Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

89 days since Derek was last heard alive.

In that time, Avery had looked. Of course, after figuring out the Drive URL and seeing the goodbye left for him, he tried to track down Derek Hutchins. Any sign of life. After seeing the video that first day, he couldn’t stomach looking at it again, but it haunted him.

He found his mother’s Facebook account. It was small, sparsely-used. The first time Avery saw Derek’s face was in a missing persons announcement on her page. He stared at that face for a long time when he found it. Squarish glasses, scruffy stubble, long hair, a tired sort of look that felt like it suited him. He looked at the date provided, the last time Derek was heard from by his own mother, and he thought about the lonely video posted on New Year’s.

Avery was the last person to hear Derek. Not even his voice, just an active microphone, movement, and silence. And now Derek was gone. He sat with this useless information.

And he sat with it for months.

Avery knew Wifies uploaded a video covering the whole disaster because the business email on his YouTube page blew up. People asked what happened since then, asked if Derek was alive or dead, asked if Avery went back to the world (he couldn’t) (he hadn’t touched Minecraft in months).

He watched the video. It summed everything up, complete with the added theatrics of a curator who thought it was a game. He couldn’t blame Wifies, he knew, because people made up horror stories all the time, and that was Wifies’ whole thing. It was almost comforting to see it play out again, to for a moment feel relieved when seeing Derek’s avatar.

At the end, hollowed out, Avery thought to watch Derek’s footage for himself, whole and unedited, and reread his goodbye, months after he was gone.

But the Drive had changed.

The footage was gone. He double-checked Wifies’ video, and yes, the footage existed in the drive when it was uploaded. It had vanished and been replaced in the thin span of time between Wifies’ use of it and Avery’s current moment.

The footage in the folder belonging to ‘Derek Hutchins’ has been temporarily seized for investigation by the US D.M.S.. We thank you for your patience.

The what.

For exactly one week, Avery relived the blind confusion of when he first read that book in the mine. Searching for the DMS online came up with absolutely nothing. People started emailing him about the change. Thought it was part of the game, or something, he didn’t know.

And then, one week after Wifies’ video, and 89 days after Derek was last heard alive, a certain email caught his eye.

He considered the email. It could’ve been bait. Another person who didn’t get it wasn’t a story, maybe. But he had no other leads on what the DMS was and what it had to do with Derek. So he replied.

Short. Not quite biting if it wasn’t really a lead, really answers. But listening.

The follow-up was instant.

Holy shit.

He and Crafty (or Brady, he supposed) exchanged phone numbers.

Brady had nothing. Ever since the DMS thing, he tried to dig more, but there was just… nothing on it online. He told Avery about Alex’s behavior before going offline but it was just the same thing from recordings he’d sent Wifies, the same information going in circles.

A: So they could totally have Derek
B: I think so. They kept Alex for years so if there’s a chance of grabbing Derek alive I don’t see why they wouldn’t have

He didn’t want to think about that. But there was no denying that that was the obvious conclusion from their pooled experiences. Derek went radio silent on January 1st and he, what, got kidnapped? He was out there, alive somewhere, held hostage by some shadow government?

He thought of the King. It was probably his least favorite thing to think about, second only to the mental image of Derek (of that face, warm and tired, in the missing persons post) dying quietly in his room unknown to the outside world after months of slow deterioration. If Derek was alive then… had his spell worked? Was the King contained in him? If the literal government got its hands on the King, the King was winning.

If Derek was alive, then—

A: he’d be there for months already

Derek, half-dead already, kidnapped and missing. His mother didn’t know where he was. Even then he’d gone missing for months and nobody noticed. If Derek Hutchins was never seen again nobody would bat an eye. Nobody would do anything.

A: he could be alive
B: He could be alive.
A: what do I do

For all intents and purposes they were the only two people alive who knew where Derek was. But that required knowing anything about the DMS’ actual, physical location. And they had nothing. All information was from a now-defunct email and after Wifies brushing against them, Avery had his doubts they’d be easy to grab a second time.

B: I don’t know

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed through grit teeth. He couldn’t do this. He hadn’t been able to focus on college work ever since January and the Drive’s edit made him even more frantic and now—and now this. He had to do something.

