By 8 a.m. Monday morning, Emz was out on the street, brimming with energy as he hailed a taxi. He programmed several waypoints, instructing the autonomous vehicle to weave in a zigzag pattern around sixteen square blocks from the corner of Urban and Updike down to the corner of Xtina and Xu. As the taxi reached the starting point and began following the planned route, Emz scanned each stretch of street in all directions, searching for a skinny man in his sixties, possibly jogging.
The streets were bustling with people heading to work or making school runs, but there was no sign of Gary. Emz had found nothing online the evening before—this old fart was completely off the grid. No social media, no mention in chess clubs, not even a whisper on dark forums about building energy management systems, whatever that was. The next ultramarathon in the area wasn’t until spring.
As the taxi reached the corner of Xtina and Xu, Emz set additional waypoints to reverse the pattern, repeating it once more before returning to the original starting point. After a third sweep of the sixteen square blocks yielded no results, and feeling unexpectedly drained by the mental effort of constant scanning, Emz gave up. He redirected the taxi to Poyz Plaza for his next plan.
At 3 p.m., he sat huddled on a cold wooden bench, fists clamped deep in the pockets of his winter coat, zipped up to his nostrils, with his thick beanie pulled low, rubbing against his eyelids with every blink. He sat for nearly an hour, occasionally shaking off the chill as he watched the chess tables. Dog walkers paraded around, robotic units emptied recycling bins, a mentally challenged person screamed at a flock of pigeons and ran off when they suddenly took flight. A frail, stooped old man marched by in a power-assisted exoskeleton, which ran down either side of his hips and knees. People came to play chess—some quick, some lengthy—but not Gary. Not that Emz actually expected him to return, having only encountered him here two days ago.
Finally, Emz saw the same old Asian player he’d noticed before, possibly Chinese by the broader face shape and flatter nose, arrive in heavy winter clothing, carrying a cushion and a wooden box. He sat down and began unpacking the chess pieces onto one of the Plaza’s molded concrete boards.
Emz unfolded himself from the bench, rubbed warmth into his arms, and walked over to the man setting up the pieces.
“Nín hǎo, lǎo xiānshēng,” he greeted, doing his best to get the respectful intonation of ‘hello sir’ correct.
“Nín hǎo, xiǎo xiānshēng,” the older Chinese man replied, to the younger, kindly smiling as he pushed his big cheeks up against fluffy earmuffs. “You have good Chinese.”
“Unfortunately, that’s all I have,” Emz said apologetically. “Do you remember me from Saturday?”
“Yes, you chased my opponent away,” he answered, almost amused. “He got away, I think?”
“Yes,” Emz agreed with a little laugh and a nod. “He’s very fast!”
“He runs a lot, every day. He always gets away.” The Chinese man gestured to the opposite concrete chair. “Please, play a game with me.”
Emz sat down, feeling the cold slab immediately reach through his jeans, zapping away his body heat. He shuffled his coat under him for some padding.
“That’s why I bring a heated cushion,” the older man chuckled, seeing Emz’s discomfort.
“That’s smart,” Emz acknowledged. “I haven’t played in years, since I was a child. I may not give you much of a game.”
The older man nodded his understanding. “Then this will be good practice for you, and an easy win for me, I hope!”
The man took a pawn of each color in both hands, rearranging them under the table until satisfied, then raised them for Emz to choose. Emz picked the fist that revealed a white pawn, and the older man began to arrange the pieces accordingly.
Once done, Emz moved his king’s pawn two spaces forward, a classic opening.
“You said he always gets away. Have many people chased him?”
“A few,” the older man replied, moving his own king's pawn forward to meet the white one. “They’re sent to take his Pokémon card.”
“You know about the card?”
“Yes, he showed it to me once.”
“He always keeps it on him?”
The older man shrugged. “It was in the back of his mobile case.”
