The apartment layout is modular, with doors to the two bedrooms and the bathroom opening off of a central area that includes a kitchen on one side, a dining table in the middle, and a living room area past the table with a sofa marking one side and the wall with the TV another.
While Masil is making a sandwich, Mohdi quietly goes to sit on the couch. Zahra is looking at all the pictures on the wall, surprised that this man even has a family. How long has been lying to them? And how could he do terrible things while pretending to be an attentive father?
We hear a door creak and turn to see a wide-eyed six-year-old boy – one of the boys from the pictures -- staring at us in shock.
A second later he starts to scream.
Quick as thought, Rasheed lashes out with his telekinesis to shut the child up. For a moment, he’s very pleased at how effective his action has been – the scream is immediately cut off – but the way the boy is jerked up in the air by the throat, kicking with his feet, and then going limp right after the sound of a soft snap, that leaves him cause for concern.
The others don’t seem to notice right away, as Masil peers past the boy to see if the other child is inside the bedroom. He relays through the telepathic link that a younger boy is lying on the bottom bunk, with a pillow over his face, desperately pretending to be asleep.
Samara approaches the child suspended in the air, to see if he is hurt, but she’s not sure how badly since Rasheed quickly maneuvers the dangling boy back into the bedroom towards the top bunk. Scanning surface thoughts, he can hear the other boy thinking over and over, “The monsters are real, they are real, they are going to eat me, I am going to be eaten, please please please don’t eat me --”
Rasheed projects a thought into the terrified boy’s frantic mantra: “If I’m very quiet, the monsters won’t notice me and I will be safe. If I keep my eyes shut and under the pillow, I will not see them and they will not see me.” The younger boy responds to this thought by holding his breath and remaining very still, eyes tightly clenched, pillow still propped over his face.
Back in the living room, Silent slips towards the other bedroom door, gives a look to the others, and holds up a finger while reaching for the knob with her other hand.
“Don’t kill him, we need him to talk!” shoves Zahra at Silent through Rasheed’s link, while giving Rasheed a sideways stink-eye for treating the first boy so roughly. It’s still not clear that any of them realize what just happened. As she approaches Silent near the other bedroom door, she thinks she can hear someone moving inside. Since Rasheed has put the first boy back to bed and telekinetically shut the boys’ bedroom door, Samara and Masil come up behind Zahra as backup.
Silent reaches out and opens the door carefully. As she does so, a bleary-eyed man – the proverbial Mahud Fahmy – comes at her with a knife. She doesn’t even try to dodge it, she just takes the thrust through the palm of her one hand, then twists it to wrench it out of his.
As he remains off balance, Zahra’s arms lash out unnaturally, easily grabbing and yanking him into the living room area and spinning him around with her one hand stretching around over his lower face so he can’t make any noise. With Fahmy incapacitated, she starts dragging him towards the kitchen area.
As he watches this unfold, Rasheed reluctantly tries to scan the strangled boy’s mind again and finds… nothing. He knows what that means and feels his heart clam up a bit, to protect himself against the guilt.
Samara looks inside the bedroom and notes through the link that the wife is still asleep, before quietly shutting the door.
Silent thinks: “Are we silencing the wife?”
Zahra: “She’s already quiet.”
Rasheed: “Plus we need her alive for leverage.” This last excuse seems to resolve Silent’s concerns.
Getting the man over to the table, Zahra thrusts him into a dining room chair, then leans over and stares coldly into both of his eyes, her strange flesh still covering his mouth.
“Don’t talk. Listen carefully.”
Fahmy’s eyes widen as behind Zahra he sees Silence pulls his knife out of her hand and the wound almost immediately closes up.
Rasheed opens a channel to the man’s surface thoughts: “Who are these people? Why does he look like me? Oh dear god I am fucked.”
Then another thought: “Oh my god it’s the people from the park!” and now he is utterly terrified. Which might be to their benefit, but to help things along, Rasheed nudges his emotions with telepathic pheromones.
