Dream Theory - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Welcome to our next story!  It's unlike anything else I've written before, as I went for a more futuristic vibe on this AU.  I hope you enjoy it!  It happens to be one of my favorites of what I've done so far.

This time of day, the police station was busy.  Petty criminals waited for processing.  Concerned civilians reported crimes or suspected crimes.  And that constant foot traffic was on top of the stream of patrol officers, detectives, and lab techs heading in or out of the double doors at the entrance of the building.

The work never stopped, but that was one of Yang’s favorite parts about her job.  Something always needed to be done and, if she ever finished all of her cases, someone else always needed a hand.  This afternoon, however, she was dropping off work for someone else.

“This way,” she said, tugging her handcuffed friend towards the left-hand side of the lobby.  The right of the room was reserved for non-criminal visitors only, which, unfortunately, this young boy didn’t qualify as anymore.

Finding an unoccupied officer serving their turn at the intake desk, Yang led her charge over and caught the woman’s attention.

“Hey, Jez.  Can you book this one in?” she asked, nodding towards the kid who’d led her on quite the footrace a little while ago.  “Attempted armed robbery.”

“Arm robbery, you say?” Jez joked while taking the boy by the elbow for processing.  “At least he didn’t get away with it.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”  Freed of her culprit, Yang lifted her right arm and formed a fist.  The mechanical fingers curled into a tight, unyielding ball of reinforced fury that no one wanted to be on the receiving end of.  Unfortunately, it was something of a station hobby to make as many arm jokes as possible when she was around.

“Can your arm do this?” she asked, waving the back of her hand across the scanner and seamlessly downloading her body cam videos to the computer for analysis.  “Oh, and here’s the holomask he was wearing.”  Setting the mask on the desk - the small device nothing more than a rectangle of silver that fit over someone’s ear - Yang grinned and patted Jez’s arm before heading further into the station.

“Why are you doing our job, anyway?” Jez called after her, but she smiled and waved the question off instead of responding.  She hadn’t meant to do patrol’s job.  The opportunity just kind of...presented itself.  And she wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity.

Before she got too far, sliding glass doors prevented her (or anyone else, for that matter) from accessing the interior of the station without permission.  Made from reinforced, blast-proof glass and secured by scrolling keycodes, palm scanners, and constant video surveillance, the doorway was probably one of the most protected in the city.  Her arm served as her keycode, and, with a simple wave across the scanner, the doors slid open to allow her through.

Having a mechanical arm hadn’t exactly been in her life plans, but Ruby made sure it was always loaded with the latest gadgets and upgrades.  The end result?  Most of the time, she considered it a cool, useful accessory that helped her do her job better.  It stored videos, took voice recordings, snapped photos, and cracked locks.  But it also held a small holo-projector, holo-scanner, and some crazy strong sedative darts if she ever needed them.  She’d rather have two real arms, but she had to admit that this one was pretty...handy.

Internally groaning at the pun, she turned the corner and found Ruby standing in front of the wall of computers in her office.  As usual, she looked like she was puzzling something out, as if the different screens of code and video somehow made sense to her.  

Normally, Yang wouldn’t interrupt such a concentrated expression, but it was almost the end of the day and she wanted to say ‘goodbye’ before Ruby left for the evening.  Two soft knocks tore Ruby’s attention away from the screen, and she smiled the instant she saw Yang walk into the office.

“Hey Yang!”  Leaving the computer behind, Ruby walked over and gave her a hug.  “Heard you chased someone down today.”

“You know I did.”  Lightly ruffling Ruby’s hair, Yang laughed when her sister made a disgruntled noise and ducked away.  “Can I just tell you...I love when they run.  There’s just something so satisfying about it...”

Rolling her eyes, Ruby walked back to her wall of screens and raised her hands to sort through the images. 

“You just like showing off,” she replied, using the mechanical glove on her left hand to manipulate the data displayed in front of them.  After sorting through several pictures - flipping through them so fast Yang couldn’t even tell what they were - Ruby stopped on a video and made it large enough to cover several screens.  She then pressed play, and Yang quickly realized that the footage was captured outside the convenience store where she’d spotted her most-recent takedown.

