The Little Lounge was a pleasant enough little place, its name reflecting the owner’s humble ambitions for it. It was indeed not very big, but small booths and tightly packed tables allowed for a decent-sized crowd. Theoretically, at least. Business didn’t seem to be booming. Even so, the fellow up on the small stage in the back of the open space was doing his very best on a double bass, and his best really was quite good.

The musician kept the mood relaxed and the few conversations going on between patrons were muted. Alone as he was in one of the booths Petyr found the atmosphere conducive to contemplation.

He’d laid the cane across the table, staring at it and letting his thoughts wander whichever way they would. There were little marks in the hardwood, and although he didn’t have a regular habit of examining it up close he felt fairly certain they stemmed from the fight with the Green Bomber. From clashing against the man’s strange stick.

What WAS that? he asked himself yet again, frustrated with the lack of a response. How did he do those things, and how am I alive?

The chaotic, frenzied fight repeated in his mind, and every time it was the same; that last bolt of green destruction had come directly at him and Petyr had been too wobbly to dodge.

He gripped the cane and brought it closer to his face, running his other hand over the once-smooth length of it.

It had been a moment of blind, stupid, panicked instinct. With no other option and death coming in the blink of an eye he’d swung this length of plain wood as if the Bomber had been pitching a ball in a stadium. By rights he should have died looking like a complete idiot.

Petyr closed his eyes. He didn’t need to recall that moment, or the searing heat of the air. Both had been refusing to leave him be for even an instant.

“He brought a wall down on us,” Petyr muttered to himself, his voice lost to the patrons due to the bass music. “With one shot.”

He rapped a knuckle on the wood. Had he seriously stopped the blast somehow? The thought was utterly ludicrous, but alternatives were in short supply. Petyr switched to the sword-like grip he’d used and did a slow version of that swing, at least as he recalled it.

A small part of him insisted on just dropping it. He was alive. He’d survived another encounter with Wolf, a tram derailment of all things, and a fight with the city’s biggest terror. And then a collapsing wall. He ought to be satisfied with that, at least until his nerves recovered.

But as always, that part was shouted down. He wanted the truth. He wanted to understand. But in this case there was a truly distressing lack of any threads to follow. Perhaps once the Bomber was caught or killed, and the authorities released information on the man. Perhaps Petyr could begin to make sense of things then.

The door opened and an unremarkable-looking woman in a brown coat and blue headscarf walked in. She cast a searching gaze about and Petyr took it to mean his contact had just arrived. He leaned out of his booth a bit to draw her attention, and the look she fixed on him confirmed it. She did look around a bit more, seeming nervous, before coming over to join him.

Petyr stood up and held his hand out.

“Good evening,” he said. “Sila, I take it?”

“Yes,” she replied, giving his hand a quick shake.

“It’s nice to meet you in the flesh. Please, have a seat. Can I buy you something?”

She glanced at the single mug of beer on the table. He wasn’t even planning to finish it. This was no time to be dulling his wits, but he considered it rent for the table. Sila shook her head.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I am simply here about my sister.”

“No word from Redda yet?”

“Nothing,” she said, and the worry in her face made Petyr believe her. The woman sat down and tightly intertwined her fingers on top of the table. “Nothing at all. And every day it gets worse.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“You know it...” Sila began, before fighting a battle to order her thoughts. “It’s... something’s gone very wrong. And it damn well isn’t drugs, like some people have said to me. My sister didn’t owe money, she wasn’t involved with bad people... nothing. There is nothing in her life that explains any of this. It was something from outside, coming into her life, that made her disappear. And one of the worst things about this is that no one seems to care.”

She clenched and unclenched her fingers, and Petyr let her work through her feelings.

“The police just aren’t investigating. And people chatter a bit, about the Woodforth Building, but that’s it. Just chatter. No one is pushing for answers.”

“I am,” Petyr told her. “And if I get a good story out there the people just might start pushing along with me.”

“You’re just by yourself though, aren’t you?” she asked, although with resignation rather than condemnation.

“Yes,” he admitted, and refrained from showing his frustration at that fact. “But I will dig until I reach the bottom, or die trying.”

“That’s very dramatic of you, Petyr,” she commented.

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“It is the truth, though,” he told her, and met the woman’s gaze firmly so she could see how serious he was. “I have been marked for death. And it seems to be because I am close to something that someone doesn’t want found out. So the sooner I solve this, the better my chances. And that goes for everyone who was affected by whatever went down in the Woodforth Building.”

He could tell she was disturbed, and hoped it would make her more helpful.

“Look...” Petyr said, shedding a bit of his strong front and showing a hint of desperation for the sake of pushing her on further. “Please help me out. For both your sister’s sake and mine. I really do think you might know something. Something that can put me on the right track. Maybe you don’t even realise that you’re sitting on something useful, but I suspect you do and it’s only worry that keeps you silent.”