Zahra’s voice, sounding like the man’s voice, is cold. “Tonight you kidnapped a young woman and abandoned her dog. Don’t talk, just nod.” Fahmy can’t help but remember as Zahra speaks and he nods, and Rasheed catches the mental image of him seeing both Khepri and Ptah. They definitely have the right man.
“You took her into the bathroom facility and called your friends to come get her.” He half-nods but hesitates. Rasheed scans him again: “Actually I left her in there and called the cleaner.” He passes this to the others.
“We need to know who took her,” continues Zahra. “How do we do that?”
Fahmy’s mouth moves but it’s muffled. When Zahra opens a gap between her fingers, he croaks, “Phone. Dresser.”
Zahra silently stares into the man’s terrified eyes as Silent enters the bedroom to fetch the phone. After she is gone for a short time, we all receive a relay through Rasheed: “Wife will be out for awhile.” Apparently there’s an orange bottle with a white cap sitting on the dresser near the phone.
When Silent returns, the phone is a face + fingerprint lock. Zahra scans her own face (since she is still wearing Fahmy’s), then forces his finger onto the screen. The phone unlocks.
We hand the phone off to Mohdi to pull up a list of contacts for Fahmy to respond to. He points out a contact – “Zheng” – with a title of “Cleanup” but no company attached, or first name listed. This is the man he called to get Khepri.
“Have you ever seen Zheng face to face?” Zahra asks. Fahmy hesitates, as he scans the rest of us, then slowly nods. Rasheed gets an immediate image off his surface thoughts – elderly Asian man, in his late 70’s. We note that the number is also a Beijing exchange, and the name “Zheng” is an absurdly common surname, so it might be difficult to locate him even if Zheng is his real name.
“Do you know where the woman might have been taken?”
The man slowly shakes his head, but Rasheed can hear his thoughts: “Oh, god, they are going to kill me, and I honestly don’t even know!”
“All right. But I bet you can tell us who asked you to kidnap her.”
“Pull up the e-mail,” instructs Fahmy. Mohdi finds it and the attached picture: There is a clear camera angle of the park showing Khepri and Ptah walking, along with brief instructions to keep her quiet, drop her in the restroom, and call cleanup.
“Was this related to your work for La Vie Chamile?” Fahmy kinda nods, then explains that he works for them but not everything he does is directly for the company. They just pay him to keep questions away, and he will also do things for the company’s clients directly if they don’t conflict. He’s not necessarily aware of the chain of command either.
“Do you know what their plans are for the young woman?”
Fahmy explains that the park people would confiscate the dog and take it to the pound. When the owner goes to retrieve the dog, people will be watching to identify the dog’s owner, so they know who to contact next about ransoming the woman. Apparently the whole thing is to set up a trap, with the potential end goal being to silence the dog’s owner either figuratively or literally.
In the telepathic group discussion occurring, it becomes clear to everyone that this is not about something Zahra did as an inspector, because their unknown enemies would know her name; it must be something she observed or did after-hours, when they could not identify her properly.
“Why were you ordered to recover Amar’s phone?” Apparently Amar had recorded things he wasn’t supposed to, and he was supposed to take the images before Amar published them. “But then someone else got involved,” he nods at Masil, “and I tried to get the phone away but… that didn’t work out.”
“And why were you chasing Amar in the park?”
The man scowls. “The schmuck went back to try to record it again.” Rasheed can’t quite pick up all of the man’s surface thoughts here, but he thinks again that Amar was getting into places and recording things he should not have.
“Who are the suits?” The “competition,” answers Fahmy – which potentially could mean a rival company.
“And working for who?” Fahmy says he doesn’t know, but Rasheed clearly hears him think, “Autumn.” Autumn is the original company that Zahra investigated, in whose bathroom Silent had killed Jameela Jamal, and under which beyond the basement was the research facility that we could not get into.
“Well, what good are you if you don’t know who Zheng works for?” says Zahra. “He could be working for the competition.”
Fahmy explains that he has worked with Zheng for years but claims that all he does is keep things quiet – it’s Zheng who takes care of problems when they get messy. “I honestly don’t ask how,” Fahmy finishes. “And I honestly don’t want to know.”
