Was there anything better than a steaming cup of tea in bed on a spring morning?

Sao stretched out his legs and sipped. From high up in his (borrowed) apartment there was rarely any audible birdsong, but the composition of the distant city waking up was just as sweet. Some light honking, a helicopter, the brush of brakes to an intercity bus, a distant train, wind and weather. Waking up to a cloudy sunrise and the patter of rain was as good as any dream could ever be.

He set the mug aside and curled the white cloud of comforter around himself. Life had been good to him. Even on days where he bussed into the office, he thought the same thing, with relative ease. Life hadn’t always been that way, but everywhere he looked reminded him of where he was and what he’d gladly left behind.

He wondered what Sigma had on his mind that stopped him from finding reprieve in his own self-made paradise that was Bell Lodge.

Sao had been manufacturing talk (as usual) when he said that Sigma was someone who saw the big picture only, but perhaps that was it. Sigma was a leader, he moved people and transformed places. Bell didn't materialize out of pure luck or whimsy; there were obviously tremendous costs. Sigma negotiated big money, big roles, big changes in peoples’ lives. And whether the Bells’ initiation had been real or a dream, he believed he saw the universe and devoted his life to unity with residents beyond human comprehension. Any of the above was weight enough to crush a lesser person.

Meanwhile here was Sao, a lifetime subordinate; under HQ, under Rai, and many before that. He dwelled on the little things and found tedium a comfort, because tedium was easy to reach without straining any muscles, without bothering to stand up. A proud navel-gazer. Picking up little things to inspect and admire was his forte, and when you only picked up small handfuls at a time it was easy to cast away the bits you didn’t like. 

And when it was just little bits, you could nap over them. But napping left a lot of time for the good parts to pass by too, didn’t it? Sao wondered what his old tutors would have made of his life. Well, he’d already given up on impressing them. He didn’t expect he’d meet any of them again.

Then there were the days after he’d left the school.

The dark forest, a nest of dead leaves and twigs and shadows behind canvas. Then barbed wires and stuffy halls, flickering lights and plumbing that never worked. Doors that, when thrown open, made him wish for quick death. ‘Moms’ and ‘Dads’.

Sao pulled the covers over his head. The details were a blur, but he had a feeling they’d come rushing back in if beckoned - if he let his guard down - and he wasn’t about to do that. They were very deliberately forced further back with a wall of downy blankets, hot tea and springtime rain. Sigma said it was too easy to forget; well, sometimes it wasn’t easy enough. And it was always the wrong things that stuck. He had to tell himself those thorny hanger-ons were small, or...

If he had brainpower to spar with the past, why not use it on the child from Bell?

The covers resting on his chest again, Sao lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The shadow of his sheer curtains flowed across it like wisps of smoke. He felt every muscle in his body go slack. His eyelids drooped. He could recall nothing.

Sao yawned.

He and Sigma were too different, and Sigma had the help of a therapist. No doubt there were more effective tactics for dealing with one’s past than lying in bed until noon. Tactics for the brave.

Sao thought himself a proud coward in addition to being a navel-gazer.

His daily concerns were summarized in small, digestible mantras. Don’t stick out. Fit in and hold on tight. People were key. All for safety. The latter was the lesson one got from an ugly history, wasn’t it? But then, for some, it might conflict with the desire to protect loved ones, or ones who loved you.

Sigma had his loves. Meanwhile, Sao scratched his unconcealed face and was glad that he lived alone.

Another way to stay safe. Let them come close, but not too close. One of the difficulties in his charmed life; he really did like most people. There was such temptation. But in addition to the rest of his so-called qualities, Sao was lazy. Dreams could compensate.

He wondered if Sigma, in his early encounters with the Bells, thought he was dreaming. But dreams were often rooted in real-life experiences, weren’t they? By the time you grew up, you’d see the patterns. Perhaps that was how Sigma knew the Bells weren’t a dream. They’d presented a wonderful feeling he’d never felt before. A sound he’d never heard.

A sound in a dream?

Sao pushed down the comforter and slid to his feet.

---

225 Judgment Street was a desiccated two-storey house, whose second storey looked ready to cave in. The entire street was filled with similar homes, and skeletons of the former that seemed to have finally come apart, or been abandoned mid-construction - hard to say. The whole place lacked consistency or continuity from placement to design to structural integrity. Rai felt he had to tread carefully or the whole row would come crashing down.

At least he fit in. His car, for one, meshed perfectly with the other dreck that lined the driveways. There were a few oldsters flopped across chairs on their lawns, and a pack of teens on a porch, but none gave him a second glance. Good.

