Meg's Apartment
Vic arrived at Meg’s building just as the sun was going down. He paused at the hallway window on Meg’s floor. In the street below, the new branch of the Breach was uncomfortably close. The hallway had a hint of the Breach’s purple hue — an eerie gift of lighting this time of day.
He knocked on Meg’s door.
“Meg! It’s Vic.”
No answer. He knocked again.
He waited a moment, and tipped his head down to listen for any sound through the door. There were no sounds of movement.
Shit, he thought. I really wanted to talk to her. Meg just kind of “got tech” in a way he never could, and he’d hoped she would have some idea what was going on.
He turned to walk away, but for no reason he understood, he didn’t leave. Instead, he spun a full 360° and tried Meg’s doorknob.
Open.
Nothing goes with unexpectedly quitting like a little B&E! Vic thought.
“Hello? Meg? It’s Vic,” he called out, and closed the door behind him.
He’d hung out here many times, and nothing looked out of the ordinary. As he moved through the rooms, he saw familiar photos, little messes that had been around a while, the couch cushion that sank a little deeper than the others because it was easily the best place to sit.
He rounded the corner and passed the kitchen. Just one person’s morning dishes, waiting patiently in the sink.
At the end of the tiny hall, he approached the open office door where Meg usually worked. He froze.
It was empty.
Not like, “oh she’s out for a break” empty.
It was empty.
No computer. No desk. No chair. Nothing on the walls. Even the nails that had hung her niece’s paintings had been removed.
You could see the imprints in the carpet from where the furniture had been. Which was good, otherwise Vic might think he was looking at a room that had never been used, and he was misremembering where her office was. But nope — all the little pressure points still held the dent of all the activity that had recently been in this room.
“What … the … fuck,” Vic said, entering the room slowly, in case he might get sucked away just by touching the floor.
He walked carefully to the window, to see if maybe the Breach was along the wall, or if somehow it existed in the room and he couldn’t see it (that wasn’t possible, but neither was a room’s contents just evaporating, either). But this window showed no sign of Breach activity, and the slice he had seen from the hallway pointed out in a different direction. This area was clear.
He searched the room for any sign of an explanation. But there wasn’t much to check in an empty extra bedroom. He thought about smelling the floor, and didn’t know what that would achieve, though it seemed like something they might do on TV. Even with no one watching and Meg possibly missing, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He double checked the closet, and then left the room, closing the door behind him.
He investigated the rest of the apartment more carefully now, looking for any sign that Meg was either out, or missing. Everything was exactly as he would expect, and no real sign of anything noteworthy … until he got to the bedroom.
On the nightstand was her phone, charging, and sitting next to it was a small bag that Vic recognized as her epipen case.
Meg would not have left her phone anywhere, but that paled in comparison to the attention she gave to her epi. When Meg was five, she hugged a balloon with Snoopy on it at a birthday party, and spent the rest of the night in the ER. Ever since, if she even started to leave without the epi, she’d go back for the bag and say “Snoopy’s not going to take me down,” or “Not today, Snoopy.” She never left a room, much less a building, without that bag.
Meg was gone.