He just had no idea what.

91 days since Derek was last heard alive.

Avery found some solace in texting back and forth with Brady, and felt a bit relieved that someone actually managed to understand what the helpless feeling was like.

He had been spending another sleepless night scrolling mindlessly when an Outlook notification appeared over the top of his phone screen. The emails from curious viewers had since slowed to a drip, with the mind of the internet slowly moving away from the tragic ending.

It was from Brady. Or, another reply at the end of their old email chain. The sender’s email address was invisible, or simply not attached. Avery frowned, sitting up in his bed as he inspected the email closer.

Had something happened to him? Why wouldn’t he text him directly? Avery’s stomach lurched at the thought of another Minecraft-based threat following him further. He swallowed his fear, breathing deeply as he scanned the email’s contents.

Later, Avery would chalk up his actions to it being a late hour, and him being inundated with the stress from midterm preparations. The email contained nothing in the body aside from a single ZIP file. It was, in fact, the most obvious kind of trap to exist.

Avery opened the file.

Nothing happened. There was a small downloading icon on the bottom of his screen, which completed itself and went away. His brows furrowed at the sight of it, and he closed his email to open his texts. He clicked on Brady’s contact, but his fingers remained hovering near the keyboard. Hell, what was he supposed to say? They hadn’t talked about much else other than their friends’ disappearance to the shady government branch, and wondering if they were even still alive.

Avery settled on something simple to say.

A: did you email me a zip file?

He sent the message, expecting a reply in the morning. It was 4 AM for him, and Brady had mentioned living somewhere in Canada, so it was god knows how late for him. Speaking of, Avery technically had class in the morning. He sighed, and clicked his phone off. He deposited it on his nightstand and pulled his blankets up.

His eyes had only been closed for a minute when his phone buzzed once. Then again in the time it took Avery to roll over and blindly reach for it.

He pulled it close to his face, but no new notifications appeared when the screen lit up. He squinted, unlocking the device and opening his texts. Nothing new from Brady. Avery’s shoulders sank. The stress was getting to him; he was starting to hallucinate it seemed. He stared at his empty texts for another few empty moments. His chest hurt.

The phone buzzed again.

Bright red text suddenly appeared on his phone, stretched to take up the entire screen. Avery flinched, dropping his phone down on the bed. The text said his name. Confusion filled his head for a moment before he thought back. Fuck. The ZIP file. Someone must’ve sent him a ZIP bomb to scare him.

He hadn’t been paying attention to the text, but once his eye caught it, he noticed it was different than before.

averythemayo, it read, the crimson text so bright it hurt his aching eyes, averythemayo are you there

The red text continued on for a few more moments, repeatedly asking if Avery was there. It seemed more impatient than malicious. Which, y’know, Avery had a tendency to assume. He did the same with Derek. It was still put on his phone via ZIP bomb, after all. Maybe it was just waiting for him to respond in order to properly bother him.

Avery watched the text flicker and change. The font size grew smaller for a few moments, then grew again in size, like it was moving around in a physical space.

i feel that your device is not roomy

averythemayo are you listening to me

He laughed at that. Just a puff of disbelief out of his nose while he smiled.

i heard that

averythemayo are you there

Something clenched in his chest. This thing had access to his microphone?

“You can hear me?” He cautioned a line of dialogue, wary of giving it any information. Thank god he had a single, lest he woke a roommate up talking to a virus he stupidly downloaded on his phone.

yes averythemayo i can hear you

i have been speaking the whole time

have you not been seeing that averythemayo

”I.. have been seeing it. You can just.. call me Avery.”

then you are aware that i need you

What?

