Matt looked at the new girl as she sorted the mess they had made. He was honestly impressed. It had taken her at most what, ten, maybe fifteen minutes? There had been no magical skill or, well, magic involved, only pure efficiency as she sorted through one newspaper after another. She had been fast, but not magical fast either. Which might be why he was so impressed. She hadn’t cheated so to speak.

“That was something.” Kali spoke up and the new girl looked like someone who had been caught doing something bad.

“It was nothing.” She shily said, clearly unsure of herself. It resonated so much with himself. She might actually be more awkward than him, which was something.

“You like things to be neat huh?” Matt asked her, and he saw her almost cross her arms before stopping herself, still in a rather defensive position.

“Well, you would have to sort it eventually before you put it back, wouldn’t you?” It had been kinda sorted when they had started, true, but if he knew his companions enough, Matt was fairly sure they would have just put everything back without going through that hassle. He stole a glance at them and saw Xar looking at Krovukk who clearly looked guilty of something they hadn’t done yet.

“Yeah! Definitely, plus it’ll be easier to keep track of what we have been through.” Matt nodded.

“I’m Matt, by the way.” He introduced himself. He almost stuck his hand out but wasn’t sure handshakes were a thing here and just kind of hesitated before catching himself.

“This is Krovukk, Xar, Kali and Philip.” He added as he pointed to each of them. Kali waved a bit at her turn, while Philip clearly frowned but kept his mouth shut, while the two veteran adventurers simply nodded.

“Hello.” Was all the girl said. Matt waited a beat but she didn’t add anything. Just as he was about to open his mouth, she added.

“I’m Maya.” Maya, Matt repeated in his head. She looked so cool with her long hair cut short on the sides. It reminded him of a viking kind of vibe while her green eyes really stood out. She had the perfect kind of face. While Kali was cute, she was beautiful in that womanly way. He would lie if he said he didn’t find her attractive. Plus she looked fairly young, maybe even around his age? It was hard to tell.

They both kind of stood there awkwardly for a while, him not sure what to say, while the others were continuing to look through recent news in hopes of finding something. Matt felt his awkwardness at an all time high as he wanted to say something, anything to keep the conversation going but was drawing a complete blank.

“What are you helping for?” He finally said and immediately regretted it.

“Sorry, I wanted to ask what are you looking for and if you needed help. Both kind of got mixed up. Sorry.” He babbled fast. Too fast. He was making things weird! Dammit Matt, get things together, he thought to himself.

“Of course you don’t have to answer! I mean, I get it if you don’t want to talk about it or anything.” He couldn’t stop his blabbering. The more he said, the more he wanted to take things back to stop being awkward, but he also wanted to clarify so she didn’t find him weird, and it simply spiraled out of his control.

“I mean, you can do whatever, it’s cool. I, uh, we. Umm. It’s cool.” He finished, while his face heated up. Oh god he was so weird! She would think he was weird. No two ways about it. Good job pal. Great first impression, idiot. It didn’t help that he heard someone hold in their laughter behind him.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to share what I’m looking for.” She simply said and he felt his stomach knot up into a ball. Dammit, he had been too weird, obviously she wasn’t going to share, he knew they wouldn’t either, if she asked.

But she stayed there, not going away, so maybe he hadn’t fucked it up completely? Matt’s stomach was doing flips right now, getting his hope up again. Maybe she really couldn’t share but still wanted to talk? Hell yeah. But her next words crushed his hopes.

“May I take some entries for my research? Don’t worry, I’ll put them back in the right pile.” She asked as she reached behind him.

“Oh, yeah of course.” He said, dejected as he stepped to the side to let her. Well, they were here to find out more about what the hell was going on, maybe he should also help instead of getting starstruck. Plus they didn’t know her at all. Yeah.

She took a few entries and went to a table close by, but far enough to let them talk privately if they wanted to. She was even considerate, damn her and her beautiful face. He took a journal and started flipping through it, hoping it might distract him from his current plight. It was more of the same he had seen time and time again. This celebrity did this, this politician said that, with some smaller columns about a new crystal mine that had been discovered on Dust, or a shortage of some material he had no knowledge about. Also the same missing person column he saw in every damn local newspaper.

