05 — Reese & Birch

April 18, 10:07 AM (District 9, Outer Wards)

The mother’s hands shook so badly the coffee left the rim in thin arcs, dripping down porcelain like brown tears. Reese reached across the table and steadied the cup—not to drink, just so the woman wouldn’t have to see her own tremor reflected.

The kitchen smelled of boiled cabbage and mold hidden under lemon cleaner. The window above the sink gave a view of concrete walls painted once upon a time in pastel green. That green was now the color of hopelessness—faded, stained, ignored.

Birch stood there, shoulder against the sill, jaw tense, the light of her tablet washing her face in cold blue.

“She said she’d be home by midnight,” the mother whispered. “My husband told me not to fuss. He said—” She swallowed hard, words catching on bone. “He said she’s eighteen. He said she’s allowed to live.” Her eyes watered but didn’t spill. “I kept checking the door. Over and over. But it never—”

Her voice broke. Her hand cut the air, chopping like she could edit the past if she just moved fast enough. “Her friends said The Squid.”

Birch’s thumb flicked. “No transit pings after 11:38. Last optic trace outside the club. Phone battery redlined at 1:12.”

“That’s when I stood up,” the mother said suddenly, eyes sharp. “I felt something tilt. Like the air itself changed shape.”

Reese let silence sit a moment. She’d learned sometimes silence said more than questions.

Her gaze roamed to the mantel. A photo: the girl at a school dance, freckles like constellations drawn on purpose. A dad behind her, pretending at casual while his pride was too loud for subtlety.

Reese leaned forward, voice soft but unflinching.
“We’re not the first people you’ve told, are we?”

The woman’s expression sharpened into knives.
“Nobody wanted the paperwork. Nobody wants girls from here. They say, ‘maybe she ran,’ ‘maybe she drank,’ ‘maybe she wanted it.’ What if she wanted a life?” Her hands shook again. “Is that a report I can file?”

Birch straightened off the sill, eyes dark, jaw set.
“We’re not going to tell you to wait,” she said flatly.

The mother’s lips trembled.
“Then what will you tell me?”

Reese held her gaze.
“That we’re going to look.”

Outside, a stray dog barked into the void until thunder answered back like the void barked too.

---

That night, Reese sat alone at her kitchen table. She took her badge off, laid it down like a tool she wasn’t sure she had the right to keep using. The metal caught the weak yellow bulb overhead, the one that buzzed louder than the fridge.

She taped six missing posters to the wall. Painter’s tape—landlords in District 9 acted like gods about nail holes. Faces looked down at her, smiling the almost-smiles people wore when cameras scared real ones away. She drew lines between them, red ink connecting strangers who’d never met but were linked now in absence.

The silence in the room pressed down, heavier than the badge.

The knock at her door wasn’t a knock. It was Birch letting herself in, because Birch didn’t wait for permission. She carried a plastic bag with a cheap bottle inside and dropped it on the counter. Didn’t open it.

“They’re funneling them,” Birch said without preamble.
“D7 clubs. The Squid. Neon Eden. Same tag on every victim. A squid with a crown. Ink fluoresces under UV. Bio-reactive. They’re marking them like inventory.”

Reese picked up the blacklight from the drawer. She washed her hand with it like maybe the city had tagged her too, like maybe there’d be an instruction manual scrawled across her skin. Nothing glowed.

Her jaw tightened.

“We go,” Reese said.

Birch nodded once.
“We go.”

The word didn’t mean “visit.” It meant “arrive like consequence.”

And for the first time in weeks, Reese felt her blood heat.