”What?” Avery so cleverly repeated his thought.

i need your assistance averythemayo

The phone screen changed, flicking open to a Youtube video, dated from 2018. Avery watched closer as the video sped up, and he caught flashes of the same red text that had been assaulting his phone. The familiar blocky textures of Minecraft crossed the screen, and the video paused on a frame of a Minecraft skin with bright blue hair. Their surroundings did not appear to be part of the base game. The sight of the game made his stomach sink.

averythemayo are you watching

”Yea, man. You can just call me Avery,” he repeated his sentiment from earlier. He was more than just his username!

avery are you watching

he is trapped

The screen flickered again, pausing on a different frame of the same blue-haired skin.

i could not get him out avery

he is stuck there avery

i fear he could not come with me

i need to get him out

“Who is he?” Avery picked the phone up again, squinting at the image on his screen. “Where is he trapped?”

he is andre

he is trapped

”Is he a person? Like- like a real person? Where is he trapped? Who are you? Why- wait, why me? Why not go to the police? I- I’m sure they could help you a lot more than I could-“

DEPARTMENT OF METAPHYSICAL SCIENCES

Avery’s heart dropped.

“The DMS? What do you know about the DMS?” Avery thought back to his initial email exchange with Brady. They were unable to dig any deeper than Wifies had, leaving them stuck. The people they had lost to the faceless government entity were taken where they could not be followed, and the two of them had just come to accept it.

The thing in his phone said otherwise.

i believe they created me

i do not know why avery

they created andre

Every word that flashed across his screen only served to make Avery grip his phone tighter.

“You escaped from them? Are you- where are you? Can you- can we meet? I need to talk to you in person, shit, where are you?”

i am in your device avery

“Well, I mean, yea, you are, but where are you talking to me from?” Maybe it was just too late at night, but this was making less and less sense. Whoever this was, they were talking to him, they had escaped the DMS. Escape was possible, if he believed the text.

i am talking to you right here

i am right here avery

-

It took convincing. A lot of convincing. Avery didn’t sleep that night.

There was a being in his phone. Something made of code, made to be aware of its own condition. It knew it was a kind of AI, but it was unsure of its purpose. It said Avery could call it Assimilation. Avery attempted several different nicknames to make the mouthful shorter, but Assimilation shot them all down. It seemed to have a one track mind: freeing Andre.

Unfortunately, its information was limited. It found Avery’s contact as it scraped the internet for anything mentioning the DMS, which apparently included civilian emails. It was just waiting for either of them to allow it into their device. When asked why it couldn’t just speak to them through email, it simply replied that it liked this method better.

Assimilation did not know much about the DMS. It didn’t seem to be very smart, like Avery had hoped it would be. It could extract numbers and data, but didn’t have the context to make sense of any of it. It didn’t know where Andre was being kept, other than the vague location of ‘DMS server’.

Avery started thinking while they chatted. If there was a physical location, then that could mean that Brady’s friend might be there. Through his early morning haze, he had an epiphany.

Derek might be there too.

His footage had been replaced with the DMS notice, and if there was even the slightest chance that he could still be alive, Avery wanted to follow it. His call with Brady was short, but informative. He managed to condense an entire night of talking with a sentient AI into about ten minutes.

Assimilation and Andre were both AIs, created for some unknown purpose. Avery watched through Andre’s video, which at first glance, seemed like a usual Twitch stream. Andre was created for speedrunning, he thought, until Assimilation explained further. Andre was based on prompts. He would follow any instructions given to him to any degree. The idea of it seemed similar to what Alex had gone through, and Avery briefly wondered if they were connected.

After the events of Andre’s video, the two of them were contained. Due to Assimilation’s glitchy nature, it was able to find a crack it could squeeze through in their containment, but Andre could not come with. He had been promptless, and uncooperative without anything to spur him forward. Assimilation left him behind in hopes that it could find someone real to help.

Avery had explained to Assimilation that, while he wanted to help, he wouldn’t know where to start. He wasn’t good at computer stuff, and if it involved any sort of breaking and entering, he was even less qualified! Avery’s hobbies consisted of surfing and skating! He had been grieving for months over someone he hardly knew. He was not the ‘save the world’ type. He just wasn’t.

Assimilation had a solution. It didn’t explain any further than opening the Phone app, swiping to the keypad, and rapidly dialing a number.

The mystery person on the other end of the line picked up. He spoke first, and his voice seemed pitched a little deeper than it may actually be, like he was trying to sound more tough than he was. Avery, again with the assumptions.

“Hello? Who is this?”

i cannot talk to him avery

i need you to tell him what i say

say hello ze i need your help

Avery nearly dropped his phone. Assimilation moved fast. He repeated the script he was given, and was met with silence on the other end.

