Good evening!

The crew walked out at noon, and by one o’clock, Wilford was in the conference room listening to someone act like his entire life was over because he’d refused to raise wages. Wilford was done. He was barely listening, even as the insults began to fly his way. Nichola fielded every last one of them, baffling the men on the screen as she took the union’s side on the matter.

“We did try to warn you,” she said. “Multiple times. This has been coming for a long time, but you looked the other way. This could have been prevented before the idea even formed.”

Then, something exploded outside. Without even thinking, Wilford got up. Explosions were more interesting than this crap.

“Does he ever stay for these?” one of the men on the TV asked.

Wilford left the room just in time to hear Nichola say no. She wasn’t exactly lying, and it shouldn’t have been new information.

Several people were already crowded at the front door, craning to look out toward the street. Joining them, Wilford could just make out a large plume of black smoke down the road. His curiosity fully getting the better of him, Wilford stepped through the crowd and walked outside. As he neared the sidewalk, he could see a big, black WEZL van crashed into a fire hydrant about twenty feet away from a burning car, while a man ran in circles and jumped up and down with a jerry can.

“Madness! The entire city!” he shouted. “You can’t escape it! We all need to form a new society before this one crumbles!”

Wilford recognised that voice. It was impossible not to. He walked up to a small crowd that had formed closer by in the middle of the intersection, where two old men on a scooter watched. The older man in front shouted at Ron Otterman to make sense, while his friend behind him casually and lazily lined up a shot with his pistol.

“What is going on?” Wilford asked.

“Ron Otterman has lost his fucking mind,” the man with the gun said. “Think I should shoot it?”

His older friend turned back to see what was happening. “No, you fucking idiot! We’re too close!” He immediately started to back up his scooter away from the taco truck that had been left abandoned in the intersection, pools of gasoline spreading out from under it.

Otterman raged and threw the empty jerry can, replacing it with his lighter. Some of the vehicular crowd began to speed off, but Otterman didn’t light the gasoline. Instead, he looked up in his rantings.

“You know all about it, Warfstache! I know you do! You wouldn’t be here right now if you didn’t!”

He threw his lighter into the gasoline on the street and ran, disappearing behind the exploding taco truck. The old men followed Otterman, taking a wide arc around the explosion, but he was already gone. As the smoke settled into another tall column, Wilford could see the van had disappeared as well. Wherever Otterman had gone, he was sure to crop back up again shortly. The freelancers on the internet would be following him in no time.

This location wasn’t an accident. WEZL wasn’t based in Vinewood. Otterman had come out here to make a point, and Wilford had a good idea about what. Otterman followed Wilford’s school of journalism, reporting on the more sinister topics while making them outlandish and stupid enough for people to watch and spread like fringe fake news. He wasn’t a stupid man. He knew something, and he wanted Wilford to know about it. The ball was in his court now, but he had to be careful. Alliances were still being drawn, and Otterman could have been on anyone’s side.

For now, Wilford put it on the back burner and returned to the studio. The crowd at the front door had already broken up and got back to work, leaving Wilford with little excuse to continue to linger. He returned to the meeting, sitting back down as if nothing had happened.

“What was that?” Nichola asked.

“Ron Otterman has lost his fucking mind,” Wilford said, going right on along with the narrative that had already been painted.

Nichola looked surprised for a moment, and then took advantage of the TV men’s wrong-footedness at the situation and barreled ahead with her demands for the future.

“Otterman?” one of the TV men said, cutting her off and ignoring her completely.

WEZL was a CBN syndicate. Sure enough, a phone somewhere on the other side of the TV screen rang, and the conference was cut short. Wilford picked up the remote to turn off the TV, and nodded for Nichola to follow him out of the building. She did, both of them getting into Wilford’s car. He had no particular destination in mind, pulling out into traffic and giving Otterman’s disaster a wide berth.

“He knows something,” Wilford said. “I don’t know what, but something.”

Nichola nodded, turning in her seat to look at the burning taco truck as it fell into the distance. “You sure it’s not just Ron being… Ron?” she asked.

Wilford thought about it for a few seconds. “No, he knows something,” he decided. His phone rang as he drove, and he spared a second to glance at his watch to see who it was. Unsurprisingly, it was Mark for the eighth time that day. “Fuck you,” he said as he cancelled the call by tapping his watch.

“The… ex again?” Nichola guessed.

Wilford answered by rolling his eyes. “I still owe him a couple of black eyes,” he said. Fighting other people’s battles wasn’t normally something he went out of his way to do, but this one felt necessary. But this was not the time. He sighed and shook his head. “So, the network’s clearly pissed. How’s your stuff going?”

“I was hoping to have a little more time,” Nichola said. “We have the space, but it’s not ready for anything. I didn’t want to launch to coincide with the strike, but I thought it would have been better if we could launch just before. If we also took a hit, it would deflect attention from us.”

Wilford nodded. He’d tried to stay as ignorant of the strike as possible, just to cover his own ass, but now it was all out in the open. “When are you looking at?” he asked.

“Mid-August, I think,” Nichola said. “What about you? Any progress?”

“I need to follow up with Ramon, but he’s never around, and between her and the kid and I don’t even have time to take a piss, much less wait around for him to show back up.” He didn’t want to complain, but he hadn’t had a moment’s peace since Celine and Mark had their explosive breakup.

“Maybe Ron losing his mind will get the press looking elsewhere,” Nichola said. Wilford hoped she was right, and suspected she was. Otterman had made an absolute spectacle, even if it was obvious bait, but the idiot had mentioned Wilford by name and opened up the chance for it to backfire.

Wilford’s phone rang again, and again he cancelled the call. Mark did not deserve his attention, and he wasn’t going to get it and live to tell about it.

“We’ll see,” he said.

After about an hour of driving around and discussing their plan in private, Wilford swung back by the studio to drop Nichola off at her car. With Vinewood closed for business indefinitely, he had no reason at all to stay there. He had other business to attend to from home, where nobody who mattered could overhear.

After chasing a couple of suspicious cars away from his gate, Wilford debated replacing it with a more obstructive option as he pulled into the garage. Inside, he found Michael and Celine downstairs playing with the enormous dollhouse, but he spared only the briefest greetings before heading upstairs. He walked into his office and closed the door behind him, hoping to convey that his business was private, and not to be disturbed. He didn’t think he had Otterman’s number, but he picked up his phone book and started looking through it anyway as he sat down. A few moments later, he surprised himself to find a number for Ron Otterman near the back, under W.

With WEZL being the CBN local syndicate, they’d crossed paths a dozen times or more since Wilford had moved to the west coast. He didn’t remember ever swapping numbers, but there was a lot he didn’t remember. Showing up to events high on three different things tended to have that effect.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the number, surprised again when he got an answer from a live human being.

“Who is this? How did you get this number?” Otterman barked on the other end.

“You mind telling me why you felt the need to blow up my sidewalk today?” Wilford asked in turn.

“Warfstache. Good. I knew you were smart. And I know you’re up to something. I want to know what it is.” Wilford could hear the rumble of a diesel engine in the background. Otterman was probably still cruising around in his van somewhere.

“Nope,” Wilford said. “What makes you think I’m the kind of idiot to tell the press anything?” He leaned back in his seat, watching the dogs run around outside through the glass doors.

“Most people are. Never hurts to try,” Otterman said, a moment before he leaned on his horn. “I heard you adopted a kid. What the hell possessed you to do a thing like that?”

“Not for the press to know. You could ask me what I had for breakfast and get the same answer.” Wilford knew Otterman’s tactics worked, because he used them himself sometimes. He’d have probably tried the same thing if the situation was reversed.

“Damn, Warfstache. You’re doing something shady with the unions. You’re fucking another man’s wife. You’ve adopted a kid for some nefarious reason. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re a dangerous man.”

“Good thing you know better.” Otterman was, of course, right. But as long as he didn’t know what he was right about, Wilford was safe.

“So, what’d you have for breakfast?” Otterman asked.

Wilford shook his head. “Call me back when you lose your job,” he said, and hung up. He took a moment to just enjoy the silence of a room all to himself. With Vinewood ground to a halt, he no longer had an excuse to leave the house when he needed to. He already hated it. He got a few glorious minutes of solitude before it was all interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Yeah,” he called.

A moment later, Celine opened the door and stepped inside. As she neared the desk, Wilford sat up in his seat and swiveled the chair to face her. He hadn’t exactly intended to invite her into his lap, but she took it as an invitation all the same. He liked it, and he was annoyed that he liked it, and he was annoyed that he was annoyed. He wanted two things at once, and both were mutually exclusive.

“The news said they went ahead with the strike,” Celine said. She ran her fingers through his hair in a hopeless attempt to get it to do anything but stick in every direction at once.

“That they did,” Wilford said. He let his hand fall onto her thigh and linger there. “If the writers were anything to go off, I am unemployed for the next few months.”

Celine frowned. “I’ve invited Damien over tonight,” she said, taking the conversation down a new path. “He’s been wanting to talk for a while, and I can’t deal with him alone right now.”

This whole mess had put him into too many awkward situations at once. “All right,” Wilford said. There was no point in fighting it. A conversation with Damien had been in the cards for a while, and needed to happen. Wilford would have just rather it not happed the same day as everything else. “Do you know what time?” he asked.

“I think around seven,” Celine said. She continued to try to fix his hair. “And I’ve told him that we’ve been trapped inside, so he’s bringing dinner.”

Good. One less thing to worry about. Wilford decided to put an end to her fiddling, and wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her closer. This, he liked. It wasn’t even scary anymore. He just liked it.

“When was the last time you managed to get out?” he asked.

“I’ve snuck out to see a few clients here and there,” Celine said. “I went with Andy a few days ago to take Mikey to the zoo.”

