Didn’t notice. Too busy.

  By the time they reached the front, the line’s mood had soured into that brittle “don’t ask me for anything” energy. Rook turned to the cluster nearest the door.

  “Look—can I go in with the next group? I’m not buying. I just need to ask the folks inside if they’ve seen her.”

  The man with the red bandana scowled. “Man, you’re just trying to skip the line.”

  “I swear I’m not,” Rook protested. “This is his mom and she’s missing. We just wanna ask, then we’ll leave.”

  The bandana guy hesitated, then jerked his chin. “Fine. But if I see you come out with anything other than that picture, I’m gonna beat your ass.”

  “Bet,” Rook answered.

  The bodega door cracked open. “Five at a time!” a clerk barked from inside.

  When the next five shuffled in, Rook and Malik slipped with them.

  The duo went straight to the counter where three clerks anxiously waited.

  “Hey,” he said, holding up the photo. “Have any of you seen her come through? Black ponytail, glasses, talks like she’s already tired.”

  All three huddled in and stared at the picture, then shook their heads in unison.

  “No. Sorry, man,” one of the clerks said.

  Rook’s throat tightened. Malik’s hand curled into his sleeve.

  “Okay,” Rook said softly. “Thanks anyway.”

  The gas station sat two blocks away, a low concrete island with three pumps and a tiny convenience store attached. The canopy lights were dark. Rain rattled against the metal roof in bursts when gusts angled it just right.

  Orange cones had been dragged in front of the pump lanes. Someone had disregarded them and parked their car under the canopy, with the hood up and the driver’s side door open. The engine was off. A man sat in the seat, his head tilted back and his eyes closed as if he were at home, resting.

  A handwritten sign had been duct-taped to the dusty window of the kiosk:

  NO FUEL

  NO CARDS

  NO BATHROOM

  NO WE DON’T KNOW WHEN

  That hadn’t stopped a cluster of people from gathering anyway, shoulders tight under soaked shirts, voices louder than they needed to be.

  “I got cash,” one guy insisted, slapping a wad of bills against the service window. “What’s the problem now?”

  “The pumps don’t work, man,” the attendant yelled back through the little slot. “When the power went out, they went offline. You want to dig? Be my guest.”

  “That’s bull,” someone else said. “You’re saving it for the trucks.”

  “What trucks?” the attendant demanded. “You see any trucks getting through?”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Traffic on the main street had turned into a knot. Cars, delivery vans, a Helios pickup… all jammed together, none moving far.

  “Do you see her?” Malik demanded, scanning faces.

  Rook assessed the crowd, analyzing each person’s characteristics. None of them resembled her.

  “No,” he said. “Not from this distance.”

  “What if she was here and left?” Malik asked. “What if she went across?” He pointed vaguely down the street, where “across” meant any number of dangerous maybes.

  “Then we check the next place anyway,” Rook said. “ATM, remember? She hates standing in lines, she’s not going to keep trying the same stuck spot forever.”

  Malik nodded, frustrated.

  “I’m still gonna go over there and show them the picture,” Rook said encouragingly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.”

  Rook pushed up to the people crowding the service window, Malik a half-step behind him like a shadow with a pulse.

  “Hey,” Rook said, raising his voice just enough. “Quick question. You seen her?” He held up the photo.

  The man with the wad of cash snorted without even looking. “Nah, man, I ain’t seen shit.”

  A woman glanced at the picture, irritation softening for half a second. “No. Sorry.”

  “Please,” Rook tried, turning the photo so a couple more could see. “Black ponytail. Glasses. Her name is Tasha. She’s missing.”

  “I haven’t,” someone muttered.

  “Sorry, brother,” another person said.

  Rook leaned toward the service window. The attendant behind the glass looked wrecked, eyes red-rimmed, jaw clenched like it was holding the whole night back.

  “Sir,” Rook said, holding the picture up to the slit. “Has she been here? Even earlier?”

  The attendant stared at it, then shook his head once, slow. “No. I’m sorry. If she came, she didn’t get to me.”

  Rook nodded, forced air into his lungs. “Alright. Thanks.”