“I think this one goes in your top five,” Ruby added while the scene unfolded.  The two of them watched the young boy brandish a weapon towards the store clerk before spotting Yang, in uniform, walking past the front door.  He immediately bolted through the back entrance, and the clerk flagged her down and alerted her to what just happened.

The camera view switched to the alley, where the perpetrator had a solid fifty-yard lead by the time she burst through the back door.  She was faster than him though, closing in with each stride as they sprinted down the alleyway.  Realizing this, he threw a trash can in her way, which only slowed him down while she effortlessly hurdled it and caught up.

When they rounded the corner onto the next street, the view switched to a camera that must’ve been on the nearby bank.  It took about ten more yards before she caught up and tackled him from behind.  A perfect tackle, too - wrap up his waist, drag him to the ground, roll over and pin his arms behind his back.

“Ok, that was pretty good,” she agreed, knowing she could be a little vain in Ruby’s presence.  “But how awesome are you?  You put this together in like five minutes.”

“That’s nothing.”  Ruby waved her gloved hand, which served as a gesture of modesty while also sending the video to Yang’s data drive.  “Just a little video editing.  I could probably do that in my sleep.”

“Which is why you’re the expert.”  After patting Ruby’s shoulder, Yang backed towards the office door.  “You’re probably heading out soon, right?”

Ruby glanced at the time on the screen, squinting her eyes to see the small numbers, before nodding.  “Yeah, guess I should.  I have plans tonight.”

“With you-know-who?” Yang asked, grinning when Ruby nodded.  

“And she doesn’t like when I’m late, so I should wrap up.”

While Ruby started closing her applications, Yang headed towards the door.  

“Have fun!  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After catching a wave from her sister, she doubled back towards the front of the station and walked into her own office.  Compared to Ruby’s cavernous space filled with technology, her office was more like...well, like a regular office.  It had a computer with two monitors (versus the twenty or so Ruby had), plus a few file cabinets for ongoing cases, a desk with a couple of chairs for visitors, and that was about it.  But it was more than enough space for her to do her job, and that was really all she asked for.

When she sat in her chair and fired up her computer, she sighed as the events of the day caught up to her.  The foot chase might’ve looked cool and taken a budding criminal off the streets, but she hadn’t planned on spending the end of her day writing up an arrest report.  Even though her bodycam recorded the footage, she still had to write down what happened as if there wasn’t any video evidence.  Time of day, address, surrounding circumstances - she hated this part of the job, but it was procedure.

Deciding to get that out of the way, she started typing down everything she remembered while letting her mind wander.  

Technically, arrests were left to the patrol officers, and she’d been promoted from patrol officer to detective several years ago.  But she still logged some arrests every once in a while because, somehow, the trouble just seemed to find her.

Like today, she was only out searching for leads in a case - witnesses or hidden cameras that might lead to a breakthrough.  After striking out everywhere she looked, she was on her way back to the station when the dumb kid decided to make a horrible life decision.  He seemed young though - hopefully, he would learn from this and become a more useful member of society.  If not...then they’d see each other again.

Thankfully, the law offered some leniency for first-time offenders.  So, after recommending remediation instead of incarceration, she sent the file to the higher-ups, leaned back in her chair, and sighed.

“Detective.”

Looking towards the door, she smiled when she found Officer Collins waiting for her.

“Hey Casey,” she breathed out while motioning him forward.  “Come on in.”

“Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”  With a sense of comfort gained over their time working together, Casey walked in and took one of the seats across from Yang.  “Heard you got into a bit of a scuffle.”

“Word travels fast around here, doesn’t it?”  She shook her head at the rhetorical question, already aware of how fast the officers disseminated information - especially regarding recent arrests.  “But I’m fine - he got the worst of it.”

“Oh, good.”  He smiled at the response, and Yang found his concern endearing, even if a little uncalled for.

“You realize I ran beat for years, right?” she added.  “Just because I moved to detective doesn’t mean I can’t still run with the best of them.”

“Guess it’s easy to forget when we see you behind a desk more often than not,” he teased, knowing that the implication would rile her up.

