“What do you mean?” Marcus looked back at the man and asked. This man was wearing a loose, light gray cloth shirt with a pocket on the left chest, a pair of loose trousers of simir material, a light e armband and a golden neckce, which were pretty standard attire of members of the local unity watd patrol team. These were special anizations pretty muly present in the South-Eastern District, anized by powerful local unity groups, typically tered around families, local groups and sometimes beliefs in different gods. All of these local unities formed a unity collective, which throughout the years became the de facto g body of the South-Eastern District.

  “She lost her son two days ago.” The maed with an aone: “She’s been looking ever since. eople out there looking for him, and I think it would be in the unity’s best i if you focus your time and effort on more dire things.”

  “I think a child missing for two days is pretty dire.” Marcus stood up and looked the man directly in his eyes: “Two days - that’s enough for the PCPD to log as potential kidnapping and fire up a, we do it for far less - ”

  “A has been fired within our work, and eople looking for him as we speak.” The man did not show any signs of bag off: “And you’re not in any other districts, are you copper? In our district, you don’t have the same kind of jurisdi.”

  “We do when it es to serious crimes just like this one.” Marcus sehat this man in front of him was trying to intimidate him, by activating his Qi and creating a more overwhelming presence, clearly maing himself as a martial arts practitioner: “And all I’m trying to do here is help her - the woman’s son is missing. Isn’t child kidnapping something you treat very very seriously here?”

  “It is, which is why we are mobilizing almost everyone from our unity patrol team.” The man’s eyes narrowed, seemingly slightly fused and angered as to why Marcus did not show any signs of worry or at his stance: “And the st thing we need is for a dumbass copper to waltz in like a disoriented pige and mess up our coordinated seard iigation mission.”

  “Coordinated seard iigation mission, you say?” Marcus asked with a frown: “How many have gone missing? Why haven’t we heard of this? Acc to the agreemeweey and your unity collective - ”

  “It’s none of your business, COPPER!” A few veins seemed to have popped up on the man’s forehead as he raised his voice, attrag passers-by and potentially other members of the unity watd patrol team: “You think we’re just gonna sit by ahe sce of heinous crime tear through our unity? What you even do huh? Nobody likes you here! Nobody works with you here! ”

  “Please help My SON! MY SON IS MISSING!” The woman screamed a, her fingers scratg her head with such a force that blood started dripping from her fingers: “I ’t find him… I ’t find him… I ’T, FIND HIM! you please help me?!”

  “You will be hearing from us!” The man turo the weeping woman and raised his voice again: “St! This isn’t going to - ”

  “Sp!” A hand swung from the side a a clear red hand mark on the man’s cheek. This was the doing of another man, middle-aged, with a slightly hunched bad holding a crooked-looking wooden walking stick.

  “If you tinue behaving like this, you are more despicable than a fug pig.” This middle-aged man with a slightly hunched back spoke with a calm but stern tone: “You bark at cops however with whatever words you want. But any disrespect thrown at a distraught mother trying to find her child is nothing short of disgrace. Fuck off! One more of this then to the bay you go!”

  The spped man put his hands on the red mark left on his face, he tried to say something but his face swelled up too much for him to make a cohesive sound. And at the hand signal of the middle-aged man, this man ran away.

  “Let’s go and have a cup of tea.” The middle-aged man sighed and said to Marcus, while waving his hand at some other members of the unity watd patrol team to e over: “Don’t worry, I’ll find a pce for her and deploy my best men to help her.”

  Old Wang’s Tea House, was the pce to which this middle-aged man took Marcus, him being “Old Wang”, or Bulu Wang, as Marcus knew him. Under any other circumstances Marcus would not have left the weeping woman like this. But with Bulu Wang’s presence, and the fact that other more benign-looking unity watd patrol team members came here to help, he felt for now assured that she would be well taken care of, and that he did not really have much of a choice.

  “Haven’t seen you for a while, still busy?” Bulu oured Marcus a cup of tea with a flowery fragrance.

  “Thank you, still kinda busy.” Marcus sighed: “As you see, things are - well - ”

  “That’s only a young punk ieam, new. He still has a ton to learn.” Bulu Wang sat bad sighed: “And - I will not waste your time. His attitude aside, he was still telling the truth about the thing with missing children - there are a few of them already. And just like you know, we took them extra seriously and dispatched a lot of members to look for them. But we have been having trouble finding many useful clues.”

  “And that’s why the unities didn’t loop iy, is it?” Marcus shook his head: “You’re afraid that the city will attempt to overreach?”

  “That’s one of the reasons, one of the main ones.” Bulu Wang sighed: “And the other thing is that whoever is doing this, they seem to be quite familiar with the way our teams work, how we duvestigation, and even how we unicate through many of our els.”

  “Inside job?” Marcus frowned and nodded: “That could definitely happen. But what for? I thought sihe unities don’t take children purchasing lightly, there would be almost no buyers here or maybe anywhere. Ever since - ”

  “No one would dare attempt to buy this many kids iire district, this I promise you.” Bulu Wang raised his hand and interjected: “And we have beeing up watches and road checks at almost all entrances all over the district, you know the drill. But to no avail - these kids seemed to have just disappeared. Which is terrible, and it started reminding people of the horribleness decades back - ”

  “I know.” Marcus put down his empty cup: “But what could I do to help? That punk might be rude, but I guess he’s n. We barely have enough resources for people like Carl Strong, or things like serial murder aremely serious narcotics traffig and trading, these are what the cops are good - well, OKAY at. Things like missing children in the South-Eastern District has never been our strong suit.”

  “I know that.” Bulu refilled Marcus’ cup: “I am looping you in because I trust you, and ask you to do the same for me. We are trying to ha, and we are als to make sure that, given the powers that be, we’re not making the situation worse.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Marcus scratched his fad sighed: “You know I ot just let this slip my mind, right?”

  “Two days, that’s all I’m asking.” Bulu raised his index and middle fi Marcus: “Two more days, we’ll update you. If we don’t have answers by then you do what you have to do.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Marcus let out a long sigh aed: “Fine, I will check baorrow and the day after. You’d better have answers by then. If you don’t, I won’t have much of a choice.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Bulu Wang smiled, raised his left hand and pinched Marcus’ right arm with a gentle force, and Marcus felt a geream of Qi toug his skin and some surface muscles then dissipating after a brief tact: “You’ve kept up with your practice, good. I was thinking if there’s anything more I could teach you, but it looks like I may o ask you for help and knowledge instead.”

  “Temple of Fetfulness, Master Liaoran is a hell of a critid guide. You could learn a lot from him if you’d … ”

  “Ah, too bad, I just don’t have the time, and patience.”