Again and again, the same things kept happening apparently. Nothing noteworthy, so he put it back in its pile, face down to signal someone had looked through it and took another one out. Another celebrity had done something ‘crazy’ and cut her hair in a provocative fashion, another politician had gotten into a scandal, a shipment that had never arrived, putting the station behind schedule, and the same missing person column that was always the smallest column at the end of the newspaper.

Ironic that the one thing that could save lives in the newspaper was the less noteworthy. It had been the same names in every entry, or close to it. So he took another one. And another one. These ones he was looking through were fairly old to be fair, but the others were already looking at the more recent ones while he had just picked a pile at random.

He was soon through the entire month of that year and decided to take a more recent pile instead. He opened it and lo and behold. More exciting news! A politician had lied! Oh no, whatever would they do? A celebrity had allegedly cheated on her partner? Clearly everyone had to know about that. A mine had run out of minerals and they needed to find a replacement? And as always, at the end, the missing person column. As it was a more recent entry, all the names were different, which only made sense to Matt. This one was about two years old, while the other pile had been way older.

So he took another one. More of the same, again. Then another. Another. At this point it felt like he just went through the motions. But something caught his attention suddenly as he looked at the missing persons column at the end. He didn’t recognize any of the names. Weird. He stopped and put down the newspaper and picked up the one he had finished prior to this one. He flicked to the last page and checked the missing person column. Completely different.

Strange. This clearly hadn’t been the case some years prior. So he checked the other newspaper he had already gone through. Maybe it was just a coincidence? As he looked through all of them, none had the same name twice. He also noted that there seemed to be more names in general. It hadn’t been obvious at first as the column took up the same amount of space on the page, but they had slightly shrunk the text size to fit it all in.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

As he went through more and more, he started to feel like maybe he was on to something. There had always been missing persons, but they had mostly been the same until they didn’t have enough space for the old ones, where they would put the new ones. Which clearly meant the amount of missing persons had skyrocketed in recent years, otherwise why would two names rarely, if ever, appear twice? It meant that there were so many new people missing they didn’t have space for the old ones.

But nowhere did any article speak about any possible reason why. He could imagine a few reasons why it might happen. Like more space pirates in the area that would loot and kill. Or maybe a tragic accident or ship that had had a malfunction of some sort. But no, there was no mention of any reason at all. No focus on it. Clearly newspapers loved drama, and if anything noteworthy had happened to make people dissapear, they would most probably have spoken of it.

It was a bit like the fact that no spaceships were leaving the station right now. If you asked a ship why, they all had their own very valid individual reasons. Some needed a thorough checkup, while others might have a vacation or simply were still negotiating a juicy contract. Whatever the cause, it all sounded reasonable, until you learned that no ship had left the station in days. Then it became obvious something was up. But who would look into it? Only the space port administration had to be in on it. And Matt was pretty sure they had simply been paid to look the other way.

Glancing towards the new girl at the other table, he saw her perusing different newspapers herself and he couldn’t help but wonder what she was looking for. Could it be related? Had she been on the ship and also escaped by different means? Or was he just hoping against all odds that he would have a reason to see her again? Probably the last one, but one could hope.

****************************

Maya saw movement at the other table as the teenager had apparently found something of interest to them. She considered trying to listen in, but was still embarrassed at her earlier display. What if they caught her eavesdropping? She would die of shame, and it probably wasn’t anything interesting anyway.

It had been surprising, not being the only one wanting to go through these newspapers, an odd coincidence. The thought that they could have worked with her father flashed through her mind but was shot down so fast she almost didn’t register thinking it. He would never have worked with such unorganized people.

But she didn’t truly believe in coincidences. She suspected it was related in some way. Maybe looking into a strange disappearance for a client? She remembered they had come out of the adventurers guild and thought they were simply doing some research for that. It was rare for adventurers to play detectives though. They usually weren’t the most… discreet from what she had understood.

She finished going through another newspaper and sighed. It only confirmed what her father had found out, only on a more local scale. Which was also worrying, if it happened so far from Dust. His data had been global in scope and she had assumed the disappearances was something happening around Dust specifically, simply because the majority of the world population resided there. The station dwellers were but a statistical drop in the metaphorical bucket. That the anomalies happened out here had never been in question, but that the people behind it had the reach to clean up even out here was worrying.

