Somewhere…

Stupid Lizard. Stop looking at me. You're like some kind of a bottom shelf throwback. Scales and four feet and a tail. Very original.

Teeth.

Stupid lizard. Food doesn't even work like that. Or, I guess it does for you. That's fine. I won't talk shit about your teeth anymore. Maybe it all comes from a place of insecurity. I told Dr. Kim that I would try to work on that.

Oh wait…

Stupid nano-whatevers.

Stupid everything.

It's not that everything is stupid. But when you see anything ten million times, it must become stupid, and since I've seen everything ten billion times, it must all be stupid already.

But I'm not saying everything has some kind of intrinsic stupidity.

Or that I even know what intrinsic means.

Or stupidity.

Or anything.

The only point I'm making is…

It's a stupid skirt! Why is it so long? You could squeeze twenty ballerinas, stern to bow, in that thing.

Of course, I would never talk about women like that, because nobody talks like that, except over there, I guess? They say a lot of weird phrases about boats over there. And over there.

The face that launched a thousand dicks.

Not dicks. Ships.

Stupid words.

Stupid face.

Stupid rules.

Stupid everything.

And for the love of all that is holy, will you PLEASE LET ME OUT OF HERE?!

CHAPTER 1

When that sizzle turns into a drizzle… Get on . Rose was staring at a poster wedged into the corner of a subway car. Two unhappy people on a date. They had committed the dire mistake of trusting good ol' fashioned dating apps.

Rose was on her way home from a rehearsal on a Tuesday, at 2:00 in the morning. The big recital was in three days.

She kept staring at the poster. Like an AI is gonna help, she mused. Put it in a sex robot, cut out the middleman. The last time Rose had gotten any was sometime in the spring of 2020. Covid really did a number on her sex life.

Her attention switched to a head she was seeing through the window on another car. The head looked familiar, the hair really, not the head. Maybe his head shape was somewhat familiar, but it was more about how his hair was jutting out at a 75 degree angle and then swooping downwards.

When she got off at her station, Rose watched as the distinctive hair guy got off too and she could finally see his face. It was Suraj, a man who Rose had met at Sherwin-Williams when she repainted her Mom's house. Suraj noticed her too and gave her a wave, inviting her to come over. She took the invitation, and the first thing he did was point to the case Rose was carrying. "Is that an instrument?"

Rose smiled and patted the case. "Yes." She was beaming. "My violin. Me and the old girl are heading home after a very, very long day."

"That's amazing. I didn't know you were a musician."

"Yup." She didn't know what else to say about it.

"Have you ever played a shenhai?"

Rose had not.

"It's like a tube with holes. Well, I'm sure that describes many instruments…" He chuckled to himself. "Anyway… My uncle would sometimes manufacture them in his workshop."

"Really?" Rose didn't want to admit it, but she had completely lost focus on what Suraj was saying. Not because he was boring, but because she noticed something behind his head. But he kept on going, and Rose nodded at the appropriate time. Then he stopped.

"Rose. Are you okay?" I guess that wasn't the appropriate time… She pointed behind him, and he turned to look. "What do you think that is?" She wondered. Suraj had no idea what he was supposed to be looking at. "The door." Rose directed him to it, visible from across the two tracks.

"Isn't that a… Construction door? The workers use it?"

"So why is it glowing?" The door itself wasn't glowing, but there was a sharp blue light emanating from the bottom, the left side and out from the top of the door. Rose was thinking about the construction of the joint. The big green tile letters on the wall said Bergen St. Her home station. Rose knew a little about it, she knew there was another part to the place, accessible through that very door. What could be glowing so bright that it penetrated the tunnel and the narrow stairway leading down there?

"It's so… Blue…"

Suraj shrugged his shoulders.

"Is that not weird to you?" Rose asked, and he shook his head. Suraj mumbled something, probably Stay safe, and then he decided to leave really quickly.

'What a crazy bitch'. Rose laughed on the inside, That's what he's probably thinking. And then a little on the outside.

What's going on down there?

It's worth noting that Rose told her Mom, Justine, about this when she got home, but Justine didn't care at all, which was baffling because Rose had learned about the Bergen Street station and all its wonders from her in the first place. Not only did she not care, but she was confused as to why Rose was thinking about glowing doors instead of her upcoming recital.

Rose didn't understand this. It wasn't even a question, anymore. She always won, because she put the work in. She went to her room and did her rudiments. Thirty minutes of form, position. Sets, patterns, stringwork. One hour of straight practice. Then she lied down.

