Gateway

by Besprizornye

The year is 2041, and Riley St. Germain is starting her first day of school, accompanied by her personal Digimon assistant, Sonny the Veemon. Although humans use Digimon for all manner of daily tasks, there is much about them and the company which markets them that is cloaked in secrecy.

The alarm went off at six-thirty and it took three fumbling attempts before its groggy owner turned the beeping device off. She began to ensconce herself deeper in her bed's sheets and blankets before a sudden flash of realization lit up her heart-shaped face and prompted her to scramble out of bed and get to her feet. She showered and dressed at a breakneck pace. As soon as she was decent, she slipped on a thin headset consisting of a lens over her left eye and a bud in the corresponding ear.

"Good morning, Sonny," she said.

From around the doorframe, a small blue creature walked into her room as though he had been waiting outside patiently for her summons. In a manner of speaking, he had been. "Good morning, Riley," he said brightly. "Are you excited for your first day of school?"

"Kind of," replied Riley as she double-checked her long chestnut brown hair and her makeup in the mirror on her vanity. "It's not as big of a deal as starting high school last year, but it'll still be nice to have a regular schedule again."

One of his fangs stayed outside of Sonny's mouth as its edges folded upwards into a wry smile. "I hope that part of that schedule includes studying. Your mom and dad weren't too happy with your marks last semester."

"God, Sonny, you're such a buzzkill," said Riley, but there was laughter behind the rebuke. "What did I answer on my quiz to get such a stick in the mud as my Digimon?"

Sonny shrugged good-naturedly and then said, "Don't forget your textbooks." The books were scooped up into Riley's backpack without a word of complaint and the two of them went downstairs together.

The good-sized home felt emptier to Riley now that she was the last one of her siblings still living there. Mike had gone off to school only a few weeks earlier and she already missed their early morning banter. She almost said something to Sonny, but thought better of it. It didn't matter either way. Her Digimon knew her too well, and he offered without any preamble, "I miss Greta, and your brother too," he quickly added, "but it was nice to have another Digimon in the house. Now that it's just me, I feel like I'm always bothering you."

From another person, or Digimon, it would have been easy to dismiss the sentiment as mere self-deprecation, but just as Sonny knew her, Riley knew him. "It's okay," she said as they reached the bottom of the staircase, "I don't mind hanging out with you, honest. It was good to have some time with you before school started." Both of them feeling placated, Riley led her Digimon into the kitchen and nearly ran into her father.

"Sorry, Riley," he said absently. "I'm already running late." He pushed past her and nearly bowled over Sonny. Riley couldn't really blame him since he didn't have an eyepiece in and never did. Fortunately, Sonny was programmed to quickly step out of the way and thereby maintained the illusion that he really existed and carried weight in the physical world.

"Good morning to you too!" Riley called after her dad moments before the door to the master bedroom closed behind him. Then she started to fix herself a small breakfast made up of a bowl of cereal and a piece of still-warm bacon that was still in the pan on the stove. As she ate, Riley studied her phone. Messages and updates from her friend appeared on the screen and were magnified in front of her eyepiece if she was interested in them. One of them was about some kind of virus that was infecting Digimon in the Midwest. Riley bookmarked that one for later. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Sonny was standing by the doorway, motionless save for the rise and fall of his digitally rendered chest as he patiently waiting for Riley to finish eating.

Some of her friends' Digimon never shut up, Riley thought as she was putting her dishes away, but Sonny was usually pretty content to wait for her to initiate a conversation. There must have been something in the quiz that accounted for that as well. But when Sonny did talk unprompted, it was usually because he needed to remind her of something, as he did just then.

"If you want to get to school fifteen minutes early, you should be leaving the house in three and a half minutes."

"Thanks, Sonny," Riley said and slung her backpack over her shoulder.

The Digimon followed her into the front room and asked, "Wouldn't you like to put on a sweater or a jacket? There's a thirty percent chance of rain this afternoon and you're always complaining about how cold the school building gets."