  Malik stared at the ground as they walked away from the gas station, shoulders caving in. His face had that gone, hopeless look that made Rook’s stomach twist.

  “Hey,” Rook said, firm but quiet. “Don’t fold yet.”

  Malik swallowed. “She’s not anywhere.”

  “She’s not here,” Rook corrected. “That’s different. We keep moving. Next stop’s the ATM. Come on.”

  The ATM in front of the check-cashing place was a relic of the past.

  Rook already knew what they’d find. No power meant no network, and no network meant the ATM would be a dead plastic face with a blank screen. Still… you checked anyway. Hope was stupid, but it kept your legs moving.

  When the ATM came into view, Malik grabbed Rook’s sleeve so hard it almost hurt. Two figures stood near it, shoulders hunched, heads close together like they were arguing with the machine.

  Closing the distance, Rook could now see that someone had jimmied open the plastic panel under the screen and pulled it halfway off. A screwdriver lay on the ground nearby, already wet enough to feel like a bad idea.

  The two figures materialized into opportunistic teenagers.

  “It’s not like there’s a money fairy behind the glass,” one said. “It’s cartridges. You crack the safe, you pull the stack, you go.”

  “Yeah,” the other said. “And then what? You buy things from the imaginary store with your apocalypse cash?”

  They both looked up as Rook and Malik approached.

  “What?” the first one said warily.

  “Nothing,” Rook said. “Just hoping stupid isn’t contagious.”

  The kid sneered but didn’t move to pick up the screwdriver.

  Malik scanned the sidewalk, the doorway of the check-cashing place.

  No mom. No reason to hangout to see what the teenagers do.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Rook insisted.

  Rook turned his gaze back towards the teenagers.

  “Yo,” he called, voice flat with sarcasm. “Love the hustle. Really. But maybe make better life choices than trying to mug an ATM during the apocalypse.”

  One of the teenagers didn’t even look up. “Relax, old man. Mind your business.”

  The other grinned, cocky and sharp. “Yeah. Go save the world or whatever. This is our stimulus package.”

  Rook gave them a long look, then shrugged like he was dropping a weight he didn’t have time to carry. Two idiots and a dead ATM weren’t his problem. Not tonight. He already had a mission: find Tasha.

  He turned back toward Malik, jaw set. “I tried,” he said with a smirk.

  The bus shelter a few blocks down had become a temporary town hall. Rain pattered on the plastic roof above it, and a gust shoved spray under the edge so people had to keep shifting their feet.

  A paper sign had been taped to the inside of the Plexiglas.

  CITY BUS NOTICE

  Due to an overwhelming increase in demand, city buses are spread thin.

  Expect longer wait times and possible delays.

  Thank you for your patience.

  Malik’s gaze snagged on a familiar patterned scrub top.

  His chest jumped. He darted forward before Rook could stop him.

  “Ma?” he blurted.

  The woman turned.

  Not her. Not by a long shot.

  Wrong eyes, wrong mouth, wrong everything.

  She stared at him with the exhausted patience of someone who’d dealt with a multitude of problems that day. They all had.

  “Sorry,” Malik said. “I thought you were… sorry.”

  Rook caught his shoulder and steered him gently backward.

  “Any chance you saw this woman?” he asked the stranger, unfolding the family photo for her to see. “She’s his mom. Her name is Tasha. She’d kill us if she knew we were out here, but we’re worried.”

  The woman almost smiled at that.

  “Sounds like half my patients’ mothers,” she said. “No. Sorry, kid.”

  “Thanks… and sorry again,” Rook said.

  Malik’s face had gone gray around the edges.

  “That was everything,” he said numbly. “Those were her places. The store. The gas station. ATM. Here. If she’s not here she’s… where is she?”

  Rook didn’t have an answer.

  “This was going to happen,” Malik said suddenly.

  Rook blinked.

  “What?”

  “My math teacher,” Malik said. “She kept saying everything was ‘fragile.’ Like, all the systems. She did this whole rant about how the whole city runs on a couple assumptions and if those stop being true everything goes sideways. We all laughed. We said ‘that’s depressing’ and she said ‘that’s realistic.’ She was right and I hate that she was right.”

  “Teachers love being right,” Rook said automatically.