She already played all day with her section. It was enough.

She fell asleep and decided to dream about blue doors.

CHAPTER 2

Friday

Rose never wanted this feeling to end. The soft hum of the engine. The blur of the road and the city and the water outside the window. The smell of chestnut trees lining the highway. The way her violin case felt, perched upon her lap. The metal corner.

Most of all, it was the way the sun had blown a bulb, leaking all over the sky like cranberry juice. Everything was bathed in a rosy film, from the clouds down to the water twinkling beneath the GW Bridge.

It was rosy. Rose thought about the word Rosy, and its cousin, Rose.

It was her name, but Rose had long ago decided to sever the link between her identity and its source. Some delicate thing.

Sure, everyone always said don't mess with the thorns, but this felt like some shit a man said two hundred years ago to justify treating his wife like a potted plant. Sure, she's stuck in the house, trapped in dirt, but at least she has spikes?

Instead, Rose believed her name was a verb, sitting in a textbook some googly-eyed kid would be reading two hundred years from now. It said 'This girl was born sitting, but she rose'.

"Stop playing with that."

Marcus swatted her hand away from the glove box. Rose had been jiggling a loose hinge without thinking. "It's gonna fall open, then the cops are gonna roll up and see my gun in your lap."

"You have a gun?" Rose knew he didn't. But wait… Did he?

All he gave her was a grin. Then he put his eyes back on the road, before rolling ye olde faithful out of his mouth. "Have you been looking for a new place?"

She hated that question. "Have you been looking for my new dick? 'Cause it's right here." She pointed at her crotch. It wasn't even talking. She was just pelting Marcus with rotten tomato words. Deflecting, as Dr. Kim would say. She was usually pretty good at it, but this dick joke wasn't her best work. She was tired.

"You know I can't leave."

She didn't bother to look at Marcus, because she already knew the stanky, judgemental face he probably had. Besides, the New Jersey skyline was all foamy. Shimmering. I wonder what we look like from here. Then Rose scraped her side against the handle of her violin case as she turned to Marcus.

"I remember what I wanted to tell you."

Marcus adjusted his glasses and flicked his eyes from the rear-view mirror to Rose. "Go on."

"Something weird is happening in the Bergen Street station."

"Tell me about it. There was this beautiful man… I couldn't stop looking at him, and he was standing right at that very station."

"What's weird about that?" Stop turning every conversation into this…

"Well, usually I'm not into short guys, but there was just something about him that screamed Better than Shai."

Rose was already done listening. "Uhuh. Anyway, back to me, please?"

Marcus strained at the weight of clearly wanting to vent about something, and then gave her a small, sour nod. "Fine. The uh… Station?"

Rose smiled. "I was coming home one night from the conservatory. By the way, do you know who I ran into that day? Suraj from the paint store." "Okay… How was he?" "Oh, he was fine. Anyway, I'm on the F Train, basically alone because it's two in the morning. And I get off at Bergen like I always do. And…" Rose squinted her eyes, conspiratorially, "You know how there's that secret platform underneath the main platform?"

"I was not aware." Marcus replied. Flatly.

I hate you. Be interested in something. "Yeah, there's an abandoned platform they stopped using in the 'Nineties, right underneath the main platform. My mom said it would still stop down there in the 'Eighties, and it was already pretty gnarly, so you can imagine what it's like now."

Marcus nodded. Stone tunnels and trees gave way to industrial bridges and billboards over the 125th Street Fairway. "I saw something kind of strange."

Finally, Marcus glanced over at her. "What?"

"I saw a blue light. Behind the maintenance door that one might use to say… Sneak down to the lower level. Where the abandoned platform is."

"What?" This What was different. Accusatory. He again glanced at her with upturned brows. His eyebrows were outrageous. "Have you done that? Snuck down there?" Ugh. What a little scaredy-cat. She wanted to mess with him, so she answered "Yeah. No big deal." Marcus turned to look at Rose and study her face. He only had a second, so he made it count. He looked at her nose. She was lying.

"I don't know why you joke about these things. You drive your mom crazy with this stuff."

"I know. I know."

"We're on our way down to celebrate your incredible performance and now I got it in my head that you're sneaking down into secret tunnels in the middle of the night?"