“Who are you?”

Assimilation’s text was going rapid fire again, but Avery took charge for a minute. The AI didn’t seem to have the best people skills.

“Hi, sorry, my name is Avery. I, uh... look, I’m gonna say some weird things, and, um.. My friend says that you can help me.”

Silence. Maybe a slight shuffle. “Okay, man.”

Avery started to explain. He started from the very beginning, when he uploaded his first video, and ended at the events of the previous hour. Once he had mentioned Andre, the other man seemed to perk up. His voice got a little more life in it, as opposed to the flat inflection he was using prior.

“Assimilation- that’s what it told me it’s name was- just.. started calling you from my phone without explaining much. Do you know why it might’ve called you?”

Assimilation’s text flashed on the screen, with a single word. GUNS

“I have some ideas. This story is.. sounding similar to some recent events.”

“It said guns. Do you know what that means?”

There was another short silence on the end of the line.

“Yea. I have a few, I like them. Why would it need guns?” Avery could hear the squeak of a chair in the background.

defense

rescue operation

your friend might be in there

Avery ignored it as his brain finally processed what the man had said prior.

“What recent events? Is- do you know anything about them, the DMS?”

“I don’t. But my.. friend is missing. He’s, um.. His name is Regect, he’s some kind of Minecraft thing, and he usually goes away for a couple days, but he comes back. I haven’t seen him for, like.. a week.”

Avery paused, piecing it together. It was hard, and he wished that Derek was there. Derek could figure this out in 20 minutes, max.

“I think I know where he could be.”

-

When Brady replied to him in the morning, he called him immediately. This couldn’t be explained over text. Avery explained all that had happened the previous night; Assimilation’s appearance, its plea for help, the phone call.

The mystery man’s name was Ze. Avery had asked if it was really that, and they got into a bit of a tiff over whether or not that was a real name, before focusing back on their actual conversation. Once Avery suggested that his friend might have been taken by the DMS, Ze had started to freak out. Avery could hear frantic, one handed typing as Ze explained him and another friend had been going crazy searching.

When he mentioned his friend was a ‘Minecraft thing’, what he’d really meant was that it wasn’t really a person, but an entity in his world. An entity like Assimilation and Andre. An entity, trapped in his world, like The King.

The King, and subsequently Derek, had been taken. Alex had been trapped for close to a decade. Ze’s friend had been taken too.

Avery made a groupchat with the three of them; Brady, Ze, and himself. Ze added a fourth person, only mentioning her name in passing and saying she was a friend. The smallest inklings of hope had begun to blossom within him. If there was a chance, he would take it.

95 days since Derek was last heard alive.

The haze of a dream had made Avery a prisoner of his bed that morning. It felt like he should’ve known what it meant: the endless loop of shapes and colors, of being pushed and pulled like a boat on the shore, of a fuzzy drone-like mumble or groan that was almost, almost, words… It lasted long enough to bleed into his consciousness as he woke up. Somehow, the obnoxious alarm he’d picked months ago when classes started hadn’t.

Avery grabbed his phone, swiped the missed alarm notifications away, and accepted he’d missed his morning classes. It was not the first time and he was pretty sure he was already failing those, so he didn’t worry too much about it.

Since he was in no rush to get anywhere, he marinated in bed for a little longer and continued looking at his phone. Since January, he’d been avoiding Minecraft videos like the plague. Unfortunately, he was subscribed to at least a couple channels which frequently uploaded that type of content. Thus, every morning he went through his routine of deleting all of those notifications on sight, regretting he hadn’t unsubscribed instead, not opening the app to change that, and telling himself he’d do that ‘tomorrow’.

After sorting through those, he got to his text messages. The groupchat had some new activity. A tap on it revealed Ze rambling at them in the early morning.

Z: hold on I’ve been thinking
Z: are we TRYING to get caught???
Z: you guys said that Assimilation had talked to you unprompted right
Z: like gotten into your phone through an email or something and told you it had looked for mentions of the DMS??
Z: that was bad. Like bad bad youeven opened it but do you see how like
Z: if IT was able to find you, then how do we know we’re not being watched already??