  “This isn’t funny,” Malik snapped.

  “I know,” Rook said. “That’s why I make jokes.”

  “We could go farther,” Malik said, suddenly energized. “Wider circle. Auntie Nala’s direction. Or the clinic. Or maybe where she works. We could—”

  “On foot? In this mess?” Rook said. “That’s not a search, that’s a gamble.”

  “What if she gambled and lost?” Malik shot back. “What if she went out farther and now she’s stuck and we’re just sitting here waiting to feel better about not doing anything?”

  A car door slammed on the street loud enough to make them both jump.

  A man on the other side of the street was standing in front of a padlocked gate, truck engine still running. The truck bed behind him was stacked with cases of water, paper goods, and boxes taped like they mattered. He pulled a jangling key ring from his pocket and started flipping through it, one key after another, muttering under his breath. He tried a brass one. Wrong. A small silver one. Still wrong. His fingers tightened as he searched faster.

  A group people at the bus stop looked at the man, like the math added up: truck bed full of supplies + locked gate = a treasure trove.

  Heads lifted. Conversations stopped mid-syllable. A couple of folks stood up off the bench without deciding to.

  “Yo,” someone said, pointing. “You see that?”

  “He’s got water,” another voice said, like water was a religion now.

  The group slowly started walking in the man’s direction.

  The man glanced over his shoulder, did a double take, and realized what was happening.

  “Back off,” he said, grabbing a baseball bat from within the bed. “I got this from my cousin’s warehouse. You want to trade, we trade, but you’re not just—”

  “You sitting on that while people are suffering?” someone else yelled. “You out of your—”

  “Mind your business,” the man snapped, lifting the bat a few inches higher.

  “It is my business,” someone else shouted. “I got a family to look after!”

  The crowd shifted closer anyway, one step at a time, pretending it was casual. People moved like they were testing a fence line.

  Rook watched the moment when restraint started slipping. You could see it in shoulders. In hands. In the way people stopped making eye contact and started looking at the supplies instead.

  The argument swelled, voices overlapping. The storm didn’t help. Rain and wind made everybody a little more feral.

  He stepped between Malik and the developing crowd of people, hand firm on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Walk,” he said quietly. “Now. Back. Don’t look back like we did something. Just walk.”

  Malik looked like he wanted to argue and obeyed anyway.

  They made it half a block before Rook risked a glance.

  One guy reached out like he couldn’t help himself, fingers stretching toward the truck bed.

  “Don’t,” the man warned.

  The guy did it anyway.

  The bat came up, fast. Not a full swing. A snap, a crack against metal as the man brought it down on the truck rail inches from the reaching hand.

  The sound was a gunshot in the wet air.

  Everybody flinched.

  Then somebody surged.

  It wasn’t even clear who started it. A shove from the side. A shoulder into ribs. A second hand grabbing for a case. The first guy yanked and the plastic wrapped around the water tore with a ripping squeal.

  Bottles cascaded out, thudding and bouncing, caps popping loose as they hit the pavement. One burst open and sprayed cold water across ankles and shoes like it was laughing at them.

  For half a heartbeat there was stunned silence.

  Then everything happened at once.

  People dropped down, knees hitting the wet concrete. Hands darted for bottles, slipping on water. Someone pushed a little too hard. A woman fell, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Her head bounced once on the asphalt.

  She screamed.

  Someone else screamed at the scream.

  “Mine!” someone shouted, meaningless and absolute.

  The man with the bat backed up toward the gate, eyes wide now, bat lifted with both hands.

  “Get away from my truck!” he roared.

  A bottle flew. It clipped his shoulder and spun away.

  That was all it took.

  He swung the bat, horizontal, more panic than aim. It caught someone’s forearm with a sick, dull thud.

  The person howled and dropped what they’d grabbed. The sound spiked the crowd into a higher gear.

  “Yo, he’s hitting people!”

  “Grab it, grab it!”

  “Call the cops!” somebody yelled, and then laughed like that was a joke the universe had already told.

  Rook felt Malik tense beside him, breath catching.

  “Rook,” Malik said, voice tight.

  “Keep walking,” Rook said. “Don’t absorb any of this.”