He doesn’t know what happens at La Vie Chemile either. “They’re a chemical company, they make crap in vats,” and inside he thinks, “Probably illegal drugs.” We know their general legal portfolio centers around anti-psychotics.
Zahra’s eyes narrow. “So… does your wife know what you do in your free time?”
For the first time, Fahmy seems stricken. “Just leave her out of this – she’s not involved! Leave my whole family out of it!”
There’s a brief pause in the mental link, then Rasheed shares: “He might not be honest here. Maybe she’s not off-book like Fahmy, but he’s thinking about how his wife works for the same company.”
Zahra smiles coldly at Fahmy. “Well, since she works for the same company you do … what exactly does she do?”
Fahmy’s eyes widen as he realizes he was caught in a lie, and wonders how many others we might have picked up on. “She’s just one of the legal consultants,” he counters, voice shaking. “She’s not involved on this end.” A few moments later, Rasheed confirms that this might be an honest answer.
Another pause as information is relayed over the telepathic network and the group discusses its next questions.
“So are there any cameras or recording devices in your apartment?” asks Zahra. Fahmy only volunteers the door cam. Mohdi can wipe that. A copy of Mohdi elsewhere checks to see if there is an online backup at that address, and there is; but it is not automated and must be transmitted manually, so… all is good right now.
Fahmy next reveals that he doesn’t have any work equipment here, then volunteers that he wasn’t even supposed to have all those e-mails on his phone. Since we weren’t aware of other e-mails, Mohdi notes that he should scan the entirety of Fahmy’s phone for them.
“So, Masud Fahmy: Knowing the kinds of things La Vie Chemile would ask you to do, why did you ever agree to work for them?”
Fahmy admits that they promised, if he’d work for their security department, his mother’s care would be paid for. All the medications that La Vie Chemique makes, his mother now gets for free. He’s been working for them for six years to cover her treatments.
“What’s wrong with your mother?” We discover she is being medicated for psychological issues. Rasheed picks up that the last time Fahmy visited her, she actually remembered him again and said she hadn’t heard any of the voices for weeks.
Fahmy also admits he’s got records on his phone of other people he has been watching. However, he doesn’t seem to know the doctor that we’ve been investigating, even when Modhi flashes a picture of him.
Fahmy volunteers that he is allowed to use his phone to take pictures, as long as he deletes the photos after he uploads them to the system. His boss has a name and face. And along with Le Vie Chemique, Fahmy honors requests from clients – he just has a list of jobs, and not very nice ones. Mostly combinations of blackmail, intimidation, cyberstalking, rumor-mongering, perceptions of clients -- he’s kind of an intimidator. Because he hasn’t killed anyone directly, and because he avoids any knowledge of what happens to those he harasses, he believes he is not culpable for what happens to them.
“Are the children still out?” someone asks on the link.
“One is too scared to do anything,” volunteers Rasheed. “The other… well, he might be out longer than anticipated.” He doesn’t really know how to break the news, but the way he says it is a bit suspicious.
Samara quietly separates from the group and sneaks into the kids’ bedroom and takes a closer look at the boy sprawled on the top bunk, then swallows. While the boy on the bottom bunk tries to not breathe and holds himself as motionless as possible, Samara feels something flip inside her like before, when she tried to save Jamil, and lays her hands on the other boy … but nothing changes in his condition even when she sends healing power into him.
She quietly leaves the room, shuts the door, then almost imperceptibly shakes her head no. Rasheed hears her thoughts: “He’s beyond help.”
Rasheed absorbs this information, without sharing, but then Mohdi’s voice speaks into his mind – “How is the child?”
Rasheed sighs and asks Samara mentally to be very clear about the boy’s status to him. “Deceased,” she responds.
What he sends back through the link: “I’m sorry, but Samara’s efforts were less than successful.” He follows up almost immediately with, “I think Fahmy has about expended his use to us. What should we do with him?”
“No witnesses,” thinks Silent. Zahra gives her an ugly stare when this is relayed -- we’ve been in this situation before.
