Yeung-Sung put his phone in his back pocket as he approached the Joint Wick. The window had yet to be fixed. The lettering of the sign was already becoming noticeably misaligned, and its stunning gold hue had oxidized into something like a green dandruff around the edges. Sticking out his finger, he ran it along the windowsill, catching flakes of it. It made Yeung-Sung sighed and smiled and almost put MEDB and Woo-Yi out of mind, almost dropped worrying about Wil.

But then he heard raw, angry voices coming from inside the pub, so he bit his lip and pushed open the heavy wooden door, straining his recovering muscles. Arguing again? About what?

Immediately he noticed that Darnes’s music was on too loud. Lo-fi music intended to be mellow and relaxing was not so. Its drums pounded, causing Yeung-Sung to quickly cover his ears. But he could not cover his body, so the sub-sonic woofs rumbled through his body, churning around like a stomach-ache. Like guilt.

“Why?” he began, then looked at the bar and found he did not know how to end the question. Or, rather, what question to ask. Most of the regulars were crowded at the bar, in front of the taps. That in itself was not unusual. Only Sykes remained apart, giving a happy salute, then pointing to his ear buds He was people-watching. Also not unusual. That’s when one of the regulars smacked their hands down against the counter, the sound and shake of it far louder than the music, and Yeung-Sung understood; He had walked in on a personal argument -On beef, as Wil would say. Strafing through haphazardly laid out tables, he searched the line of people at the bar for the third day, Yeung-Sung sadly realized that again, Wil wasn’t there.

He could feel Sykes’s gaze on him as he crept nearer to the bar. Steph began shouting. Of course it was him.

“Just give us one! A wee one, on the house”

Other’s joined him, for their own gain and reasons.

“What’ll happen?”

“Come on!”

“Be a brother”

“Fu-uck the system!” yelled Shane at Steph’ shoulder.

A smile tore open beneath wriggling bramble of his beard of Steph’s beard as he continued to receive support.

The music faded down for a moment, Darnes’s allowing himself room to growl back. “No.”

Yeung-Sung always took note of Darnes’s size. But right then he was immovable.

Arriving to the closest part of the bar that wasn’t barricaded by regulars, Yeung-Sung felt like a wandering fly. Darnes and Steph were locked together at either side of the beer taps while Steph leaned forward on his stalk-like arms. Darnes was grounded in his shadow with the face of a cornered beast.

“Umm,” Yeung-Sung said, “Hello. Have you seen Wil?”

The two slipped their eyes towards him, but he was quickly ignored.

“ Can I get a drink?” he asked.

Darnes put a hand up. “Now’s not a-”

“Oh, Darnes can I get a drink too?” Steph asked, pitching his voice and crossing his arms. “Eh?”

“You need to pay for a drink” Darnes huffed towards the Scotsman.

Yeung-Sung nodded. “I got it.”

He made it out as Steph slammed down on the desk again. “I have no more money!”

Darnes’s took a step forward, decisively, like a king in chess.

“Go make some. If you have no money, you have no purchasing power.” He put his hands out blocking Steph from so much as looking at the tap.

“Do you not understand this, Steph?”

“I understand,” Steph spat, “That yer’ a wily basterd.”

A chorus of “yeah,” followed, which dropped as soon as Darnes cocked a look around at them.

Steph grunted and sat down, but kept his arms far forward, ready to pounce from the counter. “I can’t make some. Nobody is buying ore.” He ground his teeth as a substitute for the obscenities he was thinking of. “The market,” he explained, revving his words more, “is starved. I get no activity because every fookin’ faction won’t look out of their cheating assholes for metal, or are too scared of feeding this bollocking A-I to buy at all”.

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“I’m sorry, Steph,” Darnes admitted, bowing his head.

“Fuck yer’ sorry,” Steph spat back, “ I want a drink!”

Taking a seat by Sykes, Yeung-Sung took one last concerned look at the tension at the bar before trying to move past it.

“Hey”, he called out.

Sykes couldn’t hear. It looked like he was watching the conflict, but Yeung-Sung soon realized that his head was only drifting near the sight, not at it. He waved a hand out in front of him, but his reaction speed was corpse-like.

God, you’re an oddball. Daydreaming? With half our senses being bombarded by this nonsense? How are you doing it?

He gave him a shove and backed away. Sykes clattered over several empty pint glasses while being sucked back into the real world.

“Hey,” Yeung-Sung hissed. “Sykes, do you know where Wil is?”

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Sykes replied. He yawned, stretching. At the limit of his flexibility he accidentally jolted his knee, whacking it into the table and spilling, among other things, a slobbering -sobering, I hope- sliver of beer onto his lap.

“Ah, crap, “ he cursed, and tried furiously to rub it off his jeans. Giving up, he flopped his lips down in disappointment. “I wouldn’t do that”.

“Wake you up?” Yeung-Sung asked.