  Another shove. Another slip. Someone went down and didn’t get back up right away, swallowed by legs and flailing arms. The bat rose again. Someone screamed again. A chorus of voices piled on top of each other until it became one loud, animal sound.

  A bottle skittered past Malik’s shoe. He flinched like it was a grenade.

  Rook guided Malik into an alley. The chaos behind them now held its own gravity, and he refused to let it draw Malik into its center.

  Before the turning completely into the alley, Malik noticed the woman who had struck her head.

  She was still on the ground, tears streaming down her face. Blood-soaked hands clutched the back of her head.

  “We should help her,” Malik blurted.

  “And get yanked into the middle of that?” Rook shook his head. “We step into that and we become part of the problem. Your mom wouldn’t appreciate the fact that you got trampled over bottled water.”

  “What if she’s there?” Malik demanded. “What if she went for water and is in the middle and needs—”

  “What!? If she’s there?” Rook snapped. “She hasn’t been anywhere. Now’s not the time to let your mind run wild.”

  The words felt cruel, even if they were true.

  Malik’s face crumpled. It felt even worse in the rain.

  “So what, we just… go back to wait and hope?” he asked. “You keep saying no to everything. ‘No, not tonight.’ ‘No, not there.’ ‘No, we can’t fix that.’ When do we say yes?”

  “When it won’t get us killed for no gain,” Rook said. “When things thin out. When it’s morning. When there’s light.”

  “Light isn’t going to fix people being assholes,” Malik shot back.

  “No, but it makes it easier to see them coming,” Rook said.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, rainwater and sweat all blending into the same misery.

  “I’m not saying we stop looking,” he said. “I’m saying we don’t do it like extras in a disaster movie. Today we learned: she’s not at her usual quick stops. That sucks. It also tells us where not to waste time tomorrow. We widen later. Carefully.”

  Malik stared at the wall behind him instead of his face.

  “I hate this,” he whispered.

  “Me too, man,” Rook said.

  They emerged onto the parallel street and pushed toward home, the rain easing for a moment only to come back harder when the wind shifted.

  “We’re not going to find her, are we,” Malik said dully.

  “We haven’t yet,” Rook said carefully. “That’s different.”

  “It feels the same,” Malik said.

  By the time they turned onto their block again, the mood of the street had shifted further.

  More windows were boarded, or at least covered with cardboard and tape. Someone had chalked a note on the sidewalk:

  NO INFO

  NO POWER

  CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBORS

  Below that, someone else had added:

  AND YOUR MOMMA

  The laughter it tried to summon didn’t quite land.

  As Rook and Malik walked up the sidewalk, it was like they were returning from a different planet. The building looked the same, but it felt holy anyway, a chunk of brick that still meant “inside” instead of “out there.”

  After the store line, the gas station shouting, the useless ATM and teenagers, and that whole water-and-supplies fiasco near the bus stop, home hit like a sedative. People had been one bad breath away from flipping human decency on its head.

  Here, at least, the rules were smaller. Familiar. A door. A stairwell. Faces he recognized. He could breathe without scanning hands for weapons or eyes for the moment they stopped seeing him as a person.

  He didn’t relax completely. Not even close. But the relief was real, a dull warmth under his ribs, like the city hadn’t taken every last safe place yet.

  Inside, the stairwell felt like a different universe: cramped, hot, but contained.

  Mrs. Ortiz was still there, pen in hand.

  She looked up sharply as they climbed.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “No luck,” Rook said. “People are so caught up on their own panic and worries. Understandable, I guess.”

  Malik slipped past him and headed up the stairs without a word.

  Rook watched the kid go until he was out of sight.

  He turned back to Mrs. Ortiz.

  “Did she come back?” he asked, stupidly, like there would have been a whole celebration if she had.

  “No,” she said. “Believe me, there would have been yelling.”

  Rook nodded.

  “We’re going back in,” he said. “I think I’m going to have to tranquilize him just to get him to sleep.”

  “You can’t hold that boy’s worry down with anything,” she said. “But you keep it from running straight into a wall. That’s your job now.”

  “I didn’t sign a contract,” he muttered.