The suit at Alga had been a mistake, and he could still feel that infernal tie chafing his neck raw. Talk about hanging yourself. He had over-thought the whole thing, wound up looking like an ostentatious idiot. Sao was too polite to point and laugh outright, but the bemused looks he threw Rai’s way over the course of the entire night had said it all. To make matters worse, Rai was pretty sure Sao had just worn to the dinner what he had worn to work that same day, with the addition of a tie that didn’t strangle him. With that alone, he’d blown Rai out of the water, banishing his so-called supervisor to the world of the tacky and tasteless.

He knew it wasn’t aggression on Sao’s part. Sao was not rich; wearing nice shirts must have simply been a hobby. The guy came to the office in a freshly pressed button-up and blazer every day, even if he was planning to do nothing but sit and snooze. Facedown on his desk, snoring the hours away, he was still somehow innately presentable. Competing with Sao in his own arena had been the mistake. Besides, Sao’s ability to suit up and sweet-talk were exactly the reasons Rai found him useful, because they were the departments in which Rai fell flat on his face. But in that humiliating contrast there was a sort of balance; and potentially replacing Sao was hell to consider. Both personally and professionally, Rai was sure he’d hate working with someone more like himself.

Most people did. Sao was just too polite to say it. Of course, his self-satisfied looks could just as easily indicate that he really did like working under Rai. After all, he never spoke otherwise.

Rai felt a little better after that.

Wrapping his favorite field coat tight around his shoulders, Rai trundled up to the porch of 225, sidestepping some fallen roof tiles. There appeared to be a raucous battle going on behind the front door. He pressed the doorbell. There was no corresponding bell-like noise from inside, but something thumped against the door and bounded off.

“Someone’s out there!”

“Go to the kitchen!”

“But I see ‘em!”

The door opened, revealing a ragged woman in an equally ragged floral dress, the sunflowers beige and shriveled. Behind her, he saw a teenaged boy in clothes that looked a little too small for him. The kid darted around a corner. Another ghost. Well, except for the footsteps. The floorboards sounded brittle as bones. Stirred by the movement, an odd smell was emanating from the house. Or perhaps it was the woman.

She looked him up and down. “What do you want?”

“Morning. Mrs. Joy? I’m an investigator, I’m just here to ask a few questions relating to a case going on in the city.”

“No idea what’s going on. Haven’t been around anyone but the kids in days.”

“This relates to a past foster child of yours.”

That almost got the door closed in his face. She crowed, “We just had a review last week. Not sure what they told you, but the inspectors didn’t turn up anything fishy here.”

“This isn’t related to any review. I’m here about a child who likely moved out long ago.”

“We’re not responsible for our wards after the age of 18.”

“This relates to Sigma, a man called Sigma. You know, the actor? The owner of Bell Hospitality Group? I’d just like to ask a few questions about his time here, twentyish years ago. Just want to get a vague idea of what kind of kid he was, and who he knew...”

The teen had come back with a few friends. Four pairs of eyes peeked around the corner of a shabby stairwell inside the house.

“What case does this relate to?”

Rai had prepared for this. “The disappearance of Desmond A______.”

A vapid blankness overcame her face, so lifeless and flat that it circled around to being powerful. Rai couldn’t bring himself to speak. Then the look was gone and she huffed, “I don’t remember anybody by that name.”

“But Sigma, do you remember Sigma? Let me find a picture.” Rai pulled out his phone.

“Put that away. I remember Sigma.” The frown deepened and Rai suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a glower. He’d take it over the black hole stare. “But he’s never shown any sign of remembering us. What does the case have to do with him? Does he claim to remember something about Desmond’s disappearance? You can’t always trust him, you know, Sigma’s naturally troubled. Ever since he was a child--”

“Let me write this down.” Rai bit off one of his gloves and tapped to screen to open a fresh notepad. “Okay, he was troubled. What signs did you see? Do you know what might have been troubling him?”

Mrs. Joy went pale. “Is this an accusation? What has he done?”

“Nothing. There’s just been some inquiries about his history of impulsive behavior, even violence, so if you have any information--”

“Sigma, violent? Hah!” Her laugh was more of a choke. “Government men are all the same. Interrupting our weekend to gossip about an overdramatic ex-foster. I have to prepare the children for their activities. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Actually, Sigma said-”

“You’re here on his word? There you go - he’s got you too.” She shook her head, clicking her tongue as if Rai were just another one of the jelly-eyed children behind her. “And you can call the next time you’re thinking of coming. We’re busy, and this is making us late. And here you are, expecting me to recite Sigma’s history from nothing...”

