Port Virel wouldn't exist without the harbor.
Most of the Somatic Republic's western trade ran straight through it. Cargo ships in and out around the clock, containers offloaded onto the docks, hundreds of semis pulling away toward inland destinations by morning. The locals absorbed the rhythm of it the same way they absorbed everything else about living here. It became background noise. Part of what the city sounded like.
It wasn't a flashy place and it didn't try to be. Main intersections had cameras on the poles. Police response averaged around ten minutes on a normal call. The Somatic government liked its cities organized and legible, the kind of place where patterns held and disruptions got logged.
Missing people weren't common here.
By the time dispatch arrived at Mariner Heights it had been eight minutes.
Right on schedule.
Two officers. Standard uniforms. The older one had a five o'clock shadow that had been going gray at the edges for a while, the kind of face that had seen enough apartment calls to stop being surprised by them. The younger one looked like the academy was still recent, notepad already out, pen uncapped, posture a little too straight.
They moved through the apartment slowly, stopping at the trash can at the end of the counter.
"This was from earlier?" the older one asked.
"Yeah," Eli said. "It fell when she dropped the phone. At least that's what it sounded like on the call."
The younger officer was near the door, writing things down in careful strokes. "No signs of forced entry?"
"No."
Marcus stayed back near the hallway, quiet, close enough to hear everything without being in the way.
The older officer put two fingers against the chain lock and then the deadbolt, not pulling on them, just checking the feel of them. "Anyone else have access to the apartment? Landlord, anyone like that?"
"Not without notice," Eli said.
The two officers exchanged a look. Not suspicious exactly. More like they were confirming what they'd both already landed on.
Eli had the feeling they'd seen this kind of apartment before. Small and clean and organized. Single parent. Kid. Nothing obviously wrong anywhere you looked.
The younger one asked, "Any recent arguments? Threats made? Anything unusual in the last few days?"
"No. Nothing like that."
Which wasn't entirely true. There was the phone call, the door, the sound of something moving fast and then the crash. But he didn't know how to hand that over in a way that would mean anything yet.
The older officer straightened his belt as best he could over his midsection. "We'll log this as a missing persons report. Normally it's a bit early for that, but with the phone left behind we'll move on it sooner."
"How?" Marcus asked from the hallway.
"Someone will come by in the morning to follow up," the younger one said. "Tonight we'll check the nearby cameras."
Cameras. Of course.
It was one of those things Port Virel residents accepted without much discussion. The Somatic Republic called it public safety and put it in the civic literature. His mom had always said the same phrase with a slightly different tone in her voice. He'd picked up on the difference without ever asking her about it directly.
The younger officer moved toward the counter where the cracked phone sat face up, screen still dark. He looked at it without touching it.
"You said this was on the floor when you got here?"
"Yeah."
The officer studied it a moment longer than seemed necessary. "We'll need to take that."
Eli nodded.
For the first time all evening, standing in his own kitchen watching someone bag his mother's broken phone, it felt like an actual case and not just a scared kid who had come home to an empty apartment.
The officers said their goodbyes and stepped out into the corridor to knock on neighbors' doors. Muffled voices drifted back through the wall. Mrs. Kline across the hall turned her television down before answering. Normal answers being given in a normal voice.
"I'm sure they believe you," Marcus said.
Eli wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
The officers came back in a few minutes later.
"Nothing from the immediate neighbors," the older one said. "We'll widen the scope, start asking around the block."
He set a small white card on the kitchen counter. PVPD printed across the top in clean block letters.
"She comes back, or you remember anything you forgot to mention, that number goes straight through."
Eli nodded.
They left. The younger one gave the apartment one last look on his way out, the kind of look that was trying to catch something it had missed, and then pulled the door shut behind him.
The hallway went quiet.
Marcus pulled out his phone. "I'm gonna tell my mom I'm staying. She loses it if I'm not back before ten."
He stepped toward the hallway for some privacy. Eli could still hear most of it through the thin walls.
"Yeah, I'm at Eli's. No, it's not that. His mom's missing. Yeah, the police already came. I'm staying the night."
A pause.
"No, I'll keep you posted."
He slid the phone back into his pocket and came back into the kitchen. "She said it's fine."
"Thanks for staying," Eli said.
Marcus walked over to the front door and checked the lock without being asked. The deadbolt was turned all the way over. He stood there a second looking at the chain.
"You said she just uses the chain during the day?"
"Yeah." Eli came closer. "She only does both at night before she goes to bed."
Marcus looked at him. "So if you heard the door open while you were on the phone with her..."
"Someone locked it after."
They both stood there with that for a moment.
The chain showed no damage. The door frame wasn't splintered anywhere along the edge. No scratching around the lock plate. Whatever had happened on the other side of this door, it hadn't looked like a fight from the outside.
"If somebody came in," Marcus said carefully, "they either had a key. Or they really didn't want it to look like they didn't."
Eli didn't answer.
Marcus turned toward the fridge. "Have you eaten anything? You bolted before lunch. I saw you leave."
Eli shook his head.
"You should eat something."
"I'm not hungry."
It came out sharper than he meant it. Marcus didn't argue. He just opened the cabinet like he'd done it a hundred times, because he had, and looked at what was in there. Half a box of cereal. Bread. Peanut butter pushed to the back.
He grabbed the bread.
It was the kind of thing you did when there was nothing useful left to do.
"You're not passing out on me," he said.
Eli watched him make two sandwiches with the focused efficiency of someone refusing to acknowledge how bad the situation felt. Marcus slid one across the counter toward him without ceremony.
"Eat."
Eli took it. He ate without tasting it, just working through the motions, the bread soft and familiar in a way that felt completely disconnected from the rest of the evening.
After a minute of quiet chewing Marcus said, "You're going to have to tell the school tomorrow."
Eli hadn't thought that far yet.
"Someone has to handle it," Marcus said. "Until she comes back."
Until she comes back. He said it like the outcome was already written, like it was just a matter of the timeline filling itself in.
Eli swallowed a bite and nodded.
For the first time since he'd run out of that school hallway, the panic didn't spike. It settled into something flatter and quieter. Not better. Just more manageable.
If nobody else was going to figure out what came next, he would.
He didn't want comfort anymore.
He wanted answers.