“You two spoil that kid,” Wilford said. It was starting to become a problem, and one they’d have to address soon.

“Well, he’s napping right now,” Celine said. She kissed him and slid off his lap, holding onto his hand. Wilford did not miss the hint and got up to follow her to the bedroom. She hadn’t been so blatant in weeks, and he was curious to see what she had planned. It probably wouldn’t be anything he could handle, but he was curious all the same.

She walked into the bedroom and fell back onto the bed in a lazy sprawl, leaving plenty of room for Wilford to join her. He chose not to sprawl, but went down on his side, leaning on one elbow so he could look at Celine. She was clearly up to something, and he had a pretty good idea of what. But they’d done this dance before. He knew the steps, but he still could not bring himself to act. He could see Celine turning something over in her mind, but she held onto her secrets.

When she put a hand on the back of his neck to get him to kiss her, he did. This much, he had learned to do without completely freezing up. But it couldn’t last. He sat back up again, long enough to unhook his rubber bands and toss them vaguely toward the night stand.

Much better.

This time Celine sat up to meet him, and he thought he was good to go until she was on top of him, straddling his hips.

He didn’t panic. He’d been getting better at that too. But it was like he’d suddenly forgotten what he was supposed to do. And she was going to stop what she was doing if he didn’t figure it out. Then her hands were on the sides of his neck and she was kissing him again and that was good. He wasn’t really sure where to put his own hands, but they awkwardly landed on Celine’s hips. Then she was moving on top of him, and any grip on reality he’d managed to regain disappeared again. He didn’t know and couldn’t see what she was doing, and didn’t even notice that one of her hands had disappeared from his neck until he felt her messing with his belt. He froze again, and she stopped again. He didn’t want her to stop but he didn’t know what he did want either. He tried moving one hand down from her hip to her thigh, trying to regain some semblance of control. It didn’t last long. Everything happened so quickly after that, and he could barely keep up. And then a line was crossed that couldn’t be uncrossed, and at once he wanted to flee, and couldn’t understand why he ever wanted to. The way she moved on top of him, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to be quiet for his sake, or to not wake the kid, and he was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to breathe.

Everything was over entirely too fast, and Wilford was starting to fully comprehend what exactly had just happened as she was still taking her time. Then she stilled and gave him a shaky smile, and kissed him again before he could decide if he should flee or not.

Part of him thought he should, but he didn’t want to. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and just stayed there for as long as he could. It wasn’t long enough. Everything felt too hot and too close, and it was only a few moments before he needed to do something.

He shook his head and Celine moved off of him, sliding over to sit on the bed beside him.

“Will?” she said carefully.

He took a moment to just breathe. He wanted to say something. Felt he should say something, but had no idea what to say.

“Why don’t you go take a shower,” Celine suggested. “And I’ll clean up for Damien.”

Wilford nodded. A shower sounded like an excellent idea.



Wilford should not have had to get the security company to chase away trespassers before letting a guest onto his property, and yet here he was, doing exactly that. Damien seemed hesitant to make his way up to the house, even after being given the all clear, but he made it up eventually.

He’d even made good on his promise to bring dinner. Or at least he brought things that could be turned into dinner. And then he pulled the beer out of one of the bags and offered to help, and any lingering tension that was still hanging over the visit vanished. At first, Damien didn’t seem to be there to talk about anything at all. Instead, Wilford and Damien hung out by the pool, drinking beer and cooking burgers on the grill. Whether Celine wanted to give them time to talk, or didn’t want to deal with Damien, she spent most of her time playing with Michael inside, and then playing with Michael in the pool.

“She seems happier,” Damien said abruptly.

Wilford glanced up from his beer, realising Damien was watching the other two splash around at the shallow end of the pool.

“Between you and me, I think we’re all going a little stir-crazy,” Wilford said.

“I bet. She hasn’t spent a full day at home in years,” Damien said. He turned back to look at Wilford, suddenly serious. “How long has this been going on?”

Wilford thought about it. He wasn’t sure at first how he should answer, or if he even should, but there really was no point in lying about any of it. It was all out in the open for everyone to see. All the relevant parties knew about it, even if they couldn’t accept it. Which meant he had to think about the correct answer.

“Not long. Some time around the end of February I think,” he said. Maybe not long, but a hell of a lot longer than Wilford was used to.

He didn’t like the look on Damien’s face. It was something deep in thought, and surprised all at once. “While she was seeing the other guy?” he asked.

“Other guy?” Wilford asked. How had Celine possibly had the time?

Damien hesitated for a moment. “Someone else had started paying her bills in April,” he said, keeping his voice low so only Wilford could hear.

This was a surprise to him, until he put the details together. “Oh, no. No, no. Only an idiot would do something like that under his own name. Not for him to know, by the way. Let him think whatever he wants. I don’t care. If it comes out in court, it comes out in court. But I’d like to avoid it getting out at all.” He knew he could trust Damien on this, because this scandal had a good way of getting back to him.

“You?” Damien asked. He nodded, slowly taking it in. “I’ll be honest, I’m glad to hear it. I thought…” He shook his head, obviously not wanting to voice what he thought.

“You thought your sister was testing out her options?” Wilford asked plainly. Damien actually looked ashamed. “Would you blame her if she was? I don’t know how much I believe that was the first time she got smacked around like that. I’d sure as hell be looking for money and security if it were me.”

Damien looked even more ashamed. “She wouldn’t have… I’d have known.”

“Would you?” Wilford asked. His watch started to vibrate, and it only took a glance to look at it and decide to decline the call.

Damien didn’t have an answer. Instead he picked up the spatula and opened the grill, suddenly busying himself with preparing dinner. Wilford stepped back and let him.

“All right,” Damien said after a moment, arranging the buns on the top rack to toast. “I obviously didn’t know my sister’s husband as well as I thought I did. I might as well get to know her boyfriend a little better. Call my office, and we’ll arrange to go out for lunch.” He looked back over at Celine and Michael, now joining forces to splash the dogs.

Damien obviously wanted to talk a little more freely, without Celine overhearing directly. She’d been avoiding him, and probably for a good reason.

“All right,” Wilford agreed easily. “Not like I got anything else to do for the next few months.”

The tension between them eased a little. With nothing between them left to say, Wilford decided to get a plate ready for himself and Michael, and start the grueling task of getting the kid out of the water.



Ramon still hadn’t shown back up, and it was making Wilford antsy. He didn’t need to follow up, necessarily, but habit dictated that he should. Even if it was to make sure he hadn’t gone and got bitten by any bugs or caught a cold while he was in town.

His speedster friend wasn’t exactly ideal, but when Barry showed up in the bar, Wilford hoped to get him to at least confirm that Ramon was still breathing somewhere. Which he did, in a backwards sort of way. Right before he superhero sucker punched Wilford right in the face, undoing over a year pain and tedium. Celine, of course, went into hysterics again, but this time there was no arguing about going to the ER. Wilford went, when he knew damn well he could have reset and be done with it.

He sat through being poked and prodded and X-rayed. He insisted everything that could be done at the moment be done. Wilford knew his insurance would cover a considerable deal, so he went out of his way to request specialists, duplicate tests, second opinions, and anything else he could think of. Then, he collected the bill and all his follow-up information, slipped off to the first door he could find that would allow him into Milliways, and left his note for Barry. As soon as he walked back through the door to his side, he opened his journal and opened his save from that morning.

He was not going to allow himself to go through the humiliation of a year of stuffing rubber bands into his mouth for nothing. Especially when he was less than a month away from getting all the hardware out finally.

The second time around, he chose to stay the hell home. He knew time didn’t repeat in the bar, but he still didn’t want to risk an encore. For all he knew, the bastard was stalking around for round two.

Instead, he stayed home with Michael while Celine managed to escape out to Blaine County for the day. Wilford hated how much he enjoyed a quiet day at home, with the dogs snoring and drooling all over the couch, and the kid happily colouring away on the table. He seemed to like to make up his own pictures, so along with his book, he had a small stack of paper from the printer spread out over the coffee table as well, while Wilford flipped through the news and cat napped.

When his phone rang, it startled him. He hadn’t remembered getting any calls the first time around. Then again, he’d spent most of his day without signal the first time around. He took his time fishing his phone from his pocket, and answered at once when he saw Tiffany’s name on his screen.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked. They hadn’t spoken since he handed her a cheque in a hotel lobby. She was getting on with her life, and he was quietly paying for it, and nothing ever needed to be said.

“I fucked up. I’m so sorry.” She sounded like she was about to cry.

Wilford sat up, not exactly sure he understood what was being said. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“I’m so sorry,” Tiffany repeated. “He was asking questions, and he had a badge.”

“Slow down and start over,” Wilford said. Something serious had happened. And he already knew it wasn’t good. “Who had a badge?”

He could hear Tiffany put the phone down, and make a noise that definitely sounded like she was crying, followed by several muffled voices in the background. When the phone was picked up again, it wasn’t Tiffany.

“Is this Wilfred? You’re the grandfather?” a strange woman on the other end asked.

Wilford shook his head. God, he hated that name even more than he hated his own. “Sure,” he said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

The woman sighed. “A man came by today. He told us that Tiffany’s daughter had escaped from prison, and he needed information. He had a badge. It looked real.”

Wilford already didn’t like where this was going. “What was said?” he asked.

“Tiffany told him about the little boy. She told him where he was, and that he was safe. He wanted specifics. We thought so they could, I don’t know. Investigate. She told him everything she knew. She even had a business card.”

The business card led to the studio. But it still had his name on it.

“About a half hour later, someone else came by, asking the same exact questions. We got confused, because, we’d just answered them. This guy said the other one wasn’t a cop, but they don’t know who he was.”