"But what do you think it is?" She blew right past that. She was curious. She needed a problem to solve. "That blue light…"

"Maintenance." A simple answer for a simple man. Marcus was actually pretty smart, but he was saddled with a bulbous fear gland. Rose had never really fucked up in her life, unlike Marcus. He had fucked up big time. He was a fuck-up. Former fuck-up.

Now he was cautious, conscientious, while Rose was stir-crazy. She yearned to make some mistakes. So, she explained that "It just didn't look like anything I've ever seen. And I'm curious."

"Don't go down there." Marcus waited for her to respond. Then he said it again. "Don't go down there, Rose. I'm serious." He couldn't take his eyes off the road, but for some reason, Rose wasn't answering. Then she suddenly gasped.

"Oh… My… Lanta."

"What?" Another What. Bleh.

"Oh my god. New Jersey. Wait, what city is that?"

"Jersey City."

"Oh, lordy loo. It's in Jersey City."

"What is?"

"It's terrible!"

"What is it?! I can't look, I'm driving!"

"It's the Colossal Titan!"

Rose laughed and laughed. As soon as Marcus got to a red light, he theatrically swiveled his head to give her a look. He was like Laurel or Hardy. Take your pick. The fool and the foolee.

They mostly stopped talking for the rest of the ride. Marcus had put on some Eric Dolphy, as if to proclaim to the whole world, from his car, I listen to Eric Dolphy! But it was kinda cool. And kinda stupid. Clearly the work of a mad genius.

Rose watched as the skyline was blotted out by Chelsea Piers. And then buildings and more buildings. Art Deco, brown, downtown. No more chestnut tree smell. Now it was Nuts 4 Nuts. That felt like it meant something to Rose, something significant, but she forgot it.

"Close your window."

Rose nodded, rolling her eyes. As if she had to be told. Whether it be tradition or science, one must close the window before entering the Battery Tunnel. Or, the Hugh, L. Carey Tunnel, or whadevadafuck. So she closed the window.

On the other side of the tunnel, in Brooklyn, Marcus brought up Shai again. His boyfriend of two-ish years. Isn't that the cutoff? Rose didn't want to hear about it, mostly for selfish reasons. She liked Marcus and Shai together, even if she knew they were fundamentally incompatible.

Like always, her mind was racing. She couldn't really focus.

Truly, there was only one thing Marcus could do, Be honest with the guy.

"So… What do you think?" he asked her.

They had long ago stopped in front of the restaurant, Centanni's. The old awning was better.

She looked at Marcus, and then put it into words.

"You know how you feel, don't you?" She waited for Marcus to nod his head, and he did. "Every day you don't tell him, you're just wasting his time."

Marcus seemed surprised by her answer, and it suddenly dawned on Rose how hostile she had come across, or indifferent. "I'm sorry…"

"No, I'm sorry."

"You're double parked."

"I know."

Marcus needed to park the car somewhere else. He told Rose he would meet her inside and then gave her a meaningful hand squeeze, before she unclicked her seatbelt and stepped out of the car.

She grabbed her violin. Rose watched Marcus drive around the corner and a strange feeling of dread set in her stomach, which seemed completely inexplicable. He was driving her to this restaurant for a celebration, in honor of her achievement! One that she worked very hard for, by the way, so why did Marcus suddenly seem like Fat Tony driving her to Satriale's to get whacked? She rubbed her head and walked over to the Restaurant, peeping through the glass.

Her mom, Justine. Her brother Jason, and her Grandma, Christine. They were all in there, in one of those little booths, waiting for Rose.

Grandma said something and Jason and Mom laughed. They were having a good time.

Rose was standing in front of the maintenance door.

Hot mama. What a feeling. She had literally climbed down into the very track itself, and then back up the rickety metal staircase leading to the door, and for some insane, fucked up reason, the door just opened.

No way. She opened the door and got blasted by light. Powerful, dark blue, almost violet, not like that wimpy LED bright blue, more like one click above the Mariana Trench. But it wasn't just the light. She was hearing things too. What in the shazbot? She had to know what was going on down there.

So she closed the door behind her, and she descended the staircase, finding herself in an otherwise bricked off part of the station. Same white tile, same green Bergen St. But it was old as shit.

And there was garbage everywhere. And, of course, there was the strange clicking and beeping noises. Otherwise, it was like a bite out of time. There was some graffiti of a guy with huge pants flipping the bird. Oh, the 90's.

She walked down the tunnel leading to the abandoned express track, which used to serve the F Train, back in the good-old-golden days. The dazzling blue light was piercing every shadow, its source shrieking out from something around the corner, on the far side of the track.

