He was so tired. Bone weary, spiritually numb and emotionally jaded, Brian lay wasted in the hallowed ground of the loft. Two weeks had passed since his world had been decimated, but the only one who seemed to realize the extent of that apocalypse was Brian himself.  All around him life went on. Most of the gang continued to sink balls and beers and cocks at Woody's, to pass along gossip at the diner. They told themselves and each other that Brian was (no doubt) drowning his sorrows in Kinnetik, in booze, in anonymous ass. Business as usual according to the Brian Kinney Pain Management Manual. But as Liberty Avenue and its hodge-podge of inhabitants continued to work, play, fuck and love, Brian Kinney was struggling to simply breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat... ad nauseum.

Until he couldn't.

Then Brian Kinney quietly disappeared.

********

Almost four hundred miles away, a young man on his way to meet with yet another artist's manager, descended the steps toward the subway turnstile. He was running late. Again. For two weeks his life had been nothing but one unendingly long bout of pounding the pavement: running to find an affordable place to live; running to find a paying job; running to find a manager. Running, always behind himself. He hadn't even had a moment to call home, to talk with his mom or Brian.  

God, Brian. He missed him desperately and hadn't even been able to talk with him since he called to let him know he'd arrived safely. Brian was wrong. It wasn't only time. It was also exhaustion, money, heartbreak...Why the fuck had he agreed to do this? He was already so empty from the relentless pace at which he was operating that he couldn't put brush to canvas even if he'd had the space.  Although he was sketching a bit, he hadn't painted even a line of color since he'd arrived in the city. There was just no place to work on his art. He was spending all his time and energy trying to find a way out of that miniscule apartment he was sharing with Daphne's friend. Yeah, he had a place to crash, but that's exactly what it was -crashing. On a pallet. On the floor. His god-awful apartment in the Pitts was bigger than this walkup. Christ! At this rate, it would take him years just to afford a space to paint. In the meantime he was still looking for any job that would have him and practically prostrating himself at the feet of every agent in the city, begging them to take him on.

A shoulder shoving him into the half wall beside the entrance brought Justin back from his internal misery. He had to make this appointment or his day was yet again going to be wasted. He held tightly to his portfolio as he furiously angled his way through the press of bodies scurrying toward the crowded train entrance. As his hand reached for the turnstile a familiar tingle spread along the base of his neck, as if a sweet breath had been expelled against it. "I love you." He could almost feel the words spoken against his ear. A chill crept through his heart. "Brian."

********

Another week passed before the gang actually discovered that Brian had disappeared. Of course Michael made the discovery first. He had called Brian's cell phone a week ago. It was apparently disconnected. He called the number for the loft. It went to voice mail.

"The fuck, Brian! I'm trying to call you and your cell's not working. Call me the fuck back!" Michael whined his impatience to his friend. Brian didn't return the call. The next week Michael went to the loft and, when Brian didn't answer his knock, he used the key his friend had given him years ago to let himself in. It was only 7:00 a.m. and Brian should have been home. The loft, however, was silent. Eerily so, Michael noted. Calling out to his friend, he shook off the chill that suddenly ran through him when he received no answer.  It was almost as if the room had echoed.

Everything seemed to be relatively normal in the great room of the loft - only a few papers out of place on the desk which, in itself, was way out of character for the anally retentive creature that was Brian. Bills. Credit card statements. A piece of what looked like a map printout. "Maybe he went on a business trip," Michael mused aloud. "Wonder why he didn't tell me about it?"

Though Michael thought his friend had left things uncustomarily out of order, he didn't find anything he considered extremely disturbing. The open draperies on the high loft window allowed the daylight to illuminate the bedroom as he checked it. Everything seemed normal there, as well. He checked the closet and found nothing obviously amiss there. A closet full of Armani and Prada, neatly organized. A quick glance at the bathroom showed it was pristine, as usual. The towel, apparently from Brian's last shower, was neatly hanging on the towel rack, his toothbrush properly in the holder. Walking to the kitchen, Michael checked the refrigerator. Brian had never been one to keep much in the way of actual food in his refrigerator when Justin wasn't around. Since Justin had been gone a little over three weeks, Michael wasn't really surprised to find the thing nearly empty. But the smell that assaulted his nose when he opened the door nearly choked him. The few perishables that were in the fridge were completely rotten - and reeking. The refrigerator was off, and obviously had been for some time. Checking the stove and the microwave, he found they were off as well. A first real tickle of dread teasing his gut, Michael flipped the wall switch for the overheads... Nothing.

"Shit! This is fucking strange," Michael whispered to the empty room. Having been best friends with Brian since they were fourteen, Michael was sure that Brian wouldn't be gone long enough for his food to spoil or his utilities to be disconnected without letting someone know. Christ, for that matter, if he was going to be gone for that long, he would have made arrangements for someone - probably Cynthia - to handle these things.  He would have let Michael know, for Christ's sake!  With another look around the loft - now that he knew he actually was looking for something - he noticed a fine dust film over the counters and the furniture and a vaguely stale odor that was definitely not Kinney-like.

Michael slumped down onto a tall stool beside the breakfast bar trying to make some kind of sense of things. Aimlessly running his fingers through the dust layer on the counter-top, Michael realized that as far as he knew, none of the regular gang had seen Brian since Justin left. After the Babylon bombing and his own brush with near-death, Michael himself had been rather preoccupied with his own family and his own life, just assuming Brian was drowning his sorrows in his regular fucked-up fashion. But this...this was something different. As he mindlessly trailed his hand over the dirty counter, his fingers played with a small paper stuck to the back of an envelope. Picking it up, realizing it was a sticky note, he read what was written on the small square.

Go raibh síocháin leat,deartháir. Chumhdaigh tú. Cumhdóimid.

That was definitely not Brian's handwriting. That was definitely not even Brian's language.  There was definitely something seriously wrong here.