Riley groaned and said, "Somewhere there's a little old lady wondering why she ended up with a fun Digimon instead of you," but she still went into the closet, grabbed a pink jacket, and threw it over her arm.

"You'll thank me later," said Sonny imperiously, and he smiled at Riley's conditioned response of "Not a chance."

After a farewell to her dad shouted over her shoulder, Riley and Sonny stepped outside into the late summer sunlight. The street they lived on was a few blocks away from any busy streets, and for a few minutes Riley was able to pretend that she wasn't living in a huge city but rather somewhere quiet and out of the way. Then she reached the train line and the deception was shattered for another day.

The station was pretty much a straight shot from her house and thanks to Sonny's intimate knowledge of the train's schedule, she was able to always arrive just as it did. A lot of other people with Digimon preferred to do the same, so she always was met with a dizzying vision in her left eyepiece of men and women being accompanied by Digimon companions. It was possible to toggle the settings of the eyepiece so that only the wearer's Digimon was visible, but Riley was always excited to see the menagerie of creatures that accompanied the morning commuters.

Sonny was notably less enthused, voicing what had become his usual gripe, "Look at all of these new Digimon! There's more of them every week, and they always think that they're so cool!"

"How do you know that, Sonny?" asked Riley as she bought her ticket by passing her wrist over one of the row of terminals set up outside of the train station. "I don't think I've ever seen you talk to one of them."

"Well, I don't have to," the Digimon replied quickly. "I can tell just by looking at them!"

Riley laughed at that, and made her way to the tracks where a magnetically powered train was pulling into the station. It didn't possess anywhere near the speed and power that its sister trains on the coasts or abroad had, but the train still bore the trademark whisper-quiet of its breed. Only a few passengers stepped off the train at this stop. Many more piled on for their commute into the city of St. Louis proper. Riley grabbed a seat and Sonny found himself a spot nearby after the crowd of people and Digimon gave his object avoidance programming a thorough workout.

There were two stops before Riley got off, and the whole trip took only a few minutes. The sudden changes in acceleration and deceleration were a little nauseating for her, and leaving the train and standing on solid ground was always a strange experience. But the unease was quickly forgotten, and Riley set off towards her high school with a little spring in her step. Sonny kept up with her, as he was programmed to do, but his round face was pensive.

"Why so blue?"

"Oh, do I look-" Sonny started to ask before he caught the double-meaning of Riley's words and he rolled his large eyes. "That joke never gets old."

Riley laughed easily. "The real joke is that you keep falling for it, Sonny." Her expression then turned serious. "But seriously, what's eating you?"

"Well, it's silly," said Sonny, "but looking at all of the new Digimon that they are coming out with I guess I get a little worried. I mean, what if you get bored with me? Are you bored with me?"

They were next to a park and across the street from the high school now, but Riley stopped and turned to face Sonny. "Listen to me, Sonny, there's no way I would ever want to replace you. You're more than my Digimon, you're my friend. I don't care if there's a million Veemon out there or just one, there's only one Sonny. Got it?"

"Yeah," he replied, then his fanged smile reappeared and the Digimon added, "Sorry to bother you with that. You've got enough on your mind."

It was moments like this that Riley wished that she could reach out and touch her Digimon, to give him a hug or a handshake or pat his head or whatever. But instead she had to be content with matching his toothy smile with one of her own.

The two of them crossed the street and joined the throng of students being drawn into the high school's orbit. A few of Riley's friends were inside of the brick perimeter of the campus and waved at her. She returned their greetings and then knelt so that she was face-to-face with Sonny. "It'll only be for a few hours," she said.

"I know."

"Maybe you should try and hang out with some other Digimon while you wait," Riley suggested. "It could be good for you. I know that Margot's Digimon has been asking after you." Sonny made a face and Riley sighed. "It's just a suggestion, Sonny.

"I know." The Digimon shifted on his feet and said, "I think I'd rather surf the net."

"'Surf the net'! You really are a geezer," laughed Riley and then she waved goodbye to Sonny and stepped past the campus gate. An instant later, Sonny vanished.