Emz internalised this information for a moment, then glanced back down at the game and leapt his king’s knight forward over the defensive row of pawns, and in by one square to put pressure on the central black pawn. “Is it his card or someone else’s, though?”
His older opponent moved a bishop in response. “I do not know. Though no one has caught him yet, so it is still his. But you were close, young man. I saw you leap over the bench.”
Emz, unsure of the next move, eventually mirrored the first leap with his other knight. Maybe it was subconscious, influenced by his opponent's words. “Do you know where he lives or where he runs, and when? I won’t hurt him, but I need to convince him to give me that card.”
“He tells me he does small runs every day at 6 a.m., and big runs every Saturday,” the older man said, moving another pawn forward. “He lives down and east somewhere.”
Emz moved his queen diagonally right to a space in front of his king. “Down somewhere between the Us and Xs?”
“Maybe even in the Ts,” the older man replied, moving another pawn along his defenses.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Great, five by five, twenty-five square blocks! Emz lamented internally at the expanded search area, but at least it somewhat matched Luki’s intel. “Do you know the name of the person he lives with?” Emz asked, sliding his queen diagonally left toward the center of the board.
“You play too aggressively, young man. You should be more subtle and save your big moves for later,” his opponent gently advised, then moved a pawn forward to threaten the white queen. “I am sorry, I do not know his friend’s name or anything else. I expect Gary will stay away for a few weeks until you stop looking for him, though I do not think he will stop running every day. It is his addiction.”
Emz had hoped for more, but corroborating Gary’s rough location was at least something. The mention of his running obsession added another small piece to the puzzle. With no further questions to ask, Emz turned his attention back to the game. He focused intently but was still soundly beaten—his major pieces systematically cornered and captured by advancing pawns, a few clever knight maneuvers, and those obliquely moving bishops that constantly caught Emz off guard.
He headed home and tried another search for Gary online—but still came up empty. The man was a ghost. Frustrated, Emz contacted Luki to ask for help hacking store cameras and doorbell footage to trace Gary’s route home back from the Plaza. Luki replied that he’d already tried that before but hit a wall—Gary had set up digital tripwires and random blackspots. “Gary is a great old engineer,” Luki had said, “and he knows how to stay invisible.” Emz reached out to more black-market techies, hoping for an alternative supplier, but once again, no one responded.
That evening, he looked for more ‘analogue work,’ but nothing stood out. Eventually, he went to bed early and was in a taxi by 5 a.m. the next morning, heading back toward the search area, hoping to spot Gary on his morning run around 6 a.m.
Emz yawned and cranked up the heating in the taxi, feeling the dark morning air leach away the vehicle's warmth. The driverless taxi followed its zigzag route through the now twenty-five square blocks, occasionally breaking away as Emz spotted someone moving about at that ungodly hour. But each time, it wasn’t Gary.
After 8 a.m., Emz gave up the looping exercise and resigned himself to trying again the next morning from a different starting point. He mentally calculated that with such a wide search area, he could easily have been in the wrong part of the grid when Gary left at 6 a.m. If that info was reliable, that is. If he kept changing his starting point, eventually he should spot the runner, so he decided to find some breakfast.
The next morning was the same, and the morning after that—no luck. But Thursday afternoon, Emz finally got a message back from another tech guy, Nico Sanna, who agreed to start a working arrangement. At 8 p.m., Emz stood outside an apartment block on Quatro and Kafka, buzzing the intercom for his potential new tech contact.
The outer door unlocked, and Emz quickly slipped inside, taking the elevator up to Sanna’s apartment. The door opened as soon as he knocked. Sanna was tall, with a hunched posture, probably from too many hours at a screen. He had a Mediterranean look, but his skin was slightly sallow, and his overgrown hair was dyed blond, contrasting with his dark, thick eyebrows and scruff.
“Emz, good to meet you,” Sanna greeted with an exaggerated smile. “Please come in,” he added with a big wave, drifting deeper into his chaotic apartment.