Sure, they’d been talking about the government being shady and about unethical experiments but that didn’t immediately make them a target of anything, right? Everyone did that once in a while and didn’t get immediately gangstalked. Avery read through those messages again, and moved on to the next.

Z: do you get what I mean??
Z: if we get caught we’re done for like actually
Z: and idk personally I’m not really looking for that kind of smoke over some texts

‘Over some texts’. The phrase stuck. The messages after that spiraled into paranoia, the idea of ‘getting caught’, and the terrible feeling something might be happening to his friend. Avery grimaced as he kept scrolling.

Z: I WAMT OUR FRIEND BACK AND IM FINDING HIM WITH OR WITHOUT YOU SO I NEED TO KNOW IFYOURE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS
Z: SO LIKE I SAID EITHERWERE MEETING UP AND DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT OR IM DOING THIS ON MY OWN

That was the last text. Sent at… Around 4 in the morning. He wondered what time that was in Texas. He started writing back.

A: I think we’re pretty serious about this
A: you’re saying we meet up in Texas right?

Ze started typing instantly. Well, someone hadn’t slept. Not like Avery had room to talk.

Z: YES THAT IS WHAT I’M SAYING

Avery thought about it for a minute. His midterms were in a week. He had to tell his family. He had some money saved up for emergencies. Regect had gone missing. Derek had probably been trapped and experimented on by the government for months. Alex had been wasting away for years.

A: I’m in
A: we just have to wait for Brady to wake up and ask him too
Z: LIKE HELL I’M WAITING IM CALLING HIM RN

Brady picked up, of course. He got to hear Ze for the first time since they started texting and just a few hours later, both of them had plane tickets directly to El Paso, Texas, their (for legal reasons, alleged) gunman’s hometown.

100 days since Derek was last heard alive.

Avery arrived in El Paso International Airport nearing noon on April 11. He sat huddled on a bench over his backpack, phone plugged into the wall outlet nearby. Assimilation drained the battery of Avery’s old phone like it owed it money.

i feel the wifi here is different

He hummed quietly in acknowledgement. One leg bounced anxiously.

i do not think i like planes avery

i do not understand how so many humans do this

He raised his phone as if talking to someone. With his headphones on and plugged into the phone, it looked like a regular call. “Not for everyone, I guess. Brady should be here soon, though.” Then Ze would grab them and they’d be somewhere more suited for scheming.

It was a little nerve-wracking to have Assimilation hanging out on his screen where any passerby could spot it. Some of Ze’s own paranoia leeched into him the longer he sat at the airport, where countless people passed by. He became way too aware of his presence in the room and whether someone standing behind him could see his phone screen even with the brightness all the way down.

His phone vibrated and he answered the call immediately.

“Okay I’m finally out,” Brady said, sounding tinny and muffled from the amount of people packed into the airport. “Where are you?”

Thank god. “Okay, I’m—”

hello craftyking

He’d pulled the phone closer without noticing, so its bright red text burned. He blinked hard. The ambient audio coming in from Brady’s end fuzzed when the text appeared, and cleared up when it vanished. “Assimilation says hi. I’m near the front entrance.”

He unplugged his phone and tucked it between his shoulder and cheek. He stuffed the fraying charger into his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and stood. “I’m standing near a, uh, a vending machine on the right side. Tall. Hawaiian shirt.”

“Dude, that’s, like, a third of the guys here.”

He rolled his eyes. “Listen—”

“Wait, nevermind, I see you, I think.”

Avery looked up from the phone and squinted over the crowd. Through the sea of people moving in and out of the airport, standing around talking, he scanned until someone met his gaze. A blond man around his age, maybe a little younger, and a little taller, holding a phone up to his ear. He smiled at Avery, lowered the phone, and raised a hand in greeting. He waved back.

The call ended. Brady weaved through the people to meet Avery closer to the front doors.

“Avery,” Brady greeted, and stuck out a hand in greeting, which Avery accepted with his free hand.

He smiled. “Crafty.”