The only thing Tiffany didn’t know was the kid’s new name, but that hardly mattered when everything else had been handed over on a silver platter. Wilford took a long moment to just process everything, while Tiffany continued to cry and apologise in the background.

“When was this?” he asked.

“About an hour ago,” the woman said. “We were still trying to figure out if we needed to call you or not when the real cop showed up. The first one said not to. We thought that was weird, but maybe it was normal?”

“No. It’s not,” Wilford said. “Christ.” He tried to figure out what in the hell he was supposed to do now. “Call me immediately as soon as you hear anything else.”

“Absolutely,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. We both are.”

Wilford almost hung up, but thought better of it. “Leave the city. Tell the real cop you talked to. Don’t tell anyone else,” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Do it. Now.”

“Yeah. All right.”

Wilford hung up, and had to restrain himself from throwing the phone. It would not have been a productive activity.

“Michael. Come here,” he said, forcing himself to stay calm.

Michael looked up, and after a moment, got to his feet to head over. Wilford pulled him into his lap, automatically taking the crayon that was offered to him.

“Hey, you want to go do some running around with me?” he asked.

Michael thought about this proposal, and finally nodded. “Where?” he asked.

“I don’t know where, pal. We’ll figure that out.” Wilford said. “Go get your shoes.”

He let Michael slide down onto the floor, and unlocked his phone again, bringing up the number for the local security company. While Wilford helped Michael put on his shoes, he tried to iterate the importance of clearing the street of lurkers, permanently. With that taken care of, he took Michael down to the car so they could go visit the police station.

Wilford rarely took vacations, and never for as long as a month. Even when he’d been shot, he went back to work as soon as possible. He still wasn’t sure this was the right choice. Nobody from the network seemed to have anything to say, which was a surprise — pleasant, but still a surprise.

The biggest surprise of all was getting up in the morning. That had not been a problem since… ever? There must have been a time when sleep wasn’t such an issue for him, but he couldn’t recall it if it ever existed. He never had to get up because that required being asleep in the first place. Which had become a thing since the surgery. A thing nobody had mentioned once, until after the fact. But apparently not being able to breathe right meant your body didn’t like staying asleep for very long. Getting to sleep was still a hassle, but once he got there, he tended to stay that way.

And suddenly getting up at 6am to hit the gym, find some breakfast, and get to the studio by 10am was a bigger challenge than it had ever been in his life. By his second cup of coffee as he watched the neighbours engage in their morning battle to the death, Wilford decided to skip the gym. And driving out to the good restaurants in Little Seoul for breakfast. He’d get a cinnamon bun from Bean Machine on his way into town.

He didn’t think he looked any different in the mirror. His teeth seemed straighter, where he still had them, even though they hadn’t done anything with his teeth (except for the ones they took out). Maybe they just looked straighter because his jaw wasn’t sideways. That was probably it. He showered, decided a clean shave was in order for his first day back, spent entirely too long fiddling with all the new equipment in his mouth, took extra care in getting his moustache to look just right, since a month off from doing anything with it made the whole thing completely unwilling to cooperate, and even took a shot at styling his hair. His hair was a lost cause. He gave up.

With Buster fed and the dog door open for him to come and go as he pleased, Wilford picked up Bailey and hauled her down to the car so she could spend the day being watched.

---

The studio hadn’t changed at all. There was a new stain on the carpet inside the door that looked suspiciously like blood, but it also looked old so Wilford pretended he didn’t see it and headed to his dressing room. He’d barely had time to set Bailey down beside the desk and boot up his computer before Billy walked in with a stack of folders.

“You haven’t burnt the place down yet,” Wilford said as Billy sat down on the other side of the desk. He dropped the folders down in front of Wilford.

“No, but Kevin shot the pizza guy,” Billy said.

Wilford stopped still to run that through his head again. “Why?”

Billy shrugged. “Someone said he wouldn’t.”

Wilford wasn’t exactly going to go out of his way to solve the mystery of the blood in the foyer, but it seemed he already had his answer. And it wasn’t one he wanted. He sighed, pretended he hadn’t heard any of it, and picked up the top folder. It took longer to get through all of them than usual, since he had weeks of catching up to do. He read through the correspondents’ notes, as well as Mandy’s as he’d filled the role over the last month. Wilford scribbled out a few and replaced them with his own ideas, but found it rather difficult to argue with most of what had been done. The shows that had aired in his absence had been about on the same level of quality as usual, and Mandy had done a decent job of showing his work in all the notes.

While he went through the notes, Billy sat by quietly, checking his messages on his phone and helping himself to what was left of Wilford’s breakfast.

“Make room for this,” Wilford said once he was done with the stack of folders. He dropped his own on top of the stack and pushed the whole lot back toward Billy.

“Ooh. You’re not supposed to work on your vacation,” Billy said, picking up the folder to thumb through it. He was silent at first, only to break it with a harsh chuckle. “This cannot be for real.”

“Friday. Make room,” Wilford said.

Billy laughed and got up, grabbing the massive stack of folders to take with him. “You got it, pal.”

He left to go re-distribute the cases to their owners, leaving Wilford to attack his mountain of ignored emails. It took a long time to scroll through and select all of them, but it was so worth it to hit that delete key and watch the list disappear one email at a time. Yep. It felt good to be back at work. With no more emails to go through, he got up to go find Mandy, who was probably in by that point. Wilford expected him to come in late, and couldn’t really blame him, but now they had to catch up on how the month had gone in Wilford’s absence. He found Mandy at his desk in the bullpen, screwing around on some message board. Wilford grabbed a chair from the next desk and slid it over, deliberately knocking Mandy’s mouse out of his hand.

“Here we go,” Mandy said, spinning around in his chair to face Wilford.

“The fuck was that last week?” Wilford asked.

Mandy rolled his eyes. “Like you’d have done better.”

Wilford wouldn’t have done any better for even a second, but that wasn’t the point. “We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you.” He watched Mandy, curious to see how he’d handle himself. Mandy just shrugged.

“Guest was a jackass. That’s why we invited him.”

Wilford nodded. It was an acceptable answer. With that out of the way, they discuss the actual experience of Mandy helming a show for a month. Nichola had given him almost complete control, stepping in only when ratings were going to suffer. But it didn’t sound like she needed to step in much. Mandy had been with the team almost since the beginning. He’d seen how Wilford ran things, and while he obviously hadn’t intended to copy Wilford’s style, he’d figured out what to do in a leadership position.

While they discussed what Mandy should try differently in the future, Nichola quickly walked up to them, bending down to Wilford’s level. “Do you have a half hour to spare?” she asked quietly.

Wilford looked at her, already not liking where this was going. “Depends. What awful thing do you have planned?”

“Next door is having a crisis, and they’ve asked you to fill a seat,” she said.

“Next door’s a morning show,” Wilford said, certain he’d seen their vapid, protein-shake-shilling airheads lost in the corridors many times.

“Morning show moved out. It’s late night now,” Nichola said.

That would not be as awful. Not great, but not awful. “When?” he asked.

“Now.”

Slightly more awful. “I’m not even dressed,” Wilford said. It was hot enough outside that the tar on the roads was melting, and Wilford had been dressing appropriately all month. But appropriate for the weather was not appropriate to appear on national television.

Nichola spared a moment to look at the ugly Hawaiian shirt he was wearing. “No, that’s perfect, actually. They need you right now. Thank you.”

With that, she was gone. Wilford sighed at Mandy and got up. Or tried to get up. At some point, he’d managed to roll his chair over one of his sandals. He was about to wear sandals on national television. Good god.

“She’s fired,” he grumbled as he righted himself and got to his feet.

Mandy laughed. “Good luck with that one.”

This was going to suck, but he knew it was just a matter of time before he was punished for taking such a long break. He left the bullpen and headed down the hall, crossing over the taped box on the floor representing the No Man’s Land between the two studios. He stopped halfway through the box at the vending machine and grabbed a package of chips, suddenly remembered he couldn’t eat those anymore, and grabbed a pack of mints as well. He stuffed both into his inventory and headed over to the set next door. He’d never actually been on this side of the building before, but its layout was an exact mirrored copy of his side. Only where he had a bullpen, they had props. Where he had conference rooms, they had more dressing rooms. Finding the green room wasn’t going to be a challenge, but he didn’t even get that far before one of their showrunners ran up to meet him.

“Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said, shoving a mic pack down the back of his shirt before he could even protest. Wilford managed to catch the pack and clip it onto his shorts, while the frantic showrunner moved the microphone around and clipped it to his shirt.

“Jesus, she wasn’t kidding about a crisis,” Wilford said as he was quickly moved in the direction of the stage doors.

“Most people aren’t coked up enough to leave after the pre-show talk,” the showrunner said.

Wilford couldn’t help but laugh. That was definitely a crisis all right. “I didn’t know you could do that much coke.” He’d have to try it some time.

As the showrunner stepped behind him to make sure his mic pack was on, Wilford could hear the show coming back from commercial. The audience erupted into applause as the host — whoever he was — said something that could barely be heard over the noise. That was Wilford’s cue to start acting like a professional. Mic was hot, so he pointed at the curtain and mouthed ‘where?’ at the showrunner. The showrunner pointed to Wilford’s left, and then held up one finger. Wilford checked his watch. He was the second guest, assuming they’d started filming on the hour. Maybe he could get out of there quickly, then. He got a quick pat on the back, and the curtain was thrown open just enough for him to step through. The noise from the audience was deafening. His show filmed with an audience for some segments, but this was an entirely new level of crowd energy that he’d never experienced before. He tried not to be staggered by it as he walked over to the seat and greeted the host. Wilford recognised him. Some young guy named Jackson something. He’d been getting a lot of press lately for bringing Late Night back to Los Santos.