Inside, harsh neon lights lit up the room, where old furniture was piled with scattered circuit boards, dismantled drones, and half-built devices. At the back, a long workbench cluttered with screens, wires, and tools stretched across the room. Cables snaked across the floor like unruly vines—some plugged into various gadgets, others just lying there, tangled. It made Luki’s van look tidy by comparison.
Emz felt something was off. He watched the tech guy step through his chaotic junkyard without even looking back at his guest. There was something twitchy about Sanna, something insincere, but tech guys were often a little odd. Still, Emz wished he had trusted his gut when, just a few paces into the room, the door slammed behind him.
He turned and saw two armed figures flanking the entrance, standing in the gloom. They were unnerving—almost identical, clearly siblings, though their genders were a mystery. Their androgynous faces and well-coiffed dark brown hair were striking. They stood at about Emz’s height and build, wearing dark purple suits cut in an old eighties style, almost triangular from the shoulder pads to the narrow waist, with a double-breasted front and wide, high lapels that concealed any obvious sexual characteristics.
When they stepped forward, Emz saw that they had matching piercing blue eyes that bore right through him—almost as deadly as the HK VP10 handguns they both held, pointed at his midsection. Emz instinctively felt one was male and one female, though he couldn’t consciously understand why. Before he could process it, one of the twins moved forward and spoke in an equally androgynous voice, giving instructions.
“Step over to that table and slowly start emptying all your possessions.” The voice had a slight antipodean accent, probably a New Zealander by the stresses on the vowels.
Emz moved toward the table as instructed, glancing quickly around the room, the entrance behind the twins, an internal door at the back and a thickly glazed and closed window across the room, but no obvious quick escape plan came to mind. Sanna stood against the far wall, looking sheepish, constantly fidgeting with his hands as he watched the scene unfold. At the table, Emz paused and turned, weighing his options. He needed time.
“Who are you?”
“Start emptying your possessions.” The second twin repeated, taking a step forward to stand next to the first.
Emz slowly retrieved a protein bar from his pocket. “Who do you work for? What do you think I’ve done?” He flicked the bar down onto the table, making it bounce loudly, hoping to keep the assailants on edge. “You want me to comply, but you’re not telling me anything!” Emz added with a touch of anger.
The twins didn’t react, their faces unchanged, their guns level. They only moved when Emz took a step away from the table. One of them lowered their gun and aimed at his leg.
“We told you to empty your pockets onto the table. If you don’t finish, we will shoot you in the knees, take your things from your pockets ourselves, and drag you out of here.”
At least Emz knew they didn’t want him dead—not yet. They needed him alive, likely to deliver him to a boss or someone similar. But who had sent them? If it were Petrovi?, he would have used his usual Balkan thugs, and these two didn’t resemble any gang members Emz had encountered recently—or ever. He had no idea who this queer pair worked for or why they were after him. With two cold, unflinching figures aiming guns at him, Emz knew drawing his weapon wasn’t an option. Reluctantly, he decided to comply, hoping he could talk his way out of whatever awaited him next.
He placed another protein bar on the table, followed reluctantly by his gun. The twins then instructed him to step forward a few paces and turn, interlocking his fingers behind his head. One of them patted him down briskly, though with far less force than the Balkan thug, but much more thoroughness. They removed his holster, spare clip, wrist screen, and earbuds before discovering the 1999 First Edition Holographic Wartortle card in its tough protective cover. The twin who found the card examined it, then gave him a curious look, to which Emz responded with a shrug. Once finished, they frog-marched him out of the apartment, their watchful eyes tracking his every move for any sign of resistance.
The elevator ride was silent, and once outside, they shoved him into a burgundy-red limo waiting at the kerb. The door slammed shut behind him.
Inside, Emz saw two figures waiting on the opposite padded leather bench. One was a large, nondescript henchman in a black roll-neck, holding a gun. The other—the boss.
“Fuck my life,” Emz loudly groaned, recognising the man immediately and grasping more or less what had happened.
