by Scott Moon
“Kevin, your brother is asleep,” Mandy McGuire said. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“No, Mrs. McGuire. Have you seen the twins?”
Mrs. Mandy McGuire seemed alarmed in a schoolteacher kind of way. She searched her own domicile and demanded her husband and her large brood of McGuires and guests sound off if they had seen Ace and Amanda.
Kevin ignored them and went straight to the closet-sized room in the back where he knew his brother and Ruby were watching low budget videos in the dark. Despite the number of people sharing the place, no one would interrupt them. Arthur Connelly was in his prime, a forceful personality on the 10th floor.
He was the reason gangs left this part of the building alone. Sometimes Kevin’s brother organized resistance, ordering him onto the offensive more often than not, but by and large, Arthur simply thrashed anybody who dared trespass in his realm.
It was inconceivable that such a capable tyrant as his brother would allow someone to steal Ace and Amanda.
People didn’t get taken from the 10th floor of any building. The twins were fifteen years old. And even if they had been younger, they would’ve cried out and resisted an invader. From their early childhood, the twins trusted Arthur and Kevin as though they were superheroes or gods from mythology. That didn’t mean they were helpless or timid.
Kevin flung open the door to the back room. His brother and Ruby bolted upright from the couch in the light of the video screen. His shirt was off. Her hair was in disarray with sleep still in her eyes.
“Go away, Kevin,” she said, waving a hand as she buried her face against Arthur’s shoulder.
With surprising gentleness, Arthur pushed Ruby aside and stood. “What’s wrong?” He moved forward, picking up his shirt and putting it on without looking at it.
“Ace and Amanda are gone,” Kevin said.
“Amanda and Ace,” Arthur said. “She’s older by almost a minute. Stop flipping it around.”
Kevin snorted in annoyance.
His brother didn’t wait for an argument. “They can’t be gone. Go check again. Are you awake or sleep walking?”
“You know I’m not.” Kevin barely finished the words.
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t wake up well is all I am saying.”
Ruby jumped to her feet with athleticism few people in Building 595 could match. Gone was her sleepy wistfulness. She tried to shove past Arthur. He pushed back with one thick arm, struggling to keep her behind him and only succeeding because the room was so small.
“Why do you keep barging in on us?” She put both of her hands on Arthur’s elbow and shoved with all the weight of her small body. For a moment, the determined move nearly succeeded. She glared at Kevin as Arthur used both hands to pick her up and put her back on the couch, failing only because she squirmed like an angry, human-sized cat while keeping her attention on Kevin. “You think you are so much better than your brother. Then why can’t you keep track of the twins?”
“Jesus Christ, Ruby!” Arthur lifted her off the ground, aimed her at the couch, then reconsidered at the last moment. The fact that he placed her instead of throwing or dropping her was a testament to his strength. “Let me handle this!”
Kevin stepped forward as his brother turned from the domestic squabble. He wanted to yell, but thought of his father and pretended more calmness than he felt, speaking in a lowered voice and using a measured tone. “I am not sleepwalking. I checked everything twice. Even picked up the blankets and shook them.”
“Okay, okay,” Arthur said.
For a moment, the shared hesitation inspired a rare sense of brotherly closeness. Arthur seemed confused and unsure. Kevin didn’t know if that was the big brother he wanted right now, but the human emotion reassured the part of him that trembled in the wake of nightmares and thunderstorms. For a few heartbeats, he understood his big brother really was the father figure of their little orphan clan.
Arthur stalled for time as he finished dressing. It was obvious by his expression he was thinking and working through the problem.
Unrestrained, Ruby exploded to her feet and moved so close to Kevin that they touched chest to chest like street fighters.
“I told you to stop barging in on us.” She reached up to grab the collar of his shirt and gave it a short tug. The movement barely affected his posture, but he got the idea.
“I think you want to catch us doing something. Is that it?” She shifted closer, bodies touching, still a fighter but also something more. “Arthur will find the brats and you better just leave me and your brother alone.”
Kevin glared at her as though he didn’t know her. This was a version of Ruby McGuire he had never seen.
“I thought you liked the twins.”
This caused her to retreat, her face red in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. She spoke in a softer voice and did not make eye contact. “I love the twins. Love your whole stupid family.”
Confused, Kevin shook his head, rallied, and launched into the argument with his brother that had to come next. The McGuire family sheltered in one of the extra rooms.
Still cursing at Kevin, the head of the Connelly family stormed out of the McGuire domicile. Kevin followed, leaving a wake of family disruption. Too late to keep up with his brother, he hesitated and wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to personally search these crowded rooms. When he turned, he saw a somewhat chastened Ruby McGuire already shaking her head as though she knew his thoughts.
“I’ll take care of it, Kevin Connelly,” she said. Then, despite being the middle child, she took firm control of her family from youngest to oldest and organized a thorough search of the crowded rooms.
Kevin ran to catch up with his brother. By the time he arrived at their single-room apartment, his brother had already finished another search — throwing blankets and pallets everywhere and even looking in the small cabinets near the cooking and cleaning section.