“Yeah, that,” he nodded. “What if I was having a really crazy dream? What if I snapped out of it just as I was strangling a –". He paused, smiling. “You get the idea.”

Yeung-Sung snorted down a laugh. “Am I to believe that you don’t always have crazy dreams?”

Sykes puckered his lips. “Careful,” he warned.

Yeung-Sung stretched over, standing the pint glasses back up.

“So you think he’s fine? How do you know… maybe he was kidnapped?”

Sykes was off his seat, half-bent over to take a closer look at his pants. He froze. “Kidnapped? Who’s the paranoid weirdo now?”

“I never called you paranoid.”

Sykes shrugged. “It’s accurate. Anyway, Wil’s probably holed up in his room, grinding away,” he said, holding up and mooching over a stain spread to his woollen jumper. “As always.”

“You think so?”

He dropped it and looked at Yeung-Sung through ridged eyebrows. “You’re really worried.” Sighing, he slumped back down. “Who would kidnap him? What would be the point, and where the hell would they even go? Colony’s bordered off, mate.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Yeung-Sung said, but remained tense in his seat, looking back over at the bar argument. Apart from the elderly of the regulars; Shane; Fenrick; Hans, the others were conspicuous by their absence.

“Sykes?” he began to ask, but waved himself away. He settled in to the table, and began to decipher the day.

It’s been a weird day. Somehow, I’m the only one not upset, everyone is worried:

Even the AI of the system we depend on. MEDB might be deleted, but we have so much time. Surely Jordan wouldn’t be that angry already.

And surely the colony’s factions can’t be struggling so much that they would dare demand their “saviour” change anything. Ah, it’ll probably be like earlier; someone will break through Airgead’s systems and beat her, right? It won’t be me, that’s for sure. Someone in that “Champs” guild, yeah. -Not PM, or those or brain-dead Debaters -they’re so certain his will end so soon.

Wait? How popular are they now…now that I think about it, don’t I see a lot of them in my store? At least I think so -they’re don’t dress quite as vibrant as the communists. What are they planning? Wil…is he a part of this?

A metallic clanging brought Yeung-Sung out of his thought stream.

Darnes roared, “Steph! What have you done?”

The lumbering Scot stood, and Yeung-Sung gasped as he saw what he held aloft; The beer tap!

“That’s what you get, Darnes!” he laughed.

The others looked around at themselves in panic, not wanting to risk themselves, but quite uncomfortable at being thrust near the centre of this situation.

But Shane slipped through the commotion. “How hypocritical of you, Darnes. When you know what you would’ve done in our place.”

“You couldn’t just give me one free beer?” Steph yelled.

Yeung-Sung saw Darnes spasm, wanting to retort. But the barkeeper couldn’t ignore the wasted beer exploding out the broken pipe. He leapt upon it, trying to stopper it with only his hands, spraying the vicinity in the process. “Anita, get in here!” Darnes called. The other regulars quickly fell away from the bar with disgusted faces, sniffing at their wet clothes. Anita came rushing in with an empty basin. As they swapped, Darnes swung at the troublemakers like a midnight clock.

“Get out! Get out before I kill you, so help me Jordan!”

Shane and Steph laughed together. The taller one leaned over and grabbed two glasses from under the bar, then wiggled them at the barkeeper.

“We’re not leaving,” Steph taunted, “before we get our drinks.”

Yeung-Sung shook Sykes. “What do we do? Do we help? Should we?”

Sykes whacked him away with a groggy swipe of his hand. “I’m watching, hey, you’re in the way.”

No use.

Yeung-Sung looked past everyone to Darnes, seeing anger in his face so potent it that he felt the bruise in his arm open up. Hans and Fenrick fled the scene, motioning for him to come as they crossed paths. But Yeung-Sung shook his head and stayed where he was.

“Sykes, the colony is changing.”

He turned around, hearing something behind him. Sykes hadn’t gotten up. He didn’t seem concerned in anyway, but he had heard him and nodded.

“I suppose it is,” he said, harbouring a thinly-veiled smile.

Yeung-Sung took a step, between the booth and the bar, and clenched his fists. “What can I do here? If even the Wick is tearing itself apart, where do I go? Everywhere else is bound to be worse.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a group of coloners march past the windows, the first he had seen since he left his store.

Something is definitely going on. Now.

“Sykes,” he said, trying to keep his attention, “I hope you’re right about Wil. But I need to check on him. I can’t shake the feeling that something happened to him. I need to know. Which apartment building does he live in?”

A moment of silence passed. Well, a silence omitting the waterfall of beer, the overblown music and the imminent threat of violence. Still, Sykes had not answered.

“Sykes, please,” he said, turning.

But unexpectedly, Sykes was up. Patting his shoulder, he stretched his legs and said, “Why don’t we go together? I’m not really feeling the vibe in here.”