“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 similar material, a light orange armband and a golden necklace, which were pretty standard attire of members of the local community watch and patrol team. These were special organizations pretty much only present in the South-Eastern District, organized by powerful local community groups, typically centered around families, local groups and sometimes beliefs in different gods. All of these local communities formed a community collective, which throughout the years became the de facto governing body of the South-Eastern District.

“She lost her son two days ago.” The man repeated with an annoyed tone: “She’s been looking ever since. We have people out there looking for him, and I think it would be in the community’s best interest 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 an alert, we do it for far less - ”

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

“We do when it comes to serious crimes just like this one.” Marcus sensed that this man in front of him was trying to intimidate him, by activating his Qi and creating a more overwhelming presence, clearly manifesting 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 community patrol team.” The man’s eyes narrowed, seemingly slightly confused and angered as to why Marcus did not show any signs of worry or concern at his stance: “And the last thing we need is for a dumbass copper to waltz in like a disoriented pige and mess up our coordinated search and investigation mission.”

“Coordinated search and investigation mission, you say?” Marcus asked with a frown: “How many have gone missing? Why haven’t we heard of this? According to the agreement between the city and your community 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, attracting passers-by and potentially other members of the community watch and patrol team: “You think we’re just gonna sit by and let the scourge of heinous crime tear through our community? What can you even do huh? Nobody likes you here! Nobody works with you here! ”

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

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

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

“If you continue behaving like this, you are more despicable than a fucking pig.” This middle-aged man with a slightly hunched back spoke with a calm but stern tone: “You can 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 slapped 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 community watch and patrol team to come over: “Don’t worry, I’ll find a place for her and deploy my best men to help her.”

Old Wang’s Tea House, was the place 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 community watch and 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 Wang poured Marcus a cup of tea with a flowery fragrance.

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

“That’s only a young punk in the team, new. He still has a ton to learn.” Bulu Wang sat back and 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 communities didn’t loop in the city, 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 conduct investigation, and even how we communicate through many of our channels.”

“Inside job?” Marcus frowned and nodded: “That could definitely happen. But what for? I thought since the communities 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 in the entire district, this I can promise you.” Bulu Wang raised his hand and interjected: “And we have been setting 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 not wrong. We barely have enough resources for people like Carl Strong, or things like serial murder and extremely serious narcotics trafficking 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 handle it, and we are also trying to make sure that, given the powers that be, we’re not making the situation worse.”

“I’ll think about it.” Marcus scratched his face and sighed: “You know I cannot just let this slip my mind, right?”

“Two days, that’s all I’m asking.” Bulu raised his index and middle finger at 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 and relented: “Fine, I will check back tomorrow 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 gentle stream of Qi touching his skin and some surface muscles then dissipating after a brief contact: “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 need to ask you for help and knowledge instead.”

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

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