“Hey, I’d like to see you file all these reports without a desk,” she retorted.  The response only made him smile and laugh, which went a long way in lifting her spirits.  

Tall, dark-haired, and handsome, Casey was surprisingly easy to get along with due to his calm and jovial nature.  She’d had concerns when he first joined the force - worried he would goof off too much - but he’d turned out to be a great officer and a great friend.

When his expression grew serious, however, her smile fell.

“What’s up?” she asked, knowing he might not say anything if she didn’t ask.  With permission to speak his mind, however, he leaned back and set his hands on his knees.

“It’s...just...I know I give you a hard time about the desk job, but...I’ve been thinking I might put my name in for detective.”

“Really?”  Sitting back in her seat, she shook her head at the unexpected news.  “But they just put you in charge of your own team!”

“I don’t know if Red and the Bro-Bot count as a team…”

“More than I ever had,” she pointed out.  When he shrugged, she decided to take the matter a little more seriously.  “What about Red?” she asked, but Casey waved off the concern for his only human partner.

“He said whatever I want to do is fine with him.  He’ll join another team or go solo.”

“He actually spoke?”

“He talks all the time!  To me, at least.”

Yang laughed at the idea of Red talking constantly, finding it almost as surprising as Casey’s desire to leave patrol behind.  Mostly because Red was notoriously quiet.  Most of them didn’t even know his real name - they called him Red because of the color of his hair.

“Anyway…”  Casey looked at his hands before meeting her gaze again.  “I was hoping you could help me.  I know the test is really hard, but I thought you might have a secret or something.  You must, right, since you passed it?”

“Ha ha.”  She shook her head but smiled at the joke.  “But yes, even though you’re making fun of me, I’ll help you study.”

Her acceptance was instantly rewarded with a big, warm smile.

“Thank you,” he said with a nod of appreciation.  “I owe you so much.”

“Not yet you don’t.”

Still smiling, he stood up and gave her another nod.

“Still, thank you,” he repeated before backing towards the door.  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Yang didn’t know why he always posed that as a question - they worked together, of course they would see each other on workdays - but she still nodded.

“Of course.  See you tomorrow.”

Satisfied with that answer, he left her office and headed towards the lobby.  While watching him through the glass walls of her office, she sat back and sighed.  

Should she feel guilty about helping him study?  She’d taken the test just a few years ago, so she probably remembered a good portion of it.  Plus, he was her friend.  Shouldn’t she help him if she could?

If he’d asked a year ago, she would’ve felt no hesitation helping him.  But now, things were...complicated.  

That was an argument for another time, however.  Because now, the day was over.  And, while most people greeted the end of a workday with zeal and gusto, she had the opposite feeling.  

Work gave her something to do.  Its chaotic and fast-paced nature kept her mind occupied, which prevented her from thinking about...the rest of her life.  It gave her a way to carry on what looked like a happy, normal existence.

Pretending to be happy all the time was exhausting, but everyone wanted her to be ‘fine.’  It made them more comfortable when she was ‘fine.’  So she hid the cracks, plastered on a smile, and pretended that everything was normal - just like someone who was ‘fine’ would do.

Only Ruby knew what was really going on.  Of course Ruby knew.  The last time Yang was able to hide something from Ruby, they were still in high school.  

These days, Ruby was more intuitive and cunning than Yang ever expected her to be, which meant she picked up on Yang’s emotions with little-to-no difficulty.  But besides Ruby...no one else knew.  They couldn’t know.  Not even Casey, who’d offered his shoulder time and time again, understood the depths of what Yang was going through.

All they knew was that she went through something awful - that she’d suffered a great loss - but now she was ‘fine.’  And they liked it when she was ‘fine.’

They didn’t see her when she reached the end of the day and her mind slowed down.  They didn’t see her in these moments, when the ever-present sadness, anger, and helplessness showed up - rearing their heads from their resting places not far beneath the surface of her skin.

Honestly, she was surprised she could even work with all of this happening, but a part of her wondered if her job was the only thing keeping her going.  What if she didn’t have the station to come to every day?  What if she didn’t have the pile of cases waiting to be solved?  What if she didn’t have the sense of community and togetherness that came from working towards a common goal?  