The initial excitement over seeing her friends and catching up with them over how they had spent the summer lasted up until lunch, but it didn't take long for the stories to run out and for things to return to normal. The rest of the school day promised to go by slowly as the classes were little more than teachers ponderously reading through their respective class's syllabus while students daydreamed, doodled, or passed notes. In her fifth period English class, Riley was staring glassy-eyed out the window next to her desk as Mrs. Smith droned on about the relative value each project held for the class's final grades. It was just as cold in the building as she had remembered and Riley silently thanked Sonny for reminding her to bring a jacket.

After spending the whole summer together, she really missed him. Outside there were cars passing by and a few pedestrians walking. Only a few of them had Digimon with them, but with her eyepiece Riley could see all of them. She was about to go back to paying attention to her teacher when a small red shape poked out of the bushes ringing the park across the street. From the second story of the school, it wasn't easy to make out the details but Riley squinted and tried to study it, assisted by her obliging eyepiece.

It was a small furry creature, about the size of a raccoon, but it clearly wasn't an ordinary animal. For one thing, its fur was a strikingly shade of red with dark blue accents on its forehead and the tips of its long ears. Another thing that marked it as a Digimon was the fact that its large electric blue eyes were too intelligent. They were darting around like Riley would have expected from any wild animal, but there was a method to the way the Digimon was scanning the streets, looking for something or someone. Evidently, it didn't find it, and the Digimon disappeared back into the bushes.

The rest of the day, Riley tried to keep the details of what she had seen fresh in her head so that she could ask Sonny about it. It wasn't the most entertaining way to spend her day, but it gave Riley something to focus on when she wanted to drown out her teachers or Margot relating anything she could back to her family's trip to Myrtle Beach on Independence Day. In a way, all of this attention paid to the curiosity of this strange Digimon served to make the incident seem more important to her, and so by the time that the final bell had rung and she was leaving the steel and glass building, Riley was close to bursting with the anticipation of telling Sonny about what she had seen.

As soon as her body passed the threshold marking the high school off from the rest of the city, Sonny was there, rounding the corner of the brick wall as though he had been going for a pleasant stroll around the block and just so happened to run into Riley. "Hi Riley," he said cheerfully, "how was school today?"

"Oh, it was pretty lame," was her immediate reply. "The classes are boring, the boys are annoying, and Margot wants everyone to know that she spent every second she could over the last three months on the beach."

"Sounds like nothing much has changed then!"

Together they crossed the street, but Riley stopped at the corner rather than continuing on towards the train station. "Well, there was one other thing," said Riley. "I saw a Digimon."

Sonny stopped a few paces ahead of her and said, "What's the big deal about that, you see Digimon every day, and I'm not just talking about me or Greta."

"Well," said Riley, "there was something off about it, like, it was hiding in the bushes in the park here instead of walking on the sidewalk with its human. In fact, I don't know if it even had a human!"

"What are you talking about, Riley?" asked Sonny. "There's no way for a Digimon to exist apart from its human. Even if you send me on an errand, I don't actually physically go where you send me, I just get the information from the internet and bring it back to you. Come on, you know better than that."

"I know, I know," Riley said without really meaning it, "but I still want to look for it." She grinned and said, "And don't try and lecture me about needing to do my homework or anything because they didn't assign any."

Sonny let out a huffy breath, but followed Riley into the park. He didn't refrain from commenting, "This is a total waste of your time," as Riley started to search the area for the creature that she had seen a few hours earlier that afternoon.

"Oh, quit whining, Sonny," came Riley's voice from underneath a picnic table, "besides, aren't you always telling me that I should spend more time in the great outdoors and less time on my phone?"

He didn't respond, not at first, but instead stood in one place watching Riley's search with evident disdain. When Sonny did speak, it was to say, "There's a rainstorm coming this way, in about five minutes."

"Good thing you told me to bring my jacket then." Before Sonny could say anything more, Riley caught sight of red in-between the green of the bush she was looking at. "Here it is," she said. "Come over here, Sonny."