As she got closer, she heard a voice pop out from beneath the strange clicks and buzzes. It was a man's voice, and he was clearly having a bad time. But he wasn't ranting in English. Rose thought it sounded maybe like Finnish, but she didn't even know what Finnish sounded like. All she knew was that it sounded weird, and that was good enough for her. She tried to concentrate on the sounds she was hearing.

It was something like, "Sak! Sak! Ulamaru sasa uast!" He was yelling Sak through gritted teeth, like Rose would have yelled Fuck when she stubbed her toe. It probably was something like that, she imagined. So why was this guy frustrated? And what were the strange clicking noises? And what were the strange beeping noises and whirring noises and the blue light? Rose knew she was going to have to rely on more than her sense of hearing. Smell? No, it smelled like an abandoned subway station. She preferred to not use that sense for the time being…

Unless she had invisible stretchy arms, which she didn't, the only sense left was sight.

She was staring at a poster for an old sitcom on one of those old Tv stations. It was called Best Friends For Never. It looked like a slob in a hard hat was being forced to live with a meticulously coiffed fashion model. Something like The Odd Couple, she surmised. And then she wondered if she was about to lock horns with someone in the same sitcommy way, this strange voice muttering nonsense words. Is he about to become my new best friend?

"Ulama oksekan, sut. Eh… Sut? Ak karang sak! Sak! Sak! Sak!"

Rose set her violin case down and then slowly stepped forward. She didn't want him to know she was here, yet. So she quietly peeked around the corner.

And what she saw defied explanation. Truly. She wondered if she was dreaming for a moment. But she wasn't. This was real life. Her phone worked like before. The posters weren't magically changing. Her teeth remained firmly attached to her jaw. This wasn't a dream. So what the Sak was she looking at?

First, Rose took her phone out and scrolled past all the texts and missed calls and snapped a photo for Marcus. She waited for a few seconds to see if he would see it, but she didn't have a signal, so she put her phone away.

After that, Rose went through her options. This thing was:

An art project. It was some kind of futuristic sculpture this guy was tinkering with. But why here? And why did he seem so upset if it was just a piece? And why did his language and his accent sound like nothing she had ever heard before? She tucked that away.

An MTA thing. Rose knew the NYC subway system didn't run on electronic equipment. It didn't even run on analog equipment. This bitch was mechanical, from the 1930's. Maybe this machine was so alien because it was from then? And it was supposed to do what? There were all kinds of symbols on it, and it didn't look like anything else she had ever seen from that time period. Plus, this guy did not look like an MTA employee. He was wearing a white, plastic jumpsuit, and a helmet covered in circular glass panels. Doesn't work.

A government/military/CIA thing. Works better. But it didn't explain the accent!

This whole thing was bad. This option seemed more plausible by the second. She remembered the big, bad word, terrorism. And sure, there was terror. But she was struggling to find the ism. The thing was belching out some sort of discharge. Maybe it was dangerous. Maybe it was deadly. It was right under Cobble Hill…

The thing was made of smoothly sculpted black metal, lined with veins of blue circuitry. The thing sloped out to a clear chamber at the bottom, full of glowing orange juice, or something, but probably not that. There was a holographic readout, scrolling down as the guy flicked his hand through the air. A touch-less screen.

He mumbled again. "U duraka dea, e zua, e zua kotasko." Then he shook his head and placed his hand on one of the knobs, turning it. "Ay. Tsau. Cray. Vo. (One, two, three, four?) Va. Zay. Zayva. Owat." Eight? The knob snapped onto the eighth slot, so it seemed like she was correct in her thinking. But she didn't get to celebrate for too long. Soon after, he pressed the button.

A belligerent sound started rising, like an engine, but it was full of broken glass, clinking around inside like a violent snowglobe. Or some angry, metallic beast was being awoken from its long slumber. The glowing orange juice was being drained out of the chamber, sent somewhere else. Then an antenna looking thing came out of the top and unfolded itself. On the tip of the antenna, a crackling, stuttering light switched on.

Ruh roh. The guy started typing something on a big blocky obsidian keyboard. He wasn't angry anymore. She had almost taken comfort in the strange man's frustration, as it meant that whatever this was wasn't going according to plan. That was good. Unless, maybe this thing was supposed to save the world…

No. Look at it. Look at the smoke. Listen to the sounds. They're all saying one thing. This is a bomb. She didn't want to think about it. This. Is. A. Bomb. The thought popped up again. But she shook her head. This isn't my problem. I'm just Rose. I'm a violinist, not a cop, not a superhero. Someone else will come. Someone else will do something. She looked towards the stairway. No feet. This thing is right under your neighborhood.