“They aren’t here,” Arthur said, still facing the other way. He checked the locks on the door and then the windows.
Kevin clenched his jaw, wishing he had checked the locks.
“Doesn’t look forced,” Arthur said. “You’ve got good eyes. Bring the candle over here and look into the keyhole and see if there are metal shavings or anything suspicious.”
Kevin complied, grateful for something to do and feeling better now that the brother he knew and respected had returned.
None of their combined efforts located Ace and Amanda-Margaret.
There was a subtle and hard-to-describe sound in Building 595 during a major storm. As a child, Kevin imagined the buildings speaking, offering comfort and swearing revenge against the wind and rain. The idea of searching the entire twenty-seven-story structure eroded the last of his resolve.
He resisted the temptation to give up.
He thought of his mother and her lists of things to do but did not know where to start. Several realizations occurred as he considered why anyone would steal the twins.
The storm ended and the silence was loud. He could hear car alarms on the city street below and the automated voice of a crosswalk counting down a warning that the light was about to change.
“Do you hear that?” Arthur asked.
At that precise moment, Kevin sensed something more about the sudden post storm requiem. A quiet melody unlike any he had ever heard teased either his senses or his imagination.
“I think it’s a Siren,” Arthur said, more amazed than angry or afraid.
Kevin had always thought the Sirens would look something like Ruby McGuire but nicer and less busty.
Kevin raced his brother to the window. He looked for the soldiers and police officers he had seen during the storm and saw them working toward where they had started. A squad of them had found something.
Or someone.
Nine soldiers surrounded a tall, lithe figure with silver-black hair and skin. A cluster of thick braids reached down her back to her waist. Her close fitting, uniquely styled clothi
ng seemed vibrant and alive.
Kevin thought the stranger was female, not because he could see much of her physique at this distance, but because there was an invisible aura that he sensed more than he understood. Sirens rarely traveled to Earth and never alone. Watching this one made him think of movie elves and tall samurai maidens — if there was such a thing. Video fiction was unclear on the details of ancient Earth cultures.
Arthur cursed under his breath. “I don’t like that. I don’t like it all with the twins missing.”
Kevin couldn’t talk while listening to the majestic Siren song and studying how the soldiers handled the situation. Two armored figures stood near the alien. One seemed ready to fight, watching the Siren’s every move as the other spoke and asked questions, talking with his hands as humans did.
The rest of the squad stood back in a defensive perimeter, facing out like Kevin had seen some of the tactical police officers do in the past. He thought of Grandfather Brandon, who had only spoken of major battles or told stories about his friends while on liberty in exotic places, wondering how his hero would handle the situation.
“Looks like they called in a second squad,” Arthur said. “That’s a lot of firepower for one alien.”
“Why do they sing like that?” Kevin asked.
Arthur shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Kevin experienced a hollow pain in his stomach like nothing he could remember since the Connellys became a family of four orphans.
4
Gangs and Librarians
AN hour passed like a lifetime. Kevin and his brother searched Tower Building 595 again with an expanding collection of volunteers. The McGuire family led the effort. Arthur contacted the police, who responded promptly and in considerable force, despite their preoccupation with the soldiers detaining the Siren.
Time perception never worked in a linear or logical manner for Kevin. In the midst of his darkest fears, there were mundane images of life — small worries that had no place sharing his mind with Ace and Amanda-Margaret. He chided himself for his fascination with the Siren even as he cursed her kind for drawing away the best and brightest of humanity.
This Siren had been tall, feminine, and dark as a dream of perfect sleep. Thick braided hair hid her back to the waist.
After the first few hallways and stairways, Kevin moved outside of the building. The last he saw of Ruby McGuire and his brother, they were searching the common areas and community garden on the main floor of Building 595. More than a hundred people scoured the area now. Other citizens spread the search to 596 and 594.
Kevin found it a bit surreal to watch strangers calling for the twins until dawn. Two local street gangs joined with police to check buildings and alleyways. Their teamwork and cooperation ran in parallel rather than tandem and had the flavor of competition — good-natured competition, surprisingly.
Children disappeared every day. The problem was getting people to care. As often as not, the juvenile delinquents had merely run off to play or run off for good, depending on their home situation. Arthur and Ruby did an excellent job of gathering support. He was a sports hero who had never played a sport, and she was a legendary virgin even though she didn’t act like it. Here in 595, that made them like the royal couple everyone wanted to be.
Kevin watched them move through crowds like the neighborhood king and queen of concrete high-rises and wasn’t sure if people loved or feared the couple. His brother was a regular ass kicker. His brother’s girlfriend possessed a fierce command presence that would one day make her the matriarch of a large family. She showed talent for organizing the search party as much as was possible with a well meaning but unorganized rabble.
“Check it again!” Arthur roared. A group of middle-aged men and their sons hurried to do his bidding.