“Holy hell,” Wilford said as he shook the kid’s hand. They both looked out at the crowd, which was finally starting to quiet down.

“I know, right?” Jackson agreed, inviting Wilford to take the hotseat. “Do you get anything like this next door?”

“No,” Wilford said. “I’m jealous.” He kind of was, too.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” a voice on his other side asked. Wilford looked over, and recognised this guy too. He was an actor. Mark something or other. Mick? Matt? Something like that.

“Have you been outside?” Wilford asked. “It’s two hundred degrees out there. I had to dig my car out of the drive way this morning.”

“Are you wearing flip flops?” Mark asked.

Wilford leaned over to look at his feet, and then settled comfortably in his chair. “Yes. It’s hot.”

“You have to admit, he’s got a point,” Jackson cut in. “I don’t think anyone’s used to seeing you dressed like this.”

Wilford returned his attention back to the host. “You’ve got Santa Claus on your tie in August,” he pointed out. Across the set, he could see the camera zoom in close on Jackson’s tie, giving everyone a high-def view of the skiing Santas he’d chosen to wear. Jackson covered his tie with his hand, turning red even underneath the layers of makeup he was wearing.

“You weren’t—nobody was supposed to see that,” he said.

“There’s some nerd ripping this in 4K for the entire internet to see,” Mark said. “Everybody’s going to see it.”

Jackson turned even more red as he was ganged up on. “I don’t think that’s how that works,” he said, finally taking his hand down now that the cameras had switched back to a wide shot. “But enough about what we’re wearing. We’re not that kind of show. You’ve actually been off the air all month, haven’t you? When we asked if you could come over, we were told today was your first day back. What was that all about?”

“I paid some surgeon way too much money to knock out a bunch of my teeth,” Wilford said.

Jackson seemed genuinely surprised. Apparently moving into the building didn’t come with any information about what his neighbours got up to. “Seriously?” he asked.

Wilford shrugged. “When I was a kid, I pissed off someone a grade above me, and he decided to use my face as a trampoline.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson said, hamming up his horror just a little bit.

“Oh, it was awful, and never got fixed right. But my dentist a few months ago referred me to a guy who specialises in that kind of thing. They had to tear everything up, and break my jaw in about three places to rebuild it. I lost these teeth in the process.” He pointed toward the missing teeth in front, prompting Jackson to lean forward to see.

“Did they put them back?” he asked.

Wilford considered his answer for a few moments, decided he had no shame whatsoever, and opened his mouth to pop the denture out. Jackson recoiled in what seemed like genuine disgust, while on the other side, Mark made a similar noise. The camera zoomed in again, and Wilford gave it a good shot of the fake teeth in his hand before popping it back into place.

“I would not have known,” Mark said. “You want to give me this guy’s number in case I need him?”

“Yeah, sure.” Wilford pulled out his wallet, and dug through it for a business card. He found it buried amongst coffee shop punch cards, and handed it over.

Behind his desk, Jackson laughed and shook his head. “What’d you do to piss this kid off so much?” he asked.

“Stole his car and drove it into the river,” Wilford said plainly. “I probably deserved it.”

“Oh, yeah. I would have curbstomped you too,” Mark agreed. “Absolutely.”

Jackson laughed awkwardly. Wilford could tell he’d already lost control of the interview, but it was a fun novelty to be on this side of the questions, and Wilford had no intention of helping him bring it back around.

“I’ve done it to other people since. You don’t mess with a man’s vehicle,” he said.

“Says the guy who got his face smashed for messing with someone’s vehicle,” Mark pointed out.

Wilford shrugged. “I said I probably deserved it.”

“Definitely,” Mark corrected.

“I’ve heard a rumour that that’s not the worst thing you’ve done,” Jackson said.

Wilford shook his head. “Oh, no.”

Jackson gave him a second to elaborate, but Wilford chose not to take it.

“Is it true you started a fire?” Jackson asked.

Wilford thought about this. He’d started a lot of fires. “When?” he asked.

Jackson made a startled little noise. “The one I heard about involved a teacher.”

“Oh, that fire!” Beside him, Mark barked with laughter. “I’d ask how you people dig this shit up, but that’s what I do for a living. I was, eleven? Twelve? The teacher made me sit in front of the class next to his desk, which meant he couldn’t see me while he was teaching. I had some matches and threw a lit one into his desk.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson exclaimed.

“I slashed a teacher’s tires once,” Mark added helpfully.

“Oh, I did that too. Same guy,” Wilford said. Then he thought about it for a second. “Same day.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson repeated. “And you were allowed to go back to school after that?”

Wilford shook his head. “Not the same school. I was on probation until I was eighteen.”

“I’m not surprised!”

Wilford shrugged. He still didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.

“You haven’t started any fires recently, have you?” Jackson asked.

“Not since I moved out here. Burn down a desk, it’s kind of funny. Burn down half the state, you’re kind of a dick.”

“Kind of?” Mark asked.

“Could burn down the whole state,” Wilford pointed out.

“Yeah, you’re right. That’s a lot of state to burn down. Start with an attainable target and move up from there,” Mark said, sounding like he was talking about weight loss goals or something.

“Oh my god,” Jackson repeated. He laughed and shook his head while someone next to the number 2 camera threw up a hand signal. “Let’s take a little break and try to get this madhouse under control, shall we? We’ll be right back!”

The audience erupted into applause again as Jackson relaxed against his desk, still laughing at the situation before him. “Do you have to go?” he asked Wilford.

Wilford shook his head. He was enjoying this. “I can stay. Unless I’m being kicked out.”

“No. Stay. You’re great,” Jackson said.

Wilford nodded and pulled his snacks out of his inventory. Once again, he’d forgotten he couldn’t eat the chips until a moment before he opened it.

“Chips?” he asked, offering Mark the bag.

“Oh, sure.” Mark took the bag and tore it open. “Get the wrong kind?”

“Forgot I can’t eat them,” Wilford explained. He pointed at the side of his mouth. “Got loads of equipment in there still. Chips are a no-go until it comes out.” He popped a mint into his mouth, knowing full well it would sound awful on the microphone and not caring.

“Again, I could not tell. This guy sounds like a wizard,” Mark said.

“One who takes teeth in payment,” Wilford said.

“Hey, you brought snacks and didn’t bring enough for everyone?” Jackson asked, suddenly realising what was going on while he’d been busy confabbing with a producer.

Wilford looked at his roll of mints, and spotting hand signals down by the camera again, slowly pulled one out. He waited until the camera man signalled ‘live’ to hand a mint over. Jackson completely missed his cue as he looked incredulously down at his mint. “Thanks,” he said. He laughed and finally looked up at the camera to welcome the show back.

Apparently he was done with Wilford, which wasn’t a terrible surprise after he’d asked if Wilford was leaving. Instead, some teenage pop idol was introduced to the stage with her band. The curtains flew open, the audience roared, and somewhere underneath all the noise, music was happening. With their mics off, Wilford and Mark were free to enjoy their snacks and the show, until the pop idol was invited over to the hotseat. Mark and Wilford both got up to shuffle down a seat to make room.

“I heard there were snacks,” she said to Wilford as soon as she sat down.

Wilford handed her the rest of his mints, if only to see Jackson ham up a jealous reaction.

“I only got one!” he said.

She shrugged. “He likes me more.”

More hammed up jealousy from Jackson, before he finally got on with it and asked her about album releases and tour dates, and then suddenly the show was all out of time. The audience erupted again as Jackson signed off and the band played the theme tune, and that was that. Wilford got up to be helped out of his mic pack so he could get back to his own show, while Mark lingered.

“Hey, we should get together some time,” he said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “I’ve got this thing happening on Saturday. Stop by. I’ll leave my info with your girl out front.”

Wilford untangled himself from the long wire and handed the pack off to the stagehand. “Yeah, maybe I will,” he said, almost surprised at the offer. He hadn’t moved to Vinewood to mingle, but he never was one to turn down a party either. They shook hands and parted ways. The appearance took longer than Wilford had wanted it to, but it wasn’t awful. He ducked out through the set doors into the hall, eager to get back to his own show.

Wilford didn’t like having other people in his space. But he was doing a lot of things lately that he didn’t like, so what was a team of landscapers tearing up his property? They were a week into a job that was supposed to take two, but at least they left early.

Apparently the terraces Wilford had wanted to tear out were structural. If he wanted to tear them out, he’d have to have an entire new wall built to keep the hill behind him from falling onto his house. Instead, they were able to redistribute some of them, making their angle steeper, but giving him more space on the ground directly outside of the house. It was space he still didn’t know what to do with, but he’d never had a yard before - not since he was a kid. The novelty of it was enough to make him want one. And maybe he would eventually buy a grill and stick it out here.

He kept the dogs inside while the landscapers were working, but they had to go out eventually. It wasn’t his fault they were taking longer than usual to leave. Buster immediately went out to investigate all the people laying huge bricks to build the new retaining walls, while Bailey became very interested in a giant dandelion that had sprouted right on the edge of the cement by the back door. Something about that dandelion sure was bothering her by the way she started barking at it.

“Shut up,” he scolded the puppy.

She kept barking. And barking. And barking. She obviously wasn’t going to stop, so Wilford left her there to go talk to the guy in charge.

“We’ve got one more day on the walls,” the landscaper said when Wilford asked. “Then we can start shaping the main yard. We may have to pour some more concrete to give the tiles an even base.”

Wilford looked at the area he was pointing to. It was going to be about twice the size when they were done with it, which was almost making it worth the hassle.

“You sure about those tiles?” Wilford asked. Buster ambled over and started licking the man’s shoe.

