They neither found Joey that night nor the following one. Kasia shared the news and had 4999 contacts ignore it. Embarrassed, she deleted the message, and spent hours searching for whoever unfriended her.
Leah offered minimal words of support at breakfast. At lunch they had different slots, and Kasia ate alone. Ollie took this moment to accost her, since he felt she ought to rewrite the letter to her MP. Her next attempt needed to feel more sincere. She secretly cursed him and obeyed.
In the execution’s wake President Adrian Søreni held his press statement, reaffirming a commitment to secure the Republic from its invaders within. He defended his track record with a rehearsed litany of achievements: inflation curbed at 200%, unemployment kept at an optimally high level, investment from global benefactors dripping in. These international elites chained the remnants of Great Britain together, and even China struggled to regulate them. They were too formless and vague; a nameless group of untouchable, independent oligarchs. No accusation or conspiracy theory could wrap its fingers around an entity that wasn’t an entity.
Søreni’s speech handed gratitude up to these faceless giants all the same. Behind him the two national flags billowed over Number 10: for the Republic of England & Wales, a blue lion and red dragon over white; for China’s Xīn Hán Dynasty, a holofoil dragon over rich maroon.
He left the public with the same old consolations: current hardships were a necessary evil for future improvement; past hardships happened in the past, and it was time to move on. The public raged at this with such an intensity it began to spill from the online world to the real one. Unrest frothed in London especially. Incitements to riot trended. The police struggled to keep order in rougher boroughs, with most units redeployed to affluent areas.
Gemma and Luis brooded in a pub, watching ice melt in their tumblers. The Superintendent had called them off the Kendi Estate case to sit on the border at Southwark, ready to defend it from unsavoury types spilling over from Brixton.
A group of punters near the detectives began to joke about the hell headed for their poorer Brixtonian neighbours. Luis slammed his tumbler against the table and marched outside to make a call.
Imany defended her choice to call the police against an irate mob of neighbours. She lost when Sermon arrived with worse news. An insider had tipped him off; thanks to the growing public unrest, Joey’s case was on indefinite hold.
Powerlessness gripped Kendi Estate. A few locals followed Sermon along the riverbank for a search. One by one, silence and darkness scared them away, until only he remained. He pushed on alone until a baying pack of dogs chased him off.
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A wail gripped the estate in a chill. For a moment it sounded like terrorists, but it was Misha. With nothing to do except wait she was beginning to unravel. Each resident decided it would be worse to interfere and kept to themselves.
* * *
Leah wasn’t in the canteen the next morning. Kasia assumed she had the day off and wished she had too. Between the adverts on her gentle whisper playlist and Misha’s howling she had endured a sleepless night. She even hung up on an overly stupid customer and abandoned her call target. A negative review came in; the jungle on her screen bubbled with toxic waste; her bonus entered the manager’s radar. She resented Misha for it.
After lunch she spotted Leah wearing a suspicious glare. She was leaving Ollie's office, readjusting heels she’d never worn before. It dawned on Kasia that her sole workmate had done the deed, perhaps to get upstairs ahead of her. She dived into her portal before Leah caught her looking. Her chest burned.
The commute home took an hour longer, delayed by the first drunken groups of rioters. Omens manifested in windows and across buildings - a gold lion’s head stamped on the old union flag. Revolution Britannia were moving in. Many services stopped. Police officers wafted where corruption attracted them. Detectives trawled social media for the loudest voices and tracked down their real addresses. A spate of pundits - those calling for riots - went offline. Some were discovered dead by suicide.
Sermon refused to back down. He sent messages and pooled resources. A network of contacts formed with the means for a wider search. He had also invited Kasia. She left it unreplied. Arriving home from work she saw Misha bundled and sobbing in his arms. His growing gang were in a corner of the square, conspiring and boasting, streaming and sharing. She scowled and continued home.
Eva was too absorbed in VR to register anything but the food Kasia placed in her hands. Online, Kasia’s friends were only interested in a newly announced Spiderman reboot. She swiped it all left. Her message to Leah - a lighthearted joke asking how the meeting went - had been read but ignored. She went outside, but nobody was around.
* * *
The next day Kasia again ate breakfast alone. She processed each customer with mechanical apathy as her thoughts stayed with Misha. Kendi Estate had been loud with violent retching as the surrendered mother crawled and convulsed, pink frothy bile spluttering from her mouth. After paramedics took her away Misha's mother appeared, calling for a fund raising campaign to pay for hospital treatment. This absentee woman, jumping on such an opportunity, reminded Kasia of her own mother. The guilt in her chest was getting harder to ignore.
With nothing else to do Kasia sulked in weakness. A fantasy of anonymously paying for Misha's healthcare, bypassing the campaigning parent, calmed her. Things were bleak enough that she decided to change her desk’s photo early, from the palm tree to the blue tulip. She solemnly wished Peter the best.
Eva wasn’t home. She messaged Kasia at midnight to say she was at a friend’s house and might stay over, she didn’t know yet.
Kasia stared through the phone's screen and let it slip through her fingers. She headed to Sermon’s flat and told him she would join the search.