Behind his glasses, Booker’s eyes ached. The orbs throbbed in their sockets, burning. Two days without sleep had rumpled him to the bone.

They’d captured Robert Robertson, Jr.

While trying and failing to reach the precinct on Virgil’s radio, they’d instead received a call from dispatch through the fog. Robert Robertson, Jr. had invaded a house and the residents had knocked him unconscious. They’d fractured his skull with a bust of Athena. Nothing about the situation had made much sense. The mansion owner, Victor Monroe, had fortified against the threat of Robert Robertson Junior; he’d installed floodlights on the roof and boarded up the windows. He’d all but turned the place into a bunker. But as Virgil had pointed out: none of that meant anything—a person had a right to handle their own property in their own way.

Still, something about it had rubbed Booker the wrong way.

For his part, Robert Robertson, Jr. had said nothing. He’d awoken with two cops and three EMTs in the back of an ambulance. According to one of the guys watching him, all he’d done was sit up a little bit and stare. He’d said nothing to the doctor who gave him x-rays and stitches, nothing to either of his armed supervisors, and nothing to the nurse. After discharge, Robert Robertson, Jr. had maintained his silence in the back seat of a squad car for the entire ride to the precinct.

Bob-Bob’s-son even kept a caged tongue through four hours of interrogation.

Luckily, they didn’t need a confession. Robert Robertson, Jr. faced a mountain of evidence tall and broad enough to blot out the sun. His sudden muteness wouldn’t save him from a jail cell, it would only make his life tougher before he ended up there.

John Bowman Booker parked outside of his condo building and blearily climbed the steps.

The whole day following the arrest blurred like a dream in his mind. He’d had paperwork to file, along with the detectives who’d taken over the case, along with Virgil, all of them frequently interrupted by phone calls, e-mails, and messages. They’d held a press conference. Virgil had given undue credit to Booker, Booker had given undue credit to Virgil. A reporter from the Oceanrest Chronicle asked why they hadn’t been with the police force maintaining security along the northern fringes of the city.

"I believed the exercise was a waste of department resources," Virgil had uttered into the mic. "So I went to the guy who was still working the goddamned case."

Booker keyed open the door to his home and lurched inside. He kicked off his shoes as the door shut behind him. Stopped at the fridge to grab a grapefruit soda. Stared at the appliance for several seconds, lost in molasses-slow thought and burnt out to the edges.

clack-clack

Booker twisted toward the noise. Had he heard a noise? His condo seemed vaguely blurry. He took off his glasses and pressed the heel of his hand into his sockets; replacing them, he squinted at the broad corridor of kitchen, dining room, and bedroom/bathroom intersection. He’d heard something, hadn’t he?

wwhhhrrrrr

He sagged toward the bedroom entrance, hand resting on the clasp of his holster. When the living room opened up to his left, he saw an angle of black flatscreen. Lights gleamed against its surface and shadowy figures swarmed across it. Booker froze. Blinked. When he peered over at the television, he saw only turned-off blankness, a reflection of himself caught in refracted glow.

clack-clack

He inched toward the bedroom. Hesitated.

“Relax, John,” Castellanos said from inside. “It’s just me.”

Booker remembered the puzzle box in Nick Robertson’s basement. He remembered the surreal stretch of days unraveling behind him. “Wh-what?” he stammered, stepping through the threshold, somehow still surprised to see her. She wore the same jeans and jacket, the same boots. Her hair looked fresher. She leaned against the foot of his bed, a classic Rubick’s cube mostly solved in her hands. Dazed, Booker blinked. “How?” he asked.

She grinned. “Did you think I was a ghost?”

“No,” he muttered, halfway to himself. Then, as a proper answer, he repeated, “No. Because…’cause you have documentation. A birth certificate, a social security number, a—a bank account…”

Her gaze lifted from the Rubick’s cube and flitted over to him. “You checked all that?”

“I—I did.”

“But you didn’t believe it, did you?”

He suddenly found a thickness in his throat. He cleared it, swallowed. “I…no, I didn’t. But.”

“But?”

He pursed his lips.

She rose to her booted feet. “What did you believe?”

“I—I knew you. More than five years, I knew you.”

“You still do.”

“None of this makes any sense…” his heart rate rose, his breath shortened.

She lowered the Rubick’s cube to her side and approached him with slow, languid strides. “Not to you,” she said, as if this clarified things. “Not yet.”

“You gotta tell me what’s going on, Al. Am I—am I losing my goddamned mind?”

A chuckle lit her features. “You’re not losing your mind. It’s kind of the opposite.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s better you don’t ask,” she stood only a foot away, now. Her dark eyes studied him. Her grin eased into a barely-there smile. “A long time ago,” she said, “you brushed up against something. You probably don’t remember all the details. But when it happened, you got noticed.”

“Noticed?”

She gave half a shrug. “Best I can describe it.” She took a liquid step toward him. Everything in the world looked blurry except for her. “But, generally… it ain’t a good thing. But you’re going to be okay, John. You’re going to be—” (nobody was ever really) “—okay. Know why?”

“Why?” he whispered.

She reached out with her free hand and touched the front of his shirt. Twisted it into her palm; gripped it. Booker saw nothing but her eyes. “Because I chose you, John,” she whispered in response, the words heat against his face. “I chose you.”

She pulled him into a kiss he felt through every vein and tendon in his body.

“…And that means something.”

When Booker awoke the next day, some time in a gray late morning, he remembered his return home only vaguely. He roused in a tangle of bedsheets, naked, and fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table. Clumsily, he knocked them off. Cursing underbreath, he moved to the floor slowly, palms-first. He found the frames and stood with a groan.

Un-blurring the bedroom, his gaze fell on the puzzle orb. Somehow it had ended up on the carpet. It looked worn, scuffed and scratched; it looked old. Pulling on a pair of boxer-briefs, he stepped over to it. His reflection appeared on its once-lustrous surface as a hazy fog, a figure barely distinguishable at all. Bending down, he picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Put it on top of the dresser.

And didn’t think about it again for several months.