How big would the explosion be? Big enough to destroy Cobble Hill? All of NYC? The world? What about Mom, Grandma, Jason, and Marcus? No, this whole thing is crazy.

She could leave right now. She could take her violin and walk back up the stairs and pretend like she never saw any of this. But she had. She'd seen it.

If you see something, say something. The prime directive. She saw something. There was only one thing she could possibly do next. So she forced her feet to walk, and her mouth to talk.

"Hey! Hey! What are you doing?!"

The man was startled. He whipped around, showing off his red, puffy face. Then his eyes grew wide. "Sak! A zoa zoa!"

"Yeah, Sak is right! What the hell is this thing?!"

The man went fishing and reeled in a tiny silvery black fish from his pocket. Click.

"Ma szdhin damareizhti." -{ Your every face. }- A hoarse, buzzy, telephone line voice came creaking out of the fish. What?!

Rose stepped forward, wishing to demonstrate her New York attitude. "Oh, you can understand me, now? Then maybe you can explain this atrocity. This audacity that I am witnessing right here!" Gesturing to the bomb thingy.
The fish hissed, catching up with her. Then it booted. -{ You try to define me at this time? Possible, To have information on holocausts. Awday-sidy? (~~Modem sounds…) I'm looking. }- Rose blinked. That wasn't at all what she wanted to say. Plus, it was still in english! Broken english…

The man decided today was the day he wanted to push Rose away from the thing physically. "Zoba!" -{ Not for you. }- "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" -{ Wo, wo, wo. () }- Rose shoved him back, hard, and he went stumbling right into the Tropicana. The glass tipped over and shattered on the kitchen floor. Fuck! Now the man really looked scared. He took off his helmet, revealing a pock-marked face. "A zua kavat sak! Azu nuanz! Zhoyga!" -{ Idiot villagers. You're all the same. Thank you. }-

Now Rose knew this guy was an asshole as well as a comic book villain. Not that it mattered. The glowing orange juice was everywhere. "What does this machine do?!" She cried, probably in vain.

The man flicked something on the tiny earbud and now it spoke in a different, more masculine voice. -{ Azet semet salazoyni? }- The man scratched his head and dropped his volume. "Ozpa…" And then a big shrug. -{ I don't know. }- The tinny voice echoed down the tunnel.

Blood filled her ears. Rose was gobsmacked. "You don't know what it is…" -{ Ozpozi aman. }- The man shook his dumb head, which infuriated her. "THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MESSING WITH IT?!" -{ Azet- Hel. () Oztanik salazastai? }- The fish wasn't properly conveying her outrage. The voice was being emotionally neutered. And then the man looked at something on his wrist. A watch? Are you bored? "Sak. Ana zanta…" -{ Devil. It's too late. }- The man looked into Rose's eyes, and she watched his expression go as dead as a turkey. Then his noggin hit the cold stone platform. If he wasn't gone before the crack, he probably was now.

"Um…" -{ Um. (~~) }-

Rose was suddenly alone with the machine.

Ok. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. That's not working. I need to do something. It goes 'See something, say something, then do something'. I always forget about the third part. She amused herself. She remembered getting canned from a recital one time. The bandleader told her she had a bad case of smart-mouth, and he didn't want her to infect the entire string section. Now is not the time. Mom was beside herself. Not the time for smart-mouth. She was talking to herself because she didn't want to face the music. In this case the music was a big alien orange juice bomb, a B.A.O.J.B. And it was broken. And this stupid fucking alien man died on the floor and left me with this mess that I don't even understand!

Why did he die? …Did he die? Rose ran over to the plastic-jumpsuited body lying on the platform and examined it. She held her finger up to his neck. She didn't feel a pulse. Fuck. Then she looked down at his watch thingy. It was a black screen on a string. There was a rainbowish soccer ball bouncing around on it. She tried to click the screen, swipe the screen. Nothing worked. She clicked on the thing that looked like a soccer ball and it moved away from her finger. Did it know? She cracked her knuckles. Then she stood up and turned around, facing the eight hundred ton obelisk in the room.

