Chapter 5

Bobby

9:00 AM

Bobby yawned and knuckled his eyes. He couldn't fall asleep here. He had moved to the Starbucks across the street when the sun rose to get out of his truck and use the toilet. The coffee was expensive, and they didn't offer free refills, but the Wi-Fi was better here. Besides, his bladder couldn't handle any more.

Every time the caffeine wore off, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds, the same devastation he'd witnessed at MacDonald's came back. Each time, worse than the last. He couldn't head back home either. Ivan's message was very clear. Bobby rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head was pounding, and not in the fun, after an all-night bender, way.

"What the fuck is going on here?"

That code. It all kept coming back to that code. It could rewrite time and space in the wrong hands. He didn't know which was worse: the one in the window or the one that destroyed the window. Bobby played with the sugar packets and started tying the empty ones in a knot. Anything to keep his fingers busy.

"The last time I worked on it was just before Gregory tried to kill me. It's what brought the American to me." He stared at his missing pinky finger. "I wish I'd never discovered how to manipulate it. That Motley Crue demo at the end was so true," he mumbled in Russian.

"It's what got Vlad killed," he whispered to the computer.

He still thought about his twin brother and wondered what had happened to the body. He asked the American and Ryan after he'd escaped, and both of them said it had been handled, but it didn't feel right. One day, he would have to head back to Moscow and visit Vlad's grave. Maybe Ryan would tell him where it was if he wasn't too busy leaving him swinging in the wind.

Wiping his face, Bobby stared at the computer screen. On it was something that looked like the code from the Shujing windows. He'd spent the last three hours recreating it from memory, and so far, it wasn't anything like before the memory block. He could tell that much. The block had degraded enough to tickle him with his trauma. Teasing memories that remained just out of reach. He'd tried to avoid the code and erase it, but every time he drifted off, some part of him wrote it again. Finally, he stopped fighting the memory, but now that he was awake and focused on writing it down, the numbers trickled onto the page. Like a writer stuck on a 'Dark stormy night.'

"It's only been three years. I know I locked it down for my own safety, but why can't I remember everything?" he said to his computer. "It was flowing out of me when I wasn't even trying, but now.... What's stopping me?"

A young man, about twenty-five, in a pink and yellow Speedo with a fancy pink cake, turned and glared at Bobby. "Could you please be quiet? I'm live-streaming here! What language are you speaking anyway? German? This is America. Speak English," he scoffed.

Bobby raised his hand in a karate chop gesture to say sorry, reversed it and gave the man the middle finger. "It's Russian, you peacock. I'll shut up vhen you learn how to grow a decent beard. Vhat is that fluff on your chin? Your dog vomit?"

The man put his hand to his mouth and gasped. "Well, screw you, man." He gathered his recording equipment and moved to the other side of the Starbucks.

"No, thank you. I don't sving that vay. Not enouff meat on you," Bobby laid on the Russian accent extra thick. The wannabe Tuber gave his middle finger to Bobby and sat down in a cloud of pink.

Then it hit him. Pink.

Colour was never important to the code, but it could be used to hide text, especially if it was in the light brown or blue spectrum. Every time he did the windows, he must have been reading the code, but the block must have been forcing him to ignore it. What did Kat say about the chew? Bobby racked his brains. 'It let the mind breathe.' That was it, he'd finally relaxed enough to unclench. He patted his pockets for the free sample Slazney'd sent.

Nothing.

"Where did I put that..." he slapped himself on the head. "Fuck! It's at the trailer." Either the police had it, or it was lost when his house exploded.

"Damn you, Ivan! I hope you didn't go all out on my account," he scoffed and pulled up the video on a separate tab. Maybe he could check the scale of the destruction. "Scram needs to get an iPhone if he's going to document the trailer park life. The Android he's got does nothing but destroy all sense of realism."

"Excuse me, sir, but could you keep it down?"

"Sorry about that," Bobby apologized to the server and closed the video.

He shut his laptop, shoved it into his bag, took the last swig of his coffee and tried his temporary handler again.

Nothing.