  “You signed it when you kept coming over and involving yourself in their situation,” she said. “Congratulations, you’re family.”

  Her voice was blunt. Her eyes weren’t unkind.

  Rook didn’t have a comeback for that.

  He nodded in agreement and then followed after Malik up the stairs.

  Rook hesitated for a moment before entering the Johnson household. He was aware of the pain and the difficult conversation that awaited him. With a deep breath, he stepped inside.

  Malik sat at the table, elbows braced, hands in his hair. He didn’t look up when Rook shut the door.

  “We didn’t even make it to the clinic,” he said.

  “Clinic is farther than the bus,” Rook said. “By the time we finished playing dodge-riot, we’ve hit every location we planned. You want to do that route when every street is that bad, be my guest. Tomorrow.”

  “It’s already ‘tomorrow,’” Malik said.

  “Then the tomorrow after that,” Rook said. “We’re not sprinting to the horizon and hoping she’s there. She’s smart. She knows this neighborhood. She’ll go where the support is, not where the chaos is loudest.”

  “And if she couldn’t?” Malik asked softly. “If she fell, or got grabbed, or…”

  He trailed off.

  Rook hated the images that sentence invited.

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “We know she went out. We know she didn’t come back here between then and now. That’s it. Everything else is ‘what if’ until we have facts.”

  “My brain’s bad at facts right now,” Malik said.

  “Yeah,” Rook said. “Mine too.”

  He grabbed two glasses, filled them with water from the least gross-looking pot, and set one in front of Malik.

  “Drink,” he said. “Hydration is the enemy of catastrophic thinking.”

  “That’s not a real thing,” Malik muttered, but he drank.

  Rook did too.

  The water tasted metallic and faintly warm, but it grounded his throat, gave his hands something to do. Somewhere outside, the storm still prowled, wind worrying at the building’s seams and rain tapping in uneven rhythms at the window.

  “So what now,” Malik asked. “We… wait. Again.”

  “We rest,” Rook said. “Waiting is what you do when you’re hoping something happens to you. Resting is what you do so you don’t collapse when it’s your turn to move.”

  “That’s just fancy waiting,” Malik said.

  “Let me have my metaphors,” Rook chuckled.

  Every part of him hurt more now that they were still.

  “You sleep here,” he said, tapping the couch. “I’ll take the floor, guard dog style.”

  “Guard dogs are inside the door,” Malik said. “You’re going to trip on your own face if someone knocks.”

  “That’s the plan,” Rook said. “Falling into danger is a strong tactical move.”

  It dragged a small, unwilling noise out of Malik that was almost a laugh before it cracked.

  “She’s really not here,” Malik said.

  “I know,” Rook said.

  “You’re going to keep helping me look?” Malik asked, so quietly Rook almost missed it.

  “Yeah,” Rook said, with no joke at the edges. “I’m in it now. I’m not leaving you to spin out solo. We’ll make a map, we’ll talk to people, we’ll hit every place that makes sense and some that don’t. But we’re doing it in a way that gives us a chance.”

  “The city’s too big,” Malik said.

  “It used to feel bigger,” Rook said. “Now it feels… louder. We’ll cut it down to size. Block by block.”

  “You sound like my teacher again,” Malik muttered.

  “Your teacher sounds smart,” Rook said.

  He dimmed the candles down to fat, low flames, enough to see edges, not enough to invite wandering shadows.

  The apartment shrank to a small circle of light around the couch and the guard-dog patch of floor.

  Malik lay curled on his side, eyes open.

  Rook lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  He listened to the building breathe and tried not to imagine what it would sound like if someone started pounding on the door in the middle of the night.

  He hoped, fiercely and irrationally, that if that happened it would be Malik’s mom, tired and pissed and full of stories about terrible lines and worse drivers.

  It wasn’t a plan.

  It was something to hang the dark on.

  Outside, Detroit kept panicking, loudly and badly, in every direction, while the storm kept scraping its wet knuckles along the windows like it wanted to be included.

  Inside, two people lay awake with a map that didn’t yet have the line they needed most: the one that led to a woman who’d meant to be right back and hadn’t been, in a city that had suddenly made every mile feel like an ocean.