Yelde's apartment was dark. There was enough sunlight from the window next to the front door and the window in the kitchen that Danival could find his way around. Not that there was much to get around. The apartment was a tiny one-bedroom. There was a couch and a small table on the carpeted floor of the living room attached to the kitchenette. Danival had been there before and knew the way to the bedroom. He moved slowly. Some kind of alarm was going off.

“Hey, Xiao Lin?” he called. “You left the door open.” No response but the alarm. It was a constant loud volume that wobbled from a low to a high pitch. Some other device connected to the Deceased And Assist? Danival shut the door and continued inside.

Yelde had lots of stuff, but it was an organized chaos. She didn’t have art on the walls. Her kitchen was spartan. It made the place feel clinical. You could wash it down easy with a high-grade solvent, let it air out, and move the next tenant in.

Danival expected to see Yelde’s body on the sofa. Cold and eyes open. Looking at the wall because the vid screen had gone to sleep. Danival shivered. He hadn’t bothered to take his shoes off. He didn’t see Xiao Lin’s at the stoop and figured they’d be fast. Even so, he didn’t make a sound on the carpeted floor.

Then there was the bedroom:

Imagine Yelde’s brains, digitized, unraveled, then printed. The scraps of old projects mixed with the disassembled machines of new ones. Stacks of shelves she collected from second-hand stores or curbside refuse filled with experimental computers, discontinued models of printers, welding tools, magnifying glasses attached to headgear, stands, and collapsible platforms rolled into themselves. The walls plastered in two-meter tall readout scrolls like a buddhist temple. The room lights were removed in favor of magnetized flashbulbs because sometimes she needed to shine a light on something and sometimes she needed complete darkness for a photosensitive chemical reaction. A clothes dresser blocked the bedroom’s only window. Danival never figured out if it actually held clothes. It could have had a humanoid robot, which Yelde would say was not a sex doll.

Danival saw someone in the room. He pushed something that looked like a screwdriver against the device making the alarm noise. He wore a helmet, clear goggles, and a mask over his face. He had a riding jacket with reflective patches and wore a large courier backpack. With gloves and underclothing, there was not an inch of skin exposed except for the arch of his nose under the goggles. Danival wondered why a delivery person was inside the apartment and why they were messing with a device that would have pissed Yelde off to see someone touching.

Finally, the person was able to snap something with the screwdriver. The noise cut instantly. He said, “Ugh, finally.” He sounded younger than Danival expected. A teenager. He looked up, suddenly realizing Danival. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” Danival responded.

The teenager set the machine down on Yelde’s chair and tightened their grip on the screwdriver. Danival remembered a time where Xiao Lin had pretended a canister of mints in his pocket was a weapon. “We got a problem?” Xiao Lin had said and held his hand over his butt pocket. He did sometimes carry a taser, so at that moment, Danival was convinced it was a taser.

Danival held his hand over his butt pocket. “We got a problem?” He said.

Danival could see the teenager’s eyes underneath his goggles glance down. Danival realized he didn’t have anything in his pocket.

“Hey look,” the boy started. “My friend told me to pick something up. She forgot about the alarm, and she’s not picking up.” He glanced at Danival’s pocket again. Danival didn’t know what to do with his hands. The boy pointed the screwdriver. “How about you tell me who you are and why you broke in?”

“The door was open.” Danival realized he could have said, I don’t need to tell you who I am. He quickly tried to say, but ended up asking, “Who lives here?”

The boy blinked in confusion. “Are you asking?”

Danival tried to rephrase the question. He thought of words that would make him sound intimidating. He should have been able to intimidate a teenager. He wanted to know why the kid was there. Why was someone breaking into his friend’s apartment right after she died? Did they have something to do with it?

Two loud knocks on the front door interrupted his thoughts. The kid’s eyes widened. Danival’s mind raced from terrible idea to innocent question to terrible idea. The knock sounded the way police knock. For a moment, Danival pictured someone in a suit tearing a yellow doll out of his little arms. The thought caused goosebumps to pop along his neck. It made his adrenaline burst and made him feel like he had to get ready to fight. When the kid moved, Danival shoved his hand to his butt pocket and grabbed nothing. The kid brushed past him. Danival let the feeling of combat dissolve. He remembered that he never had a yellow doll, and nobody in a suit ever took something from him. He remembered he was a runner, not a fighter.

The kid hovered flat, next to the front door and listened. Just as he reached for the latch locks, a voice on the other side said, “This is sector security responding to a wellness check. Is there anyone inside?”

After a breath, the kid opened the door an inch, stopping it with his shoe. Danival could see two uniformed men outside. He guessed they were the same age as him and looked like they went to the gym on days ending with odd numbers.

“What’s up?” The kid asked.

“There’s an alarm that’s been going off.” the man in front said, sighing. “We got a noise complaint, so.” He motioned to be let inside.

“Yeah, I took care of it.” The kid started to shut the door. The guy wedged his boot in the frame. Now a half inch.

“We have to check it out. Protocol states that an alarm going for that long requires a wellness check.”

“Well, I’m well. And I’m late for work already, so I gotta go.”

Danival stepped toward the door. “Oh yeah. Me too.” Danival heard the lie burp through his throat. He thought they were doomed. He didn’t put together that the men were condominium security and couldn’t actually get him into any real trouble. Fog filled the kid’s goggles.

“Yeah, actually.” The man in front started to push on the door. The second man placed his hand on it as well. “We need to check your IDs on the housing record. Normal HOA stuff.” The last sentence sent shivers through everyone’s spines.