He used the toilet one last time to empty his screaming bladder. "I'm never drinking this much coffee again," he muttered. Bobby got into his truck and headed back to his trailer. It was the last place he wanted to go, but the pressure in his head wasn't letting go. Something was drawing him back there. It was a long shot, but maybe he could find the tin. He didn't know what else to do. If he could get there without running into Ivan, he'd count that as a win.

"What did that fucking window do to me?"

Ming Na Liu

9:00 AM

Kat pulled up to the Shujing in the Squeegees R'Us' Us's van. Ming jerked awake, pinched her leg and downed another gulp of coffee from her flask. It had been her third all-nighter in a row trying to dig up information on Slazney. There was nothing else tying him to the squeegee place. When she finally got to bed at three, the alarm woke her up at five. "After this, I'm taking some of my vacation days," she mumbled. Her editor could go to hell. There was no way he was guilting her into cancelling again.

When she'd asked Chip to let her borrow everything Bobby used to clean the hotel, with the addition of Kat, he said no and popped a caramel. Once she offered him some money and promised to do an article on him, it was quite easy. He was surprisingly passionate about cleaning.

"Thanks for getting me out of there today," Kat said. They were getting the gear out of the truck. "Chip was on a tear with Bobby missing, said he stole a bunch of equipment. He wouldn't stop ranting about the sanctity of a promise." Kat shook their head.

"My pleasure," Ming said. "I needed someone who knew how to use this equipment anyway." She continued to stack everything on the sidewalk. It was heavy. Having Dean here would have made this much easier.

No! He was on her shit list right now. He'd refused to give her the tin. Said it was evidence in an investigation. It didn't help that he was right, but after the main suspect disappeared, retracing Bobby's steps seemed the only way to find out what he had been doing.

"So, what do you want me to do?" Kat asked.

"I need you to set up the equipment on the roof and lower me down, doing the same thing Bobby would usually do. I'm trying to retrace his steps. It helps me get into his mind. According to the video, something happened here when he was cleaning, and I'm hoping to get some insight into him," Ming said.

"Sure. I love a mystery," Kat said. "Besides, anything to help Bobby out. He was the only one who'd apologize when he got my pronouns wrong," they said.

Ignoring the front desk, Ming and Kat went through the service entrance. Yichen had given his permission last night, but that didn't mean he'd told them what she was doing.

Exiting to the roof, Ming took in the view. The sun reflected off the nearby hotels and buildings, promising more heat to come.

"I love this sight," Kat stuck out their arms and twirled around. The wind from the desert brought a hint of heat and dust in the air. It's what made it so difficult to keep the windows clean. "When you can look over everything, all your problems seem so small."

"I guess I never really thought about it," Ming responded. She leaned forward to hide her awkwardness. It wasn't the pronouns; it was the lack of anything to say to a twenty-year-old human that left her tongue-tied. "When did I get so old?" she mumbled to herself.

It didn't help that she was on edge all morning. When she woke up, her room was freezing, her mother had left a massive guilt trip on her voicemail, and her life-saving coffee machine broke. They were all small things, but combined with Chip's lack of help, they left her nervous. Dean would have consulted his instinct, checked the danger and taken it slow. She needed more than a vague stomach ache to give in to superstition. There was still too much she didn't know about this case, and that irked her. Her fingers twitched. She hated having a mystery she couldn't solve.

Working on a problem like this usually helped her push those thoughts aside. Ming secured the lines to the roof's mounting pillar and stood up. "What do we do here?"

"Let me show you." Kat grabbed the line, swung it and tossed it over the edge. "For bigger buildings, we had a crane and two-person scaffolding. For smaller ones, like the Shujing, we just used this bosun chair. Bobby would sit in it and lower himself to the ground. After, he'd climb back up the stairs and do it again for another set of windows. It's perfect for a one-man job. Safer with two, in case someone gets stuck, but the owner only wanted Bobby and would pay him a triple bonus in cash." They pulled the scaffolding back up and offered it to Ming. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," she said, putting one foot on the thing and securing herself to the chair. Part of her expected it to fall to the ground.