It was still powering up, going through some diabolical Shepherd's scale on a never ending ascent. The naked tube where the orange juice was supposed to go was clinking around, upset. Then suddenly, the thing started shaking. Everything was shaking. Is this it? It felt like an earthquake. This is it. Time to meet my end. Or something even worse. Wait, no… It wasn't an earthquake. It was an F Train.

She heard it faintly from above. "This is Bergen Street. Transfer is available to the G Train. The next stop is Jay Street - Metrotech." And then a different voice. "Stand clear of the closing doors please." Then the two-note jingle.

The major third and a one… Ahem…

Up close, Rose realized it wasn't made of metal at all. She slid her hand down the side of it, and the sensation was more like rubbing velcro. Then she imitated the man's gesture from earlier, a rambunctious flick of the wrist, and the touchless screen popped up.

Hieroglyphics. Incomprehensible yet terrifying. It was like when she first saw an algebra problem. She scrolled down and found an Ikea manual for the assembly of Satan's easy-chair. If the ancient Egyptians had seen this, we'd probably be on Mars by now. Her own thoughts were confusing her. She gazed upon the vast array of knobs and switches, they could have been suction cups lining the underside of a giant squid. It was embarrassing.

What am I doing here?

Why did I go down here?

What's wrong with me?

All good questions. Then she realized something.

I'm out of my depth.

She grabbed her violin case and turned the corner, walking up the stairs. I'll call the police, they'll figure it out. What's the worst they can do? The guy's already dead. She went out through the maintenance door onto the upper platform. There was a woman on the far end of the station. She was tall, wearing a red jacket and black pants. It was nice to see another person. Especially a tall woman with big hair.

The station began rumbling again and Rose turned to see a G Train pulling in. Then she noticed something on the platform behind her.

Orange footprints.

The surfaces reflected light in a bizarre way, flickering like an old VHS tape as the headlights of the G train passed by. The light or maybe her own mind were playing tricks on her. She couldn't tell which.

If this is my last night, I'll play something moody. Maybe Strauss.

The train came screaming past her.

Rose looked down at her phone to see if she had service, if Marcus had gotten the picture yet. Nope. The train came to a stop. The doors opened.

"This is Bergen Street. Transfer is available to the F train." A woman named Bianca briefly woke up to see if this was her stop. She saw a case for a musical instrument just lying on the platform—all by its lonesome. Then she closed her eyes again. She worried briefly about its owner, and then forgot about it.

"The next stop is Hoyt-Schermerhorn."

CHAPTER 4

76 calls. 108 texts. Justine and Marcus were relentless, sitting on the couch all night and all day the next day, hounding her. Marcus hit up her old Insta, Snapchat, he even got a hold of her ex-boyfriend.

Nada.

On Saturday night they finally called the police and gave statements. She was right there, and then she wasn't. Something along those lines. A technician from T-Mobile attempted to trace her phone, and the first thing he said was "Are you sure you gave me the right number?"

They nodded their heads. All day they assumed that her phone was simply turned off—The Technician had a different story. But first, he called up HQ to confirm that this indeed was at one point in time and right up until 11:46 last night, a real, working number. And they confirmed it. Once he accepted this fact, he told Marcus and Justine the news.

"This phone doesn't exist anymore." The technician immediately regretted phrasing it this way. He saw the disgust and confusion creeping across their faces. He didn't want to play it up, but he couldn't help it, this was some weird shit. He explained that this model, and in fact, practically all models of smartphone at this point, have a contingency plan. The phone could be turned off, and it would still be sending out a GPS signal. The phone could be buried under 80,000 tons of Egyptian sand and King Tut's tomb and it would still give out a signal. It could be inside the belly of a whale and T-Mobile would, for the right price, send a team of divers and Captain Ahab himself to retrieve it for you.

But most importantly, he explained, even if your phone was smashed to junk, rendered completely and utterly non-functional, the satellite would still pinpoint exactly where its lifeless husk remained.

This phone, however, Rose's phone, was not giving out such a signal.

"She must have gotten sucked into a tornado like Dorothy."

Marcus was furious with the technician, especially for bringing up The Wizard of Oz at a time like this. He actually threatened to sue him, but he had no case and the guy knew it.

It escalated pretty bad. Marcus walked out of the police station ashamed and somewhat relieved he wasn't arrested for nearly punching the lights out of the T-Mobile guy. He was ashamed that Justine had seen him like that. All this self pity. It's egocentric. I should be thinking about Rose. I should be thinking about how to find her.

To be continued...