She didn’t even want to think about it…

Instead, she thought about the moment that had haunted her for months - the unsolved mystery that had ripped a hole in her heart and torn her world apart.

Tapping the screen in front of her, she opened the case file that she never closed.  It lived on her desktop, waiting for moments like these - waiting for the world to slow down so she could throw herself into the agony once more.

As usual, the first item that popped onto the screen was a news article from the day after.  In bold, block letters, it declared ‘PROMINENT DREAM THEORIST AMONG THE DEAD’ for everyone to read.  Below the headline was a photograph of the attack - plumes of black smoke billowing from the transit terminal while emergency responders rushed in.  

The picture alone was enough to make her close her eyes and try to swallow around the lump growing in her throat.  She remembered it like it was yesterday.  Hearing the alerts come over the radio, watching every officer in the building sprint out the doors, catching a fraction of the chatter before flying after them.  By the time they arrived, the roof had already collapsed, making the search for survivors that much more difficult.

And she just knew.  That sinking feeling - like someone had just stolen her breath while kicking her in the stomach.  She looked at the wreckage and knew.

She flipped through the next few articles - each going through recaps of the number of people killed and the damage done - before theories about the source and purpose of the blast appeared.  By now, she had every theory committed to memory, no matter how outlandish they seemed.  Depending on the day and her mood, she believed all of them, or she believed none of them.

When a memorial to the dead popped onto her screen - complete with photos and messages from loved ones - she quickly minimized the tab and stood up.  Some days, she could handle it.  Some days, she couldn’t.  There were legitimate reasons why she wasn’t allowed to work on the case - this feeling brewing in her chest was certainly one of them.

Instead of continuing down that path, she left her office in favor of a more informal update - something quick that she could more easily stomach.  

Turning away from the lobby, she headed towards Detective Saffold’s office - the more-senior detective in charge of this particular case.  She made it only a few steps, however, before a familiar face turned into the hall up ahead of her.

Long, white hair...way-too-expensive suit...flanked by paralegals that looked frazzled and tired - Weiss Schnee was business as usual while stomping out of the precinct.  The mere sight of her made Yang tense up, knowing that someone was in trouble if Weiss was here - or about to be in trouble.

She was, in a single word, a shark.  A very pretty, very wealthy, very successful shark.

But she was also one of the best defense attorneys in the city, if not the country.  As such, their paths crossed more frequently than most of the precinct would like - usually when Weiss showed up to break her clients out of prison with some well-placed claims of ‘broken procedures’ or ‘lack of evidence.’

Altering her path ever-so-slightly, Yang maneuvered closer to Weiss as the two of them reached a passing point in the middle of the hall.  When one of the paralegals broke away to make room for her to pass, she pretended she was going to step out of Weiss’ way.  Instead, she stepped into Weiss at the last second, giving her a ‘friendly’ bump that made her shuffle a step to the side.

It broke her aura of invincibility, and for a moment, she looked almost confused by what just happened.  When she noticed the small grin on Yang’s lips, however, she scowled.

“Watch where you’re going, Detective,” she snapped before stomping away, holding her head high while leaving the station behind.

Chuckling at the response - which was about what she’d expected - Yang carried on down the hall and ducked into Detective Saffold’s office.

“Knock knock,” she said while tapping the doorframe to announce her presence.  The older woman sitting at the desk looked up at the noise and frowned when she saw Yang.

“Detective Xiao Long,” she said, putting her hands together and watching Yang sit down across from her.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You know exactly what I’m here for, Detective,” Yang replied with a sigh, silently wondering if they had to go through this routine every time.  “Anything new yet?”

For a moment - just a split second - her hope returned, only to be dashed by a shake of the head.

“I promised I’d tell you as soon as we found anything.”

“And I promised I’d ask every day anyway.”

From the way Detective Saffold shook her head and frowned, she found Yang’s persistence annoying or aggravating.  Not that Yang particularly cared.  If she wasn’t allowed to work on the case, she would at least stay informed of what happened.

“Then no, we haven’t found anything new.”