We have a fast and furious debate through the mindlink with everyone. While the man cannot identify Zahra, Mohdi, or Rasheed, he would be able to identify Masil, Samara, and Silent. But if he just disappeared? Maybe the cops would just assume he was guilty of something and it would sidetrack them.
Rasheed is now bombarded by a swirl of thoughts from the others and overwhelmed by trying to pass them all back out to the group.
“He’s a terrible human being, with no morality of his own -- how can we let him keep doing what he’s been doing?”
“He’s a family man with a wife and two kids.”
“One.” Rasheed doesn’t pass that comment along.
“He’s got a sick mother. What happens to her if he dies?”
“He should have thought about that before kidnapping Zahra’s friend.”
“And look at all the other terrible things he has done and all the people he’s hurt!”
“He’s a human being.”
“He’s a tool – and they’ll keep wielding him until he’s gone.”
“Maybe he’ll change.”
“Maybe he won’t.”
“How many people are we going to kill as part of this? Are we any better?”
“How many other people are going to die if we do nothing?”
“No witnesses,” thinks Silent again.
“If we let him go, he’ll pop up later and cause more problems.”
“Well, I’m not going to be the one to kill him.”
“Is anyone asking you to?”
“We can’t just carry a body outside the building, but we can’t just leave it here either or the police will be looking for us.”
“We are not going to let his family find his body.”
“Enough,” snaps Zahra finally through the link.
She looks down at Fahmy as her fingers flatten back up over his mouth so he can no longer speak. His eyes look anxious. “Thank you for all your help,” she says coldly, as her grip tightens. “You have been extremely informative.”
Her skin takes on a greenish tinge as her body suddenly swells and swirls around the man’s extended limbs. There is a faint gentle hissing, along with virescent steam billowing lightly up into the air. Fahmy fights against Zahra’s corrosive substance, but she has him pinned to the chair now and he can’t get free even though he fights like the largest fish caught in a net.
“This is for my friend.”
Fahmy’s limbs, buried under Zahra’s form, are looking notably shorter. Everyone is too stunned to move as Zahra continues to dissolve him.
“And this… is for my dog.” Zahra’s form now surges over Fahmy completely, mercifully obscuring his bulging pleading eyes.
Still mentally tapped into Fahmy’s thoughts, which are now almost incoherent, Rasheed considers trying to put him to sleep but it’s too late for that. “Your child and wife are okay,” he tries to tell him as way of consolation, “they will be safe now.” But he doesn’t know if it got through, and after a few more seconds, there is nothing but a deathly hush where Fahmy’s mind used to be.
When Zahra reforms and straightens up in a human form again, nothing remains of Masud Fahmy but the spotlessly clean chair where he had just been sitting. She takes a moment to compose herself. She seems both angry and sad at once. “That’s what we wanted, right?”
She is still wearing Fahmy’s face, which is just eerie.
She stares daggers at the others. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I’ll see you outside,” says Mohdi flatly, breaking the silence, and then slowly dissipates into nothingness. Silent retracts her claws, looks at the knife she extracted from her hand earlier, wipes it off with a cloth, then puts it back in the drawer before leaving.
Weirdly, monitoring someone who was actively dying has shaken Rasheed enough from his stoic earlier state of mind regarding the boy’s death, to leave him feeling more or less himself again.
When we walk back out on the street, it’s about 1am. We walk back to our respective homes in silence.
--
Elsewhere, a copy of Mohdi tries to trace Zheng’s number, but it is routed through multiple hops to get to the tower thousands of miles away and clearly the destination is outside the country. Having dialed it through a proxy, he is a bit disturbed to see something trying to call him back – but he doesn’t answer.
When Zahra gets home, she files a report that her roommate and dog never came back from an evening walk and it’s clear they are both missing, considering the time. At least this will establish a credible alibi for her. She falls asleep eventually, but tosses and turns a bit from worry over Khepri and Ptah.
Other people are also struggling to sleep – but mainly from having witnessed the end of Masud Fahmy.
