“What’s that?” The civilian had said. It was a plucky kid who couldn’t be more than 14 years old that had been seated next to Salvatore. He had black hair, blue eyes and was wearing a bright red sweater that stuck out like a broken arm.

Sal calmly closed the computer shut. There was no need to cause a scene. “Just work,” he said. “Is school over already?” he asked, diverting the conversation.

“Yep,” the kid beamed, “It ended last Friday.”

“Really?” Sal asked, eyeing the backpack on the kids lap, it was essentially popping at the seams.

The kid nodded eagerly, “Yup!” He unzipped the backpack and pulled out a binder filled with papers. “Look, I got straight A’s this time,” he said, handing Sal a paper.

Sal did look, if only to be polite. It was a report card and the kid was definitely a better student than Sal had been back in the day. “Congratulations,” he said before taking a closer look, “Wait, you took physics?”

The kid shrugged, taking the report card back and shoved it unrepentantly into the binder. “I mean, yeah, but I got an A in English! English is hard.”

“I wouldn’t know, math and science were always my weakest subjects, when I was a kid.”

“Really?” The kid said distractedly as he was trying to fit the binder back into the bag again.

“Yeah,” Sal said, his eyes caught on the many clothes and snacks in the kid’s bag. “That’s a lot of stuff, you’ve got there.”

The kid jerked slightly at the comment, “I’m going to my mom’s for the summer,” he said.

If Sal had been a normal person, a civilian, he probably would’ve bought that. The kid looked clean and well kept. There were no signs of abuse but that could be easily hidden by the kid’s sweater—that he was wearing in June—in the Nevada Desert. But that wasn’t real evidence, but he had been an interrogator before joining the organization, not that he could necessarily push the kid.

“You excited for the summer then?” Sal asked. Slipping his computer into his own bag to focus on the kid who had nodded with bright eyes. “Do you have plans or something?”

“I’m meeting up with some of my friends there and we’re all going to go on an adventure.”

Well, that explained why he was heading to California too, if he was being honest. “What kind of adventure?”

“Camping and hiking I guess.” The kid pulled out his phone and looked through what looked like text messages. “We’re going to a place called Santa Cruz? They have some cool campsites according to Drake.”

Okay—no. There was absolutely no way that Sal was this lucky or that this kid was so unlucky. “Drake?” Sal asked, grasping for some proof. This kid could not be tied up in Quantum Taint.

The kid shrugged. “Yeah, I met him online. He’s so cool, though. He has a pool and his parents run a whole science camp.” The kid was wildly gesturing as Sal’s heart plummeted to his ankles. “But,” he whispered conspiratorially, “We aren’t going to camp there, we're gonna sneak off and do some real camping. With tents and everything.” The kid clearly didn’t have any camping gear with him.

“That’s dangerous.” Sal said, now with his stomach in his throat, “Do you even know what he looks like?”

The kid nodded, pulling out his phone again and pulling up a picture from the text messages, “this is him,” he said, shoving the phone into Sal’s face.

The phone displayed a kid with a dog. The kid had blonde hair, green eyes and was hugging the big dog’s face next to his own. There was a bunch of computer gear in the background too. It was like the kid had rigged up a bunch of computers for the ultimate gaming experience. Sal had seen this picture before.

“No, it’s not,” Sal said before he could stop himself. “That’s Rahm,” the kid was looking at him like a four headed flying octopus. “He’s been missing for eight months.”

“What?”