The answer was expected, so Yang didn’t know why it still hurt.  But she tried not to let her smile fall more than a little bit - she needed to be ‘fine,’ after all.  And Detective Saffold was now looking at her as if she might not be.

“Detective?”

“It’s ok,” Yang quickly replied, slapping her knees and forcing a smile while standing up.  “Thank you for the update.  Have a good night.”

Without waiting for a response, she hurried out the door and rushed back to her office to gather her belongings.  There wasn’t much use in staying here any longer, not when the night shift was starting and most of the other detectives and lab workers were on their way home.  If they were heading home, she might as well too.  If only for the sake of keeping up appearances.

She lived a short train ride from work - a short train ride that included a passing view of the new transit terminal under construction.  Estimated completion wasn’t until next year, but the transit authority hoped to have parts of it operational before then.  For most of the city, that would be a relief.  The re-rerouted train schedules were, as she overheard multiple times on her way to and from work, a ‘pain.’

Feeling a spike of annoyance, she reminded herself that her personal tragedy wasn’t necessarily one for the people inconvenienced by the bombing.  Most likely, they hadn’t been affected at all other than suffering through wasted time.  Honestly, she might feel the same if she were in their position.  Today, however, she just wished she could trade lives with them.

Instead, she squeezed out of the train car as soon as the doors slid open and hurried across the street to her apartment building.  

She used to stop and talk to people.  She used to say ‘hello’ to the elderly couple running a small flower shop on the ground floor of the building nearby - a store she’d stopped in more than once to buy fresh flowers to bring home with her (an apology for being late, more often than not).  Now, she rushed by with nothing more than a cursory head tilt before jogging up the steps to the lobby of her building and letting herself through the door.

Was it the pity she couldn’t stand?  Or was it something else...something in the way they looked at her, or talk to her, or treated her?

Maybe she just didn’t like being the bearer of bad news - the one that made them remember.  Because, if it wasn’t for her, they would’ve moved on by now.  If it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t have to remember that horrible moment that touched so close to their lives.

After hurrying up a couple flights of stairs, Yang pressed her hand to the keypad by her apartment door and tapped in the code that hadn’t changed in years.  She was the one who’d insisted on living on the third floor or any low-level floor that made exiting through the window a livable possibility.  Ruby thought the idea was silly - which was why she lived on the top floor of her own building - but Yang was overly cautious.  Fat lot of luck that got her.

As soon as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, she sighed and dropped her bag on the entryway table.

“I’m home…” she whispered to the empty room.

It used to be their living room.  Still was, she supposed, but she hardly used it anymore.  Two small sofas faced each other in the middle of the room, creating a comfortable seating area that was nice for holding a conversation or just sitting.  The wall opposite the front door was mostly windows with a cozy reading chair and reading table situated in the perfect spot to catch the afternoon sun.  And the walls separating the living room from the bedroom and kitchen were covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, because Blake loved to read.

Thinking Blake’s name felt like an icepick plunging into her heart, but Yang tried to ignore the feeling while walking further into the apartment - their apartment.  

She hadn’t moved anything since that day, and she had no plans of moving anything soon.  And so it remained...the perfect time capsule of their lives together - her stuff mingled with Blake’s, Blake’s stuff mingled with hers.

She never understood why their relationship worked so well.  It just...did.  Everything about it felt effortless and easy, from beginning to...well, she didn’t want to say end, but...until their time together stopped.

Blake was incredibly smart, incredibly sexy, and always had a way of keeping Yang on her toes.  A sense of mystery perpetually surrounded the girl - so much so that even when Yang felt like she knew everything she could possibly know, there was still more to learn.  In all likelihood, that feeling probably stemmed from how much time Blake spent in her mind - a place Yang always wished she could step into, just once.  She’d settled for glimpses and long, deep conversations held in this very room.

Leaving the memories behind, she walked into the kitchen - the most lived-in room over the past few months.  Flipping on the video screen, she found a station playing the nightly news and turned the volume up a couple of notches.  With the news anchors serving as background noise and a subtle sense of company in the quiet, she set about making dinner for herself.  