The kid flung the door open, causing both men to lose their balance. The kid waved his hands frantically towards the kitchenette, the window, at himself. “My keycard is over there, and I think my cat peed under the sofa, which, as you can tell, is the least of my problems right now because I am late for work. You guys can chat to my boyfriend because,” the kid pushed between the two guards, “I am late for work.”

Danival couldn’t think of a single excuse. His mom was having a heart attack. He just got a call from the president. His mind was blank except for the feeling of somebody in a suit yanking a doll out of his arms. Meanwhile, this kid was walking circles around all of them. Danival wondered if he truly was a delivery person who just so happened to be the type of guy that would check in on an alarm and an open door. Danival’s head still throbbed from the procedure. He’d usually nap after the noodles. This was not good.

Danival realized the guard in front had been looking at him.

Both guards held onto the kid by his thin biceps.

“Unfortunately, we do need to do a perimeter check in situations like this.” They lifted the kid up, entered the room, and placed him on the ground. “You understand.”

Danival reached for the zipper on his shirt pocket and tried to put together the puzzle pieces of this lie. They were together. There was a cat who had a litter box problem. They were a delivery person. Danival worked in… Danival realized he couldn’t come up with a job quickly enough. The shorter guard could smell the insecurity. He pounced.

“What alarm was going off?” the shorter guard asked Danival.

“You know, I thought it was the monoxide indicator at first. I think it got moisture in it or something because it’s been going crazy.” Danival had once heard that moisture could trip devices like ovens. With the summer humidity, he thought it’d be reasonable. The kid groaned in a long, rumbling tone. He wriggled from the security guards’ grips. He began to slide his backpack off one arm and grab Danival by the shoulder.

“We’ll get you all our docs,” the kid said. “Let us just open up the safe. You know, my boss is going to fire me because of you. Glad my rent is going to this. And shut the door before the cat runs out. Plus, can you get eyes on her? I haven’t heard her in a bit…”

One guard checked his ankles and shut the door. The other glanced around the apartment. The kid motioned for Danival to close the door as they shuffled into Yelde’s bedroom. Danival slammed the door shut too abruptly. Too loud.

“Yeah, we’ll keep an eye out for the cat, but we actually need–”

The kid leaned with their full bodyweight against the door and motioned for Danival to begin dragging things over. Boxes and shelves moved easily, but items began to slip.

“Hey, gentlemen, let’s–” The second guard was interrupted by the kid.

“Yeah, it’s one of those dual-hand lock things. Fireproof and everything. I think it’s a piece of junk, but somebody keeps saying we’re financially invested, and you know how that argument goes.” While talking, the kid ran to Yelde’s desk and pulled it across the room. Gadgets fell along the way. “It’s just under all this junk. Give us a minute. You find the cat?”

The kid whispered to Danival, “Hold the door handle steady. When I give you the signal, give me a boost through the window. I’ll catch you on the other end.” Which confused Danival because the window was blocked by the dresser. The kid went to it and pushed the dresser with their entire body. It only slid enough to fit a hand through. Even so, the room was flooded with blinding sunlight. Danival felt the door handle jiggle. He held it steady with both hands. The kid pushed again. Danival could see fog on the goggles.

The kid rolled their shoulders to ready another push. He motioned for Danival to respond to the guard. Danival realized he hadn’t logged a word. He said, “Oh, uh, maybe it’s not in here.” Danival wanted to punch his teeth out. The kid grabbed his head but didn’t pull off his mask. “I mean, the– the door gets jammed. I’ll get it for you.”

The kid noticed something on the floor. He reached down for a device that had fallen from Yelde’s desk. He placed it in his bag with care. “Well,” he said, getting ready to run at the dresser, “we’re just going to go for it.”

The kid launched himself toward the dresser. He jumped to grab it from the top and used his weight to pull it down. He yelled over the crash, “Oh no! He’s having another seizure! I think he broke a bone! Call an ambulance!”

The window opened to half the frame. Just enough space for the kid to push his bag through. He grabbed the edge of the sill and tried to pull himself up. His sneakers slid on the wall. He looked over his shoulder at Danival. “Come on!” he hissed.

Danival ran over, then stopped. “No, you give me a lift.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you’re going to leave me here. Give me a lift.”

There was banging on the door.

The kid groaned, dropped from the window and cupped his hands between his knees. Danival lifted himself to the window and slid through. He dangled by his armpits and held his hand out to the kid.

They both dropped to the pavement. They could hear the guards getting into the room.

“Thanks for the boost, dude,” the kid said as he picked up his bag. “Bye forever.” He took off down the manicured alley of the apartment complex. Danival followed.

“What happened to Yelde?” Danival said between heavy breaths.

“What part of us splitting up is so difficult for you to understand?”

They both leaped over perfectly square bushes into the street. As they dodged between the crowd, Danival asked, “How’d she die?”

The kid stopped. Danival almost tripped trying to stop as well. The kid grabbed Danival’s shoulders. “Yelde’s dead?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how. It was recent. I was hoping to… I dunno.”

“Damnit!” The kid kicked the air. “Not good. So not good.” The kid rifled through his bag, found a scramble mask, and offered it to Danival. “How do you know Yelde? You go to soirees at the teahouse? You in Occipital Samba Crew?”

“The what?”

The kid glanced Danival up and down. Danival could see their annoyed huff by the fog on the goggles.

Danival persisted. “Why were you in Yelde’s apartment?”

The kid shoved the mask against Danival’s chest. “You gonna take it or not? We can’t talk about that out here.” Danival held the clear mask carefully. It was illegal to have one, but by now, the complex guards had already reported him. It made more sense to get his face off the public record rather than walk home. He placed it on his face, wrapped the hood over his head, tightened the drawstring, and turned it on.

They ran down the street. People were more likely to get out of the kid’s way than Danival’s.