Sila shook her head slowly but it didn’t have the look of a denial. It was more resignation, pushed out of a dam broken by his words.

“You... said something about men at her apartment?” she said, lowering her eyes to her ever-active hands.

“That’s what Lowe, the landlord, told me.”

Sila twisted her hands for a bit, building energy for whatever was to come.

“I am afraid,” the woman admitted in a small voice.

“Yeah, of course you are,” Petyr said, doing his best to sound comforting. But there were no assurances to give regarding Redda’s current state. “As I said, I’m going to keep digging no matter what.”

“It’s not just for myself,” Sila added. “I think... I think I’m being watched.”

Petyr’s attention was already fixed, but those five words somehow fixed it even further.

“Oh?” he said, keeping his body and tone still.

“I live on the fourth floor,” Sila went on. “It’s too far away to see anything properly. But I think people are watching from across the street. Down on the sidewalk. Between buildings. In the shadows.”

She looked haunted.

“I first noticed not long after Redda went missing. I’ve tried calling the police, but they don’t have time for anything that isn’t an immediate crisis. I’m afraid to leave the house. I always just run to the auto.”

Petyr thought of that little glimpse he’d caught out of Redda’s apartment window. He considered his own nervousness at being spied on, then took into account that he was surely almost twice this woman’s weight and knew how to throw a punch.

“I’m sorry, Sila,” he said. “This ought to end if I manage to expose whatever this big secret is.”

She propped her elbows up on the table, then rested her forehead on steepled fingers.

“And we will know what’s happened to Redda,” she said, with a note of dread in her voice.

“Hopefully, yes. Has she contacted you at all?”

The woman’s look of gnawing worry intensified.

“Since she went missing? No. But-”

Sila caught herself, looked away out into the wider lounge, and for a moment Petyr was worried she'd get up and leave.

“Please,” he said earnestly. “Please help me, so I can help.”

She shook her head again.

“Redda came by my apartment.” The words were soft but rushed out. “The night of... whatever all that was. It must have been shortly after Lowe saw her come home. Before she disappeared. It was late at night and I was angry that she just showed up like that. But...”

“Anger shifted to worry?” he suggested to fill in the trailing silence.

“Yes,” Sila said stiffly. “She was just sort of rambling, when she was talking at all. I could tell something had really upset her, but details weren’t exactly forthcoming. She just wanted our mother’s old pendant. I thought we were good about keeping it. But Redda said she loved me, just out of the blue. And that was when I got truly worried.”

Petyr nodded severely. Was there anything more quietly upsetting than sudden desperate affection from a loved one?

“I gave her the damn pendant. She didn’t say anything about the building. At least not as far as I could tell. I thought she was just going home and I asked her to call me in the morning. She asked ‘What morning?’, and then went out the door. And that was the last I saw or heard from her.”

“What morning?” Petyr repeated quizzically.

The woman shrugged.

“It’s not some private phrase between us. I don’t really know what she was getting at. But look: Redda worked on the second floor of that building,” Sila then said. “Pretty much in the centre of it. So in the dead centre of the building itself. I feel that whatever happened that still has it locked down, she had a pretty strong chance of knowing what it was. I think she might have had one of the best seats. And... now she is missing because of it.”

He refrained from prodding her as she went through another bout of silence.

“Look, I know where she would normally have gone, if she’d needed a place to stay,” Sila then said. “My apartment would have been first in line. But there are others around the city I know would have taken her in. But she didn’t go to any of them. And I am talking about people I trust to tell me the truth. She isn’t hiding out with friends or family. If she vanished willingly then she really, truly did not want to be found.”

“There is no one outside the city she might have gone to?”

“No. All our surviving kin live here. And she is not some spy. She is not running around in a disguise. If she is still alive and hiding, then I think she’s gone to the one place where everyone knows a person can disappear.”

“The Jungle,” Petyr said.

“Yes,” Sila said. “The Jungle. And I hope I have chosen correctly in sharing this with you.”

“Well, so do I,” Petyr said with a bit of self-deprecation.

She sat up more straight, now that this particular burden had been shed. Still, clearly something remained. Something continued to trouble the woman, and she seemed caught between wanting to suppress it and letting it out.

“Was there anything else?” he asked.

She silently stared at nothing for a breath before answering.

“Those people I think I see out my windows... with the distance and the darkness, they’re just shadows.”

“Yes?”

“They...”

Some inner block stopped the woman yet again, and he could see her struggling with whatever the issue was.

“If you are worried about seeming foolish, just ahead,” he told her. “Be a fool. We all are, from time to time.”

“They’re strange,” Sila said, shifting her eyes his way for a moment before staring off into nothing.

“What?”

“The shadows. They seem strangely shaped when I catch a glimpse of them. They don’t always seem like people. But... I don’t know. That’s just how it seems to me.”

Petyr didn’t have anything to reply with. He could neither reassure her, nor dismiss the notion entirely. Not in good faith.

“What is going on in this city?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.”