“So you have records on hand?”

“Possibly, but I doubt you’ll find anything useful. If you had called ahead, I could have prepared something.” The door was on its way shut. “Sorry, Investigator, you’re going to have to come back later. Maybe a weekday, when the kids are at school. Call to let us know, for god’s sake.”

“I’ll call. By the way, how many children are living in your house right now?”

She just reset her scowl, and pushed the door closed. The thud dislodged a tile on the porch cover which smashed to the ground to punctuate his dismissal.

Rai wondered if Mrs. Joy would see the humor in him making that required phone call from her front lawn, ten seconds after being kicked out. Listening to the scrambling coming from within the house, he guessed not.

He shuffled back to the car and surveyed the street again. Having lived in the arts district before the ‘arts’ were installed, Rai was no stranger to the more dangerous or disappointing parts of Central, but there was something almost spiteful about Judgment Street. As a military enclave, Judgment was funded and run by the Central Army, a.k.a. the hand of the continental controllers. Big businesses; Chimera Corp and its shiny chrome ilk had the people’s imaginations under their thumbs, but the Central Army was a boot that could come crashing down on both of them, at any time, crushing them to a pulp. The kids fostered under Central should have been easily living life better than one on the streets, but this wasn’t much of an improvement in his estimation. Maybe things were better on the North side, but there was no way upper Judgment could house the hundreds of orphans the military was claiming to foster every year. Rai supposed that houses missing half their shingles, churning out ‘trouble’ like Sigma (and Sigma was a particularly successful case, all things considered), were the answer. ‘Answers’ from the army were rarely pleasing. That was probably why their business was always so secretive.

Chief Zu himself, head of the Central Core Cities Police and one of the most upright, uptight people Rai knew, was out again kissing up to retired generals and wealthy donors at a luncheon in hopes of getting a few thousand bucks added to the budget. Gambling pride on a pittance. And then there were the kids here, who didn’t even have the opportunity to roll that dice.

Rai respected the chief, at least, he thought he did. Zu had given Rai a chance, back when Rai was just a loudmouthed high schooler with a camera and freaky hands. And despite the ironclad guard that was his nature, Zu never carried a firearm. But respect was hard to maintain when you never saw someone, only heard from his snide secretary that he was out rubbing shoulders with people you decidedly didn’t respect. And when Rai did see him, Zu always seemed to wish he were seeing anything else; prefering to mutter at feet, his axe, his rock collection, instead of the person in front of him. 

Zu was once a special magician operative for the Central Army. A magician who took down other magicians - no wonder he was bogged down with self-loathing. Thinking of Raph and Charmion, Rai considered how even a little bit of magic know-how seemed to transform normal people into eccentrics. And eccentrics into live grenades. Maybe he should stop encouraging Sao to get into that world.

The kids down the street began lighting cigarettes. 

Rai relented on Zu, just an inch. Unlike many upper-level magicians who made it onto the news, Zu was stable, if to the point of immobility at times. Zu wasn't a fan of sudden changes or breach of protocol just to make the papers. Like Sao, the chief also specialized in several areas where Rai lagged. And both were adept at, or at least willing to, ingratiate themselves. 

But they were also fairly infuriating to think about when they weren’t there.

He heard another thud, but not from the house. Rai’s gaze snapped skyward as the thud was followed by a rumble. The dense cover of clouds began spitting down rain. Rai blinked water from his eyes and slid into the driver’s seat.

All life had vanished from the street. The old men trying to enjoy the sun had retreated indoors, and the group of kids had also vanished, presumably into the house they had been loitering in front of.

Rai stepped out of his car again, pulled his jacket hood up and stalked down the road. An abandoned cigarette lay in front of the steps, on matted yellow grass. Rai peered through a window. The entryway was furnished with a small bench and a coat rack. Both were covered in mold. So was the window, which was so crusted with dirt that Rai almost missed the eviction note. The door was ajar, and the air smelled of smoke. 

Abandoned house, but it was being used nonetheless. 

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

A middle-aged man had appeared in the lawn of a neighboring house. Rai held his ground. “Just looking around. Actually - do you know the couple living in 225?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m an investigator. Uh.” Another man had emerged from the house opposite, hand conspicuously around some item he held under his coat. Rai slowly stepped down. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Investigator? Heard that one before.” A scoff. “Never saw an ‘investigator’ dressed like that. Get out of here before I call the cops.”