“They’ll look just like stone, but these guys will like it more because it won’t be as hot on their feet.”

“I don’t think he notices,” Wilford said plainly. One dog was being embarrassing, and the other was being annoying as hell. He was surprised everyone hadn’t fled already.

“It’ll also make it a bit cooler to sit out here by the pool.”

Wilford nodded. He’d been told that before, but he still wasn’t completely convinced on that either. Rubber tiles just sounded so cheap and tacky, but this guy wore him down. Wilford would have been happy to just expand the concrete and be done with it. But that was probably why he wasn’t a landscaper.

“I just don’t want it to look like a gym out here.” He’d already picked out the tiles, and knew they weren’t the same ones they used in gyms, but rubber?

He supposed if he hated it, he could always have it torn out again.

“Why don’t we wait until we get to that point to decide how it looks,” the landscaper said.

Wilford could hear the sounds of cleaning up on the hill above him, so he nodded. They were leaving. That’s all he cared about in that moment. As they packed up to leave, Wilford headed back inside, leaving the door open so the dogs could do whatever they wanted. Bailey was still barking at the dandelion, but maybe she’d encourage his neighbours to also leave, so he let her keep going while he went inside to figure out dinner. The dogs got what they always got, though now it took a little more effort. Buster ate anything put in front of him, but Bailey had to be tricked into eating her eggs by grinding up the shell and dusting it over the chicken and tuna on her plate. He was putting more effort into the dogs’ dinner than he’d be putting into his, and the hard part wasn’t even over. As he got ready to tie Buster up to keep him from inhaling everything in sight, his phone chimed. Nichola was texting him, checking in to make sure he hadn’t gone mad or something. Rather than responding directly to let her know he was still breathing, he took a quick video of Bailey barking outside. Nichola would like that. He captioned the video and sent it off, and then went to go grab Buster. He had a leash tied to the handle of the door, to keep Buster from stealing food that wasn’t his. Being tied up meant he was getting fed, which made Buster an excitable ball of energy, which in turn made it nearly impossible to tie him up. Wilford got it eventually though, and then went out to grab Bailey and carry her inside. Her plate got sat on the floor by the sink, well out of Buster’s reach. Trying to keep an eye on Buster at the same time, Wilford dug through the fridge for anything he could eat. He was sick of tofu and rice, so he decided to mix it up. Tofu and noodles. Tofu was still about the only thing soft enough to eat without wanting to die, so his fridge was stuffed with it.

By the time he was done feeding the dogs, he was out of energy for his own meal. It was the most basic fried tofu and black bean paste dish anyone had ever put together, but it was food he knew he could eat. While the noodles quickly boiled, Wilford picked up the dogs’ dishes and untied Buster, letting him run in and out some more. It heated up the house, but it was the best way to run the dogs without leaving.

With the dogs thoroughly distracted with whatever it was dogs did, Wilford took his own meal over to his chair and turned on the news. Some moron was taking a combine harvester through Vinewood, apparently picking a path that would screw up as many peoples’ commutes as possible. It looked like fun. The guys reporting from the news chopper also seemed to think so.

He flipped through channels as he ate, hoping other networks might be covering something nobody else was talking about, but it was all the same. War, monster sightings, political debates. Fucking elections always screwed with the news cycle. Maybe this time, Wilford could screw back. Having nothing to do for a month was getting boring. He needed a project, and there were plenty of sites and blogs out there that documented potential candidates. One of them must have had some dirt Wilford could dig up. It took him about an hour to come up with a shortlist of people he did not want in office anywhere, but by then it was too hot to think. He dropped his plate off at the sink on the way out to gather the dogs back. Buster came running, but Bailey still hadn’t learned English, so he had to go pick her up and carry her back.

If she really did turn out to be the breed people kept saying she was, this was going to become very problematic very quickly.

Once the dogs were inside and the house closed up again, Wilford was able to turn the AC back on. It took a couple minutes, but eventually the temperature started to drop. Even at night, it never seemed to cool down. It was in this one regard that Wilford regretted moving to the West Coast. The weather here sucked.

With everything calmed down and cooling off, Wilford flipped to one of the 24-hour news channels to see if anything interesting would crop up while he started doing some investigating of his own. One of these corrupt motherfuckers was going to be more corrupt than the rest. It was good to have a project again.

Everything went exactly as planned. Wilford would have been more pleased about this fact if he weren’t on so many drugs he couldn’t feel his face. They made him stay overnight anyway, because he did have a surgery of these things not going well, though he would have argued that the last time was an extreme extenuating circumstance - if he hadn’t been on so many drugs he couldn’t feel his face.

It was a private room this time, which even in his current state Wilford was able to appreciate. He spent most of the night in various stages of unconsciousness before Billy finally came back in the morning to take him home. Once through the door, Wilford made it as far as the sofa before carefully collapsing again and passing out again.

It was a familiar sensation. He hadn’t liked it last time, and he didn’t like it this time. He was aware there was an intense amount of pain, but the drugs made everything so uncomfortably fuzzy and numb he didn’t know which parts of himself he needed to be careful about. He had an idea, but until the morphine wore off, there was no real way to tell.

The next time he woke there was a weight on his chest. A physical, bony weight, complete with a bony dog elbow digging into his ribs. Suddenly, the dog just disappeared.

“Come on, buddy.”

Wilford opened his eyes and blearily looked up to see Billy lifting the dog up and carrying it a few paces away before putting it down again.

“I didn’t tell you to do that,” Wilford complained. Even to his ears, it came out as a single, slurred sound. The morphine was long gone, so he tested how much range of motion he had in his jaw. The answer was not much. The entire lower half of his face hurt — bone, muscle, teeth. Wait, why teeth? He suddenly realised he was missing some front teeth on the bottom. They had discussed that was a possibility before going in, and he vaguely recalled the surgeon mentioning teeth after he got out. Goddamnit. He’d been hoping to avoid that.

Buster came back to whine quietly at Wilford, so he reached out and tugged on one of the dog’s ears. Buster licked his hand.

“Here. Happy birthday,” Billy said, handing Wilford a shoebox.

“I don’t need shoes,” Wilford said.

Still, he opened the box and peered inside. There were no shoes. There were boxes of nicotine patches, and little glass bottles. He picked up one of the bottles and tried to read it, but the print was unbearably tiny. He found his glasses on the coffee table, next to the pill bottle he intended to ignore, and put them on to read the label. Since when did Phat Panda do tinctures? He carefully unscrewed the lid and gave it a little sniff, and found it smelled vaguely like lemon. If nothing else, he’d be sleeping well this week. He put the tincture back in its place and tore open one of the nicotine boxes instead, sparing maybe three seconds to read the instructions before he slapped one of the patches on his arm.

Hopefully by the time he ran out, he’d be coherent enough to go get his own.

“Nick’ll be here at seven,” Billy said. “You gonna be okay on your own until then, or should I stick around?”

Wilford waved a vague hand in Billy’s direction, and then pointed at the patio door. “Open it for the dog,” he said. Mumble, mumble, mumble.

Billy apparently got the gist anyway, because he walked into the kitchen to open the door so the dog could come and go as he pleased. “See you tomorrow,” he said, letting himself out through the door he’d just opened. Buster followed him out, leaving Wilford alone to his own misery.

Having time off because he’d requested it was an odd experience, and Wilford didn’t know what to do with himself as a result. Usually time off happened because of programming, or strikes, or fuckery with the network. Knowing that things were going on without him was surprisingly uncomfortable. Wilford didn’t want to have time off while everyone else kept working. What if they got his show cancelled? What if they got better ratings than he did?

Wilford usually took a few days around his birthday off, but in the past it had been different. It either hadn’t been his show, or the whole show went dark. This was different and weird, and the drive up to Mt Chiliad was the most uncomfortable drive in a while.

These places were always the same. Minimal luggage. Empty inventory. And a lot of security. It had been Billy’s treat every year, since they’d known one another, but this was the first time Wilford wasn’t completely looking forward to it. He wasn’t not looking forward to it. But a little part of him wanted to be back in Los Santos more than it wanted to be out at a ranch.

Checking in was always an ordeal. Luggage was limited to a single backpack per person, which was thoroughly searched at the door. There were also body searches to prevent people from smuggling anything in. No booze. No drugs. No weapons. The machine beeped loudly as Wilford stepped through it, just like it did every year. The security guard stopped him, using his entire body to block the way forward as Wilford sighed and reached into his inventory, where he kept his journal. Something about the binding, or the clasp, or the pen he kept with it set the damn detector off every time. And every time, the guard took a minute step back and nodded, suddenly uncomfortably with what he was being shown. This time was no exception. Wilford put his journal back where it belonged and stepped through to claim his bag full of clothes.

Billy stepped through the machine without a single blip. He used an old Gameboy for his save log, and that damn thing never set anything off. Wilford didn’t understand it. He never would.

The lodge was several times bigger than the one they used to go to back east. This was a 5,000 acre ranch at the foot of Mt Chiliad, bought by some tech millionaire in the 90s and converted to a series of arenas and race tracks. Billy and Wilford shared a private room, just like every year. This particular lodge seemed to favour private rooms over barracks, but the walk from the front door to the stairs quickly cleared up why. The clientele was much different than what they were used to, for one. Back east, it had been common for Wilford to have been the only recognisable face present. This time, Wilford recognised most of the people they passed on the way to their room, and a good number of them were A-listers.

Wilford loved that about Los Santos. People recognised him, but there was always someone more recognisable somewhere nearby.

The room was charming and comfortable. They’d kept the ranch theme with the western decor, while updating security through the entire building. The windows had all been reinforced, with bars on the outside. In the distance, beyond the little field with a few horses to further keep up the theme, they could see one of the arenas. Wilford could see a car kicking up a cloud of dust in the distance, but it was too far away to hear any of the explosions or gunfire.

