The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

3: The Debt

Unsurprisingly, María Este Police Precinct at two in the morning was like a fortress. The hulking mass of concrete was lit at the front by harsh strip-lighting that carried us into a bare lobby. Mud-streaked tiles were lined with rows of bolted-down plastic chairs where a few unfortunate souls were sat waiting, or perhaps hiding, from whatever scary shit lurked outside in the darkness of Este.

Will couldn't have looked any more like he wanted to dive headfirst outta the lobby if he tried. He pressed a buzzer in the wall next to a steel hatch which screeched open to reveal an eye. He beckoned me to go stand in front of the eye, which pulled back to reveal the head of a woman wearing a suspicious expression.

"Hi, I need to call my Mom. I was...I was..." I burst into tears.

Will steered me away from the disembodied head in the wall, while I added tears and snot to his already vomit-speckled hoodie sleeve.

"He's just evacuated from a fire. At number Seven, Plaza del Este. He was working there as a...as a..." A wave of unease rippled across Will's face.

Luckily, my flurry of tears had ended almost as soon as it started. I took a few deep breaths before stepping back to the Lady of the Hatch.

"There was a fire at Plaza del Este at one of the buildings owned by Sigma and I was a sex worker there and I got outta the fire and I need to get back to my Mom," I rattled off as fast as I could.

The Lady of the Hatch pondered. She didn't look convinced. "Are you a minor?" 

I wasn't offended at the question. Nobody ever guessed my age correctly. Clients and Sigma workers usually estimated that I was anywhere between fourteen and forty years old. Cal always told us that we were whatever age the clients wanted us to be.

"I'm twenty-two."

The Lady of the Hatch wrote something down, or at least I thought she was writing behind her steel wall. She could have been filing her nails. She then picked up a phone and began talking into it.

"Hey sweetie, you OK? Can you check on a report of a fire at Plaza del Este? Yeah? Damn, girl! Is anyone down there? Tomorrow at nine? Yeah. Bye, sweetie." The Lady swiped the call away and set her phone down, giving me a wide smile. "What's your Mom's number, sweetie?"

"I don't know."

Who memorizes phone numbers?

"I know her work email address," I ventured. "And my sister's university email address...but she's graduated by now...and her personal email has stupid kisses and numbers at the end...but I can't remember which order they're in...she had a CyBook[1] account...but she just used it to take pictures of food-."

Will stepped in with a kind hand to my shoulder, probably to stop me before I sounded any more like the clueless rambling fucking idiot that I was.

"What's your Mom's address, sweetie?"

"Busan, in Korea."

"Your Mom lives in Korea?"

"Yeah."

The Lady of the Hatch started to write something behind her steel citadel. "Are you a naturalized citizen of the United States, or do you have a visa to be here?"

Shibal.

I'd totally forgotten that I didn't have a visa anymore.

"I had a student visa three years ago," I offered, "But it must have expired...when I got kidnapped."

The hatch slammed shut. Weren't they gonna help me because my visa had expired? I turned from the hatch to ask Will, but he was staring at me in utter horror. For a moment I thought that he was horrified that I didn't have a visa, until I remembered that kidnapped people didn't usually wander around outside the walls of Sigma buildings.