Brady’s smile cracked wider. He had an overall laid-back aura about him, complimented by his slow, warm manner of speaking and contrasted only by a slight tension in his brow and the tightness with which he gripped Avery’s hand. This was someone who’d been in it, even if only a little, for longer than Avery had even known Derek existed. Someone who knew about the DMS and worried about his old internet friend for a year, and was finally doing something about it.

He raised the phone to his face and dropped his voice to barely-a-whisper. “Assimilation, could you text Ze and let him know—”

Red situated low on the screen. hello done

“Thanks.” He glanced away from the phone and to Brady, watching quietly, eyebrows slightly raised. Avery shrugged. A few days of an AI living on his phone was easier to adjust to than he thought.

They stepped out of the air-conditioned airport and into a cloudless, blindly bright day. Brady squinted and raised a hand to shield his eyes. The parking lot was halfway full, with cars constantly pulling in and out and people shoving luggage into trunks and people waiting around to be picked up themselves.

He checked the group chat.

Z: white ford f150 2000
Z: near the back. I’m sitting out in the bed. white shirt

He held out his phone for Brady to read. “Again, that’s like, half the guys sitting out here waiting for people. Okay, man.”

They walked out into the warm El Paso sun. It was kind of surreal to be out of California for the first time. He didn’t quite know what to expect from Ze. He scanned the parking lot for trucks matching the description.

A man sat on the edge of a truck bed at the very edge of the lot, next to a tall lightpost. Beneath a faded baseball cap, his dark hair cut close to his scalp in a buzzcut, and a nick ran through one of his thick brows. He had—and Avery felt really bad for thinking it, but it was the first thing he noticed—the hard resting expression of someone mildly pissed off.

Those callous eyes flicked over the lot and settled on Avery and Brady. They traced them both, and went clearly from Avery’s face to the phone in his hand. The man looked down at the phone in his lap. Typed something one-handed, other hand briefly raising to tap against one of the white wired earbuds in his ears.

Z: is that yall

Avery looked Ze in the eyes and nodded.

Ze slipped the phone into his pocket and stood. His jeans were grass-stained around the ankles and shins and bore a sewn-shut slice under one knee. The truck itself matched his outdoorsy air, the vehicle’s underbelly and edges scored with dirt streaks. Even the windows looked fogged, like they haven’t seen a car wash in well over a year.

Avery offered him a hand. Ze glanced down at it exactly once, then looked back up at him right in the eyes. “Hello.”

Avery recognized he would not win this encounter and pocketed his hand. “Hi. Glad to finally see you face-to-face.”

He thought of Derek. Hopefully he’d see him face-to-face someday.

He would. He would.

“Okay, cool. Get in. We can talk at my place—” A pause. He tipped his head, and his gaze briefly unfocused before locking back onto them. “Moe says hi.”

“Moe,” Avery echoed.

“Moe.” He raised a hand to his earbuds. “She can hear what we’re saying, don’t worry.” Moe, right. He’d mentioned her. His friend who was helping him.

“How come she isn’t over here, too?” Brady asked. Actually, that was a really fair question. Why did they have to go halfway across the continent when he’s been in a voice call with someone the whole—

“She would,” he said, evidently bored, as if he’d asked something obvious. “She’s from Azerbaijan? Can’t exactly take a cheap Uber over.”

Okay, fair, actually. Brady hummed. “Understood.”

“Anyways, we’re careful with how we call.” For the first time since seeing him, Ze smiled, though it was the smile of someone whispering an inside joke. “It’s more convenient in-person, but if calling can’t be avoided, of course we’re careful.”

Ze turned and pulled the truck bed shut. Before it closed completely, Avery spotted a long rifle case taking up the whole width of the bed, pushed up against the back. A dark tarp laid over the bed, hooked into the sides to keep it down.

“You hunt?” Avery guessed, in an attempt to make some sort of conversation.

Ze half-turned his head and sideeyed him hard. “Yes. Now get in.”

When he walked past Avery to get to the driver’s seat, he spied a faded bumper sticker, almost illegible from dirt and weathering. It read: NO AIRBAGS WE DIE LIKE REAL MEN.

He bit the inside of his cheek to resist making an expression.