Exhausted, heartsick, and still a bit stunned from seeing the Siren, Kevin sat on a curb and dropped his face into his hands. Headache pain flared through his fatigue, nearly eclipsing thoughts of Ace. His younger brother had suffered headaches and violent nightmares fourteen years of his fifteen-year life. Much of the family energy had been spent dealing with his hysteria. Government healthcare workers tried to label Ace’s behavior a mental illness. Accepting the diagnosis would have brought money and much needed support, but Arthur angrily resisted the pseudo-doctor’s opinion.
Kevin felt the tears sliding down his face as he stood.
Soft footsteps approached behind him. He only heard them because the noise of the search had moved into Building 597. Two squads of soldiers remained, but the Siren had long since been taken away. A pair of tactical police officers waited with the military unit as required by law, but the rest of the City Police in this bureau were helping with the search for Ace and Amanda. They had radios, phones, and an organized approach.
Kevin knew they wouldn’t find anything.
He looked over his shoulder and saw Ruby coming out of 597.
She smiled, then nodded her chin toward drones so thick they nearly blocked out the sky. “I talked to Justin O’Neil. He’s with the police now. He told me the KCSP drones didn’t notice anything suspicious.”
Kevin looked at her in wonder. He wanted to mention the Siren but held back for reasons he didn’t understand. Possibly his reticence was born of fatigue and despair. Convincing his brother’s girlfriend he was crazy didn’t seem to be a great idea.
“You look like shit,” Ruby said.
Kevin shook his head, not knowing what to say.
She sat next to him and he remembered how small she was. At the same time, she was the greatest force of nature other than Arthur in Kevin’s life. “Do you know anyone who’s with the military?”
She nodded. “Yeah, the Herrington boy is with the military, I think, but he would still be in boot camp. Did you see the troopers out on the street?” She smiled mischievously. “I heard something about a Siren.”
“Once he hears to his heart’s content, sails on, a wiser man. We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so — all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all,” Kevin said, his heart warming under a vision of his mother.
Ruby laughed and it surprised him. “You’ve read The Odyssey, Kevin Connelly?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it means. My mother recited it whenever my father mentioned the Sirens.”
She patted him on the shoulder, seeming a different person from the Ruby McGuire he had known since his older brother first started chasing her around the schoolyard. Despite his fatigue and the lingering headache from the nightmares and everything that happened since the loss of the twins, it felt good to smile.
His brother didn’t deserve Gwyneth “Ruby” McGuire, even though she was mean and tough most of the time.
He listened to her talk but didn’t follow the words. The sound of her voice helped him deal with the heart sickness he felt over his little brother’s nightmares. Images of Ace crying and trembling with frustrated rage as the entire family held him down wouldn’t go away.
A lot of children had nightmares.
Not so many drew pictures and obsessed over creatures that looked like demons from ancient mythology — like Sirens but bigger and covered in armor.
EATING, sleeping, searching — these were things Kevin did for two days. Arthur handled the official police report and beat up three people spreading stories about the twins running off with a Siren prostitute.
There was no evidence Sirens were overly sexual creatures. He couldn’t imagine one of the aliens doing anything for human money. Rumors were a plague on the working class. Kevin ignored them. Arthur got angry and that meant someone was getting slammed on the ground; probably punched in the face too.
Kevin walked with his head down, reviewing his mental list for the hundredth time. He would work the list of possibilities until he found the twins or something to add to the list that would lead to finding them.
“Siren lover!”<
br />
Kevin slowed, looked up, then stopped to see Zach Smith and his crew sitting on a car the police had locked to the curb for whatever obscure reason the police did such things. The formerly wheeled machine had been there for a while as was evidenced by rust, graffiti, and lack of doors or interior paneling.
Zach was smaller than Kevin, shorter at least, and wouldn’t open his mouth to Arthur even if he had twenty of his crew backing him up. Arthur didn’t need a crew. Kevin wished he had one about now, despite the strength his anger and pride pumped into his chest.
“Say that again,” Kevin said.
“Siren lover,” Zach said. He finished his homemade whiskey and tossed the plastic juice container that concealed the foul liquid. Hopping off the car hood, he advanced on Kevin with surprisingly few steps, like he was gliding across the bonded concrete. Five of his street-rat confederates spread out in a half circle; it was neighborhood courtesy to give a victim a chance to run.
For sport if nothing else.
“Siren,” Zach said. “Lover.”
Kevin flew at him. At least one of his punches hit someone. He couldn’t say for sure his victim was Zach because the half circle of tough guys constricted the moment Kevin moved.
Rules for a fair fight in the neighborhood varied from block to block and minute to minute.
Killing each other was counterproductive. Police involvement was something to be avoided unless you wanted your entire building locked down for search warrants, interviews, crime scene processing, and a bunch of other stall tactics that only served to punish everyone with inconveniences. Why take anyone to trial when you could imprison them and all their friends, and enemies, for up to forty-eight hours in their own homes?
Kevin limped away, reasonably confident Zach and his crew wouldn’t bother him in the near future. If Arthur had been there, it would have been a different type of encounter.