Surprisingly, she found it more difficult to cook for one person than for two.  Somehow, she always ended up with leftovers, which wasn’t altogether a bad thing - at least she had lunch for the next day.  A silver lining, as Ruby would say.  Yang’s life was all about silver linings these days...

“In other news, the new system from Dreamscape releases next week -”

The word drew Yang’s attention away from the stove, and she watched with far more interest as the screen showed the inside of one of the Dreamscape stores downtown.  Like usual, it crawled with shoppers testing the newest environments and presets.  One full corner of the store, however, was marked off with a floor-to-ceiling screen that would be dropped on release day.

“ - is promised to be more customizable than the original Dreamscape, with more functionality and better visitation features.  And, most importantly, the ability to sequence at any time of day.”

The camera then cut to a single person - a tall, almost too handsome man with perfectly-kept black hair and an expensive black suit.

“The Daydreamer system is the future,” he proclaimed in a powerful, assured tone.  “Our dream theorists have created the most advanced, most customizable machine ever known to mankind.  Just like the Dreamscape before it - Daydreamer will change the way we view our lives and our dreams.”

With his spiel over, the camera returned to the news anchors, who shuffled blank papers on the desk in front of them while flashing perfect smiles for the viewers.

“That from the founder of Dreamscape Industries - Taven Bishop,” the female anchor explained before turning to her co-host.  “What do you think, Jay - have you pre-ordered your Daydreamer yet?”

When Jay chuckled, Yang tuned them out and carried her dinner to the dining table.

All anyone could talk about these days was the new Dreamscape - how awesome it would be, how customizable it was, how - as Taven Bishop said - it would ‘change the way they thought about dreaming.’  Yang knew it was marketing fluff meant to drive up sales of an already-popular product, but she also remembered how excited Blake had been about the new system - and if Blake was excited about something, then it must be pretty spectacular.

Yang hoped, however, that the general public behaved themselves after getting their hands on the newest tech.  Unfortunately, thefts would probably increase until supply caught up with demand.  Plus, there would definitely be more calls about ‘my spouse sequence-cheating on me’ - those were always fun.  Thankfully, she didn’t have to answer those calls anymore.

Starting her dinner, she picked up her phone and sent Ruby a text.  When she didn’t get a response within the minute, she remembered that Ruby had dinner plans, which was the only way to get her phone out of her hands.  Otherwise, she was always connected to technology in some way, shape, or form.

Without her sister serving as a distraction, Yang decided that she’d do more sleuthing while finishing her meal.  Unfortunately, this had become something of a routine for her - working while eating.  It wasn’t like she had anything better to do - either she hung out with Ruby, or she devoted her free time to finding clues as to what happened on that fateful day.

Stretching across the table, she grabbed the file folder stuffed with papers she’d brought home some time ago.  Hard copies were outdated nowadays (Ruby about died when she saw the sheets of paper spread across the dining room table), but Yang liked physically moving the pages back and forth in front of her - like moving puzzle pieces.  Of course, Ruby pointed out that she could do the same thing on a computer, but that didn’t have the same tactile feedback as paper did.

Flipping open the cover and picking up the first piece of paper on the stack, Yang shook her head.  It was a list of possible motives, and it was as flawed as it was incomplete.  From political agendas to assassination attempts to science experiments gone wrong, nothing stuck out as plausible or even probable.

The next few exhibits were photographs of random objects found in the area closest to where the blast originated.  Most of it was charred or shredded beyond recognition, making it unusable and unhelpful except as a reminder of how powerful the explosive had been.

Turning another page and finding a list of known casualties - some of them never recovered - she sighed.  Even if this hadn’t impacted her personally, a crime of this magnitude would bother her the longer it went unsolved.  How could someone get away with something like this and leave no shred of evidence?  No witnesses, no video, no nothing.

In defense of Detective Saffold and the other detectives working the case, the destruction in the terminal hadn’t made it easy to collect any evidence.  If it wasn’t buried in thousand-pound blocks from the ceiling and walls of the building, it was destroyed by the initial blast or subsequent fires that broke out.  Not helping matters was the sheer volume of activity the transit center saw on any given day.  And when the explosion occurred at peak commuter travel time, the results were rightfully called ‘catastrophic.’