The first night, they always relaxed. They ate at the restaurant, made friends with some of the other folks there for the weekend, and planned out their schedule.

---

Death runs always sounded like a fun idea until they go there. Every single time. There were only about ten people doing the run, which made it even more of a challenge to get through alive. Wilford got through the disappearing floor, and the spike wall, and even managed to avoid the gas chamber. It was the fucking water that got him every time. He could never make the jump.

Being electrocuted was never fun. But it did mean he got to spend the rest of the run up on the observation deck with everyone else who sucked at these things. It was much more entertaining up on the observation deck. Between everyone shouting bad advice up in the observation deck, and people shouting down below through their headsets, the entire arena was chaos. One guy managed to find a little perch in between traps and refused to get down, while everyone else tried to conga line their way through the remaining traps, hoping there would be more runners than traps.

Of course there weren’t, and before long, everyone wound up on the observation deck, screaming at the coward to get out of the vent. When he continued to refuse, someone with more power than the rest of them gassed him out to end everyone’s misery.

---

The truck they found had a flat tire and the worst suspension in the world. Every bump and pocket they hit rattled through Wilford’s spine and threatened to knock out all of his teeth before the surgeon could. Billy took a corner too fast, and the truck rolled off the road, down an embankment, and into an unseen river. Somehow, they managed to get out without drowning, only to be met with gunfire at the surface. The river was wide, but they were able to get to the other side without being too badly shot. Wilford’s shoulder was on fire, but he pushed through it, trying to find cover on the wrong side of the arena.

There was a little shed that they were able to duck behind to catch their breath. Billy tossed him a couple of energy drinks and a first aid kit, each of them taking turns patching themselves up while the other kept an eye out for danger.

They were about as good as they were going to get when gunfire started ringing out nearby. Wilford got up and checked around the corner of the shed. He couldn’t see anybody, but he could hear them.

He heard them right behind him, along with the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the ground. Wilford turned and shot the woman behind him. Billy was beyond saving, so Wilford ran toward where the woman had come from, finding a few of her buddies and shooting at all of them until he ran out of ammo.

He’d never once won a battle arena for some reason, and seemed to be continuing that streak.

---

There was a sword in a barrel. A fucking sword. Fuck yes. Wilford wanted that. And the boots. The boots were too big, but it was better than being barefoot out in the scrub. He and Billy ran back to their hastily built shack and locked the door beside them. They had some deer meat in a cooler, which Billy threw onto the fire while Wilford went through their loot. Ammo for guns they hadn’t found or built yet, three pairs of shoes that were too small for either of them, and a straw hat that Wilford decided he wanted to wear. A lot of garbage, really.

And a sword. The sword was awesome.

They were both completely unsurprised to realise they’d been followed. They heard the footsteps and whispers outside their awful little shack, and both got ready to bust out fighting. Billy killed the fire before one of them stepped in it by accident, plunging them into relative darkness. About five seconds later, someone outside started shooting through the walls with a much better gun than either of them had. Attempting to go with the element of surprise, Wilford burst through the door with his sword. He’d managed to take one of the guys down before the other one shot him in the face.

Fuck. He liked that sword.

---

“Fuck you! It’s not me!” he shouted through his headset.

“Well it’s not me, is it? So it must be you!”

He didn’t know where the other guy was. He checked his watch again. They were the only two left. It had to be the other guy, because the screen on Wilford’s watch was green. He decided to get out of his spot and find somewhere more secure, ignoring the other guy ranting about how he was apparently innocent, and it had to be Wilford who was hunting him. He found a little supply closet and locked himself in, ready to just camp out the timer.

“Oh fuck!” the other guy shouted suddenly.

Wilford stayed quiet for a few moments, knowing he was being baited.

“Where’d you go, pal?” he asked.

Nothing.

“Don’t do this. It’s not cute,” he said.

Still nothing. Fuck. What game was being played now?

“Hey, Wil. Where you at?”

It was Billy. Billy had been confirmed dead five minutes ago.

“Oh, fuck you!” Wilford shouted. “You filthy fucking cheat!”

Billy cackled on the other end of the line. Wilford was pretty sure he could hear it on the other side of the door. Right before it exploded.

He called. He couldn’t get the idea out of his head now that it had been put there, so he called and scheduled another meeting. This time, the discussion went a little more in-depth about what would be done. A lot of fancy words were thrown around - code for re-breaking the bone and driving bolts and screws and pins into it.

“We’d need to do a graft in this area,” Dr Clarke said, pointing at the X-rays with his pen. “You’ll probably lose these teeth, but the benefit of the graft is that it’ll let us put posts in once it’s all healed.”

“I can’t film with no teeth,” Wilford said, frowning at the mess of crooked teeth and bent bone on the X-ray. He hadn’t realised those teeth were that fucked up. He wondered if it looked that bad on camera.

“We’d fit you for a temporary denture. Unless you’re filming in 4K, the camera won’t even see it,” Dr Clarke assured.

Wilford wanted to say something to refute that, but he knew this guy worked with A-listers. He probably knew what he was talking about.

“We barely film in 1080,” Wilford said instead.

Dr Clarke chuckled. “Typically, we’d use a graft from a rib or hip, but I like to use a synthetic substitute. It’s less invasive, but it can take a little longer to heal.”

Less invasive sounded good. Wilford listened carefully as Dr Clarke continued to explain the procedure, using words that barely made sense. But the farther they got into it, the better Wilford felt about it. Side effects and recovery time didn’t seem like such a big problem if this guy thought he could actually fix the problem.

---

“I need some time off. Arrange it for me.”

Nichola looked up from her desk, more than a little shocked. “What? Why? What’s wrong?”

Wilford frowned. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. “Nothing.” He sat down in front of her desk. “I’m getting this fixed.” He pointed vaguely toward his face. “June twenty-sixth. I want a month off, in case it complicates or something.”

“They can do that?” Nichola asked.

Wilford shrugged and nodded. “I guess. I’ve been talking to a surgeon about it. He thinks he could fix it in about two hours.”

Nichola made a sound like she was trying not to laugh. “Why didn’t you fix it before?” she asked.

“Nobody told me I could. It’s been fucked up half my life. You’d think someone would have said something sooner.”

She did laugh this time. “Well, they said something now. You sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah,” Wilford said, nodding. He didn’t even have to think about it. “I get hit the right way, and I hurt for a month. I’d like to try to not do that. It sounds nice.”

“Wow,” Nichola said. She looked down at her keyboard, and then back up at Wilford. “All right.” She pulled up the calendar on her computer and clicked around a bit. “Why don’t we make it easier on ourselves. Start on the 17th, and give you the whole of July? Come back the fifth of August?”

Wilford nodded. He’d probably be a nervous wreck in the week leading up to it anyway, so taking extra time off before was probably best.

“Who’s helming? Or are we going dark?” Nichola asked.

“Mandy,” Wilford said automatically. “He wants his own show. Give him the air time.”

Nichola nodded, writing all of this down on the pad on her desk. “What are we saying?” she asked. “Publicly, and within the network.”

Wilford had to think about his answer for a moment. “Network might hate it. Health leave for the public. Feel around when you tell the network and see what seems best.”

She nodded, and wrote that down as well. “All right. I’ll get the ball rolling on this.” She sighed and looked up at Wilford again. “Important question. Where are you staying?”

“Home. I’ve got…” Wilford stopped, suddenly remembering Autor giving his notice. Fuck. “I’ve got a phone if I need anything,” he said instead. He didn’t want to stay anywhere else if he were going to be miserable. And if it went better than he expected it to, he’d have some relaxing alone time for the first time in years.

“Will you use it?” Nichola asked.

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” Wilford said, getting up to go do some real work.

Wilford had wanted to let the restaurant chug along while he figured out what needed to be fixed with it. The place had been keeping its head above water so far, so how difficult could it be to turn it around one piece at a time?

More difficult than he’d imagined. The place hadn’t been keeping its head above water. It should have had the plug pulled ages ago. No amount of reshuffling and rescheduling was going to fix it any time soon. He had to close it down, fix everything at once, and start all the way over. The first part of that was figuring out what to do with the staff. It was also the easiest part. They could walk with a reference, or take a paid vacation at whatever their current salary was. Most chose to walk, which was fine by him. Fewer people to pay out of pocket that way.

The chef wasn’t bad. He knew what he was doing, even if he did have a tendency to half-ass some things. It was hard to blame him with the disaster of a menu he was working with. That was going to be the first thing Wilford looked at fixing. Not bad was also not great.

It took him the better part of the weekend to figure out what he wanted to do about it. He had some ideas, but he needed to do some research on the matter. And research needed a partner. He had some ADR scheduled for Monday morning, which he immediately decided to put off until later in the week. When he walked into the studio, he walked straight past his dressing room and started hunting through the entire building instead. Finally, he found who he was looking for, tucked away in a sound booth dipping a doughnut into her coffee.

“Come on. I need a date,” Wilford said, holding the door open.

Jess looked up at him, and then at her coffee and doughnut, and then back at him. “What’s in it for me?” she asked. She took a bite of her doughnut and chewed slowly while she waited for a response.

“An all you can eat buffet.” It was technically true, if not in the strictest sense of the word. It was enough for Jess, though. She nodded slowly and got up, bringing her coffee and doughnut with her.

“You’re paying, right?” she asked.

“I’m writing it off,” Wilford said.

The two of them walked out to his car, neither saying another word. Jess finished her breakfast on her way out to the beach, and eventually got bored and started fiddling with the stations on the radio.

