The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 20 - SAMANTHA

"So let me get this straight. Your friend has been missing over three weeks, and you're just reporting it now?" Office Tate leaned back in his desk chair and donned a skeptical look.

"Like I said," Samantha explained, "we only just found out about it. She hasn't answered any messages since then, but it wasn't until we talked to her landlord that we knew she was missing."

"And this landlord, why isn't he the one here reporting her missing?"

"I don't know, you'd have to ask him." She gave an exasperated sigh, "Can't you just... check your files or something, make sure she's not in your morgue?"

"You said her name was Sydney..."

"Rossiter," Peter supplied. He wrote it on a scrap of paper to make sure there was no mistake. The aging police officer took the note and stood.

"Give me a minute. I'll check a few things." He walked away with the gate of one carrying years of weariness.

"I'm beginning to wonder if this was a waste of time," Peter mused.

"Give it time," Samantha counseled, "the gears of bureaucracy turn slowly, but they do turn."

A few minutes later a much younger police officer entered the room. "Hi, I'm Officer Mike Anderson. I was told you were looking for a Sydney Rossiter?"

Samantha jolted upright. "Oh my god it's you." She turned to Peter. "You recognize him, right?"

Peter looked at the policeman then back at Samantha. "What?"

"Imagine him with grocery bags in his hands."

Peter's eyes grew wider.

Officer Peterson's eyes grew narrower. "Have we met before? Were you, maybe, dressed all in white and going to a party a few weeks ago?"

Peter and Samantha shared a quizzical look.

"Look, about three weeks ago I talked to a Sydney Rossiter. I helped her with her groceries. Now you show up saying she went missing around that time, and I learn there's an open arson investigation related to her apartment. I want to know what your involvement in all this is."

"We're just her friends," Samantha insisted, "and we're worried about her."

"And you weren't in her apartment several weeks ago, dressed up as aliens in business formal and summer casual?"

"No, that wasn't us," Peter insisted.

"Then what's with that crack about grocery bags?"

Samantha and Peter looked at each other.

"Come on, out with it."

Peter reached into a pocket and pulled out a USB thumb drive. "You'll want to watch the video on this."

Officer Anderson turned the USB stick over in his hands, spared a curious glance at the two of them, then walked over and plugged the stick into a wall mounted television. He fumbled with the TV remote but eventually got the video running. "Where did you get this? It looks like surveillance video."

"From Sydney's laptop," Peter explained. "We think she was recording herself."

"And why do you have her laptop?"

"Her landlord gave it to me."

Officer Anderson looked at Peter with suspicion.

"You'll want to skip ahead," Samantha advised. "There's something you need to see."

The video flickered into high speed. He stopped and backed up when the two strange figures appeared.

"These guys. They were there." Anderson backed it up and watched their materialization again. He grunted, but said nothing. The video continued, and they watched events unfold as before. When he saw himself appear at the apartment door, Officer Anderson sat on the desk and ran a hand through his hair. When Sydney disappeared, he stood up.

He turned to Samantha and Peter. "What the hell are the two of you trying to pull."

"Nothing, I swear." Peter looked to Samantha for corroboration.

"We're just showing you what we found," she affirmed, "it's not our fault it's this... weird."

Mike Anderson looked at the two of two them, a suspicious cast never leaving his face. He walked over and plucked the USB drive from the TV. "I'll need to keep this." He tucked it into a pocket. "And if you could bring in that laptop, it would be appreciated. But first, let's sit down and go over all this one more time."

* * *

An hour and half later, Samantha and Peter were finally leaving the police station.

"God, I thought that would never end," Peter groaned.

"At least someone listened to us," Samantha replied.

They walked in silence toward Samantha's van. Peter stopped, leaned against the vehicle, and stared into the dimming sky.

"What?" Samantha asked, "What's wrong?"

"Besides my friend going missing and the police treating us like suspects?"

"Yeah, besides that."

"I don't know... I just. Something about this whole thing has me wigged out." As he stared at the sky, he noticed the first stars were beginning to appear. "It's like looking into the past."

"What is?"

"The stars. Their light takes years to reach us. When we look at them, we're looking into the past."

She leaned against the van and looked up also. "Wow, you got philosophical all the sudden. What brought this on?"

"That video tape. It's got to be fake of course. And yet I can't shake this feeling like..."

"Like what?"

He closed his eyes, shutting out the starlight.

"Like we've stepped into something way bigger than we realize."