As her Digimon approached her, Riley spread the branches of the bush apart and found herself face to face with the Digimon that she had observed from the window of her school. It looked up at her owlishly, blinking its wide eyes.

"Hello," Riley said.

"Hello," the Digimon replied in kind.

By then, Sonny had joined them, and he was openly staring at the other Digimon. "You're an Elecmon," he said without preamble, followed by, "Where is your human?"

"I don't know," the small furry creature, the Elecmon, said, and then it began to shiver. At first, it seemed as though he was just cold, which would have been strange enough, but then her body was wracked by a particularly violent spasm and for a brief second his body came out of alignment, like a burst of static signaling a bad connection. Riley had heard of Digimon suffering from poor performance because of a bad connection to the 7G networks before, but it was definitely an unusual thing to happen, particularly in St. Louis itself instead of out in the more rural areas of the country.

Sonny was also surprised, but he didn't appear to regard the incident as an innocent event. Instead, he leapt backwards from the other Digimon with such force that a part of Riley thought that she would have heard the sound of his feet landing on the dirt even if she didn't have her earpiece in.

For his part, the smaller Digimon didn't seem to notice what had occurred and the Elecmon answered Sonny's question in a nervous voice that rapidly increased in volume and speed, "I don't know. I haven't seen her in, in, in a long time. I need to find her, but I don't know how. Can you help me? I need help."

"Sure," Riley said, just as Sonny said, "No." She glared at her Digimon and talked over him, adding, "we can help you. What's your name, little guy?"

"My human called me, Elmer," he said, his excitement replaced by bashfulness. "She's very nice," he said more to his paws than to Riley and Sonny.

Riley stepped back from the bush but held the branches open so that Elmer could come out of his hiding place without having to strain his programming too much. "Okay then, it's nice to meet you, Elmer. I'm Riley and the big blue coward behind me is Sonny."

Sonny's eyes narrowed, but he kept quiet, even turning away to look at the clouds rapidly approaching in the sky above when Elmer said with childish enthusiasm, "You're a Veemon! I've seen them before!"

"That's great, little guy," said Riley. "Do you know your human's name? Or where you lost her?"

"Angela," Elmer chirped, but then his face fell as he admitted, "I don't remember everything. It was a big building, but with lots of light that hurt our eyes. It didn't smell very good either."

Sonny interjected with a heavy sigh and explained, "I don't think we have time to play twenty questions with this Digimon. Riley, you need to get home."

"You're right, you're right," conceded Riley, but she immediately went back to focusing on Elmer. "How long have you been lost? How long have you been looking for your human?"

"Three days," said Elmer. "Oh, no, it's already been three days. What if something happened to her?"

Again, Riley had to resist the urge to reach out and try to touch a Digimon. Instead, she said, "She's okay, I'm sure, and I'm sure she'll be fine for one more day if you want to come with us."

"What?" both Digimon asked at the same time.

"Well, if anyone would know anything about a Digimon getting separated from its human like this, it'd be my dad," Riley explained, "and since it's going to rain like you said, Sonny, I'm afraid that Elmer's program will blow itself out trying to model getting rained on."

"Can that really happen?" asked Elmer.

Sonny's voice was much more forceful than usual as he argued, "If he's really in trouble, then he should just upload himself back into the network and wait for his human to call for him."

"But what if she can't?" insisted Riley.

Poor Elmer's head jerked back to Riley and he plaintively whimpered, "Is Angela in trouble?"

"I'm sure she's fine," Riley quickly assured him, and then added, "it's just that I think I know where she might be, and if I'm right then she might not be able to access her Digimon software right now." Neither of the two Digimon looked like they quite believed her, but when Riley stood back up to her full height and said, "Come on, let's go," they both followed after her.

They made it to the train station shortly before the rain did, and Riley ushered Sonny and Elmer onto the train after it pulled into the station and opened its doors. Sonny handled it without any difficulties as expected, but Elmer let out a small yelp as he leapt onto the train. As Riley grabbed a seat, the small red Digimon stood frozen on the floor as his body became disjointed again, only to recover from the static by the time that the train began moving. Again, he didn't seem to be aware that it had happened, and again Sonny was looking at Elmer warily. When he saw Riley looking at him and trying to catch his eye, Sonny pointedly turned to study the safety notices posted on the wall of the train.