Picking up a video file from the folder, Yang tapped it on her arm before flicking her wrist to toss it onto the projector in place of the news.  Once the clip loaded, she tapped her thumb and forefinger together and watched the foot traffic heading in and out of the terminal minutes before the explosion.  A timer in the bottom left corner of the screen counted down to zero - letting her know how close she was to the blast - and a small map on the bottom right showed where in the terminal the camera was located.

Every time she watched this video, the enormity of their task pressed on her heart like a heavy weight.  Identifying everyone could take years, and that didn’t even include compiling histories to see who might be a plausible suspect.

Still, they searched, and she searched on her own, hoping for a miracle.  A hunch that might blow the case open.  

So far, progress was...non-existent, to put it mildly.  All she knew was that Blake was at the transit station, traveling for a work conference.  The blast happened, and Blake didn’t come home.

Once the video ended, Yang wound back to the beginning and started again, this time focusing on a different section of the screen while watching the crowds of people pass through ticket counters and security checks.  Even though she’d memorized everything by now, she studied every face as if seeing them for the first time, hoping for something to jump out at her.

As usual, there was nothing.  Nothing but thousands of strangers going about their lives, trying to get wherever they were headed as quickly and easily as possible.

When the video feed ended a second time, Yang turned off the screen and put her head in her hands.  Discouraged was one way to describe how she’d felt the past few months.  Downtrodden.  Beaten.  Desperate.  

She needed to find whoever was responsible - she couldn’t stop until she did.

Rubbing her eyes and looking up, she checked the time and sighed.  Between work and keeping herself somewhat-operational, there was only so much she could do in a day.  And there were only so many times she could watch the same videos and read the same hypotheses before her mind turned into a pile of paranoid mush.

After flipping the file closed and shoving it across the table - to the semi-permanent spot she hardly moved it from - she took her half-eaten plate of food into the kitchen and stored the leftovers before cleaning everything up.

Once the kitchen was exactly as it was when she got home, minus the new container of leftovers in the fridge, she headed into the living room and walked through the doorway to the bedroom on the other side.

The bedroom was her least favorite room in the apartment.  It used to be her favorite, for both obvious and not obvious reasons, but now...she used it to sleep, and not much else.

Glancing at the time again, she hurried through her nightly routine so she made it to bed on time.  If someone told her years ago that she would one day have a bedtime she’d actually stick to, she would’ve asked what medications they were taking.  Flash forward and here she was - making it to bed around the same time every night.

Sleep, unsurprisingly, was a nightly escape she looked forward to, and tonight was no different.  As she changed into her pajamas and walked to her side of the bed, a sense of relief crept into her veins, easing the strain she unwittingly carried through the day.

This part of her day was the most cathartic, as she sat on the bed and removed her bionic arm.  It unclasped with a small twinge before falling free, becoming nothing more than a heavy weight she set on the bedstand.

Gently rubbing the spot where the cuff attached, she sighed in relief.  Sometimes, her arm felt sore after wearing it for an extended period of time, or after using it too much.  She missed the days when Blake would massage it for her, gently kneading and prodding the soreness away.  It seemed like a silly thing to miss, especially in the way she missed it - a deeply-rooted yearning for what she once had - but she couldn’t really help it.

Sighing again, she looked at the Dreamscape sitting on her nightstand.  The small device was, like most else in the apartment, a reminder of Blake.  It was Blake who bought it for Yang, after all.  Showed her how to use it, explained how it worked…now, it was the last connection between them.

Grabbing the small, silver disk from atop the Dreamscape (the ‘Dream Disk’ as the company called it, and they replaced more than a few lost versions), she stuck the little piece of metal to her temple before finally laying down in bed.

When the Dreamscape was first invented - she couldn’t remember how many years ago - she thought it sounded like a bunch of made-up marketing fluff.  ‘Live your dreams, escape from life’ - what was that even supposed to mean?

Billions of units sold and worldwide ubiquity later, she understood that the technology was revolutionary.  Live your dreams...escape from life...both sounded like exactly what she needed to do right now.  So, after pressing the small button on the Dream Disk, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.