Brady called shotgun, leaving Avery with the back seat. He stepped over a pile of caps behind the driver’s seat, uncomfortably bracing one knee on the back seat to avoid crushing anything. Getting in other people’s cars was always so awkward, so weirdly personal. He was just tall enough that the space between the back and front seats was uncomfortable for his legs, but he kept that to himself.

There was no space to tuck his feet beneath the seating, and when he tried his heel hit a metallic case with a hollow thump. It wasn’t part of the car itself, but a separate container pushed underneath. He didn’t have to look up to just know that Ze eyed him through the rearview mirror. He has a gun in there, he thought, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about the amount of weaponry just in the vehicle with them, but it left a nervous tension in him.

At least Assimilation was right. The guy had guns, alright.

He shut the car door and buckled himself into the middle seat.

Ze pulled out of the parking lot in dead silence. Brady glanced at Avery through the rearview mirror, then at the radio, untouched. Ze himself kept his eyes on the road, tapping the steering wheel, unhurried.

“I’ll let you know when we’re there,” he said abruptly, making Avery jump. Ze didn’t look away from the road, and again Avery noted the earbuds. Right, there was another person with them. Moe. Whatever he heard from her was completely unknown to either of the other passengers, but whatever she said, he replied with a noncommittal hum and quiet, “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Avery leaned his head against the hard seat backing and watched the terrain roll by. The parking lot fell away into a dry, dusty-orange shrubland on either side of the old road. On one side he watched the airport runways and planes incoming and outgoing into the hazy warm sky, and on the other side, buildings. The old truck vibrated so hard Avery felt it in his bones.

The drive to Ze’s apartment was in complete silence.

The parking lot there matched the desaturated, pale grey of the airport’s. The truck shuddered to a stop in its spot. Ze climbed out, and watched Brady and Avery follow with an odd kind of cautious distrust. What were they going to do, steal one of his several Bass Pro Shop hats?

Or go for one of the guns, Avery’s mind reasoned. Maybe the suspicion was reasonable, given the meeting with strangers, and also maybe the government knew they knew it was kidnapping people.

The building matched the generally dry, dusty appearance of most of the surrounding land. The paint, perhaps once a friendlier shade of yellow, was peeling and cracked. The lawn was a stark shade of green, artificial or unnecessarily overwatered. Ze led them to a door on ground level, unlocked it, and stood with the open door. “Home sweet home,” he said in a tone of voice giving the impression the structure was neither sweet nor all that much of a home.

He and Brady sideeyed each other. The latter hesitated, so Avery went ahead and walked in with as much ease as he could project. It was for Derek and the other people (entities?) the DMS took. He had to trust Ze.

The apartment had a smell. Like, everyone’s home has a smell, even if they didn’t think about it. It was just the result of accumulated life within a space. Here it was kind of earthy, bordering on musty, and the dim, almost-going-out lights overhead didn’t help the vibes. The furniture was old, some of it seeming older than Ze, the kind of old where the corner seams frayed to show the frame beneath.

There was, of course, a taxidermy deer head mounted to a wall. The stipple ceiling was so low its antlers almost scraped it. Avery tried not to stare into its glass eyes and instead noticed something taped to the wall beneath it. A printed and cut slip of paper—oh, it was a Twitter post—reading: Oh sure let’s blame the guy who’s fault it is.

Okay, no more looking-at-the-walls. He focused on the back of Ze’s head as he guided them to the small dining table.

They sat. “So,” Ze began once they all sat. He folded his hands together. “I’m Ze.” He turned to Avery, and said with the slightest hesitation. “...Brady.”

“Avery.”

He cursed to himself. “Avery.” Then, to Brady, “So you’re Brady—okay, okay, good. Cool.”

“Hey,” he said mildly, eyes crinkling at the corners slightly in thinly-suppressed amusement.

Avery rested his phone screen-up in his palm. “Assimilation, we’re at Ze’s place.”

hello ze

“Hello, Assimilation.” A pause. “Moe says hi to you all, too.”

hello moe

“Okay! Assimilation says hi, Moe, now, anyways—” Ze spoke in a rush, breathed in, and placed his hands palm-down as if to brace himself. “We all have a lot to go over.”