They departed the train without incident, and were almost to Riley's house when the rain finally caught up to them. Sonny's program took a few seconds to orient itself to the change in weather and soon Riley was watching fat drops of rain sliding down his blue face that he blinked out of his red eyes. When she looked at Elmer on her other side, Riley was surprised that he was not having any issues with the rain. In fact, after growing used to how Sonny looked, it was even more impressive to her eyes to see the smaller Digimon's fur appear to grow damp, then wet, and then soaked as the rain became heavier. Still, even though his programming seemed to be holding up for now, Elmer was beginning to shiver again and Riley wanted to get him out of the rain as quickly as she could.

There was no way to let a new Digimon into the house and its network without her dad's explicit permission, and he had never once granted it to any of her or Mike's friends, so Riley led Elmer to a spot under the eaves of her house's garage and then ducked inside the house proper. When she returned less than a minute later, she had an empty cardboard box that had been left over from when Mike had been packing up his things for college.

"Here," she said, once she had set up the box, "you can spend the night under here, Elmer. That way you don't have to worry about the rain."

Elmer circled the overturned cardboard box and sniffed at it. Then, he ducked through the opening that Riley had torn in the side of the box and turned around to look at her and Sonny. "Thank you, but what do I do now?"

"You just sit tight, Elmer," instructed Riley. "Sonny will look for Angela tonight and I'll talk to my dad about you over dinner. We're going to help you, trust me."

Elmer folded his paws under him and rested his head on them. He looked up at Riley and looked so pitiful and helpless with his soaked fur and huge eyes that Riley's heart nearly broke. "I trust you," he said softly, and then those big eyes closed.

As soon as they were inside, Sonny was quick to go off on Riley. "This is very irresponsible, Riley!" he said. "Something's wrong with that Digimon out there! He could be infected with that virus that your dad has been having to deal with at work for the past few weeks!"

"Elmer? No way, Sonny," said Riley shortly as they headed up the stairs to the privacy of her room. "You're just being paranoid."

"Well, if you're not going to listen to me, then maybe I won't help you out."

Even though Riley was pretty sure that it was an empty threat, for reasons of programming more than personality, the girl and the Digimon still glared daggers at one another. Riley broke the stony silence first, saying coolly, "I want you to access any local news stories or hospital records in the city that you can get into and find out anything about little girls named Angela."

"It won't be easy to get into medical records," said Sonny through gritted teeth, "but I'll do what I can." His blue face softened then and he added, "Do you think she's sick, or hurt?"

"I hope not, maybe it's just something minor like getting her tonsils out." Riley looked at her door and sighed. "I have to help get dinner ready. Promise me you'll try to help Elmer out, okay?"

"I'll do what I can," Sonny said again.

Riley smiled and said, "I owe you one." Then, she opened the door and let Sonny walk through it. As soon as he was out of sight, Riley knew that he had vanished back into the network. Riley removed her eyepiece and earbud. Finally alone, she let out a heavy sigh. Then she headed back downstairs and helped to set the table and greeted her dad when he came home.

Since her brother had moved out, dinners had been generally quiet around the St. Germain household, so it was a surprise for her parents that Riley was so engaged and talkative. She talked a little about her first day back at school and dutifully reported on her classes, but the main focus of conversation was actually her father's work. She came up with a story about needing information for an assignment in one of her classes that sounded weak to her ears, but her parents were so taken aback that they didn't seem to notice.

"So, dad, could a Digimon exist apart from his human partner?" Riley asked as she chased what was left of her baked potato around the plate.

"Well, of course," he said in his matter-of-fact way, "the Digimon personality matrices are developed to correspond with the personality of its human, then it's assigned to one of the models that we have available."