---

Sao admired his couch. It wasn’t really his, it was his landlord’s, but he was the only one who’d used it in years and he liked to think he was giving it proper respect. It was pure white and suspended on thin, angular legs; a distinctly modern rendition of a chaise longue, and most importantly soft as feathers.

He was having his second tea of the day and contemplating dreams. Wings of Steel was running on the television. Sao had found it equal parts funny and ominous that the streaming service saw fit to call it a ‘cult classic’. 

Rai’s grandmother was featured as the legion general, unfortunately allotted only three minutes of introductory screen time before disappearing from the script. A fresh-faced Sigma played a much larger part, as a suave yet mildly unhinged double-agent. While the familiar names were a draw, Sao was finding it hard to stay engaged. The plot seemed half comedy, half military drama, and many of the non-sequiturs flopped (in Sao’s eyes) when photorealistic bodies were piling up in the backdrop. Sigma’s character was also possibly one of the least competent characters ever committed to film. Despite being the villain, virtually none of the numerous casualties were his doing.

And so Sao’s mind strayed to tea and dreams. In his hand he twiddled his phone.

As Sigma’s character laid out a plan to fill all the latrines with bananas (some sort of sexual gag?) Sao could bear it no more, muted the television and dialed a number.

A receptionist for Bell Lodge picked up. Sao introduced himself and got a elated response. Apparently, reception work was an option for residents. Sao couldn’t help but think that was the perfect job for him, if only he’d known -- well, since he wasn’t really a resident it wouldn’t have made much difference, other than for teasing Rai.

“Did the lodge have a guest named Raph over, on Friday or thereabouts? If he’s still there, can I speak to him?”

He was informed that Raph had left sometime on Friday evening.

“Silly me. I’ll try to get in touch with his office again. Thank you.” Sao settled his back against the voluminous pillows. “Another thing, is Ms. Indigo there? I’d like to speak with her.”

Ms. Indigo was retrieved and picked up the phone just as the climax of the banana plotline reached its stomach-churning conclusion. Sao pulled his eyes away from the carnage and focused on exchanging effusive greetings with Indigo.

“How’s the baby doing?”

“Wonderfully, thank you. He’s just so well behaved it’s hard to imagine. I had friends who complained of crying, sleepless nights, toilet training… but little Dessie has none of that.”

“I’m no parent, but I have to say that does sound quite wonderful.” Sao paused while she laughed. “Ms. Indigo, I just wanted to ask you something about life as a resident. I dined with Sigma recently, but there were some things I wanted to get to know from someone outside management.”

“Fire away.”

“Does Sigma open up much about his past to the residents? How he met the Bells and such?”

“Oh? This sounds like police business.”

“I suppose working the files has made me overly suspicious. Bell really would be a holiday for me.” He laughed. “But just for… peace of mind. I just want to gauge how transparent he is. And you of all people know how those outside Bell can become suspicious.”

“He’s somewhat open. There’s some of his past that he does not want to make public, the orphanage or foster care, sensitive stuff like that. But the Bells… well, I know he met them as a kid, when they used to be more powerful.”

“Hm. He did say something like that to me.”

“They stayed with him throughout childhood and helped him learn how to protect himself from the Greys.”

“And when they lost their power?”

She laughed again. “Well, that’s definitely no secret. Sigma was out on a camping trip and the Greys attacked. The Bells saved him and his friends, but lost their power in the process. We’re here today to support their return.”

“More or less what he told me, then. Perhaps I really am paranoid. One more question: do you know the name of the man who went missing that night? The sitter?”

“The one the Greys took, right? The one with the van. Hm, don’t think Sigma’s ever given names of the people he knew. I guess it would be a violation of privacy; if some reporter was over at the time and dug into it, they might...”

She went silent.

“Ms. Indigo?” Sao waited. The movie was running credits. Had the banana incident really been the finale? “Ms. Indigo. The name was Desmond A_____. Have you-”

“That’s his name,” she croaked. Her laughter had dried up, her throat emitting a strange croak. “It’s his name. It’s his name. How did you know? How did you hear…?”

“Sigma gave me that name. Ms. Indigo?”

“That’s right… god. That was his name. I remember-”

“Are you alright?”

“He was there--”

“Ms. Indigo. Did you know the man?”

“No. I just heard the name in..." A pause in which she managed to patch herself together. "No. I've never met anyone by that name. Please, don’t call about this again.”

Sao opened his mouth again, but the line had gone dead. He put the phone down and pulled a pillow onto his lap, wondering if he’d misunderstood. A name so strong it had come in a dream - surely something had come with it.