“So what are we doing, really?” she asked finally as they got off the main road, and onto the winding avenues of Del Perro.

“I already told you,” Wilford said.

“There aren’t any buffets in this part of town,” Jess pointed out. “Not unless we’re going to a hotel.”

“We’re not going to a hotel.” He parked on the northern end of the boardwalk, taking a few moments to check his wallet and phone before getting out of the car. Tourist season was already in full swing, crowding the area with gawkers stopping to take selfies with seagulls. Wilford quickly walked past all of them, ducking into the very first restaurant in the long row of tourist traps along the beach. Like everything else along the boardwalk, it was full of hipster vibe and pretentious, overpriced menu items. Half the people in the place had their phones out, taking pictures of themselves, their food, or themselves eating their food. Somewhere was the irritating natter of a vlogger trying to hype the place up as THE place to eat in LS. Wilford and Jess were quickly seated and left alone almost immediately.

Wilford looked at the menu and sighed. It had exactly two choice, dressed up to look like twenty: some vegan goat food salad, or something that was 90% cheese. He wasn’t even a little bit surprised. While he was being ignored by the waiter, he pulled out his steno pad and started making notes on every aspect of the menu before ordering an appetiser that didn’t seem like it was going to kill him.

About half the boardwalk was made up of restaurants, and Wilford intended to stop into every single one of them. Deconstructed sandwiches, pseudo-Italian, ethical seafood, vegan. Somehow, it was all the same. Wilford couldn’t eat half of it, and Jess had something to say about all of it. He wrote that down too, slowly building a messy but detailed chart of everything that was available on the beach. They even stopped at some of the food cards off the boardwalk, where everything that didn’t fit in with the “super unique and totally different” mould had wound up. Thai, curry, hot dogs, the sort of thing that couldn’t decide what kind of Asian it was supposed to be. Quick meals that delivered what you expected. Wilford preferred those to anything up on the boardwalk.

As the sun began to set, they doubled back and stopped in at one that was dark and obviously closed. He’d already had the sign ripped off, because like hell was he going to run anything that was called Thandie’s. He just hadn’t figured out what he was going to call it yet.

“Is this yours?” Jess asked, following him up to the door.

“Yep.” He unlocked it and let her inside to snoop around while he headed back to the kitchen. The previous management had been a disaster, but at least the staff understood what their job was. Everything was clean, and well organised, with nice, clear dates written on everything. Wilford spent some time looking around the walk-in, trying to decide what he wanted to do with it. If this was going to be his restaurant, he wanted to actually be able to eat there without getting poisoned. He started pulling out anything he didn’t want on the menu, piling it all into boxes and crates. There wasn’t much he wound up getting rid of, but it was enough to clear up a good amount of space to make more room. Wilford went out to the front house to find Jess napping in a booth, and tossed his keys at her, rudely waking her up.

“What?” she asked, slowly looking for whatever it was that hit her in the stomach.

“Go get the car,” he said, already reaching for his wallet. “Take the crates in the kitchen and deliver it to some soup kitchen or something. I don’t care. Just get them out of here. Then I want you to go down to the port and pick up some stuff.” He handed her a few hundred dollars and a hand-written list, walking away before she had time to ask questions or object. Eventually, she got up and left the building. She was back about ten minutes later for the crates, and a demand for a tip, which Wilford paid along with an eyeroll. At that point, he was already back to digging through the walk-in to see what he could find. Once Jess was gone again, he pulled out his phone and called Paul with instructions to be prepared for a long night.

It took a few hours for Jess to come back from her errands, and by then the kitchen was full of noise and commotion. Wilford still hadn’t really decided what the menu should be, but he and Paul were working together to try to figure that out. He didn’t want to serve sandwiches and pseudo-Italian, and Paul seemed just as eager to step away from that.

“All right, men,” Jess declared disdainfully as she brought a crate into the kitchen. “Go get the rest of your disgusting fish.”

Wilford looked over to see what Paul was elbow-deep in, and decided to quickly finish off his own little experiment instead, and followed Jess out to the car. She’d put it all in the trunk, at least, so the car wouldn’t smell like seafood for the next month, and had managed to haggle more out of the people down at the port than Wilford was prepared for. This was going to be the fun part. Once they had everything in the walk-in, Wilford started digging through everything to see what he had to work with.

By about four in the morning, they had almost fifty dishes between them to work with. Enlisting Jess’ help again, they started on the task of figuring out what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to combine. Wilford didn’t know much about western cuisine, which was pretty much all Paul knew, but he’d already had some ideas that Wilford liked. After trying everything and comparing notes with one another, they managed to cut the list in half, which felt like a good number. By then, the sun was coming up, and even Wilford was feeling exhausted.

“Six o’clock tonight,” Wilford said to Paul as they started to tear everything down and clean up their mess. “We’re building the menu and teaching your team how to make it. Let your guys know.”

Paul nodded, but said nothing. They’d lost Jess again, but that was fine. She didn’t work there anyway, and was going to start getting angry if Wilford kept putting her to work. It took them almost an hour to get everything back to working order, before Wilford could go find Jess once again sleeping in a booth. He kicked her foot to wake her up again, trying not to laugh at the death glare coming from her.

“You going home, or back to the studio?” he asked.

“Home,” Jess said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Some asshole kept me up all night.”

Wilford pointed to the door, waiting for both Jess and Paul to get out of there before he shut everything down and locked up.

The first thing Wilford did as soon as he’d made his bet with Brooke was stop by the Bar to exchange some currency. He wasn’t sure how quickly he’d need it, but the sooner he had it, the better. Which was all fine and dandy, because the next day, he was high-tailing it out of the nighbourhood and toward any main road as fast as he could without actually running.

The point was not to be seen, but to simply observe. And right away, he knew he stood out, because it was fucking freezing, and he was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt like a goddamn lunatic. He hadn’t really thought about that when he packed for this trip, either. He’d kind of just grabbed whatever was on the top of the clean laundry pile, which was much of the same. Luckily, the fashion didn’t seem too far off what he was used to, which made hatching a plan to go ignored relatively easy. He just had to find the right sort of neighbourhood to make it happen.

One on the main road, he was able to flag down a cab. If he concentrated very, very hard, he could straighten his jaw out just enough to even out his words as he spoke. It hurt like hell to do, but he could keep up the act long enough to tell a story about stolen luggage and needing to find a good place to do some cheap, emergency shopping. After an over-priced 20 minutes, he was dropped outside a charity shop. The right jeans, a few old t-shirts with things called My Little Pony and Sesame Street, a couple of flannel shirts and tweed blazers. His shoes were wrong. Brown leather loafers were what he needed, and there was no shortage of them in his size. He paid at the counter, and with his best smile, asked if he could possibly use one of the changing rooms, since it was ever so cold out. The girl at the register said she really shouldn’t, but led him back anyway. It was an uncomfortable affair, but he changed quickly and stuffed his own clothes, as well as the extras into his backpack before leaving. On his way out, he caught his reflection in the window, and realised he still wasn’t done. In a rare moment, he wished he’d been better at keeping up salon appointments.

After about a half hour of searching the area, with the help of a super friendly chap with no front teeth inside a convenience store, Wilford found one nearby. More money, and twenty minutes later, his hair had been cut, shaved, and styled in various manners to perfectly suit the American hipster douche tourist he was supposed to be this week. His glasses were wrong, but he hadn’t brought his contacts with him. Hopefully nobody would notice. Finally settled into the role, the next task was simple: get the hell out of town before he was spotted by someone who might recognise him despite his costume.

One more cab ride took him to a train station. London seemed like the safest bet. He’d been there a few times on his own world, so he’d have something to compare it to. The next train was in about ten minutes, and would get him where he was going before 9pm. It was perfect. He bought the ticket, smiled at the clerk, and rushed to find his platform. Once he was on the train and they were moving, Wilford dug his iPad out of his bag, curious to see if it would connect to this world’s wifi, and was pleasantly surprised when it did. That was going to make the two-hour trip so much less tedious. The first thing he did was found a national news site to get a better feel for what he was dealing with. Something called Facebook was in trouble, Russia was so ubiquitous across the entire site that Wilford had begun to tune it out already, some space station was falling to Earth — Wilford paused at that headline, since it was the only thing he’d read so far that didn’t seem completely foreign to him. The story turned out to be far less exciting than he’d expected it to be. It was so not exciting, they’d apparently been expecting it to happen for a while. How dull.

Two hours made for a long train ride, but it wasn’t enough to get through as much of the news as he wanted to. But by the time he got off the train, he was starving. The news could wait. He tucked his iPad back into his bag and headed off into the city to see what he could find out about the place. At this time of night, there were still a few places open, though far less than he was used to back home, and at a much smaller selection. Plenty of fast food, but Wilford wanted something real. He found himself a pub that still had its lights on and headed inside. It wasn’t like the ones they showed in movies, with dark yellow lighting and decor that looked like it had survived the Blitz. It was bright and as modern as it could possibly be, given the building itself had likely survived the Blitz. He took a seat near one of the back walls and took a little bit of time to observe the entire place. Nothing seemed different so far. Except for the noise. This world was already very quiet. Not supernaturally quiet, but quiet enough to be unnerving. Traffic was a constant din. Nobody shouted or screamed. There was no erratic pattern of air traffic overhead, or fits and bursts of chaos on the streets. There was an endless, unbroken cadence, like the first bar of a song being played over and over and over again, seeming to build up to something that never came. And once Wilford had noticed it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It made him tense, like he was waiting for the inevitable. But the inevitable never seemed to come.