--
The next morning, Rasheed calls his friend Sallah and discovers he has a job where a lookout is needed. Sallah agrees for Samara to come with on the job, which is stealing a box from a shipment arriving at a high-end clothing store that day. While Sallah knows a fence for the stolen goods, he needs someone to keep watch for the police on a particular corner as he and another person make a single box disappear while the drivers are unloading the shipment.
When Rasheed and Samara arrive, they are introduced to a guy named Ham, who shows them the signal to give when everything is clear, and then they all take their positions. The wait goes as expected, and eventually Rasheed signals for Ham to go. For a brief moment, Samara thinks she almost sees two of Ham – when he moves, there is a weird after-image – and then it vanishes. Samara notes that the clerk who opened the back door for the man to unload the truck is just outside smoking, unexpectedly making it harder for Ham to walk off with a box.
Samara mentally asks Rasheed if they should just leave, but Rasheed can’t really do that to Sallah. Samara at least tries to keep moving her position so she isn’t as noticeable. Now she thinks she sees an ape forming among circling bits of smoke from the clerk’s cigarette, and the eyes seem to be looking at her. Greatly unnerved, Samara relays this to Rasheed and leaves the scene. Rasheed can’t see what she was describing but mentally scans the smoker. The man is just annoyed at how long the unloading is taking. “Can this guy go any slower? We open in ten minutes; the boxes have to be brought in in five.”
Rasheed tries to make a minor distraction with telekinesis to distract the smoker, and it works – the smoker turns and looks for the source of the distraction. Almost immediately he thinks he sees a weird after-image of Ham as the thief rolls out from under the truck, snags a box, then rolls back underneath. As the smoker stops looking around for the noise, the guy with the pushcart trundles back, loads up a few more boxes, and delivers them inside.
Soon enough the smoker drops and crushes out the cigarette, needles the man with the cart to finish up, and they take the final batch of boxes into the store. As soon as they disappear, Ham creeps out with the box, straps it down on a moped, and he and Sallah ride off. Rasheed takes his departure as well.
--
Meanwhile, Zahra meets Mohdi on her way to the pound the next day to acquire $600 in cash. When she goes to retrieve Ptah, she manages to strongly argue the point that she should not need to pay a fine at all since her dog had been reported missing/stolen and so obviously she was not the one who had “abandoned” him.
The clerk is quick to agree – as long as $200 of that money goes towards helping him “fill out the correct paperwork.” Zahra sees what is going on and carefully slips him the $200, which he tucks into a safe place and sends word to bring out the dog after waiving the fine.
Ptah seems ecstatic to see her and Zahra feels a wave of relief as she scoops up him and hugs him. … along with an undercurrent of rage that Khepri is still missing and captive somewhere. From what Fahmy had said, she knows someone will be monitoring the footage of the center in order to identify her, to present her with the hostage demands. She vows that they will regret their audacity.
They don’t even take long. As she leaves the building, with Ptah happily leashed, she sees three men in suits out front, strongly resembling the guys who were chasing Amar at the park.
Their eyes lock at the same time, and then Zahra just marches right up to them as if she personally knows them.
“I have my dog back. So where’s my friend?”
Her bluntness startles them into silence as they look back and forth to each other, then back and over to the street cameras.
Finally one reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blank envelope, which he hands to her. “Errr, yeah. This is for you.” He tries to smile pleasantly, although the grin is strained. “Good seeing you, miss. Nice dog. Why don’t you, uh, take him home and relax for the rest of the day?”
The other two men turn and walk off. The envelope guy clumsily bends down to pat the dog, gives her a final forced smile, and walks after them. Ptah wags his tail excitedly at the attention.
Zahra sighs and opens the envelope, which is 5x20cm. The flap was only folded in, not licked, and she pulls out a sheet of paper and a photo.
“If you want her back and want to live, return the drives to [this address]. Be there at 9:45pm.”
The address is not one that Zahra recognizes, but the contents of the photo are: It’s her roommate Khepri – bound, gagged, and chained to an unknown wall.