Fortunately, it also greatly reduced the potential suspects. It was probably one of the big corps. It had to be. Her first suspect was weapon manufacturers. The anomalies being made by sentient life made her believe it was most likely a new kind of weapon being tested, and poorly contained. But the fact that it had repercussions all over the colonized system was strange, for even if badly contained, a weapon wouldn’t leak that far… probably. It was possible. Either a weapon, or maybe a new energy source. It had been theorized that instead of mana, any energy could potentially be used. It simply wasn’t as convenient and as malleable as mana.

But what if they had found a way to generate mana from a non magical energy source? It was but one possibility. The only thing she was sure of was that it was something big, for the scale was obviously huge. Which also made her think the facility where the thing was had to be in the Ruins. Only there could anyone hide something so big. Only in the ruins of the old world did she think it would be possible to hide something huge enough to affect what appeared to be their corner of the system.

“-Doesn’t help at all!” She heard the bald man say too loudly. Philip, she recalled his name was.

“It’s called a lead, Philip.” The girl snapped back. Their voices loud enough she simply couldn’t help but overhear.

“I mean sure, but it doesn’t help us one bit, does it? It just means we might truly be fucked!” The others shushed him as one and they continued to debate whatever they had found with lower volume once more.

She would lie if she said she wasn’t intrigued. But she had her own plate full already. She didn’t need another mystery right now. Looking at the pile she had gone through, she picked up the whole pile with an audible groan to make the other group aware of her antics. She walked over and dumped it in an empty spot before taking another pile with her. The other group had gone completely silent all the while, and their hushed voices continued only once she was back in her seat.

She went through more newspapers only to see that it was more of the same. She didn’t learn anything new. Still, she persisted in the hopes of learning something. Maybe a small article somewhere had gone through. So she took another newspaper, then another. Methodically she went through all the different headlines. She idly thought it was a wonder people actually read this garbage, so full of nothing.

Time passed as she continued to go through the newspapers. The other group had stopped talking a while ago and were also continuing to look through the different piles themselves. Only when about another hour had passed did they seem to slow down. The teenager was the one who came towards her and she stopped reading to show him he had her attention.

“Uh, hey.” He said with a small hand wave. Unsure of what the right social response was, she did the small wave back and his face got redder. Was he embarrassed? Strange.

“We are done for today, but we wanted to know if you want us to let everything be for you or if you are done soon too?” He asked and she thought for a second.

“They’ll be closing down the library soon anyway.” He added as she hesitated. Well, no helping it then. She got up and took the whole pile back to their table.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Matt said weakly to himself, but she clearly heard him. Right, she had been so engrossed in her thoughts she had forgotten to answer.

“Sorry. Yes I’ll also be going then, of course I will help you put everything back.” She said as they arrived at their table.

“Nice, thanks. Did you find what you were looking for?” The teenager asked her, clearly interested in the answer. But why? He couldn’t know what she was looking for, could he? Why was he so interested?

“Not really. Why?” Sometimes the best was simply to ask what you were wondering in a straightforward manner.

“Oh, so you’ll come back tomorrow? I-uh…” Maya saw him get so red at the end, but she didn’t understand. Had she missed something? Some social cue she should have been aware of? She looked at him and tried to figure it out.

“It’s because he’d be happy to see you again.” The girl named Kali butted in with a wide smile.

“Isn’t that right Matt?” She pressed the teenager who seemed to look everywhere except towards them, or maybe her. He was so red in the face. She wasn’t sure what was happening exactly.

“I’ll probably be back tomorrow to continue, if that’s what you wanted to know.” She finally decided to say. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest to lay out her plans, but she didn’t think these people were suspicious in that way.

“Really? Great! I mean, cool, cool.” The boy said as his face lit up. Was it really that great that she would come back? Why would it even matter to him? Unless he wanted to uncover what she was working on? She hadn’t taken any notes, and on the surface was doing exactly like them, except they had been taking notes that could be stolen, while she had everything in her head.

Or she had simply missed a social cue, or misread the situation. The truth was that it didn’t really matter. She helped them clean up and put everything back in order. She corrected Philip when he put up a pile in the wrong section, which made the others laugh when he got upset, and soon found herself walking out with them, while they continued their smalltalk.

They split up shortly after, as they didn’t stay in the same area as her, but she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, what they were doing was related to what she was. Her father had always told her there were no coincidences in this world, but logic dictated that they most probably weren’t. She guessed only time would tell.