He remembered that, vaguely. The last time he was here, in this London, with Jim. It was years ago. Almost two decades. It hadn’t bothered Wilford as much then, because they’d made their own fun, and their own noise to break the monotony. This time was different though. He was here as a silent observer. Making his own fun would only negate everything he was trying to do. He had to ignore it. Or at least throw himself so wholly into his task that he didn’t notice it.

A waitress finally came over to take his order — a beer and a burger. Something simple and familiar, and not daring enough that he’d probably wind up turning his nose at it once he realised what was in it. When it arrived, it was over-presented on some pretentious square plate with too much garnish, and the beer was warm. He unearthed his meal from a mountain of parsley, ignored the temperature of his drink, and ate slowly while he watched couples and groups of friends finishing off their nights out before the place closed. It was not unfamiliar. It was quiet and uneasy, but there was nothing that stood out either. Nothing at least, that was there. It was what wasn’t there that continued to stand out.

When he was done, he asked the waitress to point him to a hotel. What was the tipping custom like here? He had no signal on his phone, and he hadn’t noticed one way or the other what anyone else had done. Deciding in this instance to stick to what he knew, he threw down entirely too much cash onto the table before heading out to find the address he’d been given. The hotel was a little fancier than he’d expected it to be, but he was only going to be in town for a few days. He had more than enough to cover it, assuming he could convince them to take cash. It turned out anybody took cash if you flashed enough of it. He probably shouldn’t have done that, but the alternative was staying in the sort of place that dealt only with cash, and that sort of place didn’t usually have wifi or room service. He got his room info and key, and headed to the elevator for a night of serious research.

None of the sites he knew existed. Everything was different. Something called Google led him to something called Twitter when he tried to find some police scanners, so he created an account and read through the hashtag for hours while the news played all night in the background. People called the cops over everything. Someone was holding a knife, someone was shouting at the sky, someone stole someone else’s weed. It was at once the most asinine list of complaints Wilford had ever seen, and the most fascinating thing ever. He couldn’t look away. Accounts for cities all over the world parroting police activity that made no rational sense. Or rather, it did make sense, but in a way that was twisted and bent and just wrong. He couldn’t look away.

He only got up when he needed a cigarette. As he pulled the pack from his inventory, he looked around the hotel room. No ash trays. He tried the windows, but they wouldn’t open. So he grabbed his room key and headed out to the street, assuming the people here weren’t so insane that they even banned smoking outdoors. By that point, it was so late it was early. Everything had rocketed past unnervingly quiet to eerily quiet. Wilford didn’t like it. Apart from the rumble of the occasional car in the distance, the only sound was the quiet rustle of wind. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. He made it the quickest smoke break he’d ever taken in his life. He wasn’t going to stand outside in the dark a second longer than he had to.

---

This world wasn’t a utopia by any means. During the day, Wilford left his hotel and explored the city. He was staying where the tourists stayed, which was never a representative sample, no matter where you went. He had to find the rougher, less-polished parts of town if he wanted to see what people were really like. He took too many pictures with his phone, spending too much time fiddling with filters and framing, playing the role of some tourist who had strayed a little too far from where it was safe. He listened to conversations while he stared at his phone screen. Even out here, away from the part of town they wanted to show off to everyone, the world was quiet. Not subdued, necessarily, but holding the same endless rhythm as everything else had done so far. He watched cops break up scuffles between teenagers, and people have bawling meltdowns over fender benders. Everything was the worst thing in the world to these people. They went above and beyond breakable to downright delicate. By Saturday night, he was exhausted from the constant anticipation that something would happen, which never did. He wasn’t even sure what he expected to happen, but by that point he would have taken anything just to finally break the tension. On his way back to the hotel, he stopped into another pub for dinner, more focused on getting something to eat than people watching. He was ready to go home, but it was too late by that point to head back to Holby. Being a tourist had grown boring, and this world had grown stressful and strange in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend.

As he continued to mind his own business, the man next to him refused to do the same. Wilford could feel him staring disgustedly. He ignored the man, too tired to even start.

“The fuck have you done to your face?” the man asked finally, his words slurred from one too many drinks.

“Pal, I am not in the mood,” Wilford said, not even looking up from the fish on his plate.

“Shit, I heard Americans had all lost their minds, but I didn’t think it was that bad.” The guy stood up and got a little too close to Wilford. Intentionally, no doubt. Wilford continued to ignore him and ate his dinner.

“Hey, don’t be rude. I’m talking to you.” He nudged Wilford in a way that wasn’t even trying to be friendly.

“Good for you.” He wasn’t going to do this. There was a time and a place, and this wasn’t it. He was not going to get himself arrested on some pansy-ass world that treated throwing a punch like a felony.

“Is it some kind of sex thing?” the guy asked. “How queer do you gotta be to announce it to the whole world like that?”

Ah, there it was. The unveiled disgust that meant something was finally going to happen. Wilford continued to ignore it, going on with his meal as if he’d never even heard it. But he could see the man too close beside him. He could see him moving, slow and telegraphing his every intent. Whether it was a knife or a fist that was coming toward him, Wilford neither knew nor cared. This man was drunk; he was not. He was bigger and faster, and before the irritating prick could lay a hand on him, Wilford was on his feet and grabbing the fucker to shove his face into the bartop. He could hear the clank of dropped keys falling to the floor, which meant he’d have been in for a bad night if he were anybody else.

“I told you, fucko. I’m not in the mood.” He gave the guy’s face a nice little shove into the bar, and looked up at the stunned bartender who didn’t seem to know what to do. As soon as he let go of the other guy, Wilford pulled out his wallet, dropped some cash next to his plate, and walked out the door. He wasted no time in getting out of there, just in case the cops were called, or the other guy were kicked out. He wasn’t actually sure, at that moment, which one would be worse. He walked until he could hail a cab, and headed back to the hotel.

Wilford is still bored. The restaurant was a good distraction for a while, but now the money's in escrow, and there's nothing else that he can do until the bank decides he actually owns the place. He's read up on every relevant piece of information he could, and now he feels like he's going burst from boredom.

He knows what this is, but that doesn't mean he'll do anything helpful about it. It's far more enjoyable to carve chunks out of a table with his massive switchblade instead. It'll go on his tab, of course. He doesn't care.

Of course Nichola let the dog out. Why wouldn’t she? She was angry at him over some ancient history, so she wanted to come shout at him and let his dog out. That was exactly what had happend. Naturally.

He found himself checking his Tweetr replies, but there was nothing useful in them. Most of his followers were just there to see what would irritate him next, so a lost dog was just meme material for them. Bunch of anonymous assholes. By the time it had got dark, everything started to calm down. Nobody wanted to even pretend to be helpful, because something new had probably come along and distracted everybody. Animal control had told him to stop calling, and even going out to walk through the streets and shout for the animal brought up nothing. Buster was gone. The overnight news wasn’t distracting enough, and nothing else seemed like a worthwhile use of time, so Wilford spent most of the night carrying the dog’s leash through the neighbourhood and trying to lure him home. He did lure some dogs, but none were the ones he wanted. Most of them looked just as sad and pathetic as Buster had when Wilford first found him.

Day broke with Wilford standing in the living room with a cup of coffee, staring out onto the empty street below. Nichola texted him about every half hour, but he’d taken to ignoring her. It was her fault anyway. He wasn’t going to make her feel any better by responding to her platitudes.

When his phone rang, Wilford nearly jumped out of his skin. He didn’t recognise the number, but for once that made it worth answering. There was something slightly off about the woman’s voice on the other end, but he wasn’t concerned with that at the moment.

“Is this Buster’s dad?” she asked.

“You found him?” Wilford asked, scrambling to pull his stenopad out of his inventory so he could take down information.

The woman on the other end laughed. “Yes, he’s here. He’s a little confused, but in good spirits. He got on the train and wound up out here in Rowan.”

“Rowan?” Wilford asked. Where in the fuck was Rowan? He abanoned his stenopad in exchange for his laptop so he could look it up.

“Are you going to be home today? I can pick him up,” he said, already searching for directions.

As soon as he saw the pin on the map, his stomach dropped.

“Yes, I’ll be home today. 323. That’s Los Santos, isn’t it? That’s an awful long drive. Shall I feed him?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Uh. Yeah. He likes eggs and fish.”

Rowan was out in the middle of the fucking desert. Exactly where Wilford didn’t want to go.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“We’ll be waiting for you. It’s Wilford, isn’t it?” the woman asked.

Wilford tried to remember if he’d put his name on Buster’s tags. He was pretty sure he hadn’t. But maybe they had internet and Tweetr out in the desert.

“Yeah. Uh. I’ll see you soon. Thanks.”

He hung up as quickly as he could. Fuck the desert. Wilford squinted at the map, trying to reconcile what he saw with what he’d been told. Apparently, he was going to Rowan! He pulled his contacts up on his phone and dialled Nichola.

“Hey, you. What’s the news?” she said when she finally answered after way too many rings.

“I need to go to Rowan to pick him up.”

“Oh! Where’s that?” Nichola asked.

“It’s out by Nevada. By the border,” Wilford said. The more he looked at the map, the more certain he was that the train did not go to Rowan.

“Oh,” Nichola said again, this time more slowly. “Is anyone going with you?”

“You are!” Wilford demanded.

“I can’t. I’m in a meeting that you’re also supposed to be in right now,” she said. “We can’t both not be here.”

“You lost him!” Wilford reminded her harshly.

“Ask Dennis. Just please don’t go alone,” Nichola said. She said something else, muffled as if speaking away from the phone, before the call cut off.

Wilford wanted to throw his phone. He resisted and phoned Billy instead, utterly unsprised when he didn’t even bother to answer.

He could drag Autor along with him. It would take some convincing. Or he could just haul the kid over his shoulder, but that seemed like a good way to get bitten. Hmm. He’d come up with a solution on the way downstairs.