"I'll keep the line taunt so it doesn't swing out too fast." They grabbed another rope and handed it to Ming. "Use this one to control your descent.

"Seems easy enough." Ming went to the edge of the building and looked over. Jerking her head back, she closed her eyes and thought of Colin Ferrell.

"I can do it!" Keeping her eyes on Kat's smirk, she lowered herself to the first set of windows, mimed cleaning, and continued with the next floor. Afterward, she descended to the ground floor and sighed.

"I can feel a headache coming on. The pinkness is oppressive," she mumbled to herself. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, she climbed back up the stairs.

Kat lowered Ming three more times for each set of windows on the first side. In the end, Ming was getting a headache. A small seed of pain was starting to dig in behind her eyes and exploding out from there. It was like staring at the computer screen for too long. The heat wasn't helping. She took out some aspirin and washed it down with cold coffee from her lunch, spitting out the dust.

"How did Bobby do all of the windows by himself?" Ming asked Kat. "Just lowering me takes about twenty minutes. And it's giving me a headache." She rubbed her shoulders, almost as if a presence had been staring over them all day. She shook her head. That was Dean's gut speaking, not her.

"Bobby was good at this job, and it usually only takes about four or five hours to do the whole building," Kat said, eating a sandwich. "Bobby said the same thing about the pinkness, though. I like it. It's soothing." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a joint. "Try this. I got it from my herbalist. It's great for headaches."

Ming took the joint and twirled it around in her fingers. Shrugging, she had Kat light her up.

"This is the last side. Where the body was found," Ming said, rubbing the back of her head. She handed the joint back to Kat. "I'm not going to hallucinate with that thing, am I?"

"No, you should be fine. This stuff just gives you a nice buzz, like a cigarette, only safer." They took a hit, lighting up the paper. "Oh, yeah. What happened to the body? The news said the police lost it," Kat set the scaffolding on the final side.

"They haven't found the body yet, but it'll turn up."

"Stupid," Kat scoffed. "Why would anybody want to take a body?"

Ming got onto the scaffolding one last time and lowered herself to the window where Barbie was killed. "This hole is in the exact center," she said, tracing the spiderwebs. They eventually reached the edge, radiating out from the middle in bigger and bigger circles. She stared at the pinkness, so much like the rest of the windows and leaned back. "Nothing." She hit her palm with her fist. "This was a fucking waste of time." Grumbling, she prepared to lower herself to the ground when the sunlight hit the window, reflecting off the pink. A small fleck of something peeked from the side, moving to the right. It was difficult to see, but Ming leaned forward. Nothing happened. She leaned back. Numbers and letters dug into her brain, sinking their claws and driving out all other thoughts. It changed her thoughts, bringing out new ideas and new worlds. Forcing herself away from the pink glass, she saw the destruction of the Strip. Buildings were gutted, and the road was in ruin. Craters filled the desert.

Ming screamed, grabbed her head and slumped to the side.

When she woke up, she was on the ground outside the Shujing. Kat was squatting over her, trying to get some water into her. "You're awake. I was worried about you," they said. Kat was holding Ming's head, concern in their eyes.

"What happened?"

"After you passed out, I had to lower you to the ground," they said, sticking their hand behind their head. "I think the heat was getting to you. I was worried I'd have to call an ambulance, and I didn't know if you were insured."

Two of Yichen's bodyguards stood next to them. Kat shrugged. "They helped me get you out of the harness and brought everything down," they said, frowning. "I don't think we can go back up there anymore."

"That's okay. I'm finished here," she said, holding her head and swaying to the right. "It's probably the heat. Let's get back into the van. Chip's waiting for it, and I need to lie down." Ming got into the passenger's seat, turned on the air conditioner and closed her eyes while Kat loaded up the equipment. Between the refreshing coolness, the images of Vegas's destruction kept flashing behind her eyes. And the numbers. She could still see them, hovering there, just beyond her reach, but they were fading. She couldn't hold it in. She needed someone who understood computers to help her figure this out. If she saw whatever those numbers were in a broken piece of glass, what did Bobby see? She needed to find him. He might be able to explain what was going on.