Riley smiled winningly. "I know that, dad, but I mean, what about after the two of them are paired? Could a Digimon be separated from his human? Not just going back onto the network, but I mean, could he appear to people, interact with them, without his human being around?"

Over his glasses, Riley's dad studied her carefully and then said, "I think that's still in the realm of science-fiction, honey." He opened his mouth as if he was going to say more, but decided against it and cut off another piece from his pork chop instead.

But Riley was not willing to give up so easily. "But what if it didn't happen on purpose or by design or whatever?" she insisted. "What if a Digimon and his human got separated from each other?"

"That's impossible, Riley," her dad said with a finality that made Riley's other questions die on her lips.

They finished eating in silence, but when Riley had finished rinsing off their plates, her dad stopped her on her way up to her room. "Riley," he asked, "did something happen to your Digimon?"

"No, dad, Sonny's fine," she replied, but even though it was the truth, Riley couldn't help but feel as though she was lying to him.

Back in her room, she put on her eye and earpiece and called for Sonny. In an instant he was walking into her bedroom. Once she closed the door behind him, Riley asked him for his report.

Sonny dutifully told her that he had been unable to get into any hospital records, but his search had been more fruitful when looking at local media mentions. After compiling a list of accidents that had occurred over the last week, Sonny had scoured the details of the cases and lighted upon a news item about a girl, age eleven, who had been struck by a car. From there, Sonny had compared fundraising campaigns on social media campaigns and found a series of posts that gave the name of the girl in question as Angela, and one of which mentioned that she was in St. Louis Children's Hospital.

"Way to go, Sonny," Riley said, "I knew I could count on you." She wanted him to ask her how her own mission had gone, but Sonny didn't show any inclination towards doing so. Instead, Riley explained, "Now that we know where Angela is, we can go visit her after school tomorrow and bring Elmer with. Once we're inside the hospital we should be able to find Angela either because Elmer will remember the place or we can ask around."

Sonny shook his head. "I don't think that will work, Riley. They won't just let anyone walk into the hospital and start asking questions about their patients."

"Well, we'll figure something out. We've got plenty of time tonight and tomorrow."

"Speaking of tonight and tomorrow," Sonny interjected, "don't forget to get some sleep and read over the syllabi that your teachers gave you. You can't be falling behind in school just because you're becoming a little obsessed with this strange Digimon that you let follow you home."

Riley rolled her eyes, but still retrieved her backpack from where she had thrown it onto her bed. "You're such a stick in the mud, Sonny. 'Read over the syllabi', are you serious?" Then, more solemnly, she asked, "You don't really think I'm becoming obsessed with helping Elmer, do you?"

Sonny spread his hands wide with his palms out. "I'm just trying to look out for you, Riley, don't ever forget that, okay?" As he left, he said over his shoulder, "Let me know if you need my help with anything."

"Actually, there is one thing," Riley said. "Can you go and spend some time with Elmer? Just to keep him company, you know?" Sonny didn't say anything, but the stony expression on his round face was all the answer that Riley needed. "Well, all right, how about this: can you at least check in on him for me, just to see if he is doing okay?"

"I can do that," conceded Sonny through gritted teeth, and then, in a more pleasant tone, he said, "Good night, Riley."

"Good night, Sonny," she said, and then he was gone.

The rest of the evening passed by quickly as Riley busied herself with talking with her friends on her phone, and, reluctantly, reading over the pile of papers to which her teachers had all contributed. But even as she whiled away her night, Riley could not help but look out her window from time to time and down at the small cardboard box that she had set up next to the garage. She could not see Elmer through the rain, and hoped that he was staying warm under the cover of his slowly warping shelter. Then, Riley caught herself and smiled. No matter how weird his circumstances might have been, the simple fact was that Elmer was a still a Digimon, a computer program. His programming was pretty advanced, like all Digimon, and he could be a lot of things, scared, for instance, but not wet or cold.

She continued reading, and, before she knew it, it was time to go to sleep, and Riley got herself ready for bed. After she had said goodnight to her parents and had returned to her room, Riley let her hair out of the sloppy ponytail that she had put it in after her shower and removed her eyepiece and earpiece. She had been hoping that Sonny would come by, not just because she was still uneasy about how Elmer was doing, but also because it had become a sort of ritual for the two of them to have long drawn-out conversations between dinner and when Riley went to bed. Over the past summer, those talks had helped to fill the gap of her brother leaving, but tonight, and Riley could only reluctantly admit this to herself, there wasn't really anything more that they had to say to each other.

A few hours later, Riley's dreamless sleep was cut short by a scream that pierced the gentle patter of fat raindrops against her bedroom window. There was none of the usual grogginess that accompanied waking for her, and Riley was up and out of her bed before her brain could really register what it was that she had heard. Her first instinct was to look for Elmer and his miserable little cardboard box and there, illuminated by the warm orange light of a streetlight a few yards away, she saw something that horrified and confused her in equal measures.

There were two men standing next to Elmer's box. Both were dressed in matching black suits and wearing dark glasses despite the late hour. Their attire made the length of red bars in their hands stand out even more, and the two men were holding them in front of them at the side of the soggy cardboard box. One of them took a step towards the sad structure and again a sharp scream pierced the night. Riley couldn't be sure, and didn't want to be sure, but there was no denying it when the closer man kicked over the box to reveal Elmer's shaking form.

He tried to scream again, but the man who had hung back approached him now. As the red bar in his hand grew closer, Elmer's body began to spasm. Riley held her breath and waited for Elmer's programming to momentarily fail, and for it to correct itself with, but Elmer did not morph into any jagged image of himself. Instead, he just writhed on top of the old towel that Riley had given him, his little mouth opening and closing without making any sound. The men held their strange weapons over him and watched the Digimon's seizure for a few moments before exchanging looks and a wordless nod.

From her window, Riley gasped as one of the men reached down and grabbed Elmer by the scruff of his neck. Even though she was certain that they couldn't hear her through the glass and the rain, nor see her in the dark, one of the men did look up at her house and Riley ducked below the window. She huddled next to her desk breathing hard, her tired brain whirring with confused thoughts.

Maybe she had been fooled, she thought, because there was no way, absolutely no way, for someone to touch a Digimon. It had to been a trick of the light, Riley told herself, but she wasn't convinced. She tried to make sure by popping her head up again, but the men had shifted and they were walking away from her house in a way that made it impossible to see Elmer. But Riley was sure that they had Elmer with them; the little Digimon was nowhere to be seen.

She grew bolder as the two men walked away, even venturing back to her previous perch at the window as they reached an unmarked white van, a commonplace sight with all of the contractors in Riley's neighborhood. One man opened the back of the van while the other one threw a red bundle, Elmer, into it. Then, the two men exchanged another glance and then strode purposefully around to the front of the vehicle and climbed inside. The noise that the van made when it started wasn't nearly as loud as Elmer's screams, but in the wee hours after midnight, Riley was still surprised by it. The man driving the van didn't bother to turn on the lights, but he didn't drive recklessly either. Instead, the van pulled away from the curb and drove down the street almost gracefully, its white exterior reflecting the lights of the streetlights overhead until it rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight.

Even though she had been painfully aware of every second, Riley knew that it had only been a few minutes between her waking up and the end of the strange episode which she had witnessed. She wasn't quite sure what to call it. How could you kidnap a computer program like a Digimon? For that matter, how could you make one scream like those men made Elmer scream? The very thought of it made Riley shudder in her pink pajamas.

Riley wasn't sure of what she had witnessed, and even less of an idea of who those men were. She wanted to talk to someone, to try and make sense of it all. If she went back to sleep now, it would be too easy to dismiss it all as a crazy dream tomorrow morning. She needed Sonny, and Riley reached for the eyepiece and headphone which were sitting on her nightstand.

As soon as her hands closed around the plastic, however, a sickening realization came to her, and Riley looked back out the window at Elmer's box below. Then, she carefully replaced her device on the table and got back in bed. Thoughts chased each other around in her brain, and she dreaded